American Actors In Italy

 

 

THE VISITOR-1979-At an Atlanta Hawks basketball game a little girl named Katy (Paige Connor) seems to make an opposing player lose the game. She's a snot-nosed brat and after having sex her mother Barbara (Joanne Nail) confesses to her boyfriend Raymond (Lance Henriksen who was in OMEN 2 the year before) that she's afraid of her daughter. It turns out Raymond actually works for a cabal led by Dr. Walker (Mel Ferrer) who says the mother carries the genes of “Sateen”. They want the boyfriend to impregnate mom so Katy will have a brother. For some reason Katy gets a revolver for a birthday present and she accidentally shoots mom who winds up paralyzed. A character who may be Jesus Christ (Franco Nero) sends a visitor (John Huston) to check up on Katy. And a weird housekeeper (Shelly Winters, no stranger to horror and exploitation) also hangs around. Meanwhile a detective (Glen Ford who had played Pa Kent in the SUPERMAN movie the year before) investigates until he is killed. Later after Raymond and Katy kill Barbara the visitor sends a flock of birds to kill Raymond and Katy is whisked away to a heavenly place where (now bald) she joins other hairless children under the protection of the Christ like figure.

This Italian/US co-production THE OMEN inspired tale was filmed in and around Rome by Guilio Paradisi (a former actor) under the more American sounding Michael J. Paradise. It's no paradise when viewing this disjointed, badly dubbed horror tale despite the name cast. It could be the US version was badly cut and dubbed making the story fairly incoherent. For example director Sam Peckinpah appears in one scene as a doctor named Collins (Katy and Barbara's last name). It seems in the uncut version it's explained that the doctor is actually Barbara's ex-husband but here it's reduced to a weird cameo by an American director (Peckinpah would make this last movie THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND a few years later). Actor/director Mel Ferrer was in several European horror films around this time and the same year as THE VISITOR was in added US scenes for an Italian horror film SCREAMERS.

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Not Untold Enough

THE UNTOLD (AKA: SASQUATCH)-2002-A group lead by a billionaire bio-tech CEO (Lance Henriksen) goes looking for a crashed plane that carried his daughter and some kind of DNA machine in this inept boring Canadian horror film that borrows from THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. They run into the legendary monster and Lance watches a video his daughter left behind. The group argue about the rich guy's real intentions and are terrorized by a hairy bigfoot creature (shown mostly in POV shots). The direction by the debuting Jonas Quastel is really annoying at times.

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Movies I'll Never Get Around To Writing Anymore About!

THE REBELLIOUS REIGN-1980-A martial artist (Jimmy Lee aka Lung Fong) teams up with a Prince (Norman Chu) in a grab for power set during The Ching Dynasty. Nice period piece with a bunch of long violent fights and a pessimistic ending.



TWO DRAGONS AGAINST THE TIGER-1975-Typical Hong Kong martial arts movie is almost all non-stop fights. A group of friends strike gold and want to find wives. However revenge gets in the way of their plans and everyone fights!



AVP: ALIEN VS. PREDATOR-2004-Millionaire Lance Hendriksen assembles a group of scientists, soldiers and doctors to investigate an underwater pyramid his satellite radar discovers. After a bit of exploring it becomes obvious that they are in middle of a war between 2 modern day horror/Sci-Fi icons! Those deviously reproducing aliens and Governor Swarzenegger’s worst nightmare, the other worldly Predators! It seems the Predators bred the aliens as a test for their mightiest warriors (and really stacked the deck against themselves!). The team is killed and a few go the “John Hurt route”. Director Paul W. Anderson also made RESIDENT EVIL, EVENT HORIZON and MORTAL KOMBAT.

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2 Bad

IN THE SPIDER’S WEB-2007-Crazy nonsense has a group of backpackers in India stumble upon a mysterious village where a Dr. Lecorpus (Lance Henriksen) and his strange brother like to inject people with spider venom as part of some local spider cult. They are actually harvesting organs for the black market. Henriksen makes a good villain but the best character is the comical local police sergeant who helps them. It sort of turns into a comedy for the climax!




MANTICORE-2005-In Iraq a dopey professor resurrects an ancient beast to seek revenge. A team of soldiers led by Robert Beltran go looking for a missing reporter and most of them get eaten. It’s pretty stupid and the soldiers act like assholes. Jeff Fahey is the major in charge. Director Tripp Reed was a former actor.

"I've got to stopping watching movies on the Sci-Fi channel"-me

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