Ivan Rassimov Movies

A courageous mercenary journeys to the New Guinea jungle to find a missing young woman. He brings with him an expert on the terrain and with only a rotting, super-8 film to guide them, they try to figure out where she is. As they make the dangerous journey, they must deal with hungry cannibals and a crazed religious zealot. This Italian horror adventure is filled with blood, gore, and violence that includes the killing of real animals. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This twisted Italian oddity, originally titled L'Odessa, is an incomprehensible muddle of Devil-possession horror and lots of kinky soft-core sex (its original U.S. title was The Sexorcist). The story revolves around a weird religious icon -- depicting one of the two thieves crucified with Christ -- and the demonic sexual influence it exerts on a young art student (Stella Carnacina). After a gory dream sequence in which the woman imagines herself being nailed to a cross herself, the statue eventually comes to life and begins to sexually torment her ... whereupon the entire film careens off-track into Exorcist territory, where it slogs for an uninvolving and unoriginal final hour. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

This effective occult horror film was the final feature directed by the legendary Mario Bava. Daria Nicolodi gives her most convincing performance as Dora, who moves back into her old house with a new husband, Bruno (John Steiner), after spending time in a mental hospital. Strange things start happening, mostly involving her young son Marco (David Colin, Jr.), who seems to be possessed by the ghost of Dora's first husband Carlo, a heroin addict who committed suicide. Dora suffers from vivid hallucinations, and it soon becomes obvious that she is going completely mad, and that Bruno knows more about Carlo's death than he lets on. Bava stages the hallucination scenes with his trademark visual flair, and his son Lamberto Bava's script, co-written with Francesco Barbieri, Paola Brigenti and Dardano Sacchetti, handles Dora's shifting sense of reality with great skill and a subtlety rare for Italian horror films of the period. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

While on an expedition in Thailand, a photographer is taken hostage by cannibals and forced to endure several violent adventures. The film was originally an Italian release, and its even more violent version is rarely seen. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

This seamy, atmospheric Italian thriller is a kinky variation on Edgar Allan Poe's The Black Cat. Luigi Pistilli stars as Oliviero Rouvigny, a racist, alcoholic writer who beats and verbally abuses his wife Irina (Anita Strindberg) in a remote castle. People are having their throats slashed with a curved knife, and Rouvigny is the prime suspect. When a pretty bisexual cousin, Floriana (pin-up queen Edwige Fenech) comes to stay with the unhappy couple, a sinister web of evil, sex, and death result. Pistilli gives an eminently hateful performance, and Ivan Rassimov and Daniela Giordano show up as well. There's also a fairly stylish murder involving a roadside billboard bearing the picture of a heart, a cat has one of its eyes gouged out with a pair of scissors, and a black maid is chopped to death with a meat cleaver and walled up in the cellar. The film's Italian title translates as the evocative Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, a message inscribed on one of the notes sent by Rassimov to Fenech in director Sergio Martino's previous giallo thriller, Lo Strano Vizio della Signora Wardh. He went on to make the popular Torso and other genre efforts for the next quarter-century. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

This classic blend of science-fiction and horror belies its extremely low budget with buckets of atmosphere and some genuinely creepy setpieces. The story concerns the crews of two spaceships, who land on a foggy, seemingly deserted planet. What they don't know is that the planet was home to a race of vampiric aliens, who possess their minds, eventually rising from their strange, misty graves to seek human blood. Legendary director Mario Bava once again proves himself a master at atmospheric composition, using color, sound, and minimalistic sets in original and unnerving ways. Barry Sullivan stars with Angel Aranda and Brazilian actress Norma Bengell. The American version, running several minutes shorter than the original, was put together by Ib Melchior (The Angry Red Planet). ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide