Man, was Nello Rossati dating Franco Nero's daughter or something? Not only did he get him into this movie, but a year later he would be the person -- well, his pseudonym Ted Archer did, but you get the point -- to finally get him to come back to his most famous role in Django Strikes Again. He also made the giallo La gatta in calore (assistant directed by Lamberto Bava and shot by Aristide Massaccesi!), a Napoleon-sploitation film called Bona parte di Paolina, a sex comedy called The Sensuous Nurse with Ursula Andress and Jack Palance, the poliziotteschi Don't Touch the Children!, another sex comedy called Io zombo, tu zombi, lei zomba about four zombies running a hotel, a giallo-esque film named Le mani di una donna sola in which a lesbian countess seduces married women until insane asylum escapees chop her hands off, and an I Spit On Your Grave revengeomatic called Fuga scabrosamente pericolosa that stars Andy Sidaris villain Rodrigo Obregón.
Needless to say, I'm a fan.
Ted Angelo (Nero) starts the movie off literally telling a woman that he's too tired to make love. Is this the great hero of Italian cinema? He seems exhausted throughout but it works; he's a writer fallen on hard times and harder drinking. He's supposed to be writing a book on pre-Columbian civilizations, but he's falling deeper and deeper into depression and drunken days to the point that he's fired by his publisher -- and ex-wife -- Maureen De Havilland (Miss World 1977 Mary Stävin, who by this point had already appeared in Adam Ant's "Strip" video, Octopussy and A View to a Kill, as well as releasing the exercise album Shape Up and Dance with footballer George Best).
It seems like Ted's luck is changing when he's shown a ton of writings that came from a shipwreck of Spanish conquistadores. Except that the ship isn't on the bottom of the ocean. It's in a cave. And maybe that luck's bad, because everyone connected with the ship, like art dealer Alonso Quintero (Willian Berger) is dying under mysterious circumstances. And oh yeah. That shipwreck in a cave is also inside a UFO.
The only real good luck that Ted gets is when an art historian and friend of Quintero named June (Deborah Barrymore, who is not related to Drew, but is instead of the daughter of Roger Moore and Italian actress Luisa Mattioli) helps him out.
What follows is a delirious descent into madness to the point that if you told me this was all a drug trip, I'd believe you. First, Ted is almost run over by former Nazi Heinrich Holzmann (George Kennedy, who is only in the movie for this one scene), then the camera crew he hires ends up being CIA spooks who want to murder him, then the KGB gets involved and then things get really weird.
Ted gets the idea that Maureen has the kind of connections that can save him and June. As they wait for her, a cyborg Rodrigo Obregón attacks them and only stops when he's hit by a bull. He gets torn apart and sounds like he's trying to say the words to "Humpty Dumpty" and man, I literally jumped out of my chair in the middle of the night I was so excited. He looks like Johnny Craig drew him!
Somehow, the movie then decides to top itself as another Rodrigo Obregón cyborg that looks exactly the same shows up with Maureen, who removes her skin to show us that she's one of the aliens that have been on Earth for twelve thousand years and now are in control of most countries and multinational corporations.
At this point, is there any hope for any of us?
Yes, this is a movie where a gorgeous Swedish woman takes off all of her epidermis -- of course we see her breasts, this is an Italian movie -- to reveal that she's a lizard alien that fulfills the worries of David Icke, then she vomits slime all over herself and tries to kill Franco Nero with her giant tongue.
If you told me this was an actual alien, I would believe you.
The first few times I've tried to watch this, I couldn't get into it. It was too slow and felt too downbeat with Nero's character feeling hopeless. So don't be like me. I beg you, stick with this for an hour. Just an hour, because it's not bad. I mean, yes, Franco Nero survives a car chase by throwing eggs, but it's just slow, not badly made.
But the last thirty minutes make it all worth it.
When you get there, you'll know exactly what I mean.
This is a movie all about the foreplay and then when it's time to get to the actual sex, it's the weirdest and best Penthouse Forum sex you've ever had and you feel like there's no way that it happened and no one will ever believe you.
Also: Franco Nero screams almost every line and I respect that.
Also also: This is like a budget They Live by people who never saw that movie.
Needless to say, I'm a fan.
Ted Angelo (Nero) starts the movie off literally telling a woman that he's too tired to make love. Is this the great hero of Italian cinema? He seems exhausted throughout but it works; he's a writer fallen on hard times and harder drinking. He's supposed to be writing a book on pre-Columbian civilizations, but he's falling deeper and deeper into depression and drunken days to the point that he's fired by his publisher -- and ex-wife -- Maureen De Havilland (Miss World 1977 Mary Stävin, who by this point had already appeared in Adam Ant's "Strip" video, Octopussy and A View to a Kill, as well as releasing the exercise album Shape Up and Dance with footballer George Best).
It seems like Ted's luck is changing when he's shown a ton of writings that came from a shipwreck of Spanish conquistadores. Except that the ship isn't on the bottom of the ocean. It's in a cave. And maybe that luck's bad, because everyone connected with the ship, like art dealer Alonso Quintero (Willian Berger) is dying under mysterious circumstances. And oh yeah. That shipwreck in a cave is also inside a UFO.
The only real good luck that Ted gets is when an art historian and friend of Quintero named June (Deborah Barrymore, who is not related to Drew, but is instead of the daughter of Roger Moore and Italian actress Luisa Mattioli) helps him out.
What follows is a delirious descent into madness to the point that if you told me this was all a drug trip, I'd believe you. First, Ted is almost run over by former Nazi Heinrich Holzmann (George Kennedy, who is only in the movie for this one scene), then the camera crew he hires ends up being CIA spooks who want to murder him, then the KGB gets involved and then things get really weird.
Ted gets the idea that Maureen has the kind of connections that can save him and June. As they wait for her, a cyborg Rodrigo Obregón attacks them and only stops when he's hit by a bull. He gets torn apart and sounds like he's trying to say the words to "Humpty Dumpty" and man, I literally jumped out of my chair in the middle of the night I was so excited. He looks like Johnny Craig drew him!
Somehow, the movie then decides to top itself as another Rodrigo Obregón cyborg that looks exactly the same shows up with Maureen, who removes her skin to show us that she's one of the aliens that have been on Earth for twelve thousand years and now are in control of most countries and multinational corporations.
At this point, is there any hope for any of us?
Yes, this is a movie where a gorgeous Swedish woman takes off all of her epidermis -- of course we see her breasts, this is an Italian movie -- to reveal that she's a lizard alien that fulfills the worries of David Icke, then she vomits slime all over herself and tries to kill Franco Nero with her giant tongue.
If you told me this was an actual alien, I would believe you.
The first few times I've tried to watch this, I couldn't get into it. It was too slow and felt too downbeat with Nero's character feeling hopeless. So don't be like me. I beg you, stick with this for an hour. Just an hour, because it's not bad. I mean, yes, Franco Nero survives a car chase by throwing eggs, but it's just slow, not badly made.
But the last thirty minutes make it all worth it.
When you get there, you'll know exactly what I mean.
This is a movie all about the foreplay and then when it's time to get to the actual sex, it's the weirdest and best Penthouse Forum sex you've ever had and you feel like there's no way that it happened and no one will ever believe you.
Also: Franco Nero screams almost every line and I respect that.
Also also: This is like a budget They Live by people who never saw that movie.