Lisa Goes Italy

In general, Lisa Film's sphere of influence is often seen as being limited to Lake Wörthersee, but as the current retrospective clearly demonstrates, Karl Spiehs enjoyed travelling on international terrain with his productions. ASTARON crosses Ridley Scott's ALIEN with Lucio Fulci's WOODOO and garnishes it all with a crazy idea about exploding eggs and people, plus a prog-rock earworm soundtrack - and the result is a blood-soaked hit in which ‘the cinema seat becomes a torture chair’, as the trailer announces. Unless this is meant literally, in HUNGRY SCORPIONS a colourful band of mercenaries, who are to free the kidnapped son of the ousted president of a Caribbean island country, await a (less?) masochistically inclined audience. (Florian Widegger)