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Plot: tourists are stalked by cannibalistic killer on remote Greek island.

The nineteen-eighties were an interesting time for American cinema. The old fashioned terror and suspense films were given a new coat of paint and updated for the new decade. Halloween (1978) was instrumental in that regard. John Carpenter’s little fright flick was just as much indebted to grindhouse features as Wicked, Wicked (1973) and The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976) as it was revolutionary the way it upgraded worn-out conventions of the decade past making them relevant again for a completely new audience. It was Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th (1980) that, for better or worse, codified and cemented the slasher as it’s known and understood today. Whereas Halloween (1978) was a murder mystery (although there’s never any doubt about who’s doing the slashing and hacking) Friday the 13th (1980) had no such aspirations. First and foremost, Friday the 13th (1980) was horror with not an ounce of suspense. Stylistic decisions aside, it was a critical failure but a resounding box office success. Naturally, European producers/directors wanted to get in on the international slasher boom and wasted exactly zero time in formulating their own slashers. Who better to imitate yet another American art form than the birthplace of such things, la bella Italia?

That Europeans, especially those in the continental regions such as Italy and Spain, had an entirely different concept of what a murder mystery entailed, should surprise exactly no one. The Italian giallo and the German krimi existed and evolved parallel from each other all through the sixties and seventies. While they’re generally considered the common ancestor to the American slasher and frequently overlap in terms of conventions they don’t strictly abide by those rules or parameters. By 1980 Italy had accumulated around 15 to 20 years of giallo tradition. Spain had a tradition of horror and macabre cinema that existed for about as long. They were in a habit of imitating their Italian brethren when the occasion arose but never with any regularity. Spain responded to the American slasher with Pieces (1980) and Bloody Moon (1981). Leave it to professional pornographer and part time smut peddler Aristide Massaccesi (under his English nom de plume Joe D'Amato) to throw a wrench into the slasher formula. Before he introduced the world to Jessica Moore with Eleven Days, Eleven Nights (1987) and Top Model (1988) there was this. Old Joe had just made Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977) and Beyond the Darkness (1979) and wasn’t ready (or willing) to meet American tastes fully. He hadn’t gotten that cannibalism itch out of his system yet. Something had to give. Filmed in a month (31 March 1980 to May 1980) on location in Greece (mostly around the Acropolis in Athens) and in Sperlonga, Viterbo and Ponza, Italy as the launch title of his Filmirage Anthropophagus (released in censored form in North America as The Grim Reaper and as The Savage Island in the rest of the world) is a slasher on the American model but one that’s all all’Italiana.

American tourist Julie (Tisa Farrow) has come to the Greek islands to reconnect with old friends. En route to her destination she tries to charter a boat making her acquaintance with a party of five friends about to go on a boat tour of the Aegean. She’s first approached by medical student Arnold (Bob Larson) and his very pregnant wife Maggie (Serena Grandi, as Vanessa Steiger), their friend Alan (Saverio Vallone) and his superstitious sister Carol (Zora Kerova) as well as the group’s would-be playboy friend Daniel (Mark Bodin). When Julie asks the group to sail to a remote island only Carol, an avid believer in Tarocco Piemontese, lays her cards and has a chilling premonition. She insists that something terrible will befall them if they do choose to travel there. As they make landfall on the island Maggie sprains her ankle and stays behinds with the boat. She’s attacked and dragged off by an unseen assailant. While the group explores what appears to be a ghost town a mysterious old lady gives them ominous cryptic warnings to steer clear from the island. The woman eventually identifies herself as Ruth Wortmann (Karamanlis in some versions) (Rubina Rey) and when the group reaches the abandoned house of Julie’s French friends Carol senses an evil presence that she can’t explain. The discovery of an assortment of desiccated corpses don’t help her fragile mental state nor for do things improve when the group happens upon Ariette (Margaret Mazzantini, as Margaret Donnelly), the blind daughter of Julie’s friends, blood-caked and screaming murder about a madman who smells of blood.

In the mansion they find a diary about one Klaus Wortmann (Nikos Karamanlis in some versions) (Luigi Montefiori, as George Eastman), his wife and their son having been presumed dead after a shipwreck. Then the terrible realization dawns upon them that Ruth was Klaus’/Nikos’ sister and that the incident sundered her sanity. They learn that Klaus/Nikos had been stranded at sea and in his desperation accidentally killed his wife in an argument about eating their son to survive. Driven mad by hunger he ate the remains of both his son and his wife and now has developed a cannibalistic appetite. As the shades of night descend upon the abandoned mansion and the group falls apart through arguments and romantic conflicts they realize that Klaus/Nikos is aware of their presence and surely will come to hunt them down. What was supposed to be a relaxing holiday soon will become a terrible ordeal for all involved. Soon they will come face to face with the prowler of the Greek islands, the eater of man, the Anthropophagus.

Headlined by a would-be American star, an accidental one and domestic one in the making and supported by no one in particular Anthropophagus has the good fortune of featuring a few familiar faces. The biggest name here is Tisa Farrow, Mia’s less popular sister who had starred in Some Call It Loving (1973) and played a small role in Woody Allen's Manhattan (1979). Somehow she got got mixed up in Italian exploitation and etched her name into the annals of cult cinema history with Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (1979). Apparently she took fashion advice from German sexbomb Olivia Pascal. Zora Kerova hailed from East-Europe and commuted between her native Czech Republic (then still Czechoslovakia) and Italy. While hardly an actress of great talent, she had much more of an actual career than, say, Mónica Zanchi or Cindy Leadbetter. Although she had starred in The House of the Laughing Windows (1976), and Escape From Women’s Prison (1978) Kerova would be the Italian exploitation pillar of the 1980s with roles in Umberto Lenzi’s patently ridiculous Cannibal Ferox (1981) as well as latter-day Fulci romps as The New York Ripper (1982), The New Barbarians (1983), as well as Fulci adjacent gore epics as Touch Of Death (1988), Sodoma’s Ghost (1988) and Escape from Death (1989) (often in tandem with Luciana Ottaviani). The other nominal star is Luigi Montefiori (or George Eastman) who had worked with D’Amato on Emanuelle Around the World (1977) and would star in, among others, Ironmaster (1983), Hands Of Steel (1986), and the Lamberto Bava giallo Delirium (1987). The remainder of the cast comprised of Mark Bodin from Alien 2: On Earth (1980) and Bob Larson from Filipino topless kickboxing sub-classic Angelfist (1993).

Looking almost matronly and modest compared most of her work by mid of the decade Anthropophagus introduced the world to one of the prime pin-up girls of the day, she who was loving dubbed the Italian Dolly Parton, miss Serena Grandi. Serena was a graduate in computer programming and initially employed in a scientific analysis laboratory and like her contemporaries Donatella Damiani and Pamela Prati her curvaceous, plus size figure soon to led to bigger opportunities. After playing roles of no real weight in the comedies The Traveling Companion (1980), The Women of Quiet Country (1980) and My Wife Is A Witch (1980) la Grandi got her first big break here and she had dialogue and actual things to do. Serena’s body of a goddess – an eye-watering 38D (85D) bust with an ass to match - didn’t go unnoticed and by 1982 she was in the Italian Penthouse. This brought her to the attention of professional worshipper of the female form Tinto Brass, who casted her in and as Miranda (1985), a high-profile role requiring extensive (partial and full frontal) nudity. From there Serena became a regular in glossy men’s magazines. First she landed a role in Luigi Cozzi's The Adventures Of Hercules (1985) and spent the rest of the decade showing off her divine dimensions in erotic romps as Desiring Julia (1986), Exploits Of a Young Don Juan (1986), Rimini Rimini (1987), and Delirium (1987). By the next decade her star had faded until Brass casted her again in Monella (1998). Grandi continues to act to this day and has settled into supporting maternal roles. Also making her screen debut was Margaret Mazzantini who, unbelievable as it may sound, was poised to become one of Italy’s leading figures in literature and who as an award-winning novelist saw her work translated into thirty-five languages worldwide.

Anthropophagus is interesting in how it adapts an old favorite into a newly codified subgenre. In 1980 the Italian cannibal craze was still in full swing and despite yielding a classic or two in the prior decade the classics were very well a thing of the past. This in no way slowed down to pretenders and wannabees from hacking out a few memorable hybrids and creative experiments during the ongoing feeding frenzy. D’Amato had dabbled with cannibalism in Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977) and to a lesser extent in his necrophilia epic Beyond the Darkness (1979) and Eastman was very much his go-to man for his greatest gross out and sleaze fests. As a collaborative effort between the two Anthropophagus bears hallmarks from both (D’Amato and Eastman shared writing and production credits on this after all). Director of photography Enrico Biribicchi had worked as a camera operator with Fernando Di Leo and Roberto Rossellini but by the late ‘70s was working with shlockmeisters Andrea Bianchi and D'Amato.

As one of the more prolific composers of the day Marcello Giombini is known around these parts for the Bella Cortez spectacular Vulcan, Son Of Jupiter (1962), the gialli Murder Mansion (1972), The Flower with the Deadly Sting (1973), the enjoyable The Exorcist (1973) imitation Enter the Devil (1974) (with future realtor of the rich and famous Stella Carnacina), the Venezuelan Laura Gemser jungle romp A Beach Called Desire (1976) and his association with Alfonso Brescia. None of which really changes that Giombini completely phoned it in here with disconnected washes of tranquil ambient, random sci-fi blips and plops and a vaguely Greek sounding theme. He wasn’t exactly giving Klaus Schulze, Michael Stearns or Vangelis a run for their money. The special effects by Giuseppe Ferranti and Pietro Tenoglio are effective in their brutally utilitarian minimalism. Then again, Ferranti was busy that year with Hell Of the Living Dead (1980) from masters of disaster Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso, Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City (1980) and Fernando Di Leo’s Madness (1980). No wonder then that Anthropophagus is hardly remembered as any of these men’s (or the director's for that matter) finest hour.

Had things been allowed to run their natural course than perhaps Anthropophagus would have been remembered as nothing but a curious footnote in D’Amato’s massive filmography. Yet never underestimate a zealot on a mission. By the early eighties Great Britain was in the grip of yet another moral panic: the unregulated home video market and the corruption of the minds and hearts of the youth it (supposedly) threatened. In a crusade spearheaded by conservative activist (and teacher) Mary Whitehouse the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association (NVALA) compiled a list of 72 films they believed to violate the Obscene Publications Act 1959. An additional 82 titles were confiscated under the Act's forfeiture laws. The entire sordid episode became known as the Video Nasties. If it weren’t for Whitehouse perhaps a great deal of these admittedly shoddy shockers wouldn’t be as legendary as they (often unjustly and most of them undeservedly) became in the aftermath. Then again, what are conservatives without a good moral panic; manufactured, imaginary, or otherwise?

The outrage and moral panic was perhaps indirectly responsible for spawning the nominal sequel Absurd (1981), which also ended up on the Video Nasties list. Almost twenty years later German gorehound Andreas Schnaas unofficially remade it as Anthropophagus 2000 (1999) and another twenty years later the D’Amato original begat a very belated spiritual sequel with Antropophagus II (2022) from director Dario Germani and sometime D’Amato producers Franco Gaudenzi, and Gianni Paolucci. For those in the know, Gaudenzi was the man that produced some of Bruno Mattei’s prime works in the ‘80s and Paolucci, lest we forget, facilitated a late-stage career revival for Mattei when he allowed him to direct shot-on-video sequels to his beloved/detested classics. Anthropophagus does a lot with very little and that was always D’Amato’s forte.

Plot: cyborg flees into the desert after ignoring his programming.

Hands Of Steel (released domestically as Vendetta dal Futuro, and in France as Atomic Cyborg) answers the question that nobody asked: what if The Terminator (1984) ignored his programming, fled into the Arizona desert and took up armwrestling in some remote divebar instead? It’s the kind of movie that only the Italians could and would make. Who else could come up with a cross between The Terminator (1984) and Over the Top (1987) on the budget of the average Filipino action movie? Hands Of Steel often feels as if it’s three movies mashed crudely into one. It bounces between a pedestrian sports movie, a dystopian science-fiction thriller low on intelligence and production values, and a brass-knuckles actioner without crunch. It’s emblematic of mid-to-late 1980s Italian action. The concept and ideas are far too ambitious for the meager budget it was alotted. 6 credited screenwriters, a seventh for additional dialog. Not a coherent line anywhere – and Swedish minx Janet Ågren, sadly, keeps her clothes on. Never before were Blade Runner (1982) and The Terminator (1984) pilfered so expertly. At least not until Bruno Mattei’s craptacular Shocking Dark (1989) and the 2010 Mainland China exploitation boom almost twenty years later.

The Italian shlock movie industry took a heavy blow in the eighties when wide theatrical releases for cheap, imported titles in North America, once their biggest market and sure-fire way to turn a profit, became scarce. The nascent home video market became the new home of exploitation and shlock of various stripe. This unfortunately also meant that belts were tightened and producers/directors no longer were able to commandeer the kind of budgets and resources that they once had in prior decades. Hands Of Steel is not 2019 – After the Fall Of New York (1983), it’s barely above Giuseppe Vari’s post-nuke swansong Urban Warriors (1987), where bit players Bruno Bilotta and Alex Vitale would land their own feature, but that is faint praise. Hands Of Steel wishes it was half as good and action-packed as The Raiders Of Atlantis (1983). Unfortunately it is anything but. Not even John Saxon and Janet Ågren can save it from relentless drudgery. Hands Of Steel is painfully glorious and gloriously painful.

Sergio Martino was a director who dabbled in every genre under the sun. Among other things, he launched the career of French model-turned-actress Edwige Fenech through a series of bubbly commedia sexy all’italiana and stylish gialli. Fenech had just completed a string of German comedies, including the bubbly The Sweet Pussycats (1969). Earlier in the year Top Sensation (1969) had launched Edy as the hottest and most in-demand starlet in Italian genre cinema. In his storied four decade career Martino directed offerings as diverse as Arizona Colt, Hired Gun (1970), The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (1970), All Colors Of the Dark (1972), Torso (1973), Mountain Of the Cannibal God (1978), Cream Puffs (1981), 2019 – After the Fall Of New York (1983), and Beyond Kilimanjaro, Across the River of Blood (1990). Whoever thought it was a good idea to let comedy specialist Martino direct a sci-fi/action romp clearly had no clue what his forté was. It’s probably the same skewed and random decisionmaking that led to Marino Girolami directing Zombie Holocaust (1980). Hands Of Steel isn’t Martino’s finest moment, but it’s more or less on the same level as the action-adventure dross Antonio Margheriti and Enzo G. Castellari were churning out around this time.

In the far-flung future past of 1997 pollution has ravaged the Earth and made it nigh on uninhabitable. Turner Corporation CEO Francis Turner (John Saxon) sees his bottom line threatened by the preachings of blind wheelchair-bound environmentalist guru Reverend Arthur Moseley (Franco Fantasia). He sends out cyborg soldier Paco Queruak (Daniel Greene), the most efficient and reliable in his product line, to quell the rebellion by taking out its leader. Upon reaching his target Queruak is plagued by memories of the past, only wounding the Reverend and fleeing into the nearby Arizona desert. At the local motel he meets Linda (Janet Ågren), who is in need of a handyman. Linda’s abode is the gathering spot for local armwrestlers, truckers and general troublemakers. Linda’s tavern is decorated with pictures from wrestlers Bruno Sammartino, Hillbilly Jim, Magnum TA and Dory Funk, Jr. One day working for Linda, Queruak draws the ire of perrennally sweaty Méxican no-good trucker Raul Morales (Luigi Montefiori, as George Eastman) and Tri-State arm-wrestling champion Anatolo Blanco (Darwyn Swalve). Queruak’s creator Professor Olster (Donald O’Brien) is paid a visit by Turner’s mercenaries Peter Howell (Claudio Cassinelli) and Hunt (Sergio Testori) – and when he fails to stop them, Linda is threatened at gunpoint by cyborg assassins Eddie (Andrea Coppola, as Andrew Louis Coppola) and Susie (Daria Nicolodi). Paco intervenes and things come to a violent, fiery clash. The fate of mankind will not be decided by some apocalyptic nuclear war, but in a fierce close-quarters confrontation.

The main portion of Hands Of Steel concerns itself with Queruak’s travails in and around the desert motel, his conflict with Raul Morales and his relationship with Janet Ågren’s Linda. Janet Ågren had come off Eaten Alive! (1980), City Of the Living Dead (1981) and Red Sonja (1985) and apparently this wasn’t enough to forward her starpower beyond redundant impoverished genre exercises like this. Hands Of Steel also features that other Italian low-budget action star of the 80s, Bruno Bilotta (popularly known as Karl Landgren) as one of the Reverend’s security detail. Other notables include the late, great John Saxon and an uncredited Daria Nicolodi as a rival cyborg assassin. Hands Of Steel is a typical example of the genre were it not that it anticipates Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop (1987), Universal Soldier (1992), and Albert Pyun’s Nemesis (1992) as its conflicted cyborg protagonist struggles with his programming and what is left of his humanity. Likewise does it pre-date the Sylvester Stallone arm-wrestling epic Over the Top (1987) by a single year. Martino films the whole with detached bemused disinterest as this is clearly not his wheelhouse. Hands Of Steel would’ve been blissfully forgotten were it not that Claudio Cassinelli was killed in an on-set helicopter crash during filming, necessitating the third-act disposing of his character. In between there’s enough techno-babble and arm-wrestling for everybody.

The nominal star of Hands Of Steel is Daniel Greene. Greene was an American television actor that somehow ended up in Italian exploitation trash as Hammerhead (1987), Soldier of Fortune (1990), and Condor (1990). In the late nineties he had his scenes deleted in the Farrelly brothers comedy There's Something About Mary (1998). Greene later had parts in other Farrelly brothers comedies as Me, Myself & Irene (2000), Shallow Hall (2001), and Stuck On You (2003). Janet Ågren was a Swedish model whose Nordic beauty sparked a quarter-century long career. Ågren debuted in The Two Crusaders (1968) and was a fixture in commedia sexy all’Italiana for several years. Somehow she escaped the fate that befell Christina Lindberg, Solveig Andersson, and Marie Forså. In the eighties Janet found herself in Eaten Alive! (1980), City Of the Living Dead (1980) and the considerably more high-profile Red Sonja (1985), but also in a Filipino The Karate Kid (1984) knockoff called The Boy With the Golden Kimono (1987). Suffice to say Ågren was no Gloria Guida, Barbara Bouchet, Sabrina Siani, Mónica Zanchi, or Cinzia Monreale. No, Ågren was far too classy and much too pretty for grubby exploitation and she never allowed herself to suffer the sordid degradation and assorted indignities that some of her contemporaries subjected themselves to.

The odds were certainly stacked against Hands Of Steel. Elisa Briganti (as Elisabeth Parker Jr.), Dardano Sacchetti, and Ernesto Gastaldi all contributed to the script – but 6 writers do not a decent script make. Production designer Massimo Antonello Geleng had worked on Eaten Alive! (1980), City Of the Living Dead (1981), 2019 - After the Fall Of New York (1983), Hercules (1983) and its sequel The Adventures Of Hercules (1985) as well as The Ark Of the Sun God (1984) and Dellamorte Dellamore (1994). Clearly Geleng couldn’t make more of what little he had been given. Director of photography Giancarlo Ferrando (as John McFerrand) lensed a lot of commedia sexy all’Italiana and he’s clearly out of his element here. Sadly, he would go on to work with Alfonso Brescia on Cross Mission (1988) where the only ray of light was one-time wonder Brigitte Porsche.

Spaghetti western and peplum monument Franco Fantasia is wasted as Reverend Arthur Moseley, a role that gives him nothing to do. He clearly was a long way from Kriminal (1966), Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1972), Murder Mansion (1972), Mountain Of the Cannibal God (1978), Zombie (1979), and Eaten Alive! (1980). Decades prior he was in big budget Hollywood peplums as Ben-Hur (1959), and Quo Vadis (1951). Donald O’Brien was a regular in Italian schlock and can be seen in Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977), the original The Inglorious Bastards (1978), Zombie Holocaust (1980), 2020 Texas Gladiators (1983), and Warriors of the Year 2072 (1984). In short, Hands Of Steel is nobody’s finest hour. Except maybe that of George Eastman, whose excursions seldom ventured beyond trash auteur Joe D’Amato and his assorted ilk. Sadly, it never gets quite as absurd as The Raiders Of Atlantis (1983).

Hands Of Steel is one of those cynical pastiches from the once-flourishing Italian exploitation industry that were becoming a dying breed at that point. Over the course of the same decade were birthed Contamination (1980), Nightmare City (1980), and Alien 2: On Earth (1980) to name some of the most infamous. Hands Of Steel dared answer the question that James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) never asked: what if the Terminator struggled with his programming and instead of protecting his target took up menial work and armwrestling instead?

It’s the sort of question that Mainland China would provide plenty of possible answers for in the 2010s, but Italy got there first. Hands Of Steel might not be Sergio Martino’s best work, or anybody's for that matter, really. The Terminator (1984) spawned exactly one good sequel that did not dilute from its original vision. It did begat a slew of canonical sequels that have done irreparable harm to the brand. It’s difficult to hold a grudge against something innocent as this when the Hollywood machine does so much damage all by itself.