Il medaglione insanguinato (1975)

... aka: Bloody Medallion, The

... aka: Cursed Medallion, The

... aka: Émilie, l'enfant des ténèbres (Emily, the Child of Darkness)

... aka: Night Child, The

... aka: Perché?! (Why?!)

... aka: Possédée (Possessed)

... aka: Together Forever

Directed by:

Max (Massimo) Dallamano

Innocent little girl possessed by an unseen, evil force? I bet we've all seen that a time or two or twenty already, but that's the price we all must pay when a film becomes as big of a cultural phenomenon as The Exorcist was in the 1970s. Afterward, the gates were open for tons of imitators to start flooding the market. While some of these copied Friedkin's film pretty blatantly, others (like this one) actually had next to nothing to do with the film and simply played up the child possession angle for marketing purposes. Most were cheap, low grade, instantly forgettable exploitation films made by minimally-talented directors. The fact this one wasn't and has plenty of talented people, in front of and behind the camera, involved made me set my hopes a little bit higher than usual for this one.

Director Dallamano was a very good cinematographer who'd previously shot the classic Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and A Few Dollars More (1965) starring Clint Eastwood. He'd also directed the campy but surprisingly progressive and entertaining Oscar Wilde adaptation DORIAN GRAY (1970) as well as WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE? (1972), one of the better Italian giallos from that time. In addition to that, this is headlined by a much better cast than usual.

BBC filmmaker / host Michael Williams (Richard Johnson) is busy working on a project called "Diabolical Art," a documentary about sinister old paintings. After tragically losing his wife, Lisa (Dana Ghia), in a fire, he's been left to care for their young daughter, Emily (Nicoletta Elmi). He's hired young and pretty, but depressive governess Jill Perkins ("Evelyn Stuart" / Ida Galli) to help and she's grown attached to both Michael (who she's secretly fallen in love with) and Emily. Despite the fact the mother died awhile back, as of yet Emily has been unable to get over it and is plagued by horrifying nightmares of her untimely demise. Michael takes her to a psychiatrist (Edmund Purdom), who notes that she has an unhealthy attachment to him (not surprising since mom is no longer in the picture), and recommends he allow her to stay by his side as much as possible until she starts improving. That means Michael will need three plane tickets instead of one since he's set to travel to Spoleto, Italy to research his project.

Upon arrival in Italy, Michael meets up with his production manager Joanna Morgan and is instantly smitten with the American beauty, which is understandable since she's played by a young and vibrant Joanna Cassidy. Naturally, that doesn't sit too well with Little Miss Electra Complex, who wants ALL of daddy's attention and obnoxiously interrupts their flirty conversations whenever possible.

Michael goes to visit occult expert and psychic Contessa Cappelli (Lila Kedrova), who's been advising him on his project and sending him information about some of the artwork he's planning on featuring. Well, aside from one enigmatic piece. There is no documentation for its origins or who the artist was who created it. Rumor has it that 200 years ago the painting miraculously appeared one day after a little girl vanished, never to be seen again. The Contessa pleads with Michael not to use the painting in his program, but he insists upon it. The fact it depicts a burning woman, and his wife also met a fiery end, may have something to with that. The first attempt to film the painting is ruined by some kind of green shadowy figure that shows up on the negative, which the developer says is not a smudge nor a defect in the film.

Michael and Joanna go back to the abandoned home where the painting is housed, only to be almost crushed when a statue falls over. At the same time the statue busts on the floor, Emily wakes up screaming. Jill attempts to comfort her, but Emily bites her, spits in her face, throws vases at her and tries to jump out of several windows until she's finally restrained. The incident is blamed on a bad nightmare. Several things are found to have been hidden inside the statue, perhaps dating back hundreds of years, including an old piece of cloth, a double-bladed sword and a silver medallion, which looks identical to one Michael's late wife used to own that he's since given to Emily. Several deaths follow as the mystery behind the painting, the medallion and Emily's strange, erratic behavior are uncovered.

Unlike most of the other films this is usually categorized with, Il medaglione insanguinato ("The Bloody Medallion") is professionally made and performed, and clearly put together with more skill and care than is the norm. This is not an exploitation horror film, but instead an attempt at a mature adult ghost / possession story. It's measured, atmospheric and elegant in its approach, sometimes quite haunting yet also very slow-moving and downgraded by its thin, vague and often uninvolving plot. 

Thanks to the picturesque locations, Franco Delli Colli's photography and all of the production design people, everything looks really fantastic here, though. There's plenty of beautiful outdoor scenery in nice autumn colors and crumbling old villas with lush overgrown gardens, which somehow look even more beautiful on the inside. The director obviously knows how great everything looks because he spends a lot of time lingering on it all. Perhaps a little too much time actually. There's also a lovely, albeit repetitive, score from Stelvio Cipriani.

By this point, child actress Elmi already had a filmography that actors fifty years her senior would be envious of, having worked with Mario Bava (twice), Dario Argento, Luchino Visconti and other prominent Italian filmmakers before she even hit puberty. She's been given her best role ever here and puts on a pretty good show scowling, screaming, crying and getting to go bonkers in several scenes. The rest of the actors are likewise fine and it's especially nice that Kedrova has been given a prominent role. Usually veteran actors are brought on board to exploit their name and are then wasted in a couple of scenes, but Kedrova is given a lot to do here in an important supporting role that's not some glorified cameo. The cast also includes roles for Riccardo Garrone and an uncredited Tom Felleghy who, like Purdom, are both in just one scene.

Released theatrically to little fanfare in the U.S. in 1976 under the title Night Child, this came and went and was forgotten for decades. Despite possession movies being popular and the presence of several notable stars (Cassidy even appears topless in two scenes), which you'd think would have at least ensured some interest on rental store shelves, this somehow managed to bypass a VHS release altogether here in the United States. It was however given an English-language video release in Canada on the Cocktail Video label. Some of those tapes probably ended up in U.S. video stores.

In 2008, Sinister Cinema offered a two disc release that featured both a raggedy English-dubbed print (from the theatrical release) as well as a restored, widescreen Italian version with English subtitles. Two years later, a better quality dubbed version was released by Code Red, which came with an interview with Johnson carted over from their release of BEYOND THE DOOR (1974), an actual Exorcist rip-off, unlike this one. That was followed by a 2015 Blu-ray release from the same company, which has a brief interview with Cassidy. Arrow Video handled the UK Blu-ray release. Extras on all of these releases have been pretty disappointing.

★★1/2

2019 - Dopo la caduta di New York (1983)

... aka: After the Fall of New York

... aka: Fall of New York, The

... aka: Fireflash

... aka: New York - 2019

... aka: 2019: After the Fall of New York

... aka: 2019, escape de Nueva York II (2019: Escape from New York II)

... aka: Vlucht uit New York (Flight from New York)

Directed by:

"Martin Dolman" (Sergio Martino)

Thanks to the success of Mad Max (1979) and its first sequel, the even more successful and influential The Road Warrior (1981), slightly sci-fi post apocalyptic films became all the rage in the early 80s. And when I say slightly sci-fi, I mean films that take place on a futuristic planet that's been ravaged to a degree, usually by environmental damage caused by war, but still contains plenty of remnants of what once was. This is a bleak future where most buildings are wrecked and spray painted, most people look like they haven't bathed in awhile, many others have been reduced to anarchist savagery (or have been turned into mutants), resources are extremely limited, corpses litter the ground just like any other piece of garbage and the planet has been reduced to some kind of industrial scrap metal desert wasteland. There may be running vehicles, but they all look like they've just been through a demolition derby and nearly everything about life is grim, dreary and depressing.

Many countries made these films in the 80s. While New Zealand contributed Warlords of the 21st Century aka Battletruck (1982), Filipino director Cirio H. Santiago made at least a half-dozen films in this category and there were even some fairly big budget U. S. theatrical films of this stripe, like the awful Steel Dawn starring Patrick Swayze. However, Italy became the #1 country when it came to 80s Mad Max rip-offs. Why? Well, because they never let a popular idea rest until they were first able to pummel it into complete irrelevance! In just the first few years after the success of the second Max, there was the trio of Enzo G. Castellani's 1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982), Escape from the Bronx (1983) and Warriors of the Wasterland aka The New Barbarians (1983), Joe D'Amato's dingy duo of Endgame (1983) and 2020 Texas Gladiators (1984), Giuliano Carnimeo's Exterminators of the Year 3000 (1983), Romolo Guerrieri's The Final Executioner (1984) and a number of others. This one has been inspired just as much by John Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981) as it was George Miller's films.

Twenty years have passed since the nuclear holocaust has reduced the planet to a "garbage-strewn radioactive desert." Responsible for all that were the Euracs, a monarchy of European, African and Asian nations. As a result of extremely high radiation levels, the human species is on a fast track to extinction as no human child has been born ever since the bombs were dropped. New York City has been turned into essentially a huge garbage dump being controlled by a Eurac military force, who've been steadily exterminating mutants and ill humans while simultaneously kidnapping the healthier ones to use in genetic experiments.

Somewhere in the Nevada desert, Parsifal (Michael Sopkiw) is some kind of semi-celebrity (at least to desert-dwelling punk kids) who gets by in life by participating in races-to-the-death for money. After winning his latest race, he's tranquilized by some men, kidnapped and flown off to Alaska. There, the former "Pan American Confederacy" President (Edmund Purdom) is in hiding and hoping humans can make a comeback in a galaxy far, far away from Earth (and far, far away from the Euracs). Rumor has it that there's one last remaining fertile woman hidden somewhere inside hostile NYC. Believing Parsifal is the only man capable of pulling off the mission successfully, the President wants him to sneak in, find the girl and then deliver her to him. In return, they'll give him a seat aboard their spaceship when they abandon Earth and start a new society on one of several habitable planets located in Alpha Centauri.

Parsifal finds himself unable to reject such a fine offer. Well, actually, he kind of has no other choice as they'll just execute him if he doesn't comply. He's set up with two helpers / traveling companions: Bronx ("Vincent" / Paolo Maria Scalondro), a former history professor who has a score to settle with the Euracs since they slaughtered his entire family and cut off his arm (which has been replaced by a robotic claw) and the eye-patch-wearing strongman Ratchet ("Roman Geer" / Romano Puppo). The three ride their motorcycle to Manhattan and are able to access the city via a hidden, rat-infested underground tunnel. Once there, trouble awaits around every turn, if not from the crazed mutant citizens then from the horse-riding Eurac guards and higher-ups.

Our heroes are first held prisoner by a filthy group of rat-eating mutants (the "Needle People") led by Japanese actor Hal Yamanouchi, who regularly execute dwarfs because they remind them of children. Among that clan is a hot blonde named Giada (Valentine Monnier), whom Parsifal automatically assumes is the fertile woman because, uh, she's hot, I guess? Before he can find out for sure, Eurac soldiers barge in, sink a battle axe in the leader's head and kill many of the other men. Though Ratchet manages to hide, Parsifal, Bronx, Giada and some of the other ladies are abducted and hauled off to the Experimental Center. There, the bald Eurac Commander (Serge Feuillard) rightly suspects Parsifal and Bronx are Pan-American spies and tries to torture them into confessing. Instead, he ends up getting his eyes gouged out and his captives escape. The Commander then orders Anya (Ana Kanakis) and his guards to hunt them down, with orders to capture Giada alive and kill the others.

While this was clearly bankrolled to cash in on several other then-popular films, and thus borrows many elements from said popular films, this somehow manages to transcend all that through sheer creativity. Besides, just because you're ripping off certain aspects from other films doesn't mean you can't put your own creative spins on those aspects. Just ask Quentin Tarantino. He's made a career of it. And this is, surprisingly enough, a film of some technical merit outside of just being a trashy cash-in. It's really not poorly made, shot or edited, there's plenty of fast-paced action throughout, the characters are strangely endearing, exterior shooting locations are well-chosen, some (though not all) of the art direction and costumes are good, there are lots of fun (though seldom convincing!) miniatures and the "Oliver Onions" (Guido De Angelis and Maurizio De Angelis) synth score is great.

Helping matters along nicely are a slew of interesting oddball characters. There's a commune of sewer-dwelling dwarfs led by "Shorty" ("Louis Ecclesia" / Luigi D'Ecclesia) and a clan of hairy-faced monkey mutants led by the swashbuckling (!) Big Ape (George Eastman), who's desperate to plant his "seed." Thankfully for the sex-mad simian, Melissa (Alessandra Tani), the real last fertile woman on Earth, and a virgin no less, is eventually discovered. She's been kept in a state of "hibernation" in a glass case just like Sleeping Beauty by her scientist father, who stuck her in there before the war so she wouldn't be contaminated and thus could conceivably be used to repopulate once it was safe to do so.

We also get an ultra-high-pitched sonar that causes ears to bleed and then death, multiple decapitations with a boomerang-like sword, car chases, car crashes, laser shoot-outs, a futuristic update of the old rack torture device, a backstabbing cyborg, a robot clown with a giant glowing eyeball on top of its head, rats chewing off a face, eating corpses and (unfortunately) actually get skewered and a giant replica of Picasso's Guernica at the Eurac headquarters. There's a good deal of horror grue in this one, as well, including a gory disembowelment, a face getting blown right off, eyes gouged out, eye transplant surgery, slashings, shootings and much more. On another note, is it actually possible to dislike Sopkiw? This is one guy who is so amiable and effortlessly charming that he can give mediocre line reading after mediocre line reading and you still love him, anyway.

A French / Italian co-production, this was filmed in Italy, New York City and the Arizona desert (subbing for Nevada). Co-scripted by Ernesto Gastaldi , this also features James Sampson as a mutant trumpet player and Jacques Stany as a Eurac officer. It was first released theatrically in the U. S. in 1984 under the title After the Fall of New York and made its VHS debut the following year courtesy of Vestron Video, using the same title. Later DVD (from Media Blasters, Shriek Show) and Blu-ray (from Code Red in the U. S., 88 Films in the UK) releases usually tacked the 2019 back to the beginning.

★★★