80's Italian Horror Part Four

ALIEN 2: ON EARTH

(1980)
Dir - Ciro Ippolito/Biagio Proietti
Overall: MEH

As the title would clearly advertise, Alien 2: On Earth, (Alien Terror, Alien 2 - Sulla Terra), is an Italian knock-off "sequel" to Ridley Scott's Alien and bares little to no resemblance to said work despite the fact that people die from an extraterrestrial monster attacking them.  Written, directed, and produced by Ciro Ippolito, (with Biagio Proietti also being behind the lens in an unofficial capacity), it is typically lame-brained and sluggishly paced, but it is also unintentionally humorous at parts and plenty gory.  The first two acts are plodding enough to cause most viewers to give up before it gets to the really ridiculous stuff, focusing on a group of badly-dubbed spelunkers who eventually come across an alien life form that rips them apart in outlandish detail.  From then on it gets more absurd with the violent, gooey body count, culminating in a logically-void scene in a bowling alley where the creature has miraculously managed to catch up with two of the would-be survivors who have traveled by car.  Think of it as the "bad movie night" variation of The Descent meets The Thing; cheap, stupid, mostly boring, yet worth laughing at, as it deserves.

 

SPECTERS

(1987)

Dir - Mercello Avallone

Overall: MEH

 

A rare work in unabashed Euro-horror from filmmaker Mercello Avallone, Specters, (Spettri), doubles as one of several Italian productions that Donald Pleasence provided some star power for in the last decade of his career.  While it is still stagnant in the plot department and pads its running time significantly with people talking in rooms, it is a better offering than is to be expected.  First off, the keyboard musical score by Lele Marchitelli and Danilo Rea succeeds in being subtlety creepy, generally humming away on ominous minor key notes and leaving room for many of the scenes to breathe without it.  There is a kitchen sink element to the film where visual gags and references to everything from seemingly desperate properties like Creature from the Black Lagoon, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Suspiria, the Indiana Jones series, and Quatermass and the Pit are haphazardly thrown together to cover an array of bases.  Also, Pleasence is always a nice addition even if he plays it straight and only shows up a in a handful of scenes, due to the fact that he was presumably only hired for a day or two.  The story is nowhere interesting enough to hold the viewer's attention and the pacing is still wretched, but it at least gets a few things right along the way.

 

THE WITCHES' SABBATH

(1988)

Dir - Marco Bellocchio

Overall: MEH

An imprecise, largely pretentious art film from Marcon Bellocchio and a rare entry in his body of work that quasi-explores supernatural elements, The Witches' Sabbath, (La visione del sabba, The Sabbath), is more of an erotic, hallucinatory mood piece than anything else.  An Italian/French co-production, it features one of the earliest lead roles for Béatrice Dalle who plays an evocative, unhinged woman that murders a hunter and during her psychiatric evaluation, ends up infatuating a young, promiscuous doctor.  She is also either a perpetual liar, a four-hundred year old witch, or both, depending on how reliable if at all the images are that we are presented with.  They are often haunting and beautiful images to be sure, (captured by Bellocchio's frequent collaborator Giuseppe Lanci), but the already paper thin plot gets abandoned midway through to make way for a series of time-traveling, waking dream sequences that go on for a considerable amount of time.  Some audience members may feel that the nebulous structure overstays its welcome after awhile, but the performances are commendable even if Daniel Ezralow smirks his way through almost the entirety of the proceedings.  A lustful, infidelity fable, a critique on religious persecution, an examination of mental illness, a chauvinistic comeuppance essay, or none of the above, it certainly leaves you guessing.