Joe D’Amato

Synopsis
(by Tim Lucas)
Made in 1975, “De Sade’s Juliette” was one of Franco’s earliest XXX productions, predated only by “Sexorcismes”, the hardcore variant he produced of the 1974 film “Exorcism.” It was never released anywhere in its original form. Its only release anywhere in the world was as “Justine”, the Italian variant shared here, which was cobbled together by Joe D’Amato in 1979-80, who shuffled in some footage from another 1975 Franco film, “Midnight Party.” For some other unfathomable reason, Alice Arno is top-billed and she’s not even in it!Read More »

Written by Thomas Simmons (IMDB)

An English soldier (Cliver) returns home from the Zulu war with the daughter of a tribal king (Gemser) as his slave (a gift that he was given for “saving” the kings life). The spoils of war, ya know? While he’s been gone, his wife has been having an affair with the female housekeeper (Belle). Not at all pleased with being a slave, the Ebony princess notices the mistress of the house engaging in a quick bit of foreplay with the housekeeper and plots her revenge starting with the seduction of the mistress. Jealousy spreads like wildfire and before you know it, she has turned the household into a lustful frenzy of sex and hatred. I can’t give away too much more or it would ruin the story, but there are plenty of little twists along the way. Speaking of twists, this film is actually far more twisted than it sounds. One of the more disturbing moments being a sequence about the filming of an inquisition-themed porno that turns into the sadistic rape of a lesbian / virgin by the filthy and none too bright gardener. Sporting tons of full-frontal nudity, simulated lesbian and straight sex and some hard-core (as seen in an old stag film), this has the sleazy goods to go along with the D.H. Lawrence-ish setting and atmosphere, and is definitely recommended for fans of such. Read More »

The son of Torren learns of his heritage, goes to avenge the deaths of his fellow villagers, and rescue his sister/love interest from the evil Dakkar and his spider cult. Ator battles giant spiders, swordsmen cloaked in shadow, re-animated dead warriors, and horribly hideous witches.Read More »

A disturbed young taxidermist exhumes his recently deceased girlfriend, brings her body to his family villa and proceeds to embalm her corpse, with help from his strange housekeeper. But his bouts of insanity are just beginning.Read More »

Photojournalist Emanuelle accompanies an anthropologist, two female missionary workers and a treacherous hunter’s party in a trek through the Amazon to find a cannibalistic tribe long thought extinct.Read More »

A man discovers an ancient Incan formula for raising the dead, and uses it for a series of revenge murders.

Letterboxd review
★★★½ Watched by Lou (rhymes with wow!) 22 Jun 2021

Deliciously gothic and weirdly erotic, Death Smiles on a Murder is a wonderful slice of Joe D’Amato bizarreness. The movie has an almost dream-like quality to it, which had me clueless as to what exactly was unfolding on screen. All I know for certain is that when you give Klaus Kinski some beakers you’ll end up with magic. Also, there is no such thing as too many cat jump scares.

I got to search out some more Ewa Aulin movies.Read More »

Eva comes to Hong Kong. Seeing Eva perform with a snake, Judas gets interested in her. He showers her with gifts. She moves in with him and his snakes. Things get grim.Read More »

An English soldier returns home from the Zulu war with the daughter of a tribal king as his slave (a gift that he was given for “saving” the kings life). While he was away, his wife had been having an affair with the female housekeeper. Not at all pleased with being a slave, the Ebony princess notices the mistress of the house engaging in a quick bit of foreplay with the housekeeper and plots her revenge starting with the seduction of the mistress. Jealousy spreads like wildfire and before you know it, she has turned the household into a lustful frenzy of sex and hatred.Read More »

A softcore cult classic that was instrumental in helping establish the legend of Skinemax while playing a significant role in the depletion of many a pubescent teenage boy’s tube sock supply back in the day, 1987’s ELEVEN DAYS, ELEVEN NIGHTS is a gender-swapped Italian ripoff of 9 1/2 WEEKS from notorious Eurocult journeyman Joe D’Amato. Written by Claudio Fragasso and Rossella Drudi–the husband-and-wife masters of erotica who would later gift us with TROLL 2–ELEVEN DAYS, ELEVEN NIGHTS pretty much follows the template of D’Amato’s “Black Emanuelle” films of the late ’70s, right down to the presence of Laura Gemser, this time as the editor to nympho journalist Sarah Asproon (Jessica Moore), who’s writing a scintillating memoir of her sexual exploits entitled My One Hundred Men (Drudi uses the pseudonym “Sarah Asproon” for her writing credit, giving the film a bogus autobiographical ruse in the tradition of “Emmanuelle Arsan”). Read More »