(1961)
Overall: WOOF
Antonio Margheriti who is dubbed Anthony M. Dawson here for more easy to pronounce American audiences helmed his second ridiculous, barely-a-budget sci-fi dud Battle of the Worlds, (Pianeta degli uomini spenti), a year after his debut Space-Men. For this go around he scored none other than Claude Rains of all completely random people to be in it. Everything about Rains character is laughably absurd from how much of a raging asshat he is, to his seemingly godlike abilities to know everything down to the most minute detail at all times, (often by scribbling some math on random objects with chalk, looking at things, or just boldly proclaiming them out of nowhere). It is mostly his hilarious performance though which shows an untamed, full-throttle devotion into camp that the noted thespian never even hinted at before. Hypothetically taking Rains out of the equation though, this may be the most unmemorable Italian sci-fi movie ever made, which is saying something. The characters are embarrassingly underwritten, the "special" effects are anything but, and it is atrociously dull throughout almost its entire running time. Yet with Rains unabashedly hamming it up to the umpteenth degree and the movie so cliche-ridden and stupid that it actually has you guessing along the way just how cliche-ridden and stupid it is going to be, it is fair to say that this is worth at least one viewing, solely to point and laugh at. Out loud of course.
(1964)
Overall: MEH
Having Barbara Steele on board alone for the amusingly titled The Long Hair of Death, (I lunghi capelli della morte), makes it impossible not to link back to Mario Bava's Black Sunday which more or less kickstarted the European Gothic horror boom four years earlier. In pretty much every respect, this film plays a similar, standard game. It starts with a woman wrongly being put to death as a witch, (of course), who curses her executioners, (of course), has her bloodline seek revenge, (of course), and then there is more barely important stuff about horny, hypocritical Counts and whatnot being all horrible and getting their comeuppance, (of course). The script by Margheriti and Tonino Valerii based off of a story by Ernesto Gastaldi, (who would pen a hefty number of low-budget horror and sword and sandal movies), would be fine with all of its cliches in tow. That is if not for the badly written characters who abruptly change their motivations and behavior at a moments notice. People are boldly refusing to do things or carrying their weight around only to become either sheepishly or diabolically accommodating in the very next scene. The middle of the movie plods along too and pretty much dooms the ending to come off far more lackluster than it was intended. There are some memorable scenes of animated corpses though and a few other moody bits that work OK.
(1968)
Overall: GOOD
When making a giallo with an eye-ball rollingly silly script like this, it is usually a better move to have a bit of fun with the whole ordeal. It is in this very regard that The Young, the Evil, and the Savage, (also hilariously titled Nude...si muore aka Naked...You Die), is a success. Sure the story is loaded with cliches, (obvious transvestite), plot holes, (no one would notice any smell omitting from a huge crate with a dead body in it in the warm Italian summer for days on end?), and moronic behavior amongst most of its characters, (get woken up in the middle of the night by a shower being left on when a girl is missing/presumed murdered and decide to go in and take a shower yourself?), but both Antonio Margheriti and his cast seem consistently to be enjoying themselves with how kind of dumb it all is. The movie laughs off how Mark Damon, (The Pit and the Pendulum), openly romances an underage girl and another one, (British born Sally Smith), is a downright hoot as an aspiring crime novelist/investigator who sasses her way around the boarding school while jumping in to save the day on more than one occasion. While it is not very flamboyantly staged, Margheriti excels at least as far as the "whodunit?" element is concerned by misleading the audience nearly every step of the way, often more cleverly than not.
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