Friday Trash Update Including a Kouple Kinski Flix

New reviews posted at the ER website this morning including:

• Two 1960s Gothics... Severin's excellent new NIGHTMARE CASTLE disc and the Legend House THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM disc
• A double dose of WWII Kinski action... CHURCHILL'S LEOPARDS and SALT IN THE WOUND (aka THE LIBERATORS)
• The short flick CANNIBAL FLESH RIOT and the Asian ghost story anthology VISITS
• A trip through the peeps of yesteryear with THE JOHN HOLMES COLLECTION
• Plus, Tony Marsiglia's SUZIE HEARTLESS, the SIX FEET UNDER-ish JUST BURIED, and Severin's disc for THE HAIRDRESSER'S HUSBAND
  

EUROCRIME Documentary Trailer

For me, one of the most entertaining of all Eurotrash genres has to be the Eurocrime movie. Taking their cues from successful American films like the Dirty Harry pictures and THE GODFATHER, Italian producers and directors imported American actors like John Saxon, Fred Williamson, Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas, Chris Mitchum and Henry Silva and created their own over-the-top, violent, frequently stunt-filled epics that rarely fail to entertain.

Check out this awesome trailer for Mike Malloy's upcoming documentary EUROCRIME: THE ITALIAN COP AND GANGSTER FILMS THAT RULED THE 70s. Ignore the "Preview Unavailable" caption and click away!

LateMag Picks Five Spags Not Directed by Leone

Lists, lists, lists, everybody has lists.

Earlier this week it was Nazi Flicks to See Before BASTERDS, now LateMag has a small (maybe too small) list of Five Spaghetti Westerns Not Directed by Sergio Leone.

You'll get no argument from me that THE GREAT SILENCE is "one of the greatest Spaghetti Westerns ever made". I love the stark, snowy setting, the mute hero, the cool gun, and especially one of Klaus Kinski's best ever performances as the aptly named psychotic bounty hunter Loco. If you're ever gonna be scared by a guy in a frilly girly shawl, this is the guy.

I don't agree with the final pick on the list (the much discussed and in my opinion highly overrated BULLET FOR THE GENERAL) or the author's dismissal of the entertaining BLACK KILLER as "low rent" but I guess we'll just have to wait for my list!

Nasty Nazis: 15 WWII Flicks to See Before BASTERDS

Saw the trailer for QT's new flick again the other day and the big screen presentation didn't do anything more to excite me for it. Now comes word that the Weinstein's are pressuring him to cut the flick down to a more fanny-friendly 2-hour running time in advance of its August release Stateside. (Who knows how much truth there is to the rumor.)

In the meantime, FilmJunk posted their list of 15 WWII FLICKS TO CHECK OUT BEFORE BASTERDS and it features some fun Eurotrash including the excellent and entertaining FIVE FOR HELL starring John Garko and Klaus Kinski and currently featured over at Exploitation Retrospect.

I'd probably have put a couple more Klaus flicks on the list ('natch) including CHURCHILL'S LEOPARDS and SALT IN THE WOUND (which actually casts K2 as an American GI anti-hero) but that's just me.

Alex Cox Picks His Top 10 Spags Deaths

Check out SID & NANCY/REPO MAN director Alex Cox's list of his Top 10 Spaghetti Western Deaths.

Like Cox I find the genre frequently boring and kinda repetitive (just look at the fact that there are so many DJANGO "sequels"), but when it's good – like Sergio Corbucci's brilliant THE GREAT SILENCE or the giallo-western THE PRICE OF DEATH – it can make me forget just how much I dislike westerns.

Cinebeats Names Klaus a Top 10 Character!

I read a bunch of movie-related blogs... Tomb It May Concern, Damaged 2.0, Groovy Age of Horror, Hammer & Beyond, SlashFilm, Cinema Suicide... the list goes on. Another one of my faves is Cinebeats, self-described as "one woman's love affair with '60s and '70s era cinema". Publisher Kim Lindbergs is a terrific writer and her passion for the wild cinema and the people who made it comes through in each and every post.

Kim's also a card-carrying Klaus Kinski fan so she totally gets additional kudos in my book. Curt Purcell of Groovy Age recently tipped me to a Cinebeats post that I somehow missed. Titled '10 Characters I Love' it's exactly that... Kim's list of her 10 favorite film characters.

Populating the list are such iconic performances as Terence Stamp in THE COLLECTOR, Eli Wallach as Tuco in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY and Delphine Seyrig as Countess Bathory in DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS.

But coming in at #10 is our very own Klaus Kinski as, well, Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog's documentary about his tempestuous star, MY BEST FIEND.

Naturally, the list has my head spinning about not just my 10 favorite characters but also my 10 favorite Kinski characters. Look for my lists soon!

Be Back Soon...

Just a quick post to apologize for my recent absence.

It's a busy time of year for me from a work standpoint and I've been spending pretty much every available office hour knee-deep in client projects.

Things should improve a bit in the next week or so and I'll be back posting away.

In the meantime, I did get a chance to check out BLOODY HANDS OF THE LAW, a DIRTY HARRY-inspired Italian cop flick starring our man Klaus as the silent assassin for a crime syndicate. Much ballyhooed for its supposed violence, BLOODY HANDS meanders a bit too much for its own good and doesn't quite deliver on the supposedly off-the-charts level of violence I'd always heard about. More details to come...