Red-Barracuda

A conman and his young accomplice - who may or may not be father and daughter - travel around the mid-west during the Great Depression, trying out various illicit money-making schemes.

This Peter Bogdanovich movie is a product of the New Hollywood era. Like his earlier effort, The Last Picture Show, this one shares the specific black and white period drama presentation. Its in effect a road movie, where the characters are the driving force. Ryan O'Neal illustrates his screen charisma here and he has - perhaps unsurprisingly - great chemistry with Tatum O'Neal, who is his actual daughter after all! The latter puts in one of the great child acting performances out there, with a fair amount of depth and humour. Madeline Kahn pitches up memorably too in the role of Ryan's overbearing female suitor. The acting is all very good and the period detail and monochrome cinematography an ideal accompaniment. And even if it feels like the story sags a bit somewhere in the middle, its still an all-round good movie and certainly shows just how reliable Bogdanovich was as a director up to this point in his career.

Island of Lost Souls (1932) was one of the more controversial horror movies of the 30's. It was made pre-Hays Code and was regarded as quite shocking and perverse for its time. Fast forward 45 years later and U. S. independent studio AIP stepped in and remade this film. In the event, it not only was not shocking at all by 70's standards but was also somewhat bigger budget and classier than AIP films generally were. Its cast certainly gave some clues that this one had money behind it, with Burt Lancaster as Dr Moreau, Michael York as shipwreck survivor Andrew Braddock, Barbara Carrera as the love interest and Nigel Davenport a bit of cynical mercenary muscle. The story is basically the same, albeit, it massively cuts to the chase with this one and just gets on with it without any pre-island messing about whatsoever, with York's character shipwrecked on a remote island at the turn of the century; an island, more to the point, where genetic experiments are carried out by the doctor of the title, turning people into animal hybrids - humanimals!

This one benefits from great on-location tropical sets and fun Planet of the Apes style make-up effects for the humanimals. The cast all acquit themselves well too, even if Lancaster's Moreau is a little less perverse than Charles Laughton's original interpretation in Island of Lost Souls. Its overall a fine bit of period-set sci-fi, which has enough production value about it to ensure it gets the job done with something to spare. If you enjoyed this one then 1979's Island of the Fish Men could be worth checking out as well - it's a slightly sillier Italian riff on this kind of thing, which also manages to include a nice tropical backdrop and half-decent cast.

Back in '83/'84 there were a plethora of sword and sorcery b-movies being made to cash-in on the success of Conan. Needless to say, the Italians got very involved with this and many of their prominent genre directors chipped in with an offering of their own. To that end, the goremeister general himself Lucio Fulci knocked out Conquest. The basis of its story is put forward with a scene on a beach where the dialogue is so inaudible that you are left with no alternative than to just assume that what we are about to see has some point. What in boils down to is a wimpy hero with a magic bow, who teams up with a Conanesque barbarian to battle an evil topless sorceress and her wolf-men minions! To be fair, that really is all you need to know because I don't think coherence was a prominent consideration with this one and, like other movies of its category, it essentially boils down to a journey punctuated regularly with encounters with all manner of ridiculous events. This basic template has ensured that the 80's sword and sorcery movies are one of the most reliably entertaining - they're hardly ever great exactly but their format means they tend to avoid (too much) tedium.

Conquest is both typical and distinctive of its genre. Typical in that the story, characters and setting is thoroughly ten-a-penny but distinctive in that Fulci has made some unusual choices. For one, the look is atypical, with constant foggy landscapes and what can only be described as VaselineVision - while I do commend the attempt to create a fantasy world with this, I am still not convinced it's a very good idea. The second Fulci factor in this one, is the graphic violence, which is WAY more full-on than these films usually go - the highlight of this involves a cavegirl being literally ripped in half, with her entrails poring out! Fulci also delivers unusual moments such as zombies in a swamp and a great underwater scene where dolphins save a chained-up man! The film deviates from usual rules in other ways too, with our heroes nonchalantly and completely unnecessarily killing a poor schmuck minding his own business and then laughing about it, while there is also a finale which involves the death of a major character which was somewhat pleasingly surprising. You've also got regular S&S barbarian girl Sabrina Siani in this one as the sorceress. She spends the whole runtime topless in a g-string and gold-mask, which may sound good on paper but she is such a looker, you kind or wonder why she was stuck having to hide her coupon the whole film! Unfortunately, aside from Sabrina, this was very much too much of a sausage-fest for my liking, with a couple of especially uninteresting male characters leading the charge - they should definitely have swapped one of them out for a hot barbarian girl! Finally, it would be remiss to not acknowledge that this one also benefits from sporting a nice moody synth score from legendary Goblin, Claudio Simonetti.

Overall, this one is definitely required viewing if you appreciate the salacious Conan rip-offs of the 80's and it certainly differentiates itself from the pack in several ways, even if it is(pleasingly) more of the same from this sub-genre.