Short of watching a mockbuster from The Asylum or its ilk, one would be hard-pressed to find a film that is more of a ripoff of a big time Hollywood production than Robowar, from Italian auteur Bruno Mattei. The victim in this case is Predator. From characters, to plot, to location, to certain scenes, all the way down to individual lines of dialogue, Mattei squeezed everything he could out of Predator short of being sued into oblivion. The only major change was substituting a rogue bionic soldier for the alien hunter. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Robowar”
Tag: Bruno Mattei
October Horrorshow: Zombi 3
What’s great about a zombie flick is that it doesn’t need much of a plot to be a success. It can just lurch from set piece to set piece until the main cast is winnowed down enough to call it a day. That makes zombies a perfect subject matter for Italian director Lucio Fulci.
Zombi 3 is the 1988 entry in a film series that requires its own Wikipedia page to make sense of. According to the internet, so it must be true, the screenplay was developed by Rossella Drudi, but it was her husband, Claudio Fragasso, who got the credit. Lucio Fulci is the only credited director, but, again according to the internet, he delivered a 70-minute cut that producer Franco Gaudenzi was not happy with. So, Gaudenzi enlisted Fragasso and Bruno Mattei to carry out reshoots, with Fragasso handling most of the work. The result is an 84-minute long film that makes up for its lack of cohesion with a boatload of blood and guts. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Zombi 3″
October Horrorshow: Hell of the Living Dead
What an absolute pile of trash. I loved every minute of this film. Well, almost every minute of it. I loved the exploding heads and zombies munching on guts. I loved how director Bruno Mattei slipped in some nudity and pretended it wasn’t gratuitous. I loved how wild and unrealistic were the main characters. And I loved how no one in the movie seemed to absorb, for more than a second at a time, that zombies have to be shot in the head to stop them. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Hell of the Living Dead”
October Horrorshow: Rats: Night of Terror
With a title like Rats: Night of Terror, I was expecting a horror flick. What I was not expecting was a horror flick combined with a 1980s Italian post-apocalyptic sci-fi flick, in the same milieu as 1990: The Bronx Warriors or The New Gladiators. But, shitty film auteurs Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso appeared to have no qualms in marrying two different genres, even if it added just about nothing to the plot.
In the near future, in the year 2015, civilization was consumed by atomic war. Survivors retreated underground, where they would attempt to rebuild society safely hidden from the irradiated wastes above. But, some people chose to reject a life in tunnels and caves, and returned to the surface to brave the danger. Now, 225 years after the bombs fell, descendants of the surface survivors are traveling the wasteland in search of food and water. They’re a fashionable bunch of post-apocalyptic bikers, clad in mismatched bits of military uniforms, accessorized with bandoliers and weapons of various calibers. Despite the trappings, they don’t look all that tough. Dressing like an extra in The Magnificent Seven seems to be de rigueur in this bleak future. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Rats: Night of Terror”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Strike Commando
Who wants to watch some bottom-feeding trash? I do! And we all should. Films like Strike Commando, the 1987 shitfest from Italian filmmaker Bruno Mattei, make serious film and art house fodder all the better. How would we be able to gauge excellence were it not for films like Strike Commando giving us a baseline of inferiority? Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Strike Commando”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Women’s Prison Massacre, aka Emanuelle Escapes From Hell, aka Blade Violent – I violenti
In the annals of shitty cinema, the 1980s saw the Italians holding the world championship crown. Between Enzo G. Castellari, Joe D’Amato, and Lucio Fulci, American b-flicks just didn’t stand a chance. Bruno Mattei is another filmmaker who can be added to this list of sublime cinematic futility. His 1983 film, Women’s Prison Massacre, also released as Emanuelle Escapes From Hell, among a couple of other titles, is an unbelievable piece of shit. Not only is it bottom feeding trash, it’s sexually exploitative. Being a film about a women’s prison, that’s to be expected. But there is also a cut floating around out there with hardcore porn, using body doubles of the cast, stitched into the R-rated sex scenes. I didn’t see that cut because, believe it or not, I wanted to watch this dog for the plot. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Women’s Prison Massacre, aka Emanuelle Escapes From Hell, aka Blade Violent – I violenti”