Dir - Mario Landi
Overall: WOOF
Shot at the same spacious mansion where the following year's ridiculous Burial Ground was made, (also produced by Gabriele Crisanti), Patrick Still Lives, (Patrick vive ancora, Patrick Is Still Alive), is an unofficial and noticeably sleazier sequel to Richard Franklin's 1978 film Patrick. Stylized as a slasher movie and just as boring, it concerns a different gentleman named Patrick who quickly gets put into a coma during the opening scene, only to be held up in a health clinic so that he can get his revenge on whoever threw a beer bottle at him. This "justifies" him to utilize his telekinetic powers in order to murder a bunch of mostly drunk assholes who take their clothes off and argue with each other while walking around slowly and being idiots. The most notable of these death scenes is the infamous one where Crisanti's real life ladyfriend Mariangela Giordano stands perfectly still, screams "No!", conveniently spreads her legs, and has an iron poker inserted into her vagina and out her mouth, all at a snail's pace of course. Also dogs bark, J&B bottles get chugged, a nurse fondles herself, a woman gets decapitated by a car window, a guy boils alive in a swimming pool, and best of all, it eventually ends.
(1981)
Dir - Enzo G. Castellari
Overall: WOOF
A D-rent Jaws knock-off amongst oh so many, Great White, (The Last Shark, L'ultimo squalo), is dull and derivative, yet it gained some notoriety upon its release and features a fair amount of scenery-chewing from Vic Morrow. After failing to have it blocked from release altogether, Universal Pictures were eventually successful in getting the movie pulled from US theaters a month later as the similarities to Steven Spielberg's very popular big shark blockbuster are readily apparent. As the title would suggest, an over-sized great white starts attacking people in a seaside community, only for the major to underplay the issue and get even more people chomped up due to his negligence. Colorful characters, suspense-laden set pieces, solid animatronic effects, and memorable music this version is exclusively lacking in, yet Morrow takes on an inconsistent Scottish-kind-of accent and makes a few impassioned speeches to at least liven things up. The monster shark is large enough to be imposing, but it mostly just pops up out of the water with its mouth wide open, (at least when stock footage is not utilized), since the meager production hardly had enough money to give it any sort of convincing articulation.
(1988)
Dir - David Schmoeller
Overall: MEH
One of the last films completed by Charles Band's Empire Pictures before the company was seized due to financial issues, Catacombs, (Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice), was haphazardly lumped into the Curse franchise five years after it was initially released. Baring zero relation to said movies, it is instead derivative of others from the haunted monastery variety with some demonic possession thrown in for good manner. A rare Italian production from writer/director David Schmoeller who had and would continue to work primarily in the horror genre, it has some solid location scenery and a gripping enough prologue where a long-haired, creepy looking possessed monk is locked into a secret room, plus one eerie sequence where it is worth paying attention to the life-sized crucifix in the background. Other than that though, this is a cumbersome viewing experience with almost the entirely of the first two acts having no supernatural sequences whatsoever and instead focusing on our main group of barely interesting characters. The ending is weak as well, with the resurrected demon monk finally showing back up and apparently meeting his downfall due to a simple combination of having a flashback and our hero noticing a holy relic that is sitting in plain view of both of them.
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