(1986)
Overall: MEH
Joe D'Amato returns to nunsploitation for the first time since 1979's Images in a Convent with the similarly sleaze-themed Convent of Sinners, (La monaca nel peccato, The Sinful Nun). Based off of Denis Diderot's 18th century novel La Religeuse, this adaptation naturally adds the type of rampant sexual repression and lesbianism found in such movies, but it does so in a bog-standard manner. Of course being a D'Amato film, the nudity and nastiness is on full display as Eva Grimaldi's unwilling nun is tormented by the jealous wrath of her sisterhood since virtually every male or female character that she encounters is ravished with lust towards her. Everything goes the typical route where higher-up priests are brought in due to easily-believed accusations of demonic possession and the abrupt ending slams home the cynical tone that paints Catholicism is a melodramatically dubious light. D'Amato shot the film himself as he was wont to do, bathing everything in sweaty, soft-focus candlelight that is appropriate for the erotic, period-set material. The plot points have all been utilized dozens of times and the movie treats its subject matter too sincerely to capitalize on the more outlandish aspects of nunsploitation, resulting in something that is both redundant and forgettable.
(1988)
Dir - Joe D'Amato/Claudio Lattanzi
Overall: MEH
Leave it to the Italians to somehow make a knock-off of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds that is in actuality a zombie movie. Killing Birds, (Zombi 5, Killing Birds: Zombi 5, Zombie Flesheaters 4, L'attaque des morts-vivants, Killing Birds - Raptors), does shoehorn in a couple of ominous shots of winged avians plus an early scene where a younger version of Robert Vaughan's character gets his eyeball gouged out by one, but this is otherwise another set-up where a group of college kids go to a isolated place because of student reasons, only to be attacked by reanimated corpses. This happens well into the running time as a small handful of arbitrarily mysterious things occur first to pad out an already sluggish viewing experience. After murdering his wife and her lover in the opening scene, Vaughan's character just becomes a weird recluse with too limited an amount of screen time for the audience to understand or care why. The same goes for everyone else on screen who are interchangeably uninteresting, so that there is little to no suspense or emotional investment when they get picked-off in standard, boring slasher fashion. Joe D'Amato co-directed with Claudio Lattanzi here, but their powers combined wield bland results.
(1989)
Dir - Joe D'Amato/Raffaele Donato
Overall: WOOFSharing directorial duties again, (this time due to Raffaele Donato's alleged disinterest once production began), Deep Blood, (Sangue negli abissi, Blood in the Abyss, Sharks, Shakka - Bestie der Tiefe, Bestie z hlubin), is Joe D'Amato's inevitable Jaws knock-off and it is a sentimentally sappy one at that. Primarily shot in Florida with an American cast, it utilizes both stock footage and the final shark explosion from Enzo G. Castellari's 1981 movie Great White; itself an earlier Euro-cash-grab of Steven Spielberg's endlessly copied blockbuster. While George Nelson Ott's script does allow for ample amounts of screen time to focus on a bunch of childhood friends that grow-up to have manageable, low-stakes squabblings with their parents, love interests, police officials, and local bullies, such pedestrian melodrama is endlessly lackluster. A syrupy musical score handled by Carlo Maria Cordio creates the antithesis of a menacing tone, plus the shark attacks are repetitive, largely spread out, and lazily shot. They generally just involve someone swimming by themselves, (which obviously broadcasts their demise), as a loved one stares without emotion from the beach, doing nothing to save them.
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