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If the Tenants Keep on Dying, Better Get Out of that EVIL High-Rise! “The Case of the Bloody Iris” reviewed! (Celluloid Dreams / 2-Disc Blu-ray and 4K UHD Set)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Own Your 4K and Blu-ray copy of “The Case of the Bloody Iris” today!

A pair of beautiful women are heinously murdered in a respectable high-rise apartment building.  As the case remains unsolved, a real estate architect, Andrea Antinon, is looking for models to market his new property, happening upon models Jennifer Langsburgy and Marilyn Ricci during his photographer friend’s photoshoot, and entices them by offering a sublet of the now vacant apartment in the building where one of the girls was murdered.  Jennifer, who finds herself slowly falling for the Andrea, is stalked by her polyamorous sect past and the group’s leader, her ex-husband, Adam who refuses to let her go and while he proves himself dangerous, attempting to kill Andrea after one of his dates with Jennifer, Adam is found dead in her new apartment.  The suspect pool grows as police are continuing to be baffled by an elusive killer remaining at large and set their sights on Andrea with his brief connections in two of the three victims.  Evidence against Andrea swells as those around Jennifer wind up dead and she’s next on the kill list. 

“The Case of the Bloody Iris,” the Iris represented as the delicately beautiful flower that symbolized the bound between Jennifer and her deranged, sex cult ex-husband Adam, is the 1972 giallo thriller from the prolific spaghetti western, Italian director Giuliano Carnimeo (from the previous “Sartana” series and would later helm “The Exterminators of the Year 3000″) and prolific giallo screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi (“Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key,” “Torso,”) shot in the city of Genoa doubling as Milan.  Full of eccentric suspects, taboo desires, and handsome principals, “The Cast of the Bloody Iris” is a very attractive, violent, and superbly shot whodunit.  Under the original native title of “Perché quelle strane gocce di sangue sul corpo di Jennifer?” aka “What Are Those Strange Drops of Blood on the Body of Jennifer?” Galassia Films serves as the production company with Luciano Martino (“The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh”) having produced the giallo. 

The story floats back-and-forth between a pair of co-headlining stars, one of them being the retrospective cult and sex icon actress Edwige Fenech in one of her earlier performances, and who has starred in “Strip Nude for Your Killer” and “The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh.  Co-star George Hamilton also stars in that latter giallo, reteaming the handsome-faced “The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail” actor born in Uruguay, and whose birth name is Jorge Hill Acosta y Lara, with Fenech in their respective roles of model Jennifer and architect Andrea intertwined into what is a romantic tale of love at first sight that becomes mangled by a crazed killer on a murder spree and they’re at the heart of the matter.  If revisiting Giuliano Carnimeo, comedies and watching some of his interviews, you can see why he folds in subtle comedic elements that doesn’t allow “The Case of the Bloody Iris,” or a good chunk of his credits, to be a totally engaged, heart-racing murder mystery; those comedic elements come in the form of bumbling police, a too dead-set on commissioner (Giampiero Albertini, “Commandos”) and his more ungainly assistant (Franco Agostini, “The Sex Machine”), who are always one step behind and in the wrong direction.  The juxtaposition may be too evident yet it’s also welcoming, breaking up the forbidding business with a little levity, and creates a backend sense of assurance knowing police, just like today, can be human and clueless on serious natured instances.  The suspect pool and other salient supporting principals include Paola Quattrini as Jennifer’s roommate Marilyn (no doubt based loosely on Marilyn Monroe), Ben Carra as Jennifer’s sex cultist ex-husband, Jorge Rigaud as the professional violinist neighbor, Annabella Incontrera as the professor’s lesbian daughter, Oreste Lionello as a sleazy photographer, Carla Brait as a nightclub’s dominating femme, and Maria Tedeschi as the unfriendly neighbor.

Even though giallos did not appeal to him nor did they really become a staple of his oeuvre, director Giuliano Carmineo had a different perspective than most and that closely aligns with masterclass filmmakers like Dario Argento.  Carmineo and cinematographer, who’ve collaborated previously on a pair of Sartana westerns, had purpose in their odd and first person camera shots and movements, such as laying the camera down and sideways as characters perform routine events before being attacked or looking up and doing a 360-degree turn as if scanning a stairway, that coincided with the usual first person perspective of the conventionally masked and gloved killer wielding a deadly blade.  The technique engages the viewer, as in a sort of tell that something is about to happen or is amiss in a scene to create breath holding, heightened anxiety, but the multi-faceted narrative itself doesn’t need assistant in keeping viewers glued to the edge of their seats with the eclectic mix of sultry and taboo eroticism, lampooning the authority figures, designed seamless red herrings, unique characters, a variety in murder, and an elaborate, mysterious complexity that’s downright deviant. 

If you’re a distributor looking to shoot your shot on your first release, new boutique physical media label, Celluloid Dreams, hit the bullseye with a 2-disc 4K UHD and Standard Blu-ray release of “The Cast of the Bloody Iris” on a HVEC encoded, 2160p resolution, 100 gigabyte 4K UHD and on an AVC encoded, 1080p, 50 gigabyte Blu-ray, scanned and restored brand new in 4K on a pin-registered Arriscan from the film’s original 2-perf Techniscope camera negative, and presented in the original widescreen aspect ratio of 2.35:1.  Coloring grading and restoration is noted on the interior insert being entirely completed by Celluloid Dreams Studios to remove all the celluloid and age imperfections and stimulate a vivid, vibrant picture quality and, by the giallo-Gods, this has to be one of the more flawless image presentations I’ve seen on 4K and Blu-ray in a very long time, or ever!  Meticulous precision techniques reveal a straight from-farm-to-table quality, organic for its era with a balanced, natural grain and color saturation.   Details have delineated trim and higher contrast leveling where appropriate for darker scenes, such as an unilluminated bedroom or a basement boiler room, that retains the rich inkiness of the negative space.  No signs of compression issues in the negative spaces as well and no signs of unnecessary enhancing.  Two, lossless audio options are available for selection:  an Italian 1.0 DTS-HD and an English 1.0 DTS-HD.  Both remastered tracks from the optical sound negative provided full fidelity through the single channel.  Concise and crisp dialogue renders through in full, robust effect with ample detail in the ambience and depth to create a dynamic space.  No hissing, crackling, or popping in the ADR dialogue or ambient tracks and swanky tuned by Bruno Nicolai’s multi-instrumental base, drum, sintir-like guitar, and more score.  English subtitles are available on the Italian track.  With the larger capacity on the UHD, both formats are able to handle the included three featurettes with star George Hilton, principal actress Paola Quattrini, and director and writer, Guliano Carnimeo and Ernesto Gastaldi in Italian language.  Also included is a new commentary track from film critic and Celluloid Dreams co-founder Guido Henkel, an outtake reel that extend out certain scenes, photo gallery, the original Italian Opening Credits that beginning of the feature, and Italian and English theatrical trailers. Inside a dual-sided cardboard slipcover with both the feature’s baptized titles and illustrated cover art representation of Edwige Fenech, the black 4K UHD Amaray case possesses a second and more fleshy-erotic illustration of Fenech. The same art and arrangement are on the reverse side but with the Italian title. Each disc is housed on either side of the interior snapped firmly on a press-lock on with a release acknowledgements and an advert for their next physical feature, “La Tarantola Dal Ventre Nero” aka “Black Belly of the Tarantula.” The region A playback release has a runtime of 94 and is not rated.

Last Rites: Showing such diligence in the restoration efforts, Celluloid Dreams is the new kid on the block, the promising young boutique label with the Midas touch, with a killer first presentation in “The Case of the Bloody Iris.” We can’t wait to see more!

Own Your 4K and Blu-ray copy of “The Case of the Bloody Iris” today!

The Only Fire This EVIL Monster is Afraid of is the One in His Pants! “Frankenstein ’80” reviewed! (Cauldron Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Frankenstein ’80” on Blu-ray from Cauldron Films!

At a renowned German hospital, Professor Schwarz has pioneered a new serum that has proven animal-testing results on stopping or reducing the process of organ transplant rejection.  Also, at the same hospital in another wing, a disgraced surgeon, now a posthumous examiner, named Dr. Otto Frankenstein toils away in the morgue, dismembering bodies and piecing together the limbs and organs into a new being he has named Mosiac.  The scarred and lumbering monster has an increase sexual libido and is always in pain from organ rejection, driving him to sexually assault and kill women in the shadows.  Frankenstein steals his colleague’s only batch of serum that could have saved reporter Karl Schein’s ill sister from organ failure.  Now, Karl is on the hunt for the thief along with hot headed police Inspector Schneider that have pieced together a connection between the stolen serum and the grisly deaths of young women. 

Straight from the pages of Mary Shelley’s timeless book, the Frankenstein monster was born out of mad science, or rather the fear of science gone too far, and the deep shadows of Gothic romanticism and tragedy.  The Italian took the creature and patchworked a new take on the reborn monster giving life from expired flesh and jolts of electricity.  Frankenstein took shape as a caricature, a wildly exaggerated shell of the original exterior with an increase sexual appetite and murderous rage that shifts the story from the conflictions of mad scientist to solely the exploits of his mad creation.  That’s what is Frankenstein and his creature succumb to in the 1972 Mario Mancini film “Frankenstein ’80.”  Also known by other various titles such as “Midnight Horror,” “Frankenstein 2000,” and “Mosaic,” the short stinted cinematographer, whose works include “French Sex Murders” and “Vengeance is My Forgiveness,” tackles his own directorial from a co-written treatment penned with Ferdinando De Leone.  M.G.D. Film banners as production company with Benedetto Graziani and Renato Romano (“Seven Blood-Stained Orchids”) producing the sewn-skin and flesh-exposed feature with a concupiscent creature. 

“Frankenstein ‘80” is full of colorful characters that clash literally and figuratively on screen with grandiose personalities that seek to topple over another.  The only normie of the bunch the truth-seeking reporter Karl Schein, played by British actor John Richardson (“Black Sunday,” “Torso”), in the aftermath of a criminal act and tragedy when miracle serum vanishes and his sister (Gaby Veruksy) dies on the operating room table due to potentially her unnecessary organ failure.  Bearing a lookalike tinge of schlock genre director Jess Franco, Roberto Fizz stiffens up to the be academic and scientific creator of the serum in Prof. Schwarz.  His mad science intending to make the world a better place is balanced by Dr. Otto Frankenstein’s sordid abomination and his own self-interest, a wonderfully portentous and arrogantly calm role filled to the brim by the distinguished faced genre veteran and America-born bodybuilder Gordon Mitchell (“Emanuelle, Queen of Sados,” “Malevolence”).  Mitchel doesn’t display his brawniness here as an extinguished gentleman, disgraced surgeon but his unique face with an 1000-yard stare and his tall height made him for a good imposing puppeteer on the brink of losing control of his erratically around and constantly in pain creation Mosaic by Xiro Papas.  With his behavior performance, Papas blended Golden Age horror with new wave violence by being voiceless face of stoic fear who would eventually ravage his beautiful prey.   With all these characters creating havoc and abnormalities, it’s Inspector Schneider that causes the most distress with a cocaine level high performance Renato Romano on the verge of stroking out with him and his men’s own incompetence sleuthing in solving the murder cases.  The diverse nationality cast rounds out with Dalila Di Lazzaro (“Phenomena”) as Karl’s love interest and adopted niece of Dr. Frankenstein, Inspector’s two leading investigators in Fulvio Mingozzi (“Deep Red”) and Enrico Rossi, Lemmy Carson as the suspicious male nurse, and Dada Gallotti (“The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine”) as the Bucher with hardly any clothes underneath the butcher frock.

Frankenstein of the future!  Or, at least, that was the idea for the 1972 released sleazy-schlocker to be conceived as “Frankenstein ’80,” a new generational and bastardized terror with speckles of the original Mary Shelley vision stuffed with horrid-sex aggression and grim depravity.  Blindly held together by it’s key actors, “Frankenstein ‘80” has a pervasive perversity against the unrationalized cowboy science.  We never know just why this particular Dr. Frankenstein is so keen on creating a jerry-rigged juggernaut of mixed-bag blood types and assorted body parts.  Is it because his discredited shame has driven him delusional and mad?  Or is Dr. Frankenstein hellbent on showing the world what abnormal science can accomplish?  Jolting electricity and hunchback henchmen are taken out of the equation altogether in his water version of Frankenstein; we don’t even know where Dr. Frankenstein’s disasterpiece is source from or how the body was brought to be assembled, dismantled, and assembled again over and over as there’s no mention of grave robbery or is just a slabbed soul who fell in the unfortunate hands of a crazed surgical practitioner.  “Frankenstein ‘80’s” has plenty of mania, sleaze, and misshapen aspects that not only include it’s scared and fragmentally pieced together monster that promote Italian ostentation inside the country’s own modern genre elements rather than originating English Gothicism. 

“Frankenstein ‘80” rises alive for the first time North American Blu-ray home video release from Cauldron Films.  The high-definition, 1080p, AVC encoded Blu-ray is pulled from a 35mm print restoration and is presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  Stored amply on a BD50, the original print is elevated to a rich color palette that buoys, never dipping below the natural appearing skin tones, compromising the vivid warm grading, or shying away from the inky black voids.  There are spot horizontal scratches that are transparently faint and infrequent.  The release comes with two audio ADR-produced options, an English DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio and an Italian DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio.  The ADR razes the spatial depth a bit but the overall general clarity and prominence is excellent albeit insubstantially faint hissing.  “Frankenstein ‘80” has a nationality diverse cast between the Italian majority and peppered with British and American principals and you’ll see the dub synch better with the native English or Italian proficient depending on the audio track selected.  Range concentrates around the immediate surroundings, limiting the environment to virtually around just the character actions. English subtitles and English SDH are optionally available. Special features include Dalila Forever, an Italian audio recorded message from actress Dalila Di Lazzaro over a still gallery of what is essentially her life as she reminisces about her career, Little Frankensteins, a featurette that pays homage through Italian audio host Domenico Monetti on the assortment of Italian-made Frankensteins that stray from the original story and into a culture phenomenon through a time warp of Italian entries surrounding the creature, and last is an English audio commentary by film historian Heather Drain. The Cauldron Films’ clear-cased Blu-ray displays new art on the front cover, or from at least I can tell without digging up only a handful of one sheets and original posters., with the reverse providing the art from previous DVD versions. Beautifully blood red macabre and psychotronic, both colorfully cover contrasted cover illustrations are a testament to the film’s era and living up what’s on the encoded disc inside, pressed in pure black with a dripping blood red title. The region free Blu-ray comes with an 88-mintue, uncensored final product. Forget what you already know of the stitched together flat-top with pale skin and towering stature of resurrection and death after life as “Frankenstein ’80” embarks on savagery pieced together in the natural stink of science’s putrid decay with an unnatural libido leap into the arms of the unwilling, unsuspecting woman.

“Frankenstein ’80” on Blu-ray from Cauldron Films!

Don’t Mess with Texas Unless You’re EVIL Going Up Against “Shanghai Joe” reviewed! (Cauldron Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

East Doesn’t Just Meet the West, It Kicks It’s Ass in “Shanghai Joe!”

A Chinese immigrant arrives into San Francisco looking to begin a life as an American cowboy.  Met with extreme prejudice, he pushes forward to avoid the Western stereotypes of his race by taking a stagecoach to anywhere Texas in order to become a true-to-form Cowboy.  Mocking monikered Shanghai Joe, even in Texas Joe is met with bigoted resistance in every way and in every exchange with the locals despite his uncanny fighting, intellect, and horse-riding skills that are far superior to his meanspirited rivals who think of him nothing more than a dumb foreigner.  When Joe become inadvertently involved with human traffickers and slave owners of downtrodden Mexicans, Joe aims to set things right against an oppressive and murderous rancher named Spencer who runs the entire region.  Spencer knows his usual hired posse can’t match the supernatural abilities of Joe and hires out the $5,000 bounty to the four most cunning and ruthless killers that will seek Joe’s head as well as possibly commit other atrocities to him for the sole joy of it.

The sun rises on the dawn of the East Meeting the West with “Shanghai Joe” at the center   of subgenre.  The Italian made spaghetti western helmed by “Nightmare Castle” and “Nazi Love Camp 27” director Mario Caiano who exhibits what happens when an unstoppable force hits an immovable object as quick hands and feet of the Asian East combat with the quick gunslinging showdowns of the American West.  Penned by Caiano alongside Carlo Albert Alfieri (“Sodoma’s Ghost”) and Fabrizio Trifone Trecca, credited as T.F. Karter, “Il mio nome è Shangai Joe” or “The Fighting Fists of Shanghai Joe,” as the film is originally entitled in Italian, keeps true to the graphic and vehement violence that ultimately lacked from the U.S. Western and sought to bring a martial arts foreigner into the fold of brute and barbarity as Kung-Fu flicks were up-and-coming with the rise of Bruce Lee and the Italian wanted a piece of that cinematic success without having to spend a fortune of turning sets appear oriental when already built saloons, corals, and spittoons were a plentifully available from previous films.  Producers Renato Angiolini and Robert Bessi serve under the production companies Compagnia Cinematografica Champion (“Torso”) and C.B.A. Produttori e Distributori Associati (“Emergency Squad”).

Leave it to the Italians to make a Western set in Texas and to have protagonist Chinese hero be played by a Japanese actor.  Performing under the stage name of Chen Lee, the Aichi, Japan born actor’s real name is Myoshin Hayakawa and he plays the role of Chin Hao, a nomadic Chinese immigrant, taught the rare fighting ways of an ancient martial arts, travels to America in hopes to reside in the American dream.  Lee’s certainly a presence on screen in his quiet and reserve composure but equally as self-assured and as competent to take on the worst-of-the-worst in the exploitative West where law has yet to reach it’s firm grasping hand.  Lee lands fight sequences with fierce finesse, though perhaps not on a Bruce Lee level, but does it so with his own distinct style of chopsocky flair with laws of physics breaking gliding through the air and tremendous accuracy in all areas of throwing weapons, even hyperbolizing his Yo-yo as a coconut splitting, head-cracking weapon.  When not wiggling his way out of impossible no-win situations with smarts and strength and when it comes to the interests of romantics, Chin comes to find solace being twisted into a paired fate with Mexican national Christina, played by Italian actress Carla Romanelli (“Lesbo”), after saving her father from being executed. As if destined to fall in love at first sight, the two outlanders are in each other’s embrace but before anything could be commutated by any sense of the term, head honcho rancher Mr. Spencer (Pierro Lulli, “Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot!”) hires out assassins to relieve him of a troublesome Shanghai Joe. The killers are just as colorful and individualizes as the titular character with quirky personalities and traits that make them indubitably daunting by their mere nicknames: Pedro, the Cannibal (Robert Hundar, “Cut-Throat Nine”), Burying Sam (Gordon Mitchell, “Evil Spawn”), Tricky the Gambler (Giacomo Rossi Stuart, “The Night Evelyn Came Out of Her Grave”), and Scalper Jack (Klaus Kinski, “Nosferatu the Vampyre). The eclectic bunch of Western-horror tropes level out Shanghai Joe’s uncanny abilities with their own big penchants for demise but the actors behind the characters also have bigger personalities, especially Kinski who is only in the film for a few scenes but is second billed in both before and after credits. “Shanghai Joe” fills out the cast with Dante Maggio, Andrea Aureli, George Wang, and another Japanese actor and martial arts master, Katsutoshi Mikuriya, as the showdown villain trained in the same ancient combat arts as Chin but turned his back against the teachings’ moral principles for his own greed.

Plot pointed by a series of bad case scenarios to showcase Shanghai Joe’s superior skillset as not only a fighter, but also an intelligent, almost con-like, mentalist as well as being good at just about everything else, the film is laced with repetitive derogatoriness from all races except white.  “Shanghai Joe’s” indelicacies, coupled with graphic, moderately bloodied violence, adds to the laundry list of idiosyncrasies of this unique old West spectacle.  The Caiano and team’s scripted narrative exacts the epitome of the label the Wild West where the unexplored, uncultured, and uncivilized country gives way to lawlessness and opportunity, especially the latter at the expense of others.  Joe becomes a beacon of moral hope, a foreigner who seeks, by way of a semi forced hand, to correct the system from within using his rare training only as a position of defensiveness or to right a terrible injustice.  Caiano has the eye to make a legitimate Italian spaghetti western that hits all the hallmarks and the director can also fashion a two-prong narrative with a unified purpose that builds up the hero first with a series of outlaw confrontations before immersing him into a rigorous roughhouse recruited by the rotten rancher.  While each face-off spars differently, Caiano letting the actors build upon and have fun in their villainy, the ultimately take the place of the tip of the spear antagonist, rancher Stanley Spencer, who doesn’t get what’s owed him by the roll of the end credits.  The high-flying combat wires, that you can plainly see during the air time fight sequences, and the personal and frame stylistic choices of the actors and Caiano tend to distract viewers from the unfinished business, concluding on a satisfactory note that what we just experienced was felicitously violent, engrossingly entertainable with appealing characters, and just waggish enough to provide levity amongst the harsh racism and the aforesaid brutality. 

“Shanghai Joe” is a must-have, must-see Italian Western for the subgenre aficionado and, luckily, Cauldron Films delivers the 1973 film onto Blu-ray for the first time ever in North America. The AVC encoded BD50 is presented in high definition, 1080p, with a widescreen aspect ratio of 2.35:1 of a 2K restoration scan from the original 35mm negative. Cauldron Films’ restoration is a labor of love for an atypical western of the obscure nature with a generous tactile intensification to bring the warm dust of the tumbleweed West down upon the anomalist Asian in a blue Tang suit and pants with a conical hat. A few and very faint scratches are the only issues observed that come and go as quickly as they came, but the there’s a nice richness to the coloring, a natural grain, and zero compression issues or unnecessary enhancements detected. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono comes in two options – An English dub and an Italian dub. Preferably, I went with the English dub over the Italian despite “Shanghai Joe” being an Italian production. For one, Myoshin Hayakawa spoke English which you can tell by reading his lips so the English track paired better. Secondly, the Italian track is quite orotund to the point of losing some minor ambient detail as well as not feeling to be a part of the whole package team. Slight hissing at times during dialogued scenes but the clarity comes through with the decent dub pronunciations and the chopsocky ài yas are often repeated in the same audio tone and level in every evasive or attack flight by Joe but is not ostentatiously annoying. “Marquis de Sade Justine’s” Bruno Nicolai and his twangy score, channeling his best Ennio Morricone, has great purpose as “Shanghai Joe’s” main theme that rowels up and shapes Joe’s hero role. English and English SDH subtitles are available. The special features include an interview with Master Katsutoshi Mikuriya on how he was approached for the role and the martial artists also discusses the fight sequences in Samurai Spirit, film historian Eric Zaldivar puts together a visual essay with the topic East Meets West: Italian Style, an audio commentary by Mike Hauss from “The Spaghetti Western Digest,” the original trailer, and an image gallery. The physical portions of the release include a translucent Blu-ray snapper with a reversible cover art featuring two stylishly illustrative posters in contrast to the simple disc art of the red “Shanghai Joe” title set upon a black background. The early 70’s feature comes not rated, has a runtime of 98 minutes, and is region A locked. “Shanghai Joe’s” singularity scores high on the limited East meets West subgenre novelty but certainly aces as a versatile Kung-fu period piece with ridiculously good fight scenes, a handful of callously charming characters, and a disparaged hero, who embodies the good in all of us, you can gladly cheer for from beginning to end.

East Doesn’t Just Meet the West, It Kicks It’s Ass in “Shanghai Joe!”

Surrounded by Aquatic EVIL, No One Can Escape “The Island of the Fishmen!” reviewed! (Full Moon / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Check out the scantily-cladded woman encroached upon on “The Island of the Fishmen” Blu-ray!

A French prisoner ship sinks to the bottom of the Caribbean leaving only a handful of prisoners and the Left Lieutenant Claude de Ross, the ship’s doctor, stranded on a lifeboat for weeks until they a mysterious force drives them through the fog and crash them on the rocks of a seemingly deserted volcanic island. Only a few prisoners and the doctor manage to survive the wreckage, stumbling upon a ritualistic area of empty graves and abandoned artifacts of an island society. This is where the haggard and hungry men meet the beautiful Amanda Marvin on horseback and follow her through the island jungle to a clearing where the edifice of Edmond Rackham sits imposing on them. Having left his home country, Rackham settled upon this uncharted island, garnering local Caribbean inhabitants as servants, and being a greedy treasure hunter who might have just discovered the lost city of Atlantis. There’s only one problem, the city is surrounded by aggressive fishmen kept at bay by Amanda’s famed disgraced biologist father who has fallen severely ill, charting a course for the good doctor, Lt. Claude de Ross, to be unharmed in order to care for perhaps the only person who knows how to manage the wrath of the fishmen.

A swimmingly aquatic creature feature with an all-around gratifying men in costume pastiche, familiar to the style of “The Creature from the Black Lagoon,” in Sergio Martino action-adventure horror “The Island of the Fishman.” Also know under the revamped shots of “Screamers” aka “Something Waits in the Dark,” here we have the original film in all it’s natural glory from the director of “Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key” and “Torso” director Martino from a script by Martino, Sergio Donati (“Orca”), “Slave of the Cannibal God’s” Cesare Frugoni who workshopped with Sergio Martino’s older brother, Luciano Martino, (“So Sweet… So Perverse”) on the original story. Some would also say that “The Island of the Fishmen” is also a crossbreed between H.G. Wells’ “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” and, aforementioned, “The Creature from the Black Lagoon.” The 1979 Italian production stars an international cast shooting along various locations in Italy and is produced by Luciano Martino under Dania Films and Medusa Distribution.

American, United Kingdom, and, of course, Italian come together to form “The Island of the Fishmen” cast that doesn’t stray too far away from their individual innate dialects. The most pompous is he Essex-born Richard Johnson’s sadistic and fortune hungry Edmond Rackham with a caricature of a voice that isn’t like anything in his performance in Lucio Fulci’s “Zombie.” As Rackham, the inflections reminisce of a British Humphrey Bogart mixed with a one Dick Dasterdly and so Johnson comes off a bit cartoony and overly dramatic compared to the film’s panache malnourished yet earnest hero in Italian actor Claudio Cassinelli (“Murder Rock,” “The Scorpion With Two Tails”) as Left Lieutenant Claude de Ross, a ship’s doctor who suddenly becomes the medical caretaker and leading guard over a lifeboat full of hardened prisoners, some who have blood on their hands. Franco Javarone and Roberto Posse play a pair of surviving convicts, especially two at odds on how they should treat their next in rank penal officer. Though being thrust into the oversight position, the Lieutenant doesn’t have to worry about his prisoners for too long as the island’s baleful environment with jungle death traps, poisonous water, voodoo priestess, a sadistic lord of estate, and mutant fish people swimming in circles around the island’s parameter and through the cut through waterways sees to their wellbeing. “Island of the Fishmen” does have a few predominant male figures of different caliber but there are also a pair of women inhabiting the island who, too, have counteracting roles. Bond girl Barabara Bach (“The Spy Who Loved Me”) became plagued by the ocean’s frightening fishmen only two years later as the captive dame of Edmond Rackham who holds her hostage as he pushes her father (Joseph Cotton, “The Survivor”) to continue with his mind control potion over the fishmen. Then, there’s Shakira. No, not the Brazilian singer-song writer with the hypnotizing booty shaker. This Shakira is a voodoo priestess, played by Jamaican actress Beryl Cunningham (“Dorian Gray”), who works for Rackham but ultimately envisions foreboding doom on the volcanic island. Giuseppe Castellano and Franco Mazzieri round out the cast.

A whole lot is going on in this film that from the surface seems, surfacing meaning the home video covers and posters, to focus chiefly on the hostile half-fish half-man creatures that bubble to surface, check out top side for any unwanted visitors, and quickly dispatch them before disappearing under the glassy waters of the Caribbean. I adore the design of the rather stiff but crudely convincing creature suits with buggy fisheyes, razor piranha like teeth, and cladded entirely green and scaley in a design by Massimo Antonello Geleng who by vocation was more a production designer with credits including this film along with “Cannibal Holocaust,” “City of the Living Dead,” “The Church,” and “Dellamorte Dellamore” to name a few. Yet, the fishmen were not a sole source of danger on an island that had a deadly schemer in Edmond Rackham, the motif of voodoo and jungle trap throughout, a volcano ready to erupt and engulf the island with lava, and the lost city of Atlantis as the grand epic finale that pivots this story on an acute elbow left that shows a mighty ambitious story on an Italian slim budget. To put it frank, Sergio Martino was able to put all the elements together into a cohesive, coherent plot with action, horror, exploitation, and mad science fiction albeit the story’s wild and diverging concepts.

Though many U.S. audiences know this film as Roger Corman’s highly altered, New World Pictures presented cut retitled as “Screamers,” Full Moon features releases the original oeuvre of Sergio Martino with a remastered Blu-ray release from the original 35mm negative. The 99-minute film is presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio that captures in perfect matte composition and frame the locational miniatures, such as the manor house or the underwater Atlantis temples, in a compression that doesn’t make the structures obvious fakes. Slightly tinged yellow, the overall color palette is renders out well enough to suit the release with a pristine transfer seeing no signs of real significant damage. The English language tracks come in two formats – a PCM 2.0 and a Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. The English-speaking actors have their original tracks intact while the Italian cast have their original dialogue re-dubbed in English for posterity on new releases such as this one. Dialogue, nor any of the corresponding audio tracks, show any signs of fidelity issues or damage, but do feel muffled, even on the 5.1 as if the sound was boost stifled and left with some of the channels lacking vigor. Aside from Full Moon trailers, the R-rated film rides solo on this hi-def release. “Island of the Fishmen” is a small film fighting hard to swim upstream and really does a number on many different levels regarding where the audiences should focus their attention on, but I can see why Roger Corman wanted to give Martino’s film a second run after a commercial flop with a new, gory scenes edited right into the heart of “Island of the Fishmen’s” flexible, cartilaginous bones. Despite Corman’s efforts, Sergio Martino’s unmolested, original reeling reel is the one and only catch of the day for this purist.

Check out the scantily-cladded woman encroached upon on “The Island of the Fishmen” Blu-ray!