80's Italian Horror Part Six

IL MEDIUM
(1980)
Dir - Silvio Amadio
Overall: MEH

A formulaic haunted house mystery and the penultimate work from filmmaker Silvio Amadio, Il medium, (The Medium), packs in some spooky atmosphere and set pieces despite its repetitive plotting and typical, low-budget pacing issues.  Co-written by Claudio Fragasso and a far less ridiculous endeavor than his more infamous directorial efforts, the story was apparently inspired by Amadio's real life fascination with the occult and it features the standard motifs of supernatural occurrences happening to characters who no one believes after the fact, a bratty little kid, arbitrary ghost activity, a paranormal expert, a psychic medium, (as the title would suggest), and not one but two seances.  Said sequences are done effectively with otherworldly ambiance and disembodied voices providing the soundtrack as cinematographer Maurizio Salvatore shoots everything in barely-visible candlelight.  Unfortunately though, the majority of the movie is a bore with uninteresting characters and an overly talky screenplay that endlessly slows things down.  Ergo, it is merely passable in fits and starts and blows its potential to be an ultra moody bit of creepiness.

 

MURDER OBSESSION

(1981)
Dir - Riccardo Freda
Overall: MEH

 

For his final film Murder Obsession, (Follia omicida, Fear, The Wailing), Riccardo Freda came out of retirement after a nine year break allegedly as a means to generate finances and interest in a World War I project that never came to fruition.  It is easy to see why, as the resulting movie is an unmitigated disaster and one that several of the personnel involved have rightfully disowned.  Based on a short story from Fabio Piccioni that was also turned into an adult comic book, the rights were sold years earlier to Dario Argento, who utilized elements from it for both The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Deep Red.  The movie gets off to a rocky start, establishing a far-fetched premise where a working actor allegedly murdered his father when he was a kid and presently exhibits uncontrollable bouts of rage as well as an overall douchebagy persona.  Also baffling is that his mother, girlfriend, and a fellow co-star are all different levels of enamored with him as Stefano Patrizi portrays such a lousy character with a complete lack of charisma.  Cristiano Pogany's cinematography is halfway moody and some of the violence is unintentionally funny, but it is a meandering mess, edited to the point of incomprehensibility and miserably dull in the process.

 

ALIEN TERMINATOR

(1988)

Dir - Nello Rossati

Overall: MEH

 

Another Euro-export with at least one misleading title, Alien Terminator, (Top Line), is a quasi Romancing the Stone/jungle adventure hybrid with an extraterrestrial angle haphazardly thrown in as well.  Director/co-writer Nello Rossati, (here credited under the Americanized pseudonym of Ted Archer), and actor Franco Nero had recently collaborated the previous year on the official Django sequel Djanto Strikes Again, but this is a more meandering genre mash-up that fails to land anywhere.  Nero looks particularly rugged as a down-on-his-luck, alcoholic writer and his harsh, Italian accented, English delivery makes some of the busier dialog difficult to follow.  Speaking of Italian accents, George Kennedy is jarringly dubbed by a non-American actor, but he only has a few scenes and gets killed off early on anyway.  Even though Nero locates an underground UFO in the first act, you would only know it by the colossal amount of time that the characters spend talking about it as he runs around trying not to get murdered for over an hour.  No actual aliens noticeably show up until the last twenty minutes, but once they do, the movie finally becomes a campy hoot.  It is too little, too late to makeup for the sluggish crawl to get there though.