BEST MOVIE OF THE SUMMER!

Summer is the traditional season of blockbuster movies and superhero flicks, but amid all the hooplah a small masterpiece slipped through the cracks and I thank my buddy (and fellow weirdo) Jared for alerting me to it. INDIANA JONES can lick my crystal nutsack, THE DARK KNIGHT can go fist the Joker at a local Burger King, and SPEED RACER, HANCOCK and THE INCREDIBLE HULK can both swirl down the cinematic bowl for all I care. None of those flicks contains even one tenth of the sheer entertainment found in the no-budget and utterly brilliant ITALIAN SPIDERMAN, and I'm prepared to stand behind that statement in the nation's highest court of law.

An inspired and dead-on parody of old school mindless cheese from the Italian spy movie/action flick genres with lashings of Mexican and Japanese influences thrown in for good and hilarious measure, complete with crappy film stock and bad overdubbing in Italian (don't worry, there are incredibly ludicrous subtitles) ITALIAN SPIDERMAN is an internet movie divided into ten chapters that had me, jared and our friend Rob howling as the film's balls-out madness escalated scene by scene. We've seen all manner of crazy shit, so we're a tough audience, but we had so much fun with this lunacy that we were sad when it ended and pleased to see an announcement for an impending sequel. The trailer can be found on YouTube — as can the individual chapters — and the only bit of explanation to be had with it is the following:

Alrugo Entertainment, bring you: ITALIAN SPIDERMAN Unearthed for the first time in 40 years and lovingly restored at Alrugo Studios Milan, this rare theatrical trailer for the 1968 Italian classic 'Italian Spiderman' is a real treat. Featuring Franco Franchetti of 'Mondo Sexo' fame in his last ever role before being killed in a spear fishing accident in 1969. Alrugo entertainment will be releasing the FULL, remastered ITALIAN SPIDERMAN film on the web starting MAY 22. STAY TUNED

The talk of this being a pre-existing film is obviously a load of bullshit, but when you're having this much fun you simply won't give a damn. I'm dead serious when I say ITALIAN SPIDERMAN is more entertaining than any other film I've seen this Summer, IRON MAN included, but then again it's got just about everything I grew up loving in movies, such as:

An ultra-violent hero who takes no shit from anybody or anything,

Italian Spiderman: an ass-kicking fat load of a masked hero whose abilities have pretty much nothing to do with his American namesake, who also bears a strong resemblance to porn legend/fatass Ron Jeremy.

horny and loutish greaseball idiots,

a masked Luchador-style arch-villain,

Main bad guy, Captain Maximum.

an obligatory supporting scientist and his high-tech lab,

phony chase scenes occurring against a blue screen,

awful psychedelic effects,

memorable criminal underlings,

The marvelously idiotic Crocodile Man.

gambling bad guys with eye patches and their exotic Eurotrash squeezes,

a scene where the hero does something ridiculous that reinforces just what a stud he is,

gory (but cheesy) violence,

groovy parties with lots of hipsters, hookahs, and surf music,

bikini-clad assassin chicks with spearguns,

and plenty of from-out-of-nowhere shit that makes absolutely zero sense.

Seriously, what the fuck does this have to do with anything? And it's actually in the movie!

Believe me, I haven't even scratched the surface of the lunacy on display here, so I urge you to see it for yourself. I hope this gets released on DVD because I would buy it in a heartbeat, the cost of my purchase hopefully going to the madmen behind it and enabling them to unleash more such unbridled craziness upon a world that needs an alternative to Rob Schneider flicks and (FILL IN THE BLANK) MOVIE laugh-free reference "comedies." TRUST YER BUNCHE and give ITALIAN SPIDERMAN every bit of the love it so richly deserves, starting with chapter 1 . And RESPECT WOMEN!!!