70's Italian Horror Part Seventeen - (Renato Polselli Edition)

LA VERITÀ SECONDO SATANA

(1972)

Overall: MEH

Riding a very thin line of hilariously insane and tortuously obnoxious, La verità secondo Satana, (The Truth According to Satan), is a bizarre black comedy or something from writer/director Renato Polselli that if anything else, certainly gets points for being unique.  The mannerisms of both of the male characters are eccentric to the point of parody.  As an insane man prone to psychologically torturing his fiance, Isarco Ravaioli looks disturbingly very like a sweaty, Italian Ted Buddy while Sergio Ammirata plays the far more head-scratching and annoying neighbor who makes chicken noises and throws a feminine hissy-fit if he fails to eat two fried eggs every hour.  Meanwhile, poor Rita Calderoni practically yanks her hair out as she suffers delusions including stock military footage and several naked hippies dancing to the same song over and over again, something that during the tense finale is inter-cut while people are speaking in mid sentence.  In fact, the entire film is edited as if a child on a caffeine bender was calling the shots and it all escalates at a feverish pace that is bound to perplex anyone who stays with it long enough to question what kind of movies they waste their time watching in the first place.

DELIRIO CALDO

(1972)

Overall: MEH

A demented giallo from writer/director Renato Polselli that has a largely different American dub version that throws in Vietnam footage for some on drugs reason, Delirio caldo, (Delirium), once again features wide-eyed Rita Calderoni, this time as another endlessly on-edge woman who is hysterically in love with a doctor that has a tendency to succumb to uncontrollable fits of violence against women.  Polselli's story is a love triangle though, which has another woman that is equally deranged and cannot stop murdering people.  There is also a guy whose girlfriend gets picked-off and he does not hesitate to unleash his own vengeance on who he suspects is the killer.  So, basically everyone on screen is a deranged maniac to various extents.  It has its prerequisite share of camera zooms and an up-tempo, jazzy score that all Euro-trash seemingly had to adhere to, giallos or not.  Unfortunately it is also more dull that it sounds on paper, with the kills scenes and acts of perversity spread out too thin.  That said, a few ridiculous nightmare sequences and a frenzied ending do liven things up a bit, but nothing to elevate this above just another nameless bit of Italian sleaze that is barely worth remembering.

BLACK MAGIC RITES

(1973)

Overall: WOOF

 

A logical contender for the most incomprehensible "vampire" movie ever made, Renato Polselli's Black Magic Rites, (The Reincarnation of Isabel, Riti, magie nere e segrete orge nel Trecento..., Secret Orgies in the Fourteenth Century), is fascinatingly absurd while still managing to be a torturous bore at the same time.  Presented as a series of practically unconnected set pieces where it becomes more and more impossible to even decipher what moments are flashbacks, dream sequences, or actually taking place, it is chalk full of naked people and characters staring directly into the camera while wide-eyed and presumably as confused as we are watching them.  At more than one instance, women are burnt alive at the stake for so long that it seems entirely possible that the filmmakers simply used every ounce of footage that they shot.  Comical music is played for a rape scene, every woman who appears has something randomly sadistic happen to them, (again, usually for many, many minutes at a time), and there is lots of screaming, characters yelling each other's names, reverberated alms to dark forces, and a barrage of other noise on the soundtrack such as chanting, minor-key music, and even what sounds like airplane noise.  Perhaps most oddly of all is that the entire thing is vividly colored and atmospheric from a visual perspective, but the repetitive, inconsequential, and laughably plotless nature of everything else makes this a fever dream of nonsensical garbage the likes of which, (even by Euro-horror standards), is rarely seen.

MANIA

(1974)

Overall: MEH

Another in a steady stream of wildly ridiculous films from writer/director/possible madman Renato Polselli, the aptly titled Mania fuses Gothic horror and giallo with a mad scientist, ghosts, and copious amounts of head-scratching sleaze.  Right from the opening credits and in typical Polselli fashion, the actors are comically exaggerating their mannerisms to the point of unintentional hilarity, but the story line is a true marvel of kitchen sink randomness and absurdity.  Eva Spadaro cheats on her scientist husband who is going to cure all human diseases by making a machine that controls things, (?!?), the person she cheats on him with is his identical twin brother, a maid with no pants on is also in love with her and then goes mute after a bag is placed over her head, both brothers burn up in a fire that Spadaro gets sexually turned on by not saving anyone from, one of the brother's survives in a wheelchair with burns all over his body until the very end when he can miraculously walk and the burns are gone, a ghost car chases Spadaro and her new fiance Isarco Ravaiolo and is promptly never seen again, a psychiatrist recommends that Spadaro go back to her ex-husband's now haunted house to face her fears, then more stuff involving lesbianism, snakes, fake dummies, and you name it happens.  The point is, you will probably need a nap when it is all over.