(1990)
Overall: MEH
The first of no less than three movies released in 1990 from Italian genre director Claudio Fragasso is the cheap, lazily derivative haunted house mess Beyond Darkness, (La Casa 5). While things begin hokey if not altogether ridiculously with a creepy enough set up of a crazy woman wearing an embarrassingly obvious bald cap who is being led to the electric chair as she proclaims her love for the demon Ameth, it does not take too long for the screenplay to make its sole priority that of bulldozing itself through as many cliche-ridden set pieces as possible. We are treated to a fog machine on overdrive, furniture moving by itself, a car that will not start, evil dimensions hiding behind walls, a priest whose faith is lost, a dramatic synth score throughout all but maybe five seconds of the running time, and of course an exorcism. Having the feel that anything plot related was left on the cutting room floor to make room for nothing except arbitrary horror movie nonsense, it gets redundant pretty quick. Individual, worthy to laugh at moments are a hoot, but that is about all it has to offer really.
(1990)
Dir - Claudio Fragasso/Bruno Mattei
Overall: WOOF
Fitting appropriately in the middle of Beyond Darkness and Troll 2 as far as "quality" goes, Claudio Fragasso's Night Killer, (No aprite quella porta 3), is worse than the former though of course not as monumentally terrible/unintentionally brilliant as the latter. Easily deserving its own place in the bad movie hall of fame though, the plot is rather ingeniously stupid, revolving around a horny asshole in a zombie mask and pointy-nailed glove that can punch through people's stomachs, a woman who wants to kill herself, and another horny asshole who kidnaps her while eating Kentucky Fried Chicken. Considering that comedically awkward performances and dialog that is too unnatural for even a six-year old to come up with both seem to go hand in hand with Fragasso's movies, one can logically lay the blame mostly at his feet. That said, gore fans will delight in the fact that addition scenes were shot by director Bruno Mattei, additional scenes that add ridiculous violence while completely adhering to the nonsensical, Ed Wood-worthy, auteur aesthetic of everything else. The point is, this is a winner!
(1990)
Overall: WOOF
No discussion about the worst movies ever made can happen without Claudio Fragasso's unintentional masterpiece Troll 2 being the primary focus of the conversation. On the Mount Rushmore of "So bad its great" cinema and arguably the most deservedly memorable of such films in the horror camp, this completely unrelated "sequel" to the Charles Band produced Troll from 1986 does not just have all of the hallmarks of laughably horrendous cinema; it has those hallmarks to the umpteenth degree. As showcased in the equally essential Best Worst Movie documentary, Fragasso and his Italian speaking crew butted heads with the non-professional, American cast throughout the production due to the language barrier. This in turn helped produce a lightning in a bottle combination of oblivious people both behind of and in front of the screen working with no time, no money, and creating something that legitimately seems as if it came from another planet. Everything from the Halloween masks, the fact that the monsters are goblins and not trolls, the largely non-photogenic cast shown in constant unflattering closeups, a script that seems like it was written by a five month old chimpanzee, intended humor that is so utterly bizarre that it becomes unintentionally hilarious anyway, and performances, cinematography, and direction that should all be shown in film class to exemplify what should never be done, this is the ultimate crash course in laugh-out-loud, engaging awfulness.
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