John Steiner
A documentary concerning the violent Italian 'poliziotteschi' cinematic movement of the 1970s which, at first glance, seem to be rip-offs of American crime films like DIRTY HARRY or THE GODFATHER, but which really address Italian issues like the Sicilian Mafia and red terrorism. Perhaps even more interesting than the films themselves were the rushed methods of production (stars performing their own stunts, stealing shots, no live sound) and the bleed-over between real-life crime and movie crime.
Interview with John Stiener about his career and views and perspectives on Caligula and some of his other movies.
Fantasy tale based on the tale of the legendary sailor. Here Sinbad must recover five magical stones to free the city of Basra from the evil spell cast by a wizard. His journey takes him to the isle of the Amazons where the queen tries to capture him, to a battle with ghost warriors on the isle of the dead, and ultimately to a battle with his own double.
Film makers Clem Da Silva (Tomas Milian) and Theo Steiner (Elliott Gould) are childhood friends, although now estranged. While both are gifted and equally passionate about cinema, their destinies couldn’t have been any different – multiple Oscar winner Theo is successful and admired around the world, whereas few have ever heard of Clem, because he often gets to work only for television. Clem has accused Theo of plagiarising his ideas that, to add insult to injury, went on to win awards.
Lewis Collins is back to leading mercenaries on the move in Southeast Asia. This time the cast is unusually good including Lee Van Cleef, Brett Halsey (Cop Game), Romano Puppo (Robowar), Mike Monty (Raiders of Atlantis), Bobby Rhodes (The Great Alligator), etc. Anyway, Van Cleef has Collins go on some random mission to locate a disc with all sorts of valuable crazy intelligence data on it. It just happens that Donald Pleasence, a random government official, hires another mercenary-for-hire Manfred Lehman to tag along and make sure the data ends up in the right hands. Van Cleef isn't taking any chances, and since he is crooked and murders Collins's other bosses quickly, he places Romano Puppo in the group as well to make sure the operation runs smoothly. Collins may not be too expressive but at least he seems to figure out quickly who's out to get him, so the mission continues with lots of double-crosses, twists and turns, and of course lots of explosions!
Caterina is a twenty-year-old girl from Cremona: her father died before her eyes in Brussels, a victim of the Heysel Stadium disaster. A British police inspector, determined to bring to justice all those responsible, after several years summons her again as an eyewitness as new elements have emerged. Caterina recognizes the murderer, a Liverpool taxi driver, but she prefers to remain silent as to track down the man in his hometown and take her revenge.
David must fight for his life against the gangsters who killed his brother for a CD filled with proof of their illegal activities. When David gets possession of the CD they go down to Mexico where David lives as a shark hunter. Who will get David first, the gangsters or the shark?
Julia, an American woman living in Italy, becomes depressed and traumatized after her husband Paolo is killed in a car accident on their wedding day. Six years later, Julia inexplicably finds herself sliding in time between two different worlds where in one she is still struggling with her grief over Paolo's death, and in the other world she is married to Paolo who's alive and well with their five year old son, where Julia is having an affair with a British gentleman named Daniel, in which the frequent supernatural sliding between these two worlds threaten to drive Julia crazy when she begins having difficulty in telling them apart and learning which world she is currently living in.
The Summerking's daughter has been kidnapped, and the legendary hero of the desert comes to her rescue as he did when she was young. The Lone Runner proves to be an unstoppable hero with limitless fighting abilities. He battles those who would harm innocents, and does what ever else he can for them.
The film is a tale of a strange rich woman who kidnaps a Sicilian mobster and holds him for ransom.
A bodybuilder, a junk-food addict and a wild blonde nymph and their friends are stalked by a terrifying figure. An horrific tale of murder as a fun-loving group of college students explore the Colorado wilderness.
Ten years after the end of the war in Vietnam, four ex-Marines decide to return to S.E. Asia to investigate reports of American POWs still being held there. These four include Roger, whose daughter's just been married, the unemployed James, Mark, who's quit his job at an Arizona roadside tavern, and Richard, recently a patient at a mental hospital. In the jungles of S.E. Asia they discover American POWs but also find out about a U.S. Government plot to keep this knowledge a secret.
In 1938 Berlin, Gudrun Landgrebe, wife of Nazi functionary Kevin McNally, begins taking art lessons. She makes the acquaintance of another student, Japanese ambassador's daughter Mio Takaki. Soon afterwards, the two women begin a passionate lesbian affair. This leads to a chain reaction of disaster and tragedy, culminating with the inevitable intervention of the Gestapo. Despite the film's galloping sexual passions, The Berlin Affair is an exercise in aloofness, keeping the characters at arm's length-surprising, considering that the director was Liliana Cavani, auteur of the erotic classic The Night Porter (1974). The film was based on The Buddhist Cross, a novel by Junichiro Tanizaki.
A reporter and her cameraman connect a surviving Jonestown leader and a TV exec's missing son to a drug war where jungle installations are being massacred by an army of natives and a skilled white assassin.
A cruel dictator rules a Latin American state. Corruption, brutality and exploitation are present every day. A few people begin to organise resistance. Under the leader "El Leopardo" a small group of guerillas fights against the violent government.
A safecracker takes a job where he must go to Istanbul and steal a scepter that once belonged to the god Gilgamesh but is now in the temple of a secret cult.
Assassins are after a prostitute who has come into possession of a cigarette lighter that, unbeknownst to her, contains the negatives that show a politician's assassination. A delightfully playful giallo starring the beautiful Carole Bouquet as Mystère, a high class call girl who becomes the target for a couple of assassins.
In prehistoric times, the muscular Yor saves his cave-babe from a dinosaur just before they get zapped into the future to battle bad guys in the familiar desolate wasteland.
An American soldier and a British intelligence agent try to track down an ancient relic called the Golden Cobra, rumored to have supernatural powers. An early Raiders rip-off directed Antonio Margheriti.
An Italian policeman investigates a series of murders involving people in prominent positions. Left behind at each murder scene is a drawing of a salamander. The policeman begins to suspect these murders are linked to a plot to seize control of the government.
Bruno is an idealistic hero who questions the meaning of life in this confusing and sometimes hallucinatory erotic drama. After a night in jail, he is gang-raped by punk rockers in a garbage dump. He later saves an old man who believes he is Garibaldi and a woman he believes is Ophelia. Bruno watches helplessly as she later jumps from a window.
During the Vietnam war, an American soldier gets trapped beind enemy lines. A squad of his buddies sets out to rescue him.
Design for Living presents a trio of neurotic but intensely artistic characters: Gilda, Otto and Leo. Set in Paris, Otto and Leo both fall in love with Gilda. She cannot make up her mind which man she loves, so the three decide to live together in a platonic friendship. Among Coward's trademark sparkling wit, the play explores deeper themes including infidelity, the pressures of fame on an unstable mind, and morality (or immorality) of a menage a trois.
The perversion behind imperial Rome, the epic story of Rome's mad Emporer. All the details of his cruel, bizarre reign are revealed right here: His unholy sexual passion for his sister, his marriage to Rome's most infamous prostitute, his fiendishly inventive means of disposing those who would oppose him, and more.
As John Dhannay, a CIA agent stationed in Rome, plans the overthrow of an African government, he discovers one of his men has been in contact with agents from the other side. Before he can confront the traitor, the man seemingly goes crazy, sniping several people before taking an adulterous couple hostage in a hotel room.
Architect Dumas dies from a bullet of his own gun in front of his house. The police suspect his young Swedish wife Catherine and her English lover Tom Hastings. After numerous interrogations, in which they entangle themselves in contradictions, they try to flee, but are soon both caught and brought to trial, he in England, she in France. Only when Catherine keeps on proclaiming her innocence, superintendent Corbier finally considers believing her.
Returning from Switzerland to Rome, the boss prof. Salviati, called 'The Prince', finds his business compromised by Rudy, a small local bandit full of presumption, audacity and men ready to kill. Commissioner Baldi a young and brave employee, will fight against them with the help of an ex-employee Rampelli.
Mario Gastaldi, a lawyer with no clients and no money, agrees to be a negotiator in a deal on stolen paintings, between the boss Peseti and the engineer Farnese, who plots kidnappings unsuspectedly. After he cashed from Farnese three hundred millions of lire to deliver to Peseti, Mario lets money be robbed by four pickpockets, which he is naturally in cahoots with and which he will share out it with. Money cannot be used since it comes from a kidnapping and it was marked. The lawyer will be able to make the boss get arrested.
Antonio Gramsci, sentenced to twenty years in prison by the fascist tribunals, relives the stages of his political career and private life.
Maurizio Merli stars as a hatchet-wielding bounty hunter with a dark past and an even more desperate future. But when he disrupts the balance of power in a corrupt mining town, he unleashes a firestorm of brutality, betrayal and cold-blooded murder. Now, one man stalks a savage land where justice walks a razor and no bullets slice deeper than vengeance. He is A MAN CALLED BLADE.
Kitty runs a brothel in Nazi Germany where the soldiers come to "relax". Recording devices have been installed in each room by a power hungry army official who plans to use the information to blackmail Hitler and gain power himself. A girl named Margherita discovers the little ploy and with Kitty's help plans to take on the dangerous task of exposing the conspiracy.
Plot of Fear tells the story of a decadent weekend party full of orgies and drugs on the outskirts of Milan. After two deaths occur Inspector Lomenzo interrogates one of the guests, a fashion model who becomes his informant, as well as his lover. Clery reveals that after a “wildlife orgy”one of the hosts tried to jokingly feed one of the prostitutes to a tiger but she got so frightened that she died of heart attack. In his attempt to find a connection between the victims, he investigates a cutting-edge security and surveillance firm whose director has secrets of his own to hide.
A murderous drug dealer breaks his partner out of police custody. An undercover cop is assigned to track down the two killers and bring them in.
Young women in Nazi-occupied countries are packed onto a train and shipped off to a prison camp, where the sadistic commandant uses them as rewards for his lesbian guards and perverted and deviate troops.
A gang of thieves decides to hit the headquarters of Aspex. The police intervened and only two of the robbers managed to escape with the loot, while the other two are forced to take hostages to escape. The police started investigations but also the gang leader, the Cat, will be hunting the first two escaped with the loot to get money, and revenge for their escape.
A detective sick and tired of the rampant crime and violence in his city, and constantly at odds with his superiors, is finally kicked out of the department for a "questionable" shooting of a vicious criminal. However, he is soon approached by a representative for a group of citizens who themselves are fed up with what they see as criminals going unpunished, and they make him an offer he may very well not refuse.
A woman gives birth to a baby, but this is no ordinary little tyke. The child is seemingly possessed by the spirit of a freak dwarf who the mother once spurned. Cue a spate of strange deaths, the one common factor being the presence of a baby in pram at the scene...
A young couple become embroiled with the personal problems of another couple on a yacht moored off Sicily during a turbulent weekend of fun, games, sex games, betrayal, spouse abuse, and murder.
A boorish, snobish toothpaste factory owner, Constantino Nicosia, gives his wife and everyone a hard time having let success and wealth go to his head. But after the superticous Nicosia has an encounter with an elderly gypsy aunt, and a business trip to Romania results in another encounter with a suave vampire, named Count Dragalescu, Nicosia returns with blood-sucking like qualities which makes him re-examine his life and existence.
Sequel to Lucio Fulci's first 'White Fang' has the wolf-dog once again trying to stop the villainous Beauty Smith from claiming a recently discovered gold mine in 1899 Yukon, Canada.
A castaway arrives on an island. He thinks it's uninhabited, but he sees a palace with also a hidden room. Soon he sees some people walking, dressed with old-fashioned clothes. He is afraid because people don't see him, like a ghost.
In an attempt to win better conditions for the workers in 1920s Turin, Gramsci leads a takeover of the factories by the workers. He is offered assistance by Kabak (who has just arrived from Moscow) but Gramsci soon realizes Kabak is not motivated by ideology, as he has other motives.
In Genoa, the Commissioner Sironi has identified the leader of the ferocious racket that controls the port activities. But the law restrains his action.
In the Nazi occupied city of Rome, an assault on an SS brigade draws retaliation from the military governship. "Massacre in Rome" is the true story of how this partisan attack led to the mass execution of Italian nationals under the orders of SS-Lieutenant Colonel Kappler.
Rossini, history teacher and son of another professor, for his liberal ideas refuses to sign the oath of allegiance to the the fascist regime that Mussolini imposed on the professors university. After a period of imprisonment he is so assigned to confinement on an island. Here the young intellectual finds himself in contact with the composite humanity that populated the places of confinement: militiamen, agents, common and political coercion, villagers. The figure of the director of the colony, the commissioner Rizzuto, stands out among all, who was a pupil of his father, and for whom he continues to have feelings of esteem and devotion.
The wolf dog, White Fang, aids a reporter, a fur trapper, a nun, a young Eskimo boy and his father of ridding a gold mining town of a sleazy crime lord in 1896 Yukon, Canada.
1972, Milano. We are just a few days before the general elections. The daughter of a well-known professor is found dead. Mr Bizanti, and Mr Montelli, editor-in-chief and owner of newspaper Il Giornale try to derail the official police investigation in order to help the fascist candidates they support in the upcoming elections.
Barrie Ingham (The Caesars) stars as Joe Hine, an international arms dealer battling to stay one step ahead of the competition in this rapidly paced and typically stylish ATV drama series from the creator of The Plane Makers and The Power Game Wilfred Greatorex. Hine operates alone in a multi-billion-pound market dominated by a handful of monolithic corporations. His closest rival is arms firm Pendles, where Astor Harris (Paul Eddington) is head of weapons sales; he also faces regular tussles with Walpole Gibb (Colin Gordon), a hostile official at the Department of Arms Disposal Overseas. While they form a duplicitous alliance, business rivalry and red tape are often the least of Hine's problems: from blackmail, diplomatic double-dealing and bribery to armed insurrection and kidnapping, his line of work ensures intrigue and danger are ever-present.
Because of a violation of traffic regulations an architect is put in prison. There he witnesses the grim reality of life behind bars: corrupt staff, corrupt inmates, an inhuman judicial system and the power of the Mafia.
After his Western triumphs, Valerii stepped out of the shadow of Sergio Leone with this distinctly Bergmanesque sexual melodrama.Dionisio is perfect in the title role and this remains her best film, Valerii turns up along the way too. Just when the film hits a period of auto pilot John Steiner turns up in the final reel for a climax that is quite unforgettable. A bit difficult to trace but well worth the effort.
Glenn and Carlo are writing a book in Bali. Glenn has been married twice and both weddings were in Balinese tradition. He has also learnt Balinese magic. The duo quarrel when Carlo gets jealous of Glenn getting too close with his wife. Carlo then asks his wife to go back to Europe with him, but she chooses to stay, as she is worried, knowing that Glenn has made a deal with his guru, that if one of them dies, the other will follow. One day, when Glenn is performs a mystical ritual at Karangasem, Carlo shows up again. His wife tells him that Glenn’s guru has died and asks him not to tell Glenn about it. But Carlo chooses to tell him anyway.
In ancient Mauretania, the young Roman Lucius Apuleius and his friend Aristomene run into a series of misadventures.
Benito Freire, a pedlar in a small village in northern Spain suffers from epileptic seizures and rumours start to spread that he may be a werewolf and responsible for a series of killings. The local Abbot is called upon to form a team to investigate, in an effort to halt the harrowing murders.
In a changing world a young Italian enrols at Oxford and finds i is him they are out to change.
Mario, a young philanderer, receives 13 antique chairs in a bad state by inheritance and decides to sell off them to get some money. Afterwards he gets to know that one of them contains documents worth a lot of money. So he begins an adventurous trip to regain possession of the chair. On the way he meets many strange people who would like to help or to swindle him.
Dreamlike satire about a young man who resists getting a job at the lone employing conglomerate in his dreary industrial town, but changes his mind when he discovers the plant's boiler room has the perfect climate to assist him with his pet horticultural (fungal) project.
In Charenton Asylum, the Marquis de Sade directs a play about Jean Paul Marat's death, using the patients as actors. Based 'The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade', a 1963 play by Peter Weiss.
Stanley is infatuated with Margaret, the statuesque waitress who works with him. He meets George Spiggott AKA the devil and sells his soul for 7 wishes, which Stanley uses to try and make Margaret his own first as an intellectual, then as a rock star, then as a wealthy industrialist. As each fails, he becomes more aware of how empty his life had been and how much more he has to live for.
