80s Italian Horror Part Five

NIGHTMARE CITY

(1980)

Dir - Umberto Lenzi

Overall: MEH

The 1980s were ripe with zombie films and Italy alone produced a fare share of them, with Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City, (Incubo sulla città contaminata, City of the Walking Dead), being one of the first to get the decade's ball rolling.  No more or less nonsensical and ridiculous than any of the other ones, it at least tweaks the zombies themselves who are not reanimated corpses but mutated humans that have to feast on human blood in order to maintain their radiation-ravaged form.  The rate at which they take over the populous is absurdly quick, with a plane full of them easily overpowering a barrage of armed military personnel, at which point they render both the city and countryside barren in a manner of hours.  Pure nonsense that is "enhanced" by horrendous makeup effects that look as if they were applied within thirty seconds per actor and cost about seventy-five cents to produce.  The movie has a number of fun set pieces, including the aforementioned showdown in an open airfield, a news studio segue where an unplugged TV set immediately turns into a grenade when thrown at flesh-munchers, and a finale on top of a roller coaster which results in a gloriously unconvincing prop dummy falling to its death.  Unfortunately though, the film is also full of charisma-less characters and predominantly bounces between various, monotonous subplots that merely get in the way of the unintentionally funny moments.

 

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.