1990s British Horror Part Three

THE REFLECTING SKIN

(1990)

Dir - Philip Ridley

Overall: MEH

For his full-length debut, English artist/novelist/filmmaker Philip Ridley was inspired by American prairie lands, American Gothic artwork, American films, and American literature to make The Reflecting Skin.  Ironically shot in Alberta Canada then, it is a stylized piece of Americana cinema all the same and one that portrays some horrific elements through the imaginative eyes of a young boy while the sun shines brightly, the birds chirp, and the farmhouses are decorated in plain colors of yellow, brown, and white.  While moments in it are certainly bizarre and it follows a sort of childlike, nightmare logic at times, it is so lushly photographed and even whimsical in nature that it makes for a bit of a clashing experience.  The characters are not easily relatable and some are even downright off-putting, but the movie gets by on Ridley's somewhat eccentric vision or at least it tries to.  Ultimately, the story is not particularly engaging enough to work though, save for a few interesting ideas scattered about.

 

MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN

(1994)

Dir - Kenneth Branagh

Overall: MEH

 

Two years after Francis Ford Coppola artistically and commercial updated Dracula for the big screen, Shakespeare enthusiast Kenneth Branagh attempted the same thing with the other big, classic cinema monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  While it is likewise far more faithful to its source material than virtually any other version before or since and goes for the same over the top, melodramatic flare that Coppola did, (at least on paper), Branagh misses the mark in a pretty consistent manner.  Cranked up to eleven, it is incessantly loud with hardly a solitary moment of subtlety.  For a two hour long movie, the story is bulldozed through in a typical, blockbuster-style, ADD manner.  Since it never stops to catch its breath then, instead it bombards the screen with Romantic era set pieces, grime and nastiness, things being both soaking wet and laughably combustible, dutch angles, rapid-fire editing, and characters overacting to the very best of their abilities, all of which are set to lush, dramatic music that never lets up.  Branagh does not show a quirky or even remotely avant-style; it is just a blaring, grandiose mess.  For straight-up monster movie fans though, Robert De Niro's turn as the creature and Helena Bonham Carter's briefly as his bride are relatively memorable and some of the artistic details can be seen as a nice addition to the Frankenstein mythos overall.

I, ZOMBIE: THE CHRONICLES OF PAIN

(1998)

Dir - Andrew Parkinson

Overall: MEH

 

Distributed by Fangoria Films and serving as the debut from writer/director/editor Andrew Parkinson, I, Zombie: The Chronicles of Pain is a simple yet ambitious walking corpse yarn.  Shot very primitively on 16 mm film which gives it a somewhat unfortunate SOV quality, it is not the most visually compelling movie in the world.  It does win points for its earnest attempt at being a far more tragic and thoughtful zombie film, one whose entire premise is exploring the slow, emotional as well as physical deterioration of its subject; an average Joe that is randomly bitten by a woman and then goes on to rot as he holds off his flesh-eating urges.  A unique idea on paper, but the execution is a bit dull beyond its poor look.  It is presented as a part documentary, but also one that is narrated by the main protagonist who is presumed missing by everyone the entire movie.  The concept is also a little TOO simple as it becomes predictably monotonous.  Ultimately, it is a rather depressing experience as well.  Probably better for zombies to turn as quickly as possible and then get a bullet in the head just as hastily than watch them mentally deteriorate and jerk off to their girlfriend.

1990s Italian Horror Part Two

THE MASK OF SATAN
(1990)
Dir - Lamberto Bava
Overall: MEH

A quasi-remake of Mario Bava's seminal Black Sunday from his son Lamberto, The Mask of Satan, (La maschera del demonio, Demons 5, Demons V: The Devil's Veil, La Mascara del Satan), is a somewhat charming though ultimately mediocre retelling of its source material.  It was made for the European television series Sabbath, debuting in the summer of 1990 where it inevitably got lumped in with Lamberto's own Demons franchise, becoming one of the several non-official sequels in it.  Fusing the loose, Black Sunday concept of a condemned witch in an iron mask coming back to wreak her vengeance with a contemporary setting where dumb-dumb, horned-up, attractive characters get possessed and run around laughing a lot, it cruises along at a solid enough trot to not become too concerned with the humdrum script.  Despite some inconsistent character behavior and a comparative lack of gore, it is well decorated and has a consistent, mostly non-schlocky tone until about the last five minutes at least.  The story really is not dense enough to keep numerous moments from growing repetitive though, especially the third act where it tries to get more psychologically ambitious and clever.

THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER

(1991)

Dir - Michele Soavi

Overall: MEH

 

Another stylish collaboration between Dario Argento and Michele Soavi which acts rather as a Euro-Rosemary's Baby, The Devil's Daughter, (The Sect, La Setta), becomes inescapably messy, but has some charm to it nonetheless.  The story is not particularly strong, struggling as most Italian horror films do to maintain coherency while primarily being concerned with macabre set pieces that are often fun and ghastly, yet almost comically arbitrary as well.  In the lead, Kelly Curtis' performance is uneven as is the score by Pino Donaggio which gets a little too over the top at times.  That said, at least genre regular Herbert Lom delivers the creepy as a mysterious, hobo-esque Satan enthusiast.  Tone wise, Soavi plays it very serious, something which occasionally enhances the inherent bizarreness, particularly during a moment where a woman's face gets ripped off ceremoniously by hooks and then when Curtis is attacked sexually by a bird and forced to give birth in a pool surrounded by weird women egging her on.  Sadly though, the cumbersome running time and inadvertently laughable qualities do undermine its potential to actually be frightening, which it assuredly is not.  Interesting at times yes, but that is about it.

WAX MASK

(1997)

Dir - Sergio Stivaletti

Overall: GOOD

 

This quasi-remake of House of Wax doubles as a rare collaboration between Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, indented as a directorial effort for the latter who ended up dying before shooting began.  Handed off to special effects artist Sergio Stivaletti to be behind the lens then with a story by Argento and a screenplay co-written by Fulci, Wax Mask, (M.D.C. - Maschera di cera), is a gory, fun, and sloppily plotted update of the standard, Italian-flavored variety.  Visually, Stivaletti's steampunk version of the horror classic has rusted medical equipment, brightly colored liquid bubbling in gigantic tubes, skeletal, Terminator-esque monsters, and elaborate needles and masks which seem old fashioned and futuristic all at once.  This all goes along with the usual ingredients of an ugly assistant, the secretly deformed mad genius, a dramatic soundtrack that plays incessantly and obnoxiously throughout, the dashing hero, women who cannot keep their boobs covered for very long, and a story that is as predictable as they come.  Its combination of mundane and inventive qualities somewhat cancel each other out, but it is briskly paced enough with just the right amount of schlock to comfortably please genre fans.

1990s Italian Horror Part One

NIGHTMARE CONCERT: A CAT IN THE BRAIN

(1990)
Dir - Lucio Fulci
Overall: MEH

A thoroughly bizarre, late entry in Lucio Fulci's increasingly inconsistent filmography, Nightmare Concert: A Cat in the Brain, (Un gatto nel cervello (I volti del terrore)), finds the director not only appearing as himself, but also top billed for the first and only time in his career.  A meta-film which desperately cobbles together footage from some of Fulci's older works as well as those from various other filmmakers, the linking story and entire presentation is rather lame and uninteresting.  It is not just the sequences of previous movies included that give it an out of date feel, but the liberal use of zooms, piss-pour dubbing, and the giallo-flavored story line are anything but contemporary.  To the film's credit, the mix mash of footage is not as consistently jarring as it could have been, though solo shots of Fulci simply reacting to things that are taken from different movies while never sharing the same screen space with anything in them is still pretty ridiculous let alone incredibly monotonous.  It might be the easiest entry in Fulci's repertoire to tune out of while watching and sadly, a pretty embarrassing one to nearly go out on.

 

CEMETERY MAN

(1994)

Dir - Michele Soavi

Overall: GOOD

 

Director Michele Soavi's first attempt at comedy be it of the dark, off-kilter variety was this adaptation of Tiziano Sclavi’s novel Dellamorte Dellamore, here also given the English title Cemetery Man.  It is a bizarre mix of genres, some co-mingling more inconsistently than others.  As the title character whose aim with a handgun is uncannily accurate, Rupert Everett seems all at once perpetually horny, easily love-stricken, cynical, cut-off from reality, and self-loathing in his desperately lonely job as a graveyard caretaker who also "takes care" of its inhabitants.  Meaning inhabitants that routinely rise up as zombies for reasons the script spends literally zero time explaining.  While it is often wildly unorthodox and bordering on incoherence because of it, this also serves as a large part of the film's charm.  The absurdness is more subtle than overtly over the top, almost as if its messy lack of plotting is unintentional, though this is likely not the case.  Throw in tone issues and inconsistent character behavior and it all makes for quite a unique, avant-garde finished product that is certainly headscratching, yet also entertaining enough for the same reasons.

THE MYSTERIOUS ENCHANTER
(1996)
Dir - Pupi Avati
Overall: GOOD

A return to the horror genre and probably the best work in it form Italian filmmaker Pupi Avati, The Mysterious Enchanter, (L'arcano incantatore, Arcane Sorcerer), is a different beast than his more well-known giallos.  That said, it does bare similarities to The House with Laughing Windows from twenty years prior as it takes place in a remote location, focuses on a character that is employed by an excommunicated monsignor, and features a diabolical twist.  Plenty of other bizarre details are scattered about as well, though it is essentially a mood piece, with Avati, cinematographer Cesare Bastelli, and composer Pino Donaggio creating a menacing mood out of the large, run-down, candle-lit estate that is home to an enormous library presumably full of mysterious, supernatural enchanting volumes.  As far as most Euro-horror which it is in part a throwback to, the story is more streamlined if not still intentionally ambiguous.  There is no emphasis on outrageous set pieces or logic-defying silliness in other words; instead it is genuinely creepy and subdued, thankfully with no pacing lulls despite the small cast of characters and isolated setting.

Night of the Living Dead

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

(1968)

Dir - George A. Romero

Overall: GREAT

Fifty-two years and some days ago, George A. Romero and a devoted collection of Pittsburgh natives all chipped in, (and without realizing it at the time), changed the horror film forever with Night of the Living Dead.  Is there anything left to say after all these decades later concerning possibly the most written about and critically examined movie that the genre ever produced?  It is cherished and beloved.  It is hugely influential.  It is culturally significant as much today as it was during the era of civil unrest and the Vietnam War in which it was produced.  It is one of the most inspiring and successful independent movies ever made.  Really, if you have not seen it by now, why would you even be reading this or be on a blog like this in the first place?

There are many aspects then to Romero's undead masterpiece, (and truly one of the best American movies of any kind to emerge from the 1960s), that make it remarkable.  Romero and his company The Latent Image was formed along with friends John Russo and Russell Streiner, both of whom appeared in the film.  As well as being the co-screenwriter on the finished product, Russo shows up as a random zombie; Streiner as Johnny aka the "They're Coming to Get You Barbara" guy.  Having tooled away making commercials and even Mister Rogers' Neighborhood shorts, they eventually acquired a 35 mm camera for the job of an elaborate, Fantastic Voyage spoof for Calgon soap.  With this new piece of fancy gear at their disposal, the crew got restless and wanted to attempt making an actual full-length movie with it.  They quickly abandoned an Ingmar Bergman-esque, introspective period drama called Whine of the Fawn which Romero had penned a script for and instead went with the more crowd pleasing genre of horror.

 

There can be no modern zombie culture without...soap!

A new production company called Image Ten was then formed with the Latent Image guys along with Karl Hardman, (Mr. Cooper), and Marilyn Eastman, (Helen Cooper).  After various other investors came on board, (many of whom also appeared in the finished film), a budget of a hundred and fourteen thousand dollars was eventually raised.  Small potatoes indeed to put a movie together, primarily with non actors and no legitimate studio backing.  It got made on sheer will power alone it seemed, with nearly everyone on screen also serving some other behind the scene duties to get the job done.

 

By the time that it was completed and shopped around for a distributor, everyone passed on it or if not, Romero passed on them for wanting the ending changed to something more conventionally uplifting.  Sticking to their guns and almost having wasted their time and resources with no one willing to get it shown in theaters, the Manhattan-based company Walter Read Organization finally agreed to distribute it, but again under a condition.  Thankfully, this one ended up being for the best as they wanted to change the more misleadingly schlocky title of Night of the Flesh Eaters to the comparatively more eerie Night of the Living Dead.  Of course in the process they also forgot to add a copyright indication to the new title on all of the prints, thus ensuring that the movie remained in the public domain until this day.  That is another story entirely though.

 

The less that's spoken about the 30th Anniversary abomination that only exists because any asshole can legally add their own footage to Night of the Living Dead, the better.

When finally unleashed upon an audience, the initial critical response was lukewarm since the film was pared with hokey B-movies for the drive-in crowd, as was common of such low-budget fare of the day.  Before too long and particularly due to the more positive recognition it received in Europe though, NOTLD was re-released back home and truly began making its undeniable mark and finding its audience in the process.

 

No hyperbole is necessary in considering it a legitimate game changer.  For the most part, the horror film up until this point had changed with the times as far as cultural interest, but they were still formulaic in their approach.  Whether dealing with Gothic literary and folklore tropes based around vampires, ghosts, werewolves, mummies, or man-made monsters, all the way to the more atomic age of the 50s and 60s where giant, behemoth-like creatures or Communist stand-in aliens from neighboring planets besieged the human race, nothing like what was show in Night of the Living Dead resembled anything of the sort.  Certainly the outcome of the film was far more desolate and bleak than any Godzilla or Universal monster movie had been.

Behold, true bleakness in its most cinematic of forms.

The "zombies" here are not referred to as such, only as "ghouls".  This was because the traditional film zombie was a resurrected body under mystical, voodoo hypnotism with some diabolical master pulling the strings.  In Romero's film, people inexplicably come back to life and even more inexplicably seek to CONSUME life by attacking and eating any living specimen that they can get their hands on.  The monsters in this case are regular, once normal people.  They are not under a curse, bitten by a supernatural being, existing ethereally between two worlds, sent from outer space, caused by radiation, or made in a lab; they are just the recently dead who no longer are going to stay that way.  There is a simplicity there that is unnerving.  Romero offers no explanation because none was necessary.  The void left by giving any such details to the audience is in turn far more frightening and concerning than anything that a screenplay could have divulged to us.

The fear of the unknown is a prominent component to most of the best horror stories out there and certainly to this one.  Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, (released six years prior), likewise presents its threat as a random occurrence, simply throwing its characters in the midst of unexplainable chaos for the duration of two hours.  Perhaps in both films, a Biblical parallel can be drawn.  Mankind has lost its humanity and as the equally brilliant sequel Dawn of the Dead would proclaim as a possible "answer", there is simply "no more room in hell".

 

Always room for fat juicy bugs though amiright?

Romero deliberately wanted to present his ghoul-outbreak from ground zero, yet he wastes no time in getting right to the good stuff as the industry executives would say.  The opening scene in an unassuming cemetery in broad daylight begins innocently enough, sans for the stock, scary music that signifies in a subtle yet assured way that something is already awry in what we are seeing.  Within minutes, that concerned feeling we already have is justified as a man randomly begins attacking the only two speaking characters we have thus far met.  One of them is presumably killed in an instant; so much for that guy being a main player.  This leaves Barbara who just in the minuscule amount of dialog that we are given, is already proven to be on-edge by being sensitive to her surroundings that once scared her as a kid.  Now the scary stuff is real; now it is unexplained.  It will remain that way for the rest of the movie.

The bulk of Night of the Living Dead takes place in an abandoned farmhouse, one that the crew were able to rent on the cheap as it was fit to be demolished soon afterwards.  This proves not to be a detriment since Romero even as a twenty-seven year old, first-time filmmaker was already primarily interested in presenting social commentary to go along with the horror.  It is an ideal location for such a thing.  With the utterly random realization that the dead are no longer going to stay dead let alone leave the living alone, there is also the realization that society itself will collapse along with it in such a claustrophobic environment no less.

 

In many ways, creepier than any haunted mansion would ever be.

The characters cooped up in that farmhouse are from all different walks of life; Barbara is an immediately traumatized, young attractive white woman, Ben is a strong-willed, practical oriented black man, Mr. Cooper is a scared, bald, stubborn suburban dad with an uneasy relationship with his frustrated and equally frightened wife, Tom and Judy are a young, optimistic couple from the country.  None of them are proven to be right or wrong in their actions.  Some may have more likable or benevolent qualities than others, but Romero and Russo's script wisely make them all flawed to some extent.  These characters are as textbook as anything else in the movie, meaning they are not textbook at all.  They are presented as real, unremarkable people who are caught in a very real, unexplained, and horrifically deadly scenario.  They mean well, but they also make that scenario worse and in the process, the dead keep on coming.

The film's relentless quality then is made more so by all the people on screen not being able to get along.  No matter what they agree on, disagree on, no matter what they do or refuse to do, the rules have changed and none of it matters.  It is a grim film in every respect though arguably, it is never more grim than in its final moments.

 

After enduring the night of the title only by frantically giving in to the one reality that he violently riled against Mr. Cooper about the whole film, (that the cellar really was the safest place to hide out), Ben emerges the next morning in a daze, yet still cautious.  The ghouls have dispersed.  The audience knows what Ben does not know though; that a militia of local good ole boys strapped to the gills with firearms and what would otherwise be drug-sniffing dogs are taking out all of the walking corpses that they can find, adding them "to the fire" as they do so.  We see what is coming and after the ordeal that we have just witnessed and then briefly feeling optimistic for Ben's future as the one character who is going to survive, it is even more visceral how that optimism is broken.  Especially for audiences of the time, their brains were wired not to expect the worst.  Ben's emergence from the cellar to a house full of no zombies clearly indicates that he is going to be OK and there is now some semblance of hope right?  Of course we know the answer to that and Romero and company had no intention of ending their tiny, "little engine that could", indie horror movie on any such buoyant note.

That combination look of "Oh shit" and "I've been up all goddamn night listening to dead people wanting to eat me".

As a piece of social commentary, Night of the Living Dead is viably potent.  Romero and Russo chose not to change any part of their script concerning Ben being an African American.  Actor Duane Jones was simply the best candidate for the part.  Much praise has been given to the movie and rightfully so over no mention at any time by any character as to the fact that Ben is black.  Once again, it does not matter.  In this universe, this earth-shattering, safety-shattering, conventional horror film shattering world, no one makes it out alive, their skin color be damned.  The only ones that are shown to have been spared becoming flesh-eating ghouls are the hillbilly "saviors" with riffles who do not even bother to make sure that Ben is not all dead and all messed up before they shoot him.  He is shot anyway and the film ends with the titles shown over disturbing still photographs of his body being dragged away and the rounding up of the undead continuing as just a new thing to be taken care of.  There is no emotion to these images.  They are instead presented matter of factly.

 

In 1968, the first ever televised war was the one in Vietnam.  Pictures from both that and the race riots in major metropolitan areas were being shown across the country.  The final, unapologetically relevant images at the end of the movie present this fictional world as a mere stones throw away from the actual one of the time.  On that note, to hell with the "of the time" nonsense.  In 2020, these images still hit home as they did at the end of the 1960s.  Much has changed, but clearly much remains the same.  War and racial inequality are still very much a thing and perhaps the only saving grace that Romero's landmark film leaves us with is that well, at least the dead have not come back to eat us alive.  Yet.

Another saving grace is that at least we know to shoot 'em in the head now.

There would be more Living Dead movies under Romero's direction in the decades to come.  One of them was on par with its predecessor here, one was flawed yet still damn enjoyable, and the last three, well, Romero is no longer with us so let us not speak ill of the actual dead.  In any event, Night of the Living Dead begat what is now the conventionally regarded film zombie.  What started as an intentional deviation from the previously established, cinematic walking corpse in turn came to define it.  This was a movie that made no apologies for its unforgiving finale and whose relatively crude production qualities, cinematography, and performances made it seem less like a popcorn-ready product and more like an unflinching glimpse into a disheartening world, as far as possible from the kind that Hollywood was frequently presenting.  It ushered in new possibilities for what the horror film could do and set an unreachable hallmark for regional filmmaking.

 

The American New Wave found its first poster boy for the horror genre here.  Just as unexpected as the actual goings on in the movie itself is how unexpected it was that such a film came out of Pittsburgh of all places by a Bronx native with a TV commercial background who scrapped up enough cash with his friends and eager local business men and women to make it.  It is one of the best and enduring examples of how the studio system can be avoided with the right film at the right time made by the right people with the right agenda and frame of mind.  Romero and his band of misfits may have innocently just wanted to make a horror movie because they could do it affordably and it would be a nice little bit of fun, but the perfect storm of ingenuity, conventional cinematic defiance, and luck paved the way for an entire new crop of filmmakers to break more rules.  Everything that came in its wake owes it a considerable amount of gratitude.  It will stand as a paramount work so long as humanity can crumble into a storm of flesh-eating chaos and so long as unsuspecting people just trying to visit a graveyard at a cemetery can get freaked out by that guy walking kind of strange towards them in the distance.

It is bad enough that they had a three hour drive back, now they gotta do it with a broken window.  Sigh.

1980s Italian Horror Part Three

THE HOUSE OF BLUE SHADOWS

(1986)

Dir - Beppe Cino

Overall: MEH

 

An obscure, incoherent, small-scale, and meandering effort from writer/director Beppe Cino, The House of Blue Shadows, (La Casa del Buon Ritorno, The House of Good Returns, Haus der Blauen Schatten, The House with Blue Shutters), is high on atmosphere with nowhere to go story wise.  The cast is small and the entire thing was shot in only twelve days, almost entirely at a single location where it is persistently unclear what is even going on.  Two timelines are bounced back and forth between, (or so it would seem), which adds even more confusion to a dormant plot involving a couple staying in an old house because reasons, who are occasionally visited by a smirking woman from one of their pasts.  Also, there is a masked maybe ghost/maybe killer with an Onibaba mask on and something about a kid that was murdered fifteen years earlier.  It is all conveyed in a murky fashion, deliberately so by Cino who tries to create a spooky, surreal atmosphere that becomes laborious to sit through.  As the man in the relationship, Stefano Gabriniis' performance is hilariously awful as he yells almost all of his lines when not staring into mirrors with no expression on his face whatsoever.  We certainly feel his frustration in watching the finished product.

VAMPIRE IN VENICE
(1988)
Dir - Augusto Caminito/Klaus Kinski
Overall: GOOD

Tales of Klaus Kinski's barbaric difficulty on and off set are legendary and have served as the basis for more than one documentary even.  His resulting shenanigans during the filming of Vampire in Venice, (Nosferatu a Venezia, Prince of the Night), are no exception and included sexually assaulting his female actors, locking himself in his trailer, ignoring rehearsals and staging which forced the cinematographer to rearrange everything last minute, and demanding re-writes and cast changes.  So in other words, just another Klaus Kinski production.  To further complicate matters, the budget doubled, producer Augusto Caminito ended up directing along with an uncredited Kinksi after two other directors were either fired or dropped out for various reasons, and only two thirds of the movie were ultimately shot before everything inevitably collapsed.  It is therefor amazing that such an insufferably troubled production ended up not being a total disaster in its completed form.  While the plotting has absolutely no choice but to become incomprehensible, the thick, densely macabre atmosphere goes a very long way.  Respectable performances from Christopher Plummer, Barbara De Rossi, and a bit over the top Donald Pleasence also help.  Ultimately it is Kinski who remains as mesmerizingly disturbing as ever though.  Of course one cannot condone his atrocious methods, (even after he was forced to apologize on set allegedly), but it undoubtedly comes through as he pulls off one of cinema's most sadistic undead.

THE RED MONKS
(1989)
Dir - Gianni Martucci
Overall: MEH

Oddly out of time for the end of 1989, Gianni Martucci's final directorial effort The Red Monks, (I frati rossi), specifically evokes 60s and 70s Gothic Euro-horror.  It went so far as to attach Lucio Fulci's name to the project as special effects supervisor even though in reality the Italian filmmaker had nothing to do with any part of the movie.  The pacing is a little tighter at times and from a production standpoint it is much more professionally put together than the films it styles itself so closely after.  Though it fixes these all too common hick-ups with its more contemporary presentation, it is still a bit flat in other areas.  What turns out to be a flash-forward opening, (which was tagged on after the final cut by Martucci proved too short), serves no other purpose and the mystery is simple enough, but the payoff nothing to really write home about.  It is also low on gore though liberal with nudity and women getting raped of course.  The evil, Satan praising monks of the title can be directly linked to Amando de Ossorio's Blind Dead series, but while their vividly crimson get ups are indeed striking, naturally they pale in comparison to the highly effective and decrepit walking corpse skeletons of the Knights Templar.  It could be worth seeking out for fans of such material or those looking to scrape the barrel a bit with more obscure and singular stuff from its era, but it is still ultimately mediocre.

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.

1980s Italian Horror Part One

ZEDER
(1983)
Dir - Pupi Avati
Overall: MEH

The second strange and uneven giallo-esque offering from Pupi Avati after 1976's The House with Laughing Windows, Zeder, (Revenge of the Dead), gets points for little else besides its ambitions and a handful of brief, quite spooky moments.  It is a frustrating example of having a fairly unique enough premise that at very infrequent intervals has glimpses of atmospheric and macabre visuals.   Such things are ultimately wasted when the film is looked at as a whole though.  Once again, Avati's pacing is just dreadful, blowing at least its entire middle hour by advancing the plot with the most mundane, minute conversations between characters.  The problem is that while such things are happening, nothing else is.  This includes anything remotely creepy or befitting to such a genre film.  On that note, the bombastic horror music soundtrack seems to turn on at completely arbitrary intervals, often during scenes where nothing at all foreboding is even happening.  It becomes difficult to tell just what exactly is going on after awhile anyway, but not in a challenging manner.  Instead, the film seems to just meander aimlessly with too many people talking about too many things that are void of interest, let alone scares.

STAGE FRIGHT
(1987)
Dir - Michele Soavi
Overall: MEH

Serving as the behind the lens debut from Dario Argento protégé and actor turned director Michele Soavi, Stage Fright, (Deliria), has a singular premise of a theater trope locked up with a maniac in a rehearsal studio.  On top of that though, Soavi like Argento, (and Alfred Hitchcock before both), focuses on specific little details to rev-up tension.  The finale gets a lot of mileage out of a single key per example.  While the camera work is typically flashy for this kind of giallo-influenced fare and the film is well dressed in general, Soavi does not quite have the chops yet to keep the pacing from slagging, particularly in its first two lumbering acts.  While the final few set pieces do a tremendous job of making up for that, the very ending of the movie seems bafflingly tagged on and becomes both laughable and annoying as the final girl returns to the scene of the crime only to find the dead murderer who the police already took away still there inexplicably.  This is after he got stabbed in the eye, fell from the theater ceiling, and was set on fire.  Which then leads to the janitor rambling about how you have to take the safety off of a handgun before he shoots him "right between the eyes" and proceeds to say just those words about nine-hundred and eighty-four times in the last thirty seconds of the movie.  Remove that moronic nonsense and tighten up the first hour, and the movie passes the test of being a unique enough slasher to recommend.

THE SPIDER LABYRINTH
(1988)
Dir - Gianfranco Giagni
Overall: MEH

The relatively obscure and rather strange The Spider Labyrinth, (Il nido del ragno), remains the only non television or documentary work from director Gianfranco Giagni.  Also serving as his debut, Giagni brought in singer-songwriter Gianfranco Manfredi to co-tweak the initial script that had been floating around for sometime, a script with an odd premise of some kind of spider god worshiping cult operating in Budapest.  It is plenty atmospheric in spots and well shot by cinematographer Nino Celeste, but the first half is a sluggish crawl.  After the kind of pedestrian, standard opening dream sequence, the initial, board room set up that follows is a poor place to kick things into motion and sadly the script never picks up any proper momentum until well past the point of either noticing or caring what is even going on.  There is a mystery at hand, but when that mystery is not properly engaging as is the case here, the entire presentation assuredly suffers.  A freaky spider lady with mad scientist hair, wide eyes, and fangs does provide some much needed jolts, but the real horror movie meat and potatoes set piece doe not come until the very end, though it does make up for some of the humdrum approach of everything proceeding it.  It is probably more worthy of checking out a few select scenes the partaking of the actual complete filmgoing experience if one was so inclined though.