ARCANA
(1972)
Dir - Giulio Questi
Overall: MEH
Writer/director Giulio Questi's last theatrically released movie before moving permanently into television was Arcana, an experimental art film that bares as much resemblance to the work of David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Luis Buñuel, or Frederico Fellini as any other that you can think of. It also comes off as rather exploitative with a barrage of uncomfortable, disturbing imagery put there solely for the sake of shock value more or less, (incest anyone?). Questi by all accounts was a rather uncompromising filmmaker with somewhat of an anarchist agenda, one who wished to challenge his audience as much as possible, proclaiming in the very first frame here that the movie "is not a story, but a game of cards". Split into two parts, the first is still bizarre, but it at least seems to be going somewhere. The second on the other hand unleashes hell and throws logic to the ether. While it is a bit fascinating to watch, (be it uneasily so at times), it does seem to just be a random barrage of images with none of the characters behaving in any remotely comprehensible manner. It also probably was not meant to be anything else, but in the world of pretentious art cinema, Questi's choice to have his images be devoid of meaning does rather give it a pointless feeling. That said, you can generally champion the bizarre nature of the film and for those that are curious, it is certainly worth a gander.
THE PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK
(1974)
Dir - Francesco Barilli
Overall: GOOD
With a title like The Perfume of the Lady in Black, (Il profumo della signora in nero), and coming out of Italy in the mid 70s, one would logically assume that this is another in an endless stream of silly giallos made liberally in said country at the time. Not only is it pleasantly very much not, (giallos are fine, but it is nice to be surprised now and again), it is also a borderline superb, supernaturally-vague thriller with an utterly perfect ending. There is undeniably some confusion as to the details of how everything plays out, but co-writer/director Francesco Barilli keeps everything more tightly constructed than usual. European horror, (particularly of the Italian variety), often has a knack to make logical plot points a secondary concern, but the mysterious, long con played on Mimsy Farmer's Silvia here does not drop anything like an utterly random room full of barbed wire at us per example. Premises where seemingly one person seems to be succumbing to madness with everyone around him/her acting on the side of peculiar are always a good place to start. One could fairly see this as an Italian answer to Rosemary's Baby, to the point where it is likely no accident that Farmer looks more than a bit like Mia Farrow. Also while the ball can often be dropped with a limp payoff, thankfully that is not the case here. Again, you may be scratching your head over a few specifics, but the outcome is fiendishly clever enough to make it possibly one of Italy's most overlooked horror films.
LAST CANNIBAL WORLD
(1977)
Dir - Ruggero Deodato
Overall: MEH
The cannibal boom which emerged out of Italy in the early 1970s after the success of Umberto Lenzi's Il paese del sesso selvaggio was by nature a rather unpleasant sub-genre, itself a more fictionalized and exploitative extension of the mondo documentary cinema movement which began a decade earlier in the same country. Last Cannibal World, (Ultimo mondo cannibale, Cannibal the Last Survivor, Jungle Holocaust), was the first such entry into this nasty, Euro-horror movement from Ruggero Deodato who would make the even more barbaric and unflinching Cannibal Holocaust three years later. While the same routine of people getting marooned in the jungle with a primitive tribe that wants to eat them as well as each other is the same as ever, comparatively to Cannibal Holocaust at least, this is a more "tame" version. The real life animal murdering is still there yet in less graphic detail and it is mostly reserved to the mondo style version of seeing the animals themselves attacking and devouring each other. Make no mistake though, the movie is still loaded with explicit and nauseating footage of chest cavities getting ripped open and gorged upon, plus rape, filth, and torture everywhere else. The appeal of these films is assuredly a mystery, but credit where it is due; Last Cannibal World delivers in all of the unwholesome ways one would be accustomed to. Also, what the fuck was with the lush, romantic music during that final cannibal feast? Someone should have probably gotten fired over that move.
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