LeeVanNero

Enjoyable vigilante action thriller from Enzo G. Castellari, staring Franco Nero. Feels like a riff/cash in on Death Wish, but was in fact made before the release of Winner's film - according to Nero, the two films were in production at around the same time. Plenty of action - pretty much non stop from the off in fact - street crime, car chases and of course violence, as you'd expect from Castellari. Very light on flesh though, and indeed females are in very short supply generally, even Barbara Bach, the female 'lead', hardly gets any screen time at all. The always reliable Guido and Maurizio De Angelis provide a lively, and generally very good soundtrack. Best viewed in it's full uncut glory, there have been a few different versions over the years, but the complete version is freely available now. Acting & direction are solid, but it must be said there are a fair few superior Poliziotteschi films from the same period.

Entertaining Mystery/Giallo, from Spainish director Juan Logar - of Autopsy infamy - which features a very decent cast of Curd Jurgens, Rosalba Neri, Emma Cohen and Juan Luis Galiardo - lead in Logar's Autopsy. Story line is a little different from the standard Giallo, though in truth it isn't really a 'true' Giallo in any case. No mysterious or gloved killer, no dramatic twists as such and no red herrings, but plenty of drama, mostly seen in flashback. The direction is certainly different, odd at times, but never dull, and there is little about this film that is mainstream. Music is nice enough, Piero Piccioni scoring a solid soundtrack, that's no classic, but is far from lifeless or tedious. Acting is generally OK throughout, though Jurgens never streches himself too much. The stunningly beautiful Neri is her usual reliable, strong and incredibly sexy self. All in all a film that is definitely recommended, though not an easy one to get hold of, particularly in English. There are a couple of nice blu-ray release from Germany, with English subs - both of which also feature the 'clothed' Spanish variant - but currently no UK or US versions available on any format. Hopefully that will change !

Watchable and entertaining enough aswang/vampire horror from the Philipines. Acting is not great and the script is fairly lifeless, but the action - not a slow burner at all - and atmosphere do make up for this somewhat. Print I saw - on Koch Media DVD - was pretty shocking, particularly for something that isn't that old, very dark and grainy, almsot as if it was shot on video tape. Defintely the sort of film that will inspire plenty of moronic, generic rants about it being the 'worst film I've ever seen' or the even more ridiculos 'worst film of all time'. It really isn't either of those, though charges of mediocrity would not be that unreasonable. It's certainly no masterpiece, and I suspect not really for anyone other than avid horror fans, and vampire freaks ! But as I say entertaing enough for fans of the genre.