(1984)
Overall: MEH
One of several D-rent Jaws knock-offs that were still regularly getting pumped out nearly a decade after the release of Steven Spielberg's initial blockbuster, Monster Shark, (Shark - Rosso nell'oceano, Devil Fish, Monster from the Red Ocean, Devouring Waves, Shark: Red in the Ocean), is unique enough to justify its existence yet lame enough to laugh at. Four different screenwriters tossed in ideas from a story already concocted by Italian directors Sergio Martino and Luigi Cozzi, so it could be a typical case of "too many cooks in the kitchen" contributing to the silly structure involving completely forgettable characters with few if any distinguishing attributes attached to them, as well as a plot concerning an octopus/extinct Dunkleosteus hybrid that was genetically created for asinine military reasons or something. Sadly, there are only a small handful of gory death scenes and one of them does not even involve the title creature, instead, (because sleazy Euro-trash), a naked women gets beaten and then electrocuted in a tub by some guy. The pacing is wretched, none of the performances ham it up to appropriately laughable levels, and it was obviously made on a shoestring budget which means that the aquatic monster only gets shown in frantic close-ups, making it neither funny nor frightening and more just a case of "What am I even looking at?", which is likely not what the production team had in mind.
(1986)
Overall: MEH
Coming after the one-two punch of off-the-wall, supernatural mayhem with Demons and Demons 2, Lamberto Bava seems to be phoning it in with Midnight Killer, (Morirai a mezzanotte, To Die at Midnight), a lackluster slasher movie with no flare or absurdity to elevate it. By the director's own admittance, he was one of the rarest of Italian, exploitation directors that was not entirely comfortable making misogynistic giallos, so his female-murdering-death-scene-by-numbers work here backs up such a claim. The victims, (all women), are numerous and their demises are formulaically brutal and predictable, yet Bava and Dardano Sacchetti's script does not even try to throw in any wacky or sleazy elements. Everyone just gets stabbed and left for people to easily find as several characters argue over whether or not the murderer is a police officer with an anger problem or a back-from-the-dead killer, (spoiler alert, it is neither). The outcome is both dull and stupid in trying to justify the least likely person as the one picking everybody off, but even the forced twist had long been standard practice for giallos going back two decades earlier. On the plus side, the musical score from Goblin's Claudio Simonetti is fine and the pacing is not too horrendous, all things considered.
(1987)
Overall: MEH
A typically lame-brained giallo from Lamberto Bava, Delirium, (Le foto di Gioia, Photos of Gioia), is as by-the-books and therefor redundant as one would expect. While Bava did not pen the screenplay, (that unfortunate task was left to Gianfranco Clerici and Daniele Stroppa), he claimed to be responsible for the two bizarre, fantastical moments where we see the killer's victims through his eyes, both of whom have an giant eyeball and bee mask on respectfully. These sequences are never narratively explained and come off as more laughably arbitrary than interesting, but the rest of the proceedings have the standard amount of misogyny, exploitative nudity, asinine dialog, illogical character behavior, and a killer reveal that throws an incestuous angle in for good sleazy measure. Star Serena Grandi noticeably chose to limit the on screen moments in her birthday suite in an attempt to distance herself from her sex pot image, but jumbo sized naked pictures of her are still present along with various other hapless women either getting photographed or getting murdered with their clothes off. It is all nothing that has not been done several dozen times over, (both better and worse), which just makes this one seem like a derivative waste of time.
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