I Am Sartana, Your Angel of Death (1969) – This is the fourth or fifth spaghetti western by release date (from four different production companies) to use the character of “Sartana,” the elegant black-clad bounty hunter who’s just as smooth with cards as with a gun; it’s also the second to feature Gianni Garko in the title role, and since he played Sartana in the first of those features, If you Meet Sartana… Pray for Your Death (1968), he’s probably got the best claim to “authenticity” in his portrayal.
I mention all of that because, ironically, the plot of this movie revolves around someone masquerading as Sartana to rob a bank of $300,000 and kill oodles of people, and Sartana has to track down the real robber to prove his innocence while fighting off a bunch of bounty hunters on his own tail (most of whom he knows professionally). One of those old-friend-bounty-hunters is Klaus Kinski, whose role is probably closest to playing a “nice guy” that he ever had in his career.
The Heroic Trio (1993) – When I watched this last, over twenty years ago on TV, I did so my toddler son who was not creeped out by the gory violence of a walking burnt skeleton, despite the fact that he was frightened of the spooky “outside-down rock” in a Winnie-the-Pooh video. Ah, the memories.
The trio of women in question are a superhero married to a very competent police inspector who has no clue that his wife is Shadow Fox; an irreverent, dynamite-loving mercenary called “Mercy,” and the thrall assassin for a shadowy underworld king (as played by “Michelle Khan,” aka Michelle Yeoh). Said underworld king is stealing babies, one of whom will become his heir, and defeating him takes many explosions and wire-fu kicks.
Oddly enough, the dubbed Miramax-released version I just watched is missing a scene that I remember from the shown-on-TV version, of rag-clad male children (a previous batch of prospective emperors, maybe? I forget) urinating on themselves they’re being killed. There’s definitely a different sensibility toward child violence in these movies than American audiences are used to, but I also didn’t expect that that scene which was on TNT or some similar network would be cut.
The Terror Within (1989) – Vazquez Rocks AND Bronson Canyon within the first five minutes? Be still, my beating heart!
This cheap and unambitious post-apocalyptic Alien ripoff seems pretty good when you realize that dreck like Creepozoids is its competition. After a biological plague has decimated the world, a handful of inoculated military personnel in an underground bunker are just trying to find enough food to stay alive, while protecting themselves from the mutated “gargoyles” that have taken over the world, plus the rare naturally immune survivor. When they find a female of the latter and bring her inside, they discover (a) she’s pregnant, and (b) it’s a gargoyle-spawn that grows at super-speed, frees itself from her womb, and quickly becomes the size of a man in a rubber suit to either kill or rape the bunker’s occupants, depending on gender.
It’s ironic that Vasquez Rocks figures so prominently in the opening shots, since that’s where Captain Kirk fought the Gorn… and brother, this movie’s gargoyle suit is at least as silly. I guess the guy inside can move better, but the monster head preserves the human eyes — which, deep inside a structure of cable-controlled latex, just look dumb.
To fulfill a need that didn’t exist, this movie also spawned a sequel three years later… which I’ll probably watch someday.