River of Death (1989)

Dir: Steve Carver

The Third Reich is crumbling. The Russians have beat back the Hun to the Fatherland. It is 1945, Germany. SS Commander Heinrich Spaatz (Donald Pleasence HALLOWEEN) arrives at a P.O.W. camp, the Russian army just a short distance away. He is there to see the Mengele like Dr. Wolfgang Manteuffel (Robert Vaughn KILLING BIRDS). His orders are to bring the Dr. and himself to Hitler's bunker. But Heinrich has a better plan. He wants the Dr. to join him in South America. Heinrich will be a prosperous businessman and the Dr. can continue his inhumane experiments in his quest to rid the planet of inferior races. The Dr. agrees but at the runway rendezvous point to escape the in flames country he turns on his friend. Shooting Heinrich in the knee, the Dr. leaves behind his former comrade. Heinrich vows to find the Dr. as he watches the plane fly away.

Skip ahead 20 years. It is now 1965. Jungle guide / adventurer John Hamilton (Michael Dudikoff AMERICAN NINJA) leads a Dr. Blakesley (Victor Melleney CYBORG COP II) and his daughter Anna (Sarah Maur Thorp EDGE OF SANITY) through the Amazon jungle. The Blakesley's are on a humanitarian mission to discover the source of and a cure to a mysterious disease that is plaguing the indigenous tribes. Trekking to the unexplored region of the jungle, the group is attacked by an unknown tribe. The Dr. is killed, Anna is kidnapped and Hamilton barely makes it out of the jungle back to civilization. Realizing that the tribe's village is a fabled lost city and vowing to return and rescue Anna, he seeks out the police commander Colonel Ricardo Diaz (Herbert Lom A SHOT IN THE DARK). The colonel isn't buying the tall tale about the city of legend and tries to dissuade Hamilton from venturing back into the jungle. Hamilton, man of daring that he is, and being smitten by Anna, will have none of that.

Hamilton turns to old friend Eddie Hiller (L.Q. Jones THE WILD BUNCH), gun runner and midget boxing promoter, to seed his return trip. Eddie has already heard about Hamilton's adventure in the jungle and so has seemingly every one else in the town. Eddie connects Hamilton with a wealthy businessman interested in traveling to the lost city and willing to fund the expedition. Hamilton agrees to take the man and his secretary Maria (Cynthia Erland DEATH FEUD), not realizing the man is Heinrich Spaatz living under an assumed identity. Even more parties reach out to Hamilton. There's the couple who are secret Israeli Nazi hunters. The government bureaucrat who claims he can speak the tribal tongues and clutches a worn piece of luggage as if his life depended on it. Throw in a couple of helicopter pilots and men who I have no idea what they are doing there and there's plenty of fodder.

Nazis. Gunfights. Tribal warfare. River pirates with a mortar on the bow of their boat. Chemical warfare. Indiana Jones and APOCALYPSE NOW references. A wonderful cast with Donald Pleasence hamming it up and stylin' it with a number of horrendous looking wigs. Double and triple crosses. This film packs it all in. All that's missing is a piranha scene.

Directed by Steve Carver (who helmed LONE WOLF MCQUADE, one of my favourite Chuck Norris films) and based on the Alistair MacLean novel of the same name, RIVER OF DEATH is not what I'd call a good film but it certainly is a fun combination of exploitation and action. Dudikoff acquits himself well as the intrepid jungle explorer who has a knack for getting into trouble. It's obvious Pleasence is having a blast with his character and Robert Vaughn is menacing as the cardboard cut out evil Nazi doctor. L.Q. Jones is a plus to any film he appears in. Oh, Herbert Lom wielding a SMG! Throw in plenty of action and that's my entertainment sorted for the night.

Released by Canon, produced in part by Harry Alan Towers. What a combo.

**1/2 out of ****

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

Dir: S. Craig Zahler

A couple of drifters, Buddy (Sid Haig) and Purvis (David Arquette SCREAM), stumble onto sacred Indian ground while fleeing the camp site where they butchered people as part of a robbery. Buddy is brutally attacked by Indians and Purvis makes his escape. Eleven days later, Purvis enters the small town of Bright Oak. Doddering backup Deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins THE CABIN IN THE WOODS) spots the suspicious Purvis and alerts Sheriff Hunt (Kurt Russell). Confronting Purvis at the drinking establishment The Learned Goat, the Sheriff isn't buying any of Purvis' lies and shoots him in the leg. Wanting Purvis to be as healthy as possible when he's hanged, the Sheriff sends the sharply dressed gunslinger Brooder (Matthew Fox EXTINCTION) to collect the doctor and meet up at the jail. Finding the doctor in his cups, Brooder instead brings the assistant Samantha (Lili Simmons) who was tending to her husband Arthur's (Patrick Wilson THE CONJURING) broken leg in their home. As Purvis needs constant attention, a Deputy is left with Samantha at the jail for her overnight vigil, as the other retire.

In the morning the Sheriff learns that a man has been murdered and horses stolen from the stables. Entering the jail no one is to be found. No Deputy, no Samantha, no Purvis. The only sign of what happened is an arrow. An arrow that the Indian The Professor (Zahn McClarnon who co-stars with Wilson in the second season of FARGO) identifies as belonging to a troglodyte tribe of cannibals. They live in an area avoided by the other Indian tribes. Determined to retrieve the three kidnapping victims the Sheriff puts together a posse consisting of Chicory, Brooder, Arthur and himself. Despite his broken leg, Arthur is hell bent on joining the posse and saving his wife.

On the trail to the lands of the cannibal Indians, each member learns much about each other.

Writer / director S. Craig Zahler has crafted a western film that balances the sharp comedic wit of the Sheriff's conversations with his absent minded back up Deputy and the bloody violence that erupts without warning. The script is wonderful and allows for all the leads to inhabit their characters and deliver fantastic performances. The film is bleak but the comedy helps to take the edge off. We are invested in characters and we want to see them succeed.

BONE TOMAHAWK is one of the best films released in 2015.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Horrible (1981)

aka
Rosso Sangue
Zombie 6
Absurd

Dir: Joe D'Amato

The film opens with Mikos (George PORNO HOLOCAUST Eastman) running through the woods

desperately trying to escape from his pursuer, a priest (Edmund Purdom, the dean in PIECES). They run some more. They continue running. And a bit more running until Mikos manages to impale himself while trying to climb a gate. He musters enough strength to ring the doorbell of the rural home he has ended up at and promptly
spills his intestines on the welcome mat as the home owner answers.

Mikos is taken to the local hospital (Ted Rusoff, dubber extrodinaire, is one of the doctors operating on him). While on the operating table the doctors realize that Mikos' blood coagulates quickly. In the film that ability translates to surviving impalement on iron spikes and being shot multiple times. Which works out well for Mikos seeing as he is a blood crazed killer whose two favourite things to do seem to be meander around rural villages and dispatch everyone he comes across in an inventive and gory manner. Luckily for Mikos there's a nurse he can ram a drill into the head of and a rural village right outside the hospital doors.

The priest continues to chase after Mikos and when he's picked up by police for looking suspicious he fills them (and the viewer) on the negligible back story. Mikos and the priest are Greek and Mikos was transformed into the killing machine he is by some sort of scientific experiment gone awry. How the pair made it from Greece to the U.S. is never explained. But at least the priest has not only convinced the chain smoking police detective that Mikos must be found, also the detective hands over a pistol and keys to a squad car. No more running for the priest. Can the police and the priest track down and stop the maniac before he kills again?

A reviewer could just write 'Horrible' and be done with the review. But I was entertained by bits and pieces of the film. It certainly wasn't the non existent script or Joe D'Amato's lackluster direction. I willingly waded through long boring stretches to get to the '80's crude and in your face gore; the highlight a band saw to the head. Seeing a young Michelle Soavi as a biker menacing an old man was another nostalgia kick. And rural Italy being passed off as rural America led to a number of curious set pieces and every day things looking a bit ... different. I know that when I'm hosting a Super Bowl party at my house I like to have the missus serve pasta while the game is still on. Forget nachos or wings, present a big bowl of plain spaghetti and everyone will be happy.

Unless you are attempting to see every D'Amato film (I do not recommended putting oneself through that torture) or think George Eastman is dreamy, skip this.





* out of ****

Amazonia: The Catherine Miles Story (1985)

aka: White Slave
Cannibal Holocaust 2: The Catherine Miles Story

Dir:  Mario Gariazzo

The film is set up so as to fool the audience into believing it is an authentic narrative of what happened to 18 year old Catherine Miles (Elvire Audray) in the untamed Amazon and her blood thirsty revenge on those who sought to destroy her family. Opening with a post trial interview with Kathy, the film flashes back to her testimony in court which in turn flashes back to her trials in the Amazon. It is, of course, fake.

On holiday from boarding school, Kathy flies to the Amazon in order to spend time with her parents on their plantation. As it is her birthday the family takes out their houseboat to an uncharted part of the mighty river to have a celebratory picnic. Following behind the houseboat are Kath's Aunt and Uncle along with their retainers.

Shortly after mooring the houseboat, mother, father and Kathy are attacked by poisoned darts. The brutal attack kills her mother and father and paralyses Kathy; she cannot move but can still see and hear. Onto the houseboat a group of natives storm, seemingly intoxicated by the kills and the wonders of the modern world as represented by a well stocked bar and leather chairs. As is the custom of their tribe, the mother and father are decapitated and their heads taken as trophies. The hunting party's leader, Umukai, bleeds the poison from the blow gun dart stuck in Kathy's arm. He has claimed the blonde white woman as his own.

Umukai takes his prize back to his village and over time Kathy learns the practices, customs and language of the tribe. At all times Umukai treats Kathy well and fights for her as if he loves her but Kathy returns each affectionate gesture with hatred as she holds him responsible for her parent's death. In time, and with the help of Umukai's sister who just happens to have learned English at a nearby missionary school, Kathy learns the truth as to what happened on the houseboat on that fateful day. She sets out on a brutal mission of revenge.

Like its cinematic predecessors, AMAZONIA has plenty of stock jungle footage, animals eating other animals, and characters pondering who the real savages are. While it is no where near as shocking as many of the earlier Jungle exploitation films, it was passed off as a sequel to CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST for some releases. There's some crude gore and Kathy walking around topless for most of the running time but it's not enough to bolster the tired script and mediocre direction.

* 1/2 out of ****