80s Italian Horror Part Five

BAKTERION
(1982)
Dir - Tonino Ricci
Overall: WOOF
 
Shot in England with an international cast, this Spanish/Italian co-production was one of many to get lumped into the unofficial Zombi series of titles, and it also may be the worst of the bunch.  Bakterion, (Panic, Zombie 4, Zombi IV: Bakterion), has a puss-covered monster and a killer virus that is endlessly talked about but never shown to actually exist, yet director Tonino Ricci does nothing visually enthralling with such schlock-ready ingredients.  This is due to the usual ailments of a piss-pour budget and a piss-pour script, the latter just brimful of moronic tangents that go nowhere, plus characters behaving in a manner that constitutes serious mental illness.  Authorities decide to block everyone into a town without telling any of its residents that there is a killer mutant running around, then they want to blow up the town, then they fill the sewers with poisonous gas, then they go into those sewers with no protection, and this only scratches the surface of the type of plot points that seem as if they were constructed by the screenwriters in a twenty minute session, presumably while at gun point.  Some of the gore effects are charming in their squishy cheapness, but the experience is as horrendously structured as it is painfully sterile.

 

WITCHERY

(1988)

Dir - Fabrizio Laurenti

Overall: MEH

After Ghosthouse garnished acceptable box office returns in the beginning of the year, producer Joe D'Amato set up another entry in Italy's unrelated "La Casa" series with Witchery, (La Casa 4 - Witchcraft, Haxenbrut, Evil Encounters).  Once again filmed in Massachusetts with a mostly American cast, this one scored David Hasselhoff and Linda Blair, the latter who even gets possessed again.  Typecasting is real yo.  Sadly though, the results are not as ridiculous as Euro-horror enthusiasts would hope, even if it has a gruesome death sequence here or there.  This could be due to director Fabrizio Laurenti's relative inexperience behind the lens as he had made but one short film before this, coming on board only after Umberto Lenzi, Claudio Lattanzi, and Luigi Cozzi all held various claims to the material and left the project for various reasons.  The pacing is not punctuated by enough silly supernatural set pieces and Gianlorenzo Battaglia's cinematography is bare bones at best.  Along with the noticeably minuscule production budget, it all makes for a cheap looking film which would otherwise enhance its schlocky charm if not for the fact that the story is largely uninteresting, the performances wooden, the dialog repetitive, and every other aspect merely a cut-and-paste re-hash of better, more wacky genre movies with witches, nudity, and busy keyboard scores.

ALIEN FROM THE DEEP

(1989)

Dir - Antonio Margheriti

Overall: MEH

 

A typical action/horror/sci-fi knock-off of the Italian variety, Alien from the Deep, (Alien degli abissi, Aliens del abismo, Alien of the Abyss), has a sluggish start yet delivers some acceptable, B-level schlock in its second half.  Falsely marketed as an hybrid of James Cameron's Aliens and The Abyss respectfully, it is in fact an environmental jungle movie with the gigantic, extraterrestrial creature of the title only showing off its giant, crab-like claw at over an hour into the running time.  We are eventually treated to its full, animatronic form in the very last explody set piece which sees Daniel Bosch hopping in a yellow forklift to push said creature into a lava pit, but this is as close to the Ripley/Queen Xenomorph showdown in Aliens as we get.  Charles Napier shows up to chew some scenery as a no-nonsense and villainous military commander, plus Marina Giulia Cavalli gets to be sweaty in her tank top and underwear on several occasions.  Director Antonio Margheriti had tackled virtually every genre at this point in low-budget fashion and he and cinematographer Fausto Maria Zuccoli make the most out of the tropical landscape and radioactive factory setting, hiding the film's inadequate production values in an impressive enough manner.