Hercules Against Karate / Schiaffoni e karate (1973)

Percival, the titular "Hercules", and his friend Danny take a job tracking down a child in China after impressing the kid's father in a bar fight.

Fernando Bilbao, who plays Percival, and Alberto Terracina as his friend Danny pair up in this film like a lesser version of Bud Spencer and Terence Hill. That's not to say that the film doesn't have its moments. The amusing plot finds the strong, but bumbling, Percival fumbling his way through fights and throwing puns and silly jokes as fast as fists. Though often groan inducing, i.e. villains named Hung Lo and Fah-ku, the silliness paired with every kung fu sound effect in existence made the film a satisfying piece of escapist nonsense. Even the shoehorned in romance sections don't bog the film down because there's always a joke lurking around the corner.

Director Antonio Margheriti had previously helmed a straight up sword and sandals Hercules movie and would go on to direct one of the best East meets West movies of all time, El kárate, el Colt y el imposter. With Schiaffoni e karate, he found a reasonable middle ground between the two and brought his eye for action to the proceedings. However, at nearly two hours,the mix of comedy and fistfights begins to wear toward the end of the film.

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Perfect Husband, The / Il marito perfetto (2011)

At under forty minutes Il marito perfetto is a film that is unlikely to outstay it's welcome and this is just as well as it stylistically does little to divert from what have by now become almost horror and action clichés, including the flavour-of-the-month timelapse recorded cloudscape to denote the passage of time. This gives the feature the feeling of a car commercial with added relentless ultraviolence.

However, just when it seems that the by now familiar torture porn sensory assault is going to result in the kind of borefest the remake of I Spit on Your Grave represented, Argentina born director and writer Lucas Pavetto manages to pull a rabbit from the hat as a final act flashback overturns the whole narrative. It will confound those who would no doubt already be formulating thoughts about yet another example of mindless cinematic misogyny. This earns the movie Brownie Points.

While it is clear that this in no way film aimed at the Bava generation there is the slightest hint of Argento's Tenebrae amongst the screaming and bloodletting. However, the film is more likely influenced by both French extreme and American horror film of the moment, against which it holds up reasonably well. This is horror for those who would most likely find Cannibal Holocaust boring or painfully verbose and is, anyway, far more interesting than rubbish like YellowBrickRoad.

On balance Il marito perfetto is a film that can be recommended. Especially to those who find the term high-octane acts on the senses like the skills of some kind of critical fluffer.

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Sewer Rats, The / Una donna per sette bastardi (1974)

Also known as The Sewer Rats, Montero’s sleazy, grotty and generally decrepit yarn, based on an idea by the film’s lead, Richard Harrison, works as a transgressive, contemporary western of sorts. As the downtrodden, crippled, man with no name, Harrison wanders into an isolated, makeshift town, 200 miles from anywhere half civilised and populated by a wretched handful of sinister scumbags who promptly make him feel less than welcome.

Dagmar Lassander is the J&B chugging nympho slut Rita, who works her way through the men one by one. They include her violent “boyfriend”, Carl played by Antonio Casale, Gordon Mitchell as a mysterious, granite faced man who first came to the community in military uniform, and creepy pervert Ivano Staccioli. All have dark secrets and shady pasts.

Una donna per sette bastardi is a real slow burner of a movie, one that revels in the quagmire during its gradual, though inevitable, revelations of the characters’ closeted skeletons. Enriched by a veritable who’s who of Italian Genre casting including the reunion of Luciano Rossi, as a mute hunchback, and Casale following their brief turn in The Violent Professionals, Montero wisely opts to place his emphasis on the able performances of his actors rather than on what is mainly functional, and somewhat austere, cinematography.

Richard Harrison does his best Warren Oates in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia impersonation and gets to use his walking stick to great effect at the film’s climax. Rossi is particularly impressive despite having no lines of dialogue to play with and, as you would expect, Lassander lends the film a sexy, though trampy, charm.

Best enjoyed on the scuzziest VHS copy available, Una donna per sette bastardi, is an irresistibly ugly little film that will probably appeal to the more unscrupulous, and patient, of genre enthusiasts.

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Concorde Affaire '79 / Affare Concorde (1979)

In an effort to get in on the trend started by the Airport movies, which also had a supersonic entry the same year with The Concorde: Airport '79, Cannibal Holocaust auteur Ruggero Deodato fashions a story of corporate espionage bolstered by taut action sequences.

James Franciscus stars as reporter Moses Brody, a journalist on the trail of a hot story in the Lesser Antilles, and the actor strikes a charismatic mode as the writer ready for action. Especially thrilling are the underwater action sequences which rival anything this side of Zombie vs. Shark or James Bond in Thunderball. Italian genre film mainstay Mimsy Farmer co-stars as the only survivor of a doomed Concorde plight. Viewers should also look out for appearances by Hollywood stars Van Johnson and Josh Cotten. However the real delight is an uncredited Robert Kerman as an Air Traffic Controller who is integral to the climax of the film.

The score by incredibly prolific composer Stelvio Cipriani penned a fitting synth fueled score for the film, but it was reminiscent of the tunes found in Cannibal Apocalypse by Alexander Blonksteiner. Concorde Affair '79 makes the 28th collaboration between Deodato and cinematographer Federico Zanni, and the film clearly has a visual flow and style. However the undersea footage and the plane crash scenes both suffer from being too dark at times. The only portion of the film that feels awkward are the stock footage and middling miniatures used to illustrate the supersonic jet in flight.

Overall, an enjoyable watch for fans of Deodato, Airport knockoffs, or Italian action cinema in general.

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