Mirella D'Angelo Movies

A Cockney thug becomes a daddy just before he and his two colleagues are supposed to put the screws to some unfortunate deadbeat. The new dad decides that he has had enough killing and wants to start anew. Unfortunately, his partners have other plans, as does his boss who is angry that the thug killed one of his best customers. This black comedy is filled with cartoonish but intense violence and very coarse language. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this student's debut film, a Polish refugee in Germany is torn between her two countries and her two lovers. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The polar-opposite worlds of opera and horror collide in this gory giallo film from director Dario Argento. Christina Marsillach (Tom Hanks' romantic interest in Every Time We Say Goodbye) stars as Betty, a beautiful understudy who gets an unlikely break to play the female lead in a contemporary opera of Verdi's Macbeth. Her fear of Macbeth's notorious curse proves to have foundation when a psychopath with a strange connection to Betty murders a stage hand in the midst of her debut and later kills several ravens being used in the opera. Characters introduced at this point who could be the killer include: the show's director, Marco (Ian Charleson); Betty's publicist, Mira (Daria Nicolodi); and the police inspector, Alan Santini (Urbano Barberini). The middle third of the film is devoted to the killer's bloody work which serves to torment Betty. The madman binds her and tapes a row of tiny needles beneath her eyes so that she is forced to watch him butcher a young stage manager and a costume designer, among others. With the police investigation going nowhere and the killer zeroing in on Betty's death, Marco decides to enact his own plan to stop the madman; he releases the ravens (apparently, they always remember their enemies) during a performance. The birds circle wildly before attacking the killer and plucking one of his eyeballs out. He absconds with Betty, but dies in a fire after revealing his demented motivation and his connection to the young singer. A final scene set in the Swiss mountains provides a couple of final shocks. ~ Patrick Legare, Rovi

The 12 labors of Hercules were not the objective of this film starring Lou Ferrigno as the semi-divine son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene. Hercules must rescue Princess Cassiopea from her kidnappers, fight off grotesque laser-breathing monsters and in one case, jettison a giant bear up into space where it becomes Ursa Major, the Big Dipper or "Great Bear" constellation. Off-color (many scenes are in dim, bluish stage sets) and low-budget, this incarnation of Hercules may find unconverted viewers a difficult, 13th challenge to conquer. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This standard comedy thriller is more a vehicle to show off Jean-Paul Belmondo's stunts than to convey a suspenseful tale to a hoodwinked audience. Belmondo plays a conman who gets tangled in a complex series of hassles that involve some well-placed kicks to straighten out. Everyone is after a microfilm he has, and when he is not hanging from a helicopter to escape his enemies he is bedding down one woman or another. Life, after awhile, seems fairly predictable as he goes from being airborne to bedridden or vice-versa. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This lavish big-budget epic was the pinnacle of a uniquely Italian subgenre, the historical hardcore gore/porn extravaganza. The star-studded cast, perhaps lured by the high-profile involvement of producer Bob Guccione and screenwriter Gore Vidal, includes such luminaries as John Gielgud, Peter O'Toole, and Helen Mirren. Director Tinto Brass, whose similar treatment of Nazi Germany in Salon Kitty won him the job, did his best with the mammoth enterprise, but numerous production problems and re-edits took their toll on the finished product. When Caligula works best, it works because of Malcolm McDowell, whose crazed portrayal of the title Emperor is the embodiment of villainous corruption. McDowell raises his performance level to match the gaudy spectacle around him, which led to charges of overacting, but there are moments when he is absolutely riveting. Some of the cast doesn't fare as well, as O'Toole makes a particularly unsubtle Tiberius. The sex is graphic and steamy, particularly a feverish lesbian interlude between Penthouse Pets Lori Wagner and Marjorie Thorsen (using the pseudonym "Anneka di Lorenzo"), and the various carnival freaks used as atmosphere imbue the film with a grotesque, Fellini-like opulence. There are many memorable scenes and a magnificent score by Paul Clemente, but the heady brew of historical epic, hardcore sex, and gory violence proved overwhelming to many viewers. Still, Gore Vidal's script is surprisingly accurate, and manages to be entertainingly vulgar while bringing a rather loathsome slice of human history to vivid life, warts and all. The more explicit scenes were directed by Bob Guccione and Giancarlo Lui, causing both Vidal and Brass to remove their names from the credits. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi