Monstervision Host Segments for

2020 Texas Gladiators

"2020 TEXAS GLADIATORS" Intro

Now. As you may know, The Road Warrior started a whole new cycle of post-holocaust movies, basically barbarians with motor vehicles and automatic weapons. And a sub-set of that cycle was post-holocaust movies made in Italy, kind of the spaghetti westerns of the eighties. The movie we're about to watch is actually called [gesturing] "Anno Venti-Venti: I Gladiatori del Futuro"--you have to do this when you speak Eyetalian--and somehow it gets translated to "2020 Texas Gladiators."

I'm not sure how they decided it takes place in Texas, cause it features some kinda 500-year-old Eyetalian farmhouse pretty prominently. That's where these ventriloquist tough guys have their oil refinery, till a bunch of bikers and a UPS truck filled with the Darth Vader drill team come and take it over, and everybody rides around and shoots each other till the producers run outta money. Anyone who can figure out who the good guys are before the last reel gets a, uh ... a free post-apocalypse double-feature next week. Okay, let's do the drive-in totals. We have:

85 dead bodies.
Two breasts -- and it's my theory that you DO see em.
One bar fight.
Stair-rolling.
Sword-hacking.
Head-butting.
Necklace-rippin.
Crucifixion.
Tomahawk to the head.
Dagger to the chest.
Multiple gun battles.
Salty-mouth torture.
Kung Fu. Russian roulette Fu.
Harley-Davidson Fu.
I give it about . . . one and a half stars.

Check it out, and I'll be here to translate as best I can.
[fading] I do speak Eyetalian fluently. "Chianti per tutti!" "Tutti frutti per Lolita!" "Benvenuto Bardolino!"

"2020 TEXAS GLADIATORS" Commercial Break #1

Well, wasn't that suspenseful? Hot steam pours out of the valve.
"She's gonna blow!"
And everybody stands three feet away, saying "Oh no, will he get out alive when it blows up?"
And then they think everything's okay, but the vigilantes with the eighties make-up and the black UPS truck are actually right outside? You'd think George Miller directed this himself, wouldn't you? I can't believe this went straight to video. In fact, I'm gonna stop talking so we can keep it goin. Roll it.

[fading] I guess I can't really say it went "straight to video." It sat around for two or three years, and THEN it went to video. You don't want to just randomly throw a flick like this out on the marketplace. There's Oscar nominations to consider, the timing of the Vanity Fair "making of" piece . . . it's very complicated. Started out okay, though. Rednecks wasting zombies that are raping nuns in a monastery.
A TEXAS monastery, of course.

"2020 TEXAS GLADIATORS" Commercial Break #2

Did you notice the sign on the old building? It said "Texas." So you would KNOW we're in Texas. That is just hysterical to me. "Let's see, how can we make it plain to the audience that this is Texas?"
"Uh, write 'Texas' on the building?"
And how bout those vicious dirtbikers!
At least they could be riding Harleys!

I guess it's hard to find Harleys in Italy. Well, Al Oliver is dead, the guy who played Nisus--I'm sure that's not his real name, because this was made by one of the low-budget Eyetalian studios in the early eighties. They would occasionally import an American actor --usually it was Broderick Crawford or Robert Mitchum or Fred Williamson--but mostly they used Europeans, and they never put an Italian name on the screen, because that would GIVE IT AWAY. Instead, they would put a box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes on the table--so people would know "American movie." Did you see the guy in this movie? He had a T-shirt that reads "Jersey Shore Hockey School."

Because, you know, of all the Texans who attend the Jersey Shore Hockey School. Actually they didn't do that so much to sell the movie in America; they did it so that ITALIANS would think the movie was American. Better box office. Italians stopped supporting their own cinema a long time ago. They wouldn't even support Fellini the last twenty years of his life. The one exception is Sabrina Siani, who plays Maida in this movie-- Sabrina was so hot, and so well known in Italy, that you couldn't disguise her. What was that movie where she plays the evil snake woman, and these snakes crawl all over her nekkid body? Yowza! Anyhoo, Al Oliver, or whoever that Italian actor was, is dayud. Nisus. And it's too bad that Nisus realized AFTER she got raped by the Hell's Angel how easy it was to get out of those ropes. Okay, tell me if I'm seein what I think I'm seein in this next scene. Go.

[fading] We got a new character in the last part: Donal O'Brien as Dr. Evil. Rounding out the international cast of Texans.

"2020 TEXAS GLADIATORS" Commercial Break #3

Kung Fu in the Wild West. Yee-haw. And I do believe I saw FOUR-- count em, four --Eyetalian mushmelons there on the saloon girls. Who says the TNT high sheriffs don't deliver, especially at 2 in the morning. Your European bimbos are much wilder than your American bimbos.
You ever been to the beach in Europe? They're all runnin around with their tops off, actin like it's perfectly normal, like they see each other nekkid every day.
Can you imagine runnin into a gal from the office at an Eyetalian beach and havin to talk about stock options while her growth funds are right there starin up at you? I'd have to pierce my Merrill Lynch Fenner and Smith. Okay, back to the flick.

[fading] What are we watching here?
I got a little sidetracked on the topless beach. Dr. Evil is paying the guy who looks like Lorenzo Lamas to stop three men. I have no idea what three men he's talking about. Three RANGERS. Shades of Chuck Norris.

"2020 TEXAS GLADIATORS" Commercial Break #4

One thing you do have in the Eyetalian post-holocaust flicks is great fight scenes. They don't flinch at anything.
If somebody gets his throat slit, he GETS HIS THROAT SLIT. Anyway, the director on this baby is listed as Kevin Mancuso, but here at "MonsterVision" we know that's one of the many pseudonyms for the great Aristide Massaccesi [Masachayzi], who's probably made, what?, 200 films. Action films, horror films, adventure films, films in every language in the world. Including the great

Grim Reaper, or "Anthropophagous," about the creepy guy who lives on the Greek island and eats tourists.

Many of you know that The Grim Reaper was the first movie that I ever reviewed. And then the screenwriter on this baby is Alex Carver, which is also a fake name--it's really Luigi Montefiori.
Luigi wrote one of the all-time great spaghetti westerns, "The Violent Breed," using the name George Eastman. Some people say that Luigi and Aristide co-directed this movie. Are you confused yet? Aristide Massaccesi has a whole PHONE BOOK full of pseudonyms, including John Shadow, which I have a feeling is for his more erotic flicks, Robert Vip and Chana Lee Sun. I guess he uses that one when he wants people to think the movie was filmed in the Orient, although if this is what it looks like when Eyetalians try to carry off being American, I'd like to see em try to be Oriental. Okay, that's your lesson on the International Cinema.
Roll film.

[fading] I think my favorite of the Eyetalian "Violent Adventures," as they call em, is "Il Cacciatore di Squali," or "Eating Chicken in a Storm." Great flick.

"2020 TEXAS GLADIATORS" Commercial Break #5

The evil Nazi bald-guy laugh-- that may be the WORST stage laugh in the history of the movies. Oooo. But they just kinda pass Sabrina Siani around like a piece of meat, don't they? My kinda MACHO guys!
"Oh, he's dead now, that means . . . you're MINE!"
But did I hear that dialogue right? The guy who owns her now--after he says "Now you're mine!", he vows to kill the evil man who VIOLATED her. To "make him pay"!
And she says "But there are DOZENS." Is that what she said? Those wacky Italians.
"Oh, honey, don't bother avenging my honor, too many guys to kill." And, like all Italian movies, this flick IS dubbed. They don't even record sound when they make an Italian movie. Even the ITALIAN actors are dubbed INTO ITALIAN. Everybody's dubbed. They can make these actors speak any language in the world. They're the masters of the dubbed soundtrack. Okay, guns and motorcycles-- well, flimsy dirtbikes. Let's go. We're about to go to East Texas now, so . . . roll it.

[fading] Well, we're either going to East Texas, or a wildlife reserve outside Rome. Or the jungles of Botswana. Wherever you want it to be. We'll just dub in the Botswanese later.

"2020 TEXAS GLADIATORS" Commercial Break #6

Were those supposed to be Indians? With the plastic teepees and the bad wigs? Oh, I know--those are the famous East Texas Eyetalian Injuns. Must be from that Alabama-Coushatta reservation down near Huntsville. The ones that will only agree to fight if you use REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY on em.
"You are cowardly."
"These are harsh words, white man. The tips of our arrows are cold."
"Yellow belly!"
"No man will die for a stranger."
"Sissy boys!"
"OKAY, we'll fight." All right, as you know if you've been keeping track of the drive-in totals, the body count is about to go WAY up, so roll it. Thrilling conclusion to "2020 Texas Gladiators."

[fading] This IS a post-holocaust movie, isn't it? We ordered a post-holocaust movie. Has anyone mentioned World War III in this thing?
Am I the only one paying attention here? [no answer]
I'll take that as a "yes."

"2020 TEXAS GLADIATORS" Outro

How do you get around those bullet-proof high-tech force fields carried by armored warriors?
Bow and arrow! All it took was a few of those WILY Texas Indians on horseback. And now Halakron can ride off to rescue other blonde babes in doeskin hotpants. I don't remember Sabrina Siani being BLONDE in her other movies. The great "2020 Texas Gladiators."

Before we get outta here, I wanna remind you that next week, for those of you who just can't get enough post-apocalyptic cinema, we have two classics from the 70s, The Ultimate Warrior, where Yul Brynner helps prevent Max Von Sydow's tomatoes from being stolen (and no, that's not a euphemism), and Damnation Alley, where Jan-Michael Vincent rides around with George Peppard and a decorative babe in a Tonka Truck tank.

Redneck Barbie

That's it for me, Joe Bob Briggs, reminding you that if an infinite number of rednecks riding an infinite number of pickup trucks fire an infinite number of shotgun rounds at an infinite number of highway signs, they will eventually produce all the world's great literary works in Braille.

You guys hear the one about the bartender who's washing glasses when an old Irish guy comes limping into the bar? The Irishman hoists his bad leg over the bartstool, pulls himself up, and in a lot of pain, asks for a sip of Irish whiskey.

He looks down the bar and says, "Is that Jesus down there?" The bartender nods, so the Irishman tells him to give Jesus an Irish whiskey, too. The next guy to come into the bar is an old Eyetalian guy with a hunched back, who shuffles up to the barstool and asks for a glass of Chianti. He also looks down the bar and asks if that's Jesus sittin at the end of the bar. The bartender nods, and the Eyetalian says to give him a glass of Chianti, too. The third guy to arrive is a redneck, who swaggers in and hollers, "Barkeep, set me up a cold one! Hey, is that God's Boy down there?" The barkeep nods, so the redneck tells him to give Jesus a cold one, too. As Jesus gets up to leave, he walks over to the Irishman and touches him and says, "For your kindness, you are healed!" The Irishman feels the strength come back to his leg, and he gets up and dances a jig out the door. Jesus touches the Eyetalian and says, "For your kindness, you are healed!" The Eyetalian feels his back straighten, and he raises his hands above his head and does a flip out the door. Jesus walks toward the redneck, and the redneck jumps back and yells, "Don't touch me! I'm on disability!"

Joe Bob Briggs, reminding you that the drive-in will never die.

On to next week's host segments for "The Ultimate Warrior" and Damnation Alley.
Or host segments for tonight's first movie, The Road Warrior

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Monstervision Host Segments for

2020 Texas Gladiators

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