(1990)
Dir - Lamberto Bava
Overall: MEH
A quasi-remake of Mario Bava's seminal Black Sunday from his son Lamberto, The Mask of Satan, (La maschera del demonio, Demons 5, Demons V: The Devil's Veil, La Mascara del Satan), is a somewhat charming though ultimately mediocre retelling of its source material. It was made for the European television series Sabbath, debuting in the summer of 1990 where it inevitably got lumped in with Lamberto's own Demons franchise, becoming one of the several non-official sequels in it. Fusing the loose, Black Sunday concept of a condemned witch in an iron mask coming back to wreak her vengeance with a contemporary setting where dumb-dumb, horned-up, attractive characters get possessed and run around laughing a lot, it cruises along at a solid enough trot to not become too concerned with the humdrum script. Despite some inconsistent character behavior and a comparative lack of gore, it is well decorated and has a consistent, mostly non-schlocky tone until about the last five minutes at least. The story really is not dense enough to keep numerous moments from growing repetitive though, especially the third act where it tries to get more psychologically ambitious and clever.
(1991)
Dir - Michele Soavi
Overall: MEH
Another stylish collaboration between Dario Argento and Michele Soavi which acts rather as a Euro-Rosemary's Baby, The Devil's Daughter, (The Sect, La Setta), becomes inescapably messy, but has some charm to it nonetheless. The story is not particularly strong, struggling as most Italian horror films do to maintain coherency while primarily being concerned with macabre set pieces that are often fun and ghastly, yet almost comically arbitrary as well. In the lead, Kelly Curtis' performance is uneven as is the score by Pino Donaggio which gets a little too over the top at times. That said, at least genre regular Herbert Lom delivers the creepy as a mysterious, hobo-esque Satan enthusiast. Tone wise, Soavi plays it very serious, something which occasionally enhances the inherent bizarreness, particularly during a moment where a woman's face gets ripped off ceremoniously by hooks and then when Curtis is attacked sexually by a bird and forced to give birth in a pool surrounded by weird women egging her on. Sadly though, the cumbersome running time and inadvertently laughable qualities do undermine its potential to actually be frightening, which it assuredly is not. Interesting at times yes, but that is about it.
(1997)
Dir - Sergio Stivaletti
Overall: GOOD
This quasi-remake of House of Wax doubles as a rare collaboration between Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, indented as a directorial effort for the latter who ended up dying before shooting began. Handed off to special effects artist Sergio Stivaletti to be behind the lens then with a story by Argento and a screenplay co-written by Fulci, Wax Mask, (M.D.C. - Maschera di cera), is a gory, fun, and sloppily plotted update of the standard, Italian-flavored variety. Visually, Stivaletti's steampunk version of the horror classic has rusted medical equipment, brightly colored liquid bubbling in gigantic tubes, skeletal, Terminator-esque monsters, and elaborate needles and masks which seem old fashioned and futuristic all at once. This all goes along with the usual ingredients of an ugly assistant, the secretly deformed mad genius, a dramatic soundtrack that plays incessantly and obnoxiously throughout, the dashing hero, women who cannot keep their boobs covered for very long, and a story that is as predictable as they come. Its combination of mundane and inventive qualities somewhat cancel each other out, but it is briskly paced enough with just the right amount of schlock to comfortably please genre fans.
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