1980s 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, 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.

1970s Italian Horror Part Twenty

NECROPOLIS

(1970)

Dir - Franco Brocani

Overall: WOOF

 

A mercilessly pretensions art film and the full-length debut from director Franco Brocani, Necropolis is a maddening experience from front to back.  Essentially an avant-garde, counter culture stage play made up of painfully long, (very, very, very long), takes while actors soliloquize against minimalist backdrops, it is remarkable that each and every line in such an enormously gratuitous amount of dialog can be completely void of meaning.  This is a movie that could be watched on mute and/or without subtitles and the audience will walk away with an equal amount of frustration and confusion over having wasting their time with such aimless dribble.  To Brocani's credit, he is certainly not making anything remotely commercial here, nor anything that adheres to any conventional confines of cinema in general.  It is a work of pure experimentation which could be appreciated if it was remotely watchable.  Instead, people pretend to be various historical or fictitious characters, (though good luck putting together which historical or fictitious characters most of them are), and deliver incoherent monologues made up of arbitrary words for well over ten minutes at a time.  As one could guess, it wears out its welcome well before the two hour running time has buried its pompous premise into the ground.

 

WEB OF THE SPIDER

(1971)

Dir - Antonio Margheriti

Overall: MEH

Prolific genre director Antonio Margheriti remade his own Castle of Blood a mere five years later as Web of the Spider, (Nella stretta morsa del ragno, Les fantômes de Hurlevent, Dracula im Schloß des Schreckens), though it unfortunately suffers from the same issues as its comparatively still better predecessor.  While it is a hoot to see Klaus Kinski in anything really, he is wasted in mere bookending cameos here as none other than Edgar Allan Poe; a hilariously inappropriate casting decision if ever there was one.  Once the story properly kicks in where Anthony Franciosa agrees to spend the night in a haunted mansion for mere shits and giggles, only a handful of those initial minutes are eerily inciting.  The spacious abode is at first completely isolated and Franciosa jumps at every sound and nuance under such suggestively foreboding circumstances.  Things quickly succumb to elongated flashback sequences though once the ghosts start showing up, at which point the movie loses its atmospheric momentum and becomes a poorly paced slog.  The initial materiel that made up the aforementioned Castle of Blood was already cliche-ridden, so yet another version of it and so soon afterwards is redundant to say the least, despite the fact that Kinski is barely in it and that the whole thing was shot in color this time.

IL BACIO DI UNA MORTA

(1974)

Dir - Carlo Infascelli

Overall: MEH

Mislabeled as a horror movie, Carlo Infascelli's last directorial effort Il bacio di una morta, (Kiss of a Dead Woman), is actually an infidelity melodrama, be it one that opens with a man visiting a woman's tomb on an eerie night only to find her still very much alive.  Outside of this macabre detail though, the rest of the film is broken up into a lengthy flashback sequence that brings the viewer up to date, followed by another lengthy conclusion that leans on the unsatisfying side.  Orso Maria Guerrini's Count is an unlikable central character due to his reckless and selfish behavior, so the fact that he does not get his just comeuppance may be an annoyance to some.  It is a melancholic turn of events in this regard where some of the guilty parties are outed for their unwholesome acts, while Guerrini is reunited with his wife in a relationship that can only continue on in the most dysfunctional of manners.  Regardless of the dopey plot, it is all played stiff as a board with every performer delivering emotionally stripped performances as to never once veer the project into anything resembling camp.  This is an admirable move, but it is also one that renders the whole thing a bore that is only mildly interesting in its final, be it disappointing moments.

1970s Italian Horror Part Eleven

THE CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS

(1972)

Dir - Giuliano Carnimeo

Overall: MEH

After being behind the lens on no less than ten Spaghetti Westerns in a row, Giuliano Carnimeo took a detour with the adequately sleazy giallo The Case of the Bloody Iris, (Perché quelle strane gocce di sangue sul corpo di Jennifer?, Why Those Strange Drops of Blood on Jennifer's Body?, Erotic Blue).  Crediting himself once again under the Americanized name Anthony Ascott, Carnimeo scored genre regulars George Hilton and Edwige Fenech as the two good-looking leads. the latter who is pursued once again by a shady, hedonistic cult in a similar enough fashion as she was in the same year's All the Colors of the Dark.  As is typical with Euro-trash, women are treated particularly and hilariously awful here as they are berated, seen as hysterical nuisances, objectified, smacked across the face, raped, and of course murdered.  There is even a lesbian character and crotchety old woman who act as bad as the men do, just to make sure that Fenech is sparred nothing and punished in some form of another just for being gorgeous.  Carnimeo throws in more humor here than giallos often allow, (sometimes effectively and sometimes awkwardly), with quite a bit of police detective padding in place of more over the top murder sequences.  The film looks a lot better than it is, but it also seems to be in on its formulaic and silly nature.

 

SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CAT'S EYE

(1973)

Dir - Antonio Margheriti

Overall: MEH

 

The Gothic giallo hybrid Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye, (La morte negli occhi del gatto, Sieben Tote in den Augen der Katzefrom), is unfortunately a lame one from director Antonio Margheriti.  Atmospheric on paper only, it has a typical set up of a motley crew of people conducting themselves in a large, Scottish mansion where everyone keeps getting picked off as a gorilla is seen occasionally through a window, bodies disappear and are assumed to be vampire for no reason, women have emotional nightmares that none of the men take seriously, a cat seems to be supernaturally up to something, characters are sleeping with and back-stabbing each other, and all of it is dreadfully boring.  The plotting plays out like a typical giallo, with an obvious red herring who the audience never once believes is the actual killer, only to reveal the real one in the final scene whose motivation is of course laughably convoluted and unsatisfying.  Though Anton Diffring is always a nice addition to any genre film and there is a barely touched upon lesbian angle thrown in to spice things up with Doris Kuntsmann's adulteress, neither of these things is enough to ward off the persistent sense of disinterest.  Margheriti has certainly done worse in his filmography, but he perhaps never did anything less memorable, at least as far as his horror works are concerned.

 

KILLER NUN

(1979)

Dir - Giulio Berruti

Overall: MEH

Set in the modern day and claiming to be based on the real life case of Cecile Bombeek who committed a series of murders at a Catholic-run hospital in Belgium circa 1977, Killer Nun, (Suor Omicidi, Sister Nun, Geständnis einer Nonne), is an unimpressive nunsploitation outing that arrived late in the sub-genre's heyday.  The second of only two directorial efforts from Giulio Berruti who was generally an editor, it is as poorly paced as any other Euro-trash movie and sans a nasty acupuncture murder and Paola Morra's naked, well-endowed chest area, it is mostly void of excessive violence and nudity.  Most of the sleaze, (which also includes lesbianism and drug abuse), is alluded to more than shown, despite the film's video nasty reputation.  It managed to score a past-her-prime, appropriately over the top Anita Ekberg in the lead, along with more subdued performances from Alida Valli as the Mother Superior and Andy Warhol regular Joe Dallesandro as a dashing doctor.  There is a "twist" ending that anyone who is only paying half attention to what is going on can spot a mile away and a couple of moment's where Ekberg's morphine withdraws spiral into nasty behavior for a hoot, but it is mostly a tame and monotonous affair that does not live up to its trashtacular title.

1980s Italian Horror Part Two

CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE
(1980)
Dir - Antonio Margheriti
Overall: MEH

Coming from an wide-ranging background of Gothic horror, giallos, sword and sandal, westerns, sci-fi, and various other things in between, prolific filmmaker Antonio Margheriti dropped this weird, cannibal/Vietnam hybrid Cannibal Apocalypse, (Apocalypse Domani, Invasion of the Flesh Hunters, Cannibals in the Streets), in between two other just as eclectically paired movies at the dawn of the 80s.  While the film assuredly is not good, by Eurotrash standards it has some goofy, gross-out appeal.  The English dubbing is as wincingly bad as any from the era and certainly helps the already melodramatic performances kicking into an even higher gear with a cartoon cutout police Sargent, a dopey, Southern-accent doctor, and all of the women coming off the most ridiculous.  John Saxon in one of his many appearances in an Italian production is literally the only actor on screen who plays it respectable and he sticks out for better or worse because of it.  Speaking of clashing, the ideas presented in the script deserve some props for uniting the treatment of war veterans with almost a zombie outbreak type of scenario, but again, the movie is too consistently schlocky to make any type of enduring points.  It is plenty gory though and well-paced for a change.

BURIAL GROUND
(1981)
Dir - Andrea Bianchi
Overall: WOOF

Occasionally, something gets unleashed that on paper is so uniquely horrible as to cause nothing but sheer befuddlement.  Andrea Bianchi's Burial Ground, (Le Notti del terrore, Nights of Terror, Zombi Horror, The Zombie Dead, Zombie 3), is just such a movie.  A collection of nonsensical set pieces with bizarre production choices such as a twenty-five year old, midget-height actor playing a woman's young, incestuous child is all fascinatingly absurd.  As far as a plot goes, there is none.  The first act features several couples getting interrupted while making out or having sex by either zombies or the weird man-kid, then everyone locks themselves indoors Night of the Living Dead style and the story ends there with about fifty minutes still left to go.  Laughably slow undead is nothing singular to this film when compared to others of the Italian or Spanish variety, but the zombies here not only move like their eternal organs are exclusively made of molasses, but they also variate randomly between the standard biting people to also choking them, throwing things at them, equipping themselves with scythes to break down doors, or pretending to be monks.  The relentless pacing mixed with the total lack of narrative and thoroughly odd details scattered about make it something to see, (and scratch your head at), alright.

THE CHURCH
(1989)
Dir - Michele Soavi
Overall: GOOD

Yet another collaboration between Dario Argento and director Michele Soavi, The Church, (La Chiesa), is a bit problematically slow, but still a somewhat effective "gates of hell" Euro-horror entry.  While it was initially scripted by Franco Ferrini and Dardano Sacchetti as the third entry in Lamberto Bava's Dèmoni franchise, (which was likewise produced by Argento), apparently little to no interest was shared with another such sequel and it ultimately shifted into the hands of Soavi who reworked the screenplay as a stand-alone entry.  It still bares some standard calling cards from Argento's projects, namely loose plotting, a score which combines pieces from past collaborators Keith Emerson and Goblin's bassist Fabio Pignatelli, and rather creepy, inappropriate scenes involving Argento's daughter Asia.  Though eerily atmospheric in spots, it takes rather long for things to start moving and even with all of the extra build up, the story is still so thin that it is really not warranted.  When it does stop pussyfooting around though, it is a solid combination of silly and fun set pieces involving lots of gore, characters acting strange, and the occasional live action demon puppet.  Similar to other films of its irk, the flaws can be seen as tolerable so long as the rest of it delivers the evil in a sufficient enough manner, which is mostly the case here.

1960s Antonio Margheriti Part Two

BATTLE OF THE WORLDS
(1961)
Overall: WOOF

Antonio Margheriti who is dubbed Anthony M. Dawson here for more easy to pronounce American audiences helmed his second ridiculous, barely-a-budget sci-fi dud Battle of the Worlds, (Pianeta degli uomini spenti), a year after his debut Space-Men.  For this go around he scored none other than Claude Rains of all completely random people to be in it.  Everything about Rains character is laughably absurd from how much of a raging asshat he is, to his seemingly godlike abilities to know everything down to the most minute detail at all times, (often by scribbling some math on random objects with chalk, looking at things, or just boldly proclaiming them out of nowhere).  It is mostly his hilarious performance though which shows an untamed, full-throttle devotion into camp that the noted thespian never even hinted at before.  Hypothetically taking Rains out of the equation though, this may be the most unmemorable Italian sci-fi movie ever made, which is saying something.  The characters are embarrassingly underwritten, the "special" effects are anything but, and it is atrociously dull throughout almost its entire running time.  Yet with Rains unabashedly hamming it up to the umpteenth degree and the movie so cliche-ridden and stupid that it actually has you guessing along the way just how cliche-ridden and stupid it is going to be, it is fair to say that this is worth at least one viewing, solely to point and laugh at.  Out loud of course.

THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH
(1964)
Overall: MEH

Having Barbara Steele on board alone for the amusingly titled The Long Hair of Death, (I lunghi capelli della morte), makes it impossible not to link back to Mario Bava's Black Sunday which more or less kickstarted the European Gothic horror boom four years earlier.  In pretty much every respect, this film plays a similar, standard game.  It starts with a woman wrongly being put to death as a witch, (of course), who curses her executioners, (of course), has her bloodline seek revenge, (of course), and then there is more barely important stuff about horny, hypocritical Counts and whatnot being all horrible and getting their comeuppance, (of course).  The script by Margheriti and Tonino Valerii based off of a story by Ernesto Gastaldi, (who would pen a hefty number of low-budget horror and sword and sandal movies), would be fine with all of its cliches in tow.  That is if not for the badly written characters who abruptly change their motivations and behavior at a moments notice.  People are boldly refusing to do things or carrying their weight around only to become either sheepishly or diabolically accommodating in the very next scene.  The middle of the movie plods along too and pretty much dooms the ending to come off far more lackluster than it was intended.  There are some memorable scenes of animated corpses though and a few other moody bits that work OK.

THE YOUNG, THE EVIL, AND THE SAVAGE
(1968)
Overall: GOOD

When making a giallo with an eye-ball rollingly silly script like this, it is usually a better move to have a bit of fun with the whole ordeal.  It is in this very regard that The Young, the Evil, and the Savage, (also hilariously titled Nude...si muore aka Naked...You Die), is a success.  Sure the story is loaded with cliches, (obvious transvestite), plot holes, (no one would notice any smell omitting from a huge crate with a dead body in it in the warm Italian summer for days on end?), and moronic behavior amongst most of its characters, (get woken up in the middle of the night by a shower being left on when a girl is missing/presumed murdered and decide to go in and take a shower yourself?), but both Antonio Margheriti and his cast seem consistently to be enjoying themselves with how kind of dumb it all is.  The movie laughs off how Mark Damon, (The Pit and the Pendulum), openly romances an underage girl and another one, (British born Sally Smith), is a downright hoot as an aspiring crime novelist/investigator who sasses her way around the boarding school while jumping in to save the day on more than one occasion.  While it is not very flamboyantly staged, Margheriti excels at least as far as the "whodunit?" element is concerned by misleading the audience nearly every step of the way, often more cleverly than not.

1960s Antonio Margheriti Part One

THE VIRGIN OF NUREMBERG

(1963)

Dir - Antonio Margheriti

Overall: WOOF

Quite sadly, Christopher Lee appeared in one of the worst movies ever made and that movie is The Virgin of Nuremberg, (La vergine di Norimberga, Horror Castle).  A rushed production which was filmed in three weeks hot off the heels of director Antonio Margheriti's Castle of Blood which was released the following year, Nuremberg is based on a disposable, cheap Italian paperback novel of the same name by Maddalena Gui with a screenplay credited to three different people including Margheriti.  This makes sense considering how utterly messy and ridiculous it all plays out.  Every single detail in the plot is almost impressively stupid.  Everything every character says, everything they do, every single thing that happens is devoid of logic in a manner far surpassing even the usual Euro-horror standards.  The sets are fine and the music is awful in a generic sense, but the mind-numbingly stupid script and cripplingly tedious pacing makes it as close to unwatchable as can be imagined.  Even by silly and lousy Italian horror standards, only the truest gluttons for punishment can hope to endure how unentertainingly terrible this is.  Truly the worst of its kind, that is for sure.

 

CASTLE OF BLOOD
(1964)
Dir - Antonio Margheriti/Sergio Corbucci
Overall: MEH

Occasionally spooky and containing a more than admirable if cliche ridden plot, flaws in Castle of Blood, (Danza Macabra), sadly do too much harm to the proceedings.  Sergio Corbucci was initially on board to direct it, having been given the opportunity to make a Gothic horror film on the cheap from producer Giovanni Addessi who had some sets left over from The Monk of Monza that he wanted to get more mileage out of.  While he conceived of the initial story concept, Corbucci ended up dropping out, (though he was later brought in to direct a single scene), and his friend Antonio Margheriti took on the project instead.  Margheriti stretches the deliberate, would-be moody pacing too far and in several instances the movie goes from genuinely white-knuckled to tedious.  This makes it far too easy for the viewer to lose patience and by the end of it, more moments become undone by their exhausting presentation than not.  It is another common shame where the material is treated sincerely, the premise is solid, the performances are fine, the sets are wholly appropriate for such a gloomy affair, and the small budget is forgivable, but they just cannot pick up the goddamn pace.

WAR BETWEEN THE PLANETS
(1966)
Overall: MEH

It is occasionally charming how awful some cinematic dung heaps are and War Between the Planets, (not to be confused with about ten other Italian movies titled with the same group of words made in and around the decade that this one was produced), gets a solid "so bad it is almost kind of OK good" pass.  A typical drive-in schlock fest made on a dime and designed to maybe make a few extra dollars than it was worth, its only really remembered now by people who champion silly, cheap, European genre cash-grabs and that is perfectly fine.  Giacomo Rossi Stuart, (Kill, Baby, Kill), plays one of the most unnecessarily hard-assed space captains and when he is not getting into macho fistfights with other officers or scowling in all of his shots, he is yelling at everyone for not following his orders and spattering off some of the most redundant dialog you are likely to hear along with the rest of the cast.  The effects are an absolute hoot with toy space ships, astronauts dangling on wires against papier-mâché planets and cardboard backdrops, and a bubbling alien/comment/planet/something with snugly blankets that act as organic material.  The amount of effort put into pretending this is a real movie by the cast and crew is rather adorable at some instances, but of course it starts to drag too much by the pathetic finale and you are left barely remembering what you just watched.  Which is also kind of fine.

THE UNNATURALS
(1969)
Overall: GOOD

Antonio Margheriti closed out the 1960s with probably his strongest overall film, the cold and eerie The Unnaturals, (Contronatura in Italy, Schreie in der Nacht in Germany, both countries of which had studios that co-produced it).  The first half moves a bit too slow, but eventually we are treated to something closely resembling an anthology mystery, with the guilty secrets of a bunch of rich socialites all getting revealed to us in various flashbacks over a séance.  Margheriti maintains pretty tight control of the material here and working with his own screenplay as well as co-producing, it is one of the rare auteur works in the director's filmography, (and probably the reason he considered it his best movie).  The international cast is pretty strong with German-born Marianne Koch, (A Fistful of Dollars), standing out the most as a tragic, closeted lesbian.  The erotic aspects are mostly underplayed with only minimal nudity and the sex scenes being as atmospheric as the "creepy castle during a thunderstorm" ones.  The finale is a bit unexpected almost in a humorous way, but it is just another pleasantly surprising element to a film that would have been far less successful under more exploitative and uninspired direction.