(1990)
Dir - George Eastman
Overall: MEH
The second of only two directorial efforts from actor George Eastman/Luigi Montefiori, Metamorphosis, (Regenerator, Re-Animator 2), is your typical shot-in-America/Italian conglomerate of better and more professionally done genre offerings. Namely, this one takes a little bit of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, David Cronenberg's The Fly, Ken Russell's Altered States, and a dash of Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator into a cliche-ridden plot where a dashing university scientist is hellbent on completing his genetics-tweaking experiments no matter how many of his crotchety superiors try to shut him down. Everyone on screen takes the material seriously, giving it a sincere tone that of course jives awkwardly with the minuscule budget and how dopey the material is. This is the type of story that by the turn of the 90s should have been played for laughs, but there is no intentional humor to be found. There are a handful of "bad movie" chuckles scattered around though, and the final set piece where the culmination of Gene LeBrock's transformation is finally unveiled is so embarrassingly stupid that it needs to be seen to be believed.
(1991)
Dir - Fabio Salerno
Overall: MEH
After cranking out home movies for a decade, Italian DIY filmmaker Fabio Salerno made his only feature-length one Notte profonda, (Deep Night), since his follow-up and final work L'altra dimensione was merely three shorts cobbled together. This is a commendable zero dollar production, if only in a practical sense. Shot on 16 mm in what looks like a single apartment, Salerno pulls off some nifty special effects like a claymation key dissolving, a guy's face melting, another face appearing out of a wall, people getting dragged across the floor by a noose, and various bold colors to help illuminate things in proper otherworldly Mario Bava fashion. The story's grasp does not come anywhere near matching the non-existent budget or Salerno's modest talents from behind the lens, plus the nightmarish set pieces are few and far between, which makes all sixty-eight minutes feel much longer. Still, Salerno gets an A for effort and with proper financing and an experienced director, something could have been made out of such a story where a comic book artist coming across a tiny pyramid that unlocks a demon dimension, (or something).
(1994)
Dir - Alvaro Passeri
Overall: WOOF
Special effects man-turned director Alvaro Passeri takes his first stab behind the lens with the hare-brained monster romp Creatures from the Abyss, (Plankton). Filmed in Miami, Florida with a cast of nobodies who are dubbed as terribly as you would imagine, it has some bikini babes, an insufferable mimbo, and a nerd (because he wears glasses and makes accurate scientific guesses since his character read the script), who come across an abandoned yacht with human possessing sea creatures or something. These unlikable saps do intelligent things like willingly split up, taste stuff in jars that are in a lab, get excited about selling all of the presumed drugs that are on board, eat the weird fish that they find, and plan to throw orgies on the ghost ship instead of being concerned with why it is a ghost ship in the first place. It takes until the forty-two minute mark until we get a hilariously stupid aquatic critter attack, and being made by a guy whose career was in visual effects work, the results here are on par with James Nguyen's Birdemic. Thankfully, we eventually get a memorable sex scene where the horny scumbag turns into a slimy fish monster in mid-orgasmic thrust. There are other bizarre details like a flirty female computer voice that seems to run various high-tech bathroom appliances as if it is under the influence of poltergeists, but the tone is all over the place, the dialog is atrocious, and the plot is stupid enough to constitute as a hate crime.
No comments:
Post a Comment