SO MANY FUNBAGS, SO LITTLE FUN:

Kalungo's Electric Finger, Tashi's Cavern of Dark Mysteries & The Sad Waltz of the Cross-Dressing Vampires...

AMAZONS (Alejandro Sessa, 1986)

During the odd but loveable "adult fantasy" craze of the 80s - from mildly classy productions like The Sword and the Sorcerer to more sleazy fare like Barbarian Queen - this tale of a tribe of hot warrior babes in a time long lost to the pages of history made an inglorious appearance on the scene. The evil king/wizard Kalungo (!) camps his henchman outside of a village "in the Emerald Land" protected by the eponymous Amazons. The trouble is that without a legendary lost sword, they are helpless against his bad juju. A contingent of six Amazons is thus dispatched to retrieve the "spirit stone" from the temple for the queen for some reason, presumably because Roger Corman insisted that this thing needed a rudimentary plot of some sort.

This accomplished, more typical fantasy bullshit ensues, such as a good wizard leading the girls to trees that show them "their true selves" (which are, quite sadly, not naked). The stone is presented to the queen (who looks an awful lot like Judi Dench), and I still haven't got a damn clue why they needed it in the first damn place. Anyway, now they have to go find that sword in order to defeat Kalungo, who is made aware of this by a henchman who sounds like a gameshow announcer from the late 1970s. The real problem here is that this place's entire military force is made up of women - and as anyone who has ever worked in an office full of women knows, they're catty as shit. So of course there is a perpetually PMSing bitch named Tashi (Penelope Reed, who looks like Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard, who looks like Skeletor) on the team who arranges to have the leader, Dyala (Mindi Miller), assassinated. Probably because she's jealous of Dyala's awesomely crimped hair, but this is just supposition.

Meanwhile, Kalungo sends a completely naked female assassin of his own after Dyala and company, since no one expects death from the fully nude. Crafty! Speaking of which, the girls fall afoul of a group of slave-traders whilst bathing, resulting in the poor bastards getting their asses handed to them by a squad of topless chicks. Did I say poor? Clearly I meant fortunate. Naturally, they then encounter some more topless chicks in the woods, having some kind of ritual that revolves around flowers and New Age music and toplessness. Jeepers - when did fantasy stop being this great? For fuck's sake, I sat through 800 hours of that boring Lord of the Rings nonsense and not one single boob. Seriously, Peter Jackson got an Oscar for that?

Moving on - Kalungo is soon hiding his magic wand in Tashi's cavern of dark mysteries (see? I can talk fantasy, too!), which really has nothing to do with the plot and is just plain gross to sit through. Back at the ranch, the villagers are too impatient to wait for the magic sword, so they decide to do battle against Kalungo without it. Our heroines find the sword of course, but Kalungo's nekkid killer lies in wait for them, as does Tashi's daughter/assassin. The latter gives into friendship, is killed by the former, and Dyala kills her as well. The sword acquired, all is well and good and shit man, who really cares at this point?

I ain't gonna lie to you, Amazons is pretty lame. Rarely have I seen a movie with so many funbags, yet so little fun. The real problem here is the lack of a compelling lead - Mindi Miller, who had few roles in her short career, is about as wooden as possible and just seems confused through the whole affair. Check out the lovely and lively Lana Clarkson in the Barbarian Queen flicks instead and mourn her along with me. Damn you to hell, Phil Spector!!

Highlight of the Film: All of this in the desperate effort to defeat Kalungo, and why? Because he can shoot electricity out of his forefinger. Seriously, that's it. An entire army equipped with swords and shields cannot defeat one guy who shoots electricity out of one finger. In fact, they just stand there and let him electrocute them. To hell with the damn sword, these dumbshits deserve what they get. And so do I for watching the whole damn thing. For crying out loud people, just push him into the bath! It's freaking science!

YOUNG DRACULA, aka THE DEMONIC WOMANIZER CONSTANTE NICOSIA, OR: DRACULA IN BRIANZA (Lucio Fulci, 1975)

Perhaps a little known fact, Italian gore maestro Lucio Fulci made a number a sex comedies before turning his attention to horror (The Senator Likes Women being a standout among them). Hence, 1975's Young Dracula is not a blood-soaked vampire flick at all, but rather a silly marriage farce with some campy vampirism thrown into the mix. (Fulci had done some gialli fare heretofore, but his first gore outing wasn't until 1979 with Zombi 2.)

Constante Nicosia (Italian comedy star Lando Buzzanca) is the owner of a toothpaste company who cares more about toothpaste than his wife Mariu (Sylvia Koscina) and friends, and who treats his employees like grade D shit. Constante is also superbly superstitious and obsessed with luck (black cats and a broken mirror throw him into fits in the first 10 minutes of the picture). At a family dinner party one night, a creepy old Sicilian aunt places a particularly nasty curse on poor Constante ("may your insides turn to ash," etc.) which he superficially blows off, yet internally he is freaking out about the whole thing. The next day Constante heads to Romania on a business trip, where he is invited to a castle by its effeminate owner, Count Dragulescu (John Steiner).

Stuck in the country for a few days, he takes the old queen up on the invite and journeys to the appropriately dark and creepy abode. There he meets the Count's three lovely female friends, and the four of them commence to have a nude dinner party, much to Constante's surprise. Nevertheless, he strips down and allows the women to pour champagne into his gullet, which is precisely what I would do. Constante passes out on some broad's bush and awakens the next morning in bed with the Count, who cackles at the poor guy's homophobic shrieking.

Back in Italy, Constante is a changed man. He's more nervous, deeply concerned that he might have become gay, and has developed a curious taste for blood. So yeah, now poor Constante is a sexually ambiguous vampire unable to get it going with the ladies and nothing but his crazy aunt's advice to ineffectively work out the curse. He goes to see a sham wizard who he believes to have cured him, but instead is working for his idiotic brother-in-law to help the dumbass not get fired. Still, he manages to attack his wife in the bath with bites to the ass, which throws the “cured” theory into the shitter.

Kicked out of the house, he begins seeing whores just for the opportunity to nibble on them a little bit. One finds this awfully strange, but a dominatrix (looking a bit like Tawny Kitaen in The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of Yik-Yak) seems to break him of the habit by way of a severe whipping. But when his last remaining factory girl – the rest having quit – cuts her wrist open in a faux-suicidal protest, he decides to hire everyone back, treat them well, and have them donate blood regularly. Constante also reconciles with his wife and finally agrees to sire an heir – who sports enormous vampire fangs.

This is actually a pretty damn funny movie with a great performance from Buzzanca. Plus, the entire score sounds like riffs on Wechter's "Spanish Flea," which is simultaneously ludicrous and delightful. Unfortunately all I could find for this flick was a 10th generation VHS with Greek subtitles with an absolutely abominable picture. Here’s hoping someone like Severin cleans this up someday for DVD.

Highlight of the Film: There is a particularly funny scene early in the film when Constante first arrives in Romania and learns that he will be stuck there for a while. Wandering into the skanky hotel bar, he is immediately noticed by a fellow Italian who beckons him to sit. Eager for company, Constante obliges and asks about the area and what it has to offer. The corpulent fellow just stirs his drink with his finger and complains bitterly about everything from the quality of the champagne to his bad luck doing business there. The business in question is lingerie, which intrigues Constante until the fellow displays some of his product which he is presently wearing. To make the situation more awkward, the fat woman singing in there announces the presence of the two Italians and dedicates a song to them, culminating in a very defeated-looking Constante waltzing with his cross-dressing companion to the tune. Who knew the guy whose primary claim to fame was increasingly graphic disembowelments could be so funny? Okay, I guess disembowelments are kind of funny...