Franco E. Prosperi Movies

This is a combination message movie and horror film, punctuated with gruesome animal attacks. The story starts with dangerous PCBs contaminating a German city's water supply. While the toxins might have a negative impact on the health of the human population, it's impact on the animals in the zoo is immediate: it drives the animals in the zoo off their feed and a further accident gets them into the streets. The chief zoo keeper, a female reporter and a police inspector team up to try to get the fearsome beasts under control and protect the city's population. Mangled bodies and some horrible deaths are strewn across the screen before the disaster has ended. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Set up as though it were a true tale, this far-out Italian potboiler by Mario Garriazo (aka: "Roy Garrett") begins with the reminiscences of a London housewife and continues as a long series of flashbacks. Catherine (Elvire Audray) lives with her parents on a plantation on the Amazon River. On her 18th birthday, the family takes a trip upstream and are attacked by Native Americans. Her parents are killed by poisonous darts and Catherine is captured and then raised by an Amazonian jungle tribe. After some adjustment to this new life she ascertains that her aunt and uncle were the real killers of her parents. This discovery sets her off on a mission of revenge across the Atlantic and into another series of adventures. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

A warrior who was raised by Amazons hunts down the evildoers who destroyed his village. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi

This shameless knockoff of Last House on the Left even goes so far as to repeat the detail of having the theme song performed by the lead villain. Florinda Bolkan (Non Si Sevizia un Paperino) plays a nun who takes the teenage girls in her care to a remote house where they rehearse A Midsummer Night's Dream. Ray Lovelock and a pair of thugs show up, brutally raping and terrorizing the girls -- killing one by raping her with a cane -- until Bolkan renounces her teachings and seeks bloody revenge. Utter nonsense, but AC/DC and Roxy Music are on the soundtrack, so it isn't a complete waste. Director Franco Prosperi is best known for co-directing Mondo Cane and Africa Addio. Sherry Buchanan (Dr. Butcher, M.D.) co-stars with Laura Trotter. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco E. Prosperi, best-known for the groundbreaking shockumentary Mondo Cane, directed this bizarre and shocking look at slavery in America. Set in the deep South prior to the Civil War, Zio Tom finds Jacopetti and Prosperi travelling back in time aboard a helicopter to investigate the nuts and bolts of slavery as it happened in the United States prior to abolition. Along the way, the filmmakers go aboard a slave ship as frightened Africans are brought to America under inhuman conditions; they witness the dangerous and degrading process by which slaves were made ready for market; and they visit a "breeding farm" for slaves after laws prohibit the importation of slaves from abroad. Also included is a sermon from a preacher who argues for the moral and spiritual necessity of slavery (while another man speaks out against it strictly on grounds of economics and practicality); the contrasting thoughts of men and women on the matter of miscegenation; and an interview with an educated slave who feels his circumstances are better for him than conventional employment. Also shown is the brutal torture and punishment of slaves for any number of real or imagined grievances. Re-creating both the opulence and the ugliness of the Old South on a grand scale, Zio Tom concludes with present-day African-Americans reading The Confession of Nat Turner and contemplating violent overthrow of the white-dominated culture. Understandably controversial, Zio Tom received a very brief theatrical release in the United States under the title Farewell Uncle Tom, where it received an X rating from the MPAA despite being trimmed by approximately 20 minutes from its original Italian running time. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

It was "tax shelter" time when Hollywood's Robert Blake and Ernest Borgnine headed to Italy to star in Counter Punch. Slimmer and lighter on his feet than he'd be in his Baretta days, Blake plays a young boxer, accused of murdering his crooked manager. Escaping from detective Borgnine, Blake sets about to uncover the real killer on his own. Expect a lot of heavy duty fisticuffs, with Blake doing most of his own stunt work. Adding spice to the proceedings are distaff co-stars Gabrielle Ferzetti and Catherine Spaak, the latter cast as the murder victim's daughter. Originally titled Un Uomo dalla Pelle Dura, Counter Punch was also released as Ripped-Off. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Africa, Blood and Guts is an edited-down version of the 1966 documentary Africa, Addio, a follow up to the directors' Mondo Cane. Whereas the original 138-minute version of Addio sought to criticize practices and customs in 1960s Africa and demonstrated a fair amount of substance (drawing extreme controversy for its political and social observations about Africa), this reduced version exists only for the sake of exploitation - exclusively emphasizing homicides, genocides, mutilations, the butchering of animals and all manner of other grotesquerie.
~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A three-year documentary odyssey through the bloody social upheaval of 1960s Africa, this film from the directors of Mondo Cane is just as unflinching as its predecessor in its visual catalogue of atrocities but has some substance to back it up. Topics include the violent civil war in the Congo, the final days of colonial rule in Kenya, revolutions in Zanzibar and Angola, racial strife in Dar es Salaam, the Bahuti slaughter of the Rwandan Watusi, and the mass extermination of thousands of animals in game enclaves. The considerable political content was greatly reduced when exploitation maven Jerry Gross released the film in America several years later as Africa, Blood and Guts, a version running almost an hour shorter than the original and emphasizing gore over historical perspective; to make things really confusing, the 2008 DVD reissue contains the original 138-minut version but was slapped with the title of the re-edit. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

This shockumentary caused a stir when it was released in 1962 -- no one had seen anything quite like it before. But audiences need not have worried, this low-brow, disconnected series of clips on "savages" and "barbarians" (usually dark-skinned) who pierce their skin or their noses and do not bother to cover their breasts, would only get worse in sequel after sequel, through the 1970s. Purporting to show repulsive or erotic ritual practices and strange cultural customs from around the world, such as the slaughter of pigs in New Guinea or Asians who eat dog meat, or even the Hawaiian hula, this supposed documentary is nothing more than a series of unrelated, jarring film clips with commentary from a limited white male perspective. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Generally considered the first real giallo film, Mario Bava's stylish thriller stars Leticia Roman as Nora, who travels to Rome to visit her sick aunt. The aunt dies that night, and Nora ends up witnessing a murder. The police and kindly Dr. Bassi (John Saxon) don't believe her, since there is no body, so she goes to stay with her aunt's friends, the Cravens. Along the way, there are several more murders tied to a decade-long string of killings of victims chosen in alphabetical order by surname. The surprising ending is worth staying around for, as is an amusing supporting performance by Valentina Cortese. Bava would go on to further codify many of the giallo genre's conventions in Sei Donne per l'Assassino the following year. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

Horrormeister Mario Bava helmed this entry in the series, in which Hercules (Reg Park) must journey to the bowels of Hell to recover a magical plant that is the only hope of a dying princess. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi