1980s Spanish Horror Part Four

BEYOND TERROR

(1980)
Dir - Tomás Aznar
Overall: MEH

Tomás Aznar only directed five full-length movies and the only one to be in the horror genre was Beyond Terror, (Más allá del terror); a criminal-on-the-run hybrid of sorts with loathsome characters from front-to-back.  The film's exploitative value is due to the icky behavior of a low-rent biker gang that murders everyone in a diner when their sloppy robbery attempt goes awry, only to kidnap a couple, beat an old lady, and then burn down her house with her grandson crying inside from the window.  Both of their captors go along with such unwholesomeness with less complainants than logic would dictate, plus the female falls in love with one of the thugs that she was supposed to merely seduce.  So as far as consistent character behavior goes, this is hardly the most plausible example out there, but at least the scumbag criminals remain awful, which is a shame since we are stuck with them for the entire duration.  Aznar goes for an ominous mood once the second half settles in where everyone is held up at an abandoned monastery, but the pacing is comatose-inducing and supernatural occurrences are way too few and far between.  There are some amazing looking undead monks or something that show up for a couple of seconds and ridiculous dialog like "You faggot, go feel up your mother!", but this is still subpar Euro-sleaze.

 

EL SER

(1986)

Dir - Sebastián D'Arbó

Overall: MEH

A later staring vehicle for the Spanish Vincent Price Narciso Ibáñez Menta, El ser, (The Being, Ectoplásma, Psychophobia, Psychophobia: Der Killer aus der 4. Dimension), is absurd and convoluted, though possibly to the benefit of genre fans.  Like many Euro-trash outings, the plotting is ridiculous and throws a number of arbitrary components into the mix.  Here, a recently widowed woman starts to experience supernatural phenomena that could be the ghost of her dead husband, the outcome of living in a home where a Satanic cult once worshiped, or the result of her own skyrocketing stress levels manifesting themselves via destructive psychic energy.  Some of these excuses/explanations are given proper pseudoscience break-downs while others are offered up merely in throw-away dialog, but there are also romance and financial drama plot points added to the mix.  It makes for a goofy watch that at least keeps busy as to not become a monotonous bore, but the sum of its parts still ends up being messy to say the least.  The performances are routinely melodramatic, (which is obviously intensified tenfold in its hilariously dubbed version), but Menta is his usual, respectable stuff even if he has the misfortune of delivering the most gobbledygook dialog.

 

MONSTER DOG
(1986)
Dir - Claudio Fragasso
Overall: MEH

A missed opportunity was had with Monster Dog, (Leviatán), to deliver something wonderfully stupid.  Directed by none other than Claudio Fragasso who would go on to helm arguably the most beloved worst movie ever made in Troll 2, his work here is subpar in a still strange yet less hilarious manner.  The script is plenty asinine and there are laugh out loud moments of incompetence, but these are due to the usual culprits of cheap special effects and wretched English dubbing.  While it is a plus that it contains two Alice Cooper songs recorded especially for it, (neither of which was released commercially until the 1999 box set The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper), it is obvious that the accompanying music videos for one of them was meant to be little more than padding since it appears twice and each time features the same relatively small amount of footage.  The film itself drags endlessly and Cooper in the lead is hardly given anything to do besides talk in a voice that is clearly not his.  With such a tiny budget, a generic and one-page script, plus a plodding tone that fails to take advantage of the inherent schlock value, the whole thing is a forgettable snore.

1980s Spanish Horror Part Three

REBORN

(1981)

Dir - Bigas Luna

Overall: MEH

A largely impenetrable, Spanish religious thriller that is set in America with a US cast, Reborn, (Born Again), doubles as the forth feature from filmmaker Bigas Luna.  An interesting staring vehicle for Dennis Hopper who plays a sleazy preacher, Larry Cohen's frequent lead Michael Moriarty also carries a significant amount of screen time and is his usual schlubby, mixed-bag-of-emotions-self.  Moriarty's unfocused character here has more to do with Luna's strange presentation than the script from Robert Dunn, since the movie never gains its footing during its hundred-plus minute running time.  Instead, it plays out in a strange, serious fever state where no one on screen seems to behave in a consistent manner and few moments of humor are thrown in to lighten the mood, save for some "Good for all eternity" televangelist credit card jabs from Hopper.  Many things are left aggravatingly dangling from a narrative perspective, such as the true nature of Antonela Murgia's foreign, faith-healing character, how Moriarty of all people became attached to her, what exactly her willing or unwilling participation with Hopper's religious organization is, and the especially confused, "ride off into the sunset" ending.

BEYOND DEATH

(1986)

Dir - Sebastián D'Arbó

Overall: MEH

 

What happens when you make a movie with all pseudoscience gobbledygook and no action?  You fall asleep while watching it.  Paranormal TV personality-turned filmmaker Sebastián D'Arbó's Beyond Death, (Más allá de la muerte), introduces the proceedings himself in an on screen cameo, treating his own field of study seriously; too seriously in fact as he forgets the entire concept of making something that has any kind of agreeable pacing or macabre set pieces to remember.  On paper, a mad scientist/Naziploitation bit of Euro-trash seems like it would offer up some ghastly, low-brow fun, yet "fun" is lacking in the final result.  Even with a convoluted plot that involves spies, double identities, raising people from the dead, and two people falling in love because movies, the presentation is a sluggish bore with endless babbling that regurgitates the same type of balderdash that countless other films of its kind have utilized.  That said, the grainy, newsreel-styled concentration camp flashbacks are surprisingly convincing and the ending introduces some visually ambitious, 2001: A Space Odyssey stargate sequences when two different characters transcend into the afterlife.  Narciso Ibáñez Menta does his best and prolific, lazy-eyed character actor Víctor Israel shows up for seven seconds because of course he does, but otherwise this is passable stuff.

 

MOON CHILD

(1989)

Dir - Agustí Villaronga

Overall: GOOD

As his follow-up to the brutally unforgiving In a Glass Cage, filmmaker Agustí Villaronga went a mystical route with Moon Child, (El niño de la luna).  Told in part as a coming-of-age fairy tale where a twelve year old boy grows up believing himself to be the Son of the Moon, (a god that was long ago prophesied by an African tribe), it also features a well-staffed, occult scientific community who adopts/kidnaps both children and adults with extrasensory abilities in order to breed their own lunar deity.  While the arcane details are never spoon-fed to the audience, they serve more of a metaphorical purpose about destiny and finding one's place in the world than anything else.  The performances are strong all around, with young Enrique Saldana, (in his only acting appearance ever), standing toe-to-toe with scream queen veteran Maribel Martín, (in her last acting appearance ever), as his ultimately benevolent pursuer.  The music was composed by the Australian duo Dead Can Dance, Lisa Gerrard of whom appears prominently as an impregnated woman on the run with the title character.  Perhaps too emotionally driven and low on satisfyingly coherent storytelling for some tastes, it is an evocative work for anyone else who can meet it under its own ethereal terms.

1980s Joe D'Amato Part Two

CONVENT OF SINNERS

(1986)

Overall: MEH

 

Joe D'Amato returns to nunsploitation for the first time since 1979's Images in a Convent with the similarly sleaze-themed Convent of Sinners, (La monaca nel peccato, The Sinful Nun).  Based off of Denis Diderot's 18th century novel La Religeuse, this adaptation naturally adds the type of rampant sexual repression and lesbianism found in such movies, but it does so in a bog-standard manner.  Of course being a D'Amato film, the nudity and nastiness is on full display as Eva Grimaldi's unwilling nun is tormented by the jealous wrath of her sisterhood since virtually every male or female character that she encounters is ravished with lust towards her.  Everything goes the typical route where higher-up priests are brought in due to easily-believed accusations of demonic possession and the abrupt ending slams home the cynical tone that paints Catholicism is a melodramatically dubious light.  D'Amato shot the film himself as he was wont to do, bathing everything in sweaty, soft-focus candlelight that is appropriate for the erotic, period-set material.  The plot points have all been utilized dozens of times and the movie treats its subject matter too sincerely to capitalize on the more outlandish aspects of nunsploitation, resulting in something that is both redundant and forgettable.

KILLING BIRDS

(1988)

Dir - Joe D'Amato/Claudio Lattanzi

Overall: MEH

 

Leave it to the Italians to somehow make a knock-off of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds that is in actuality a zombie movie.  Killing Birds, (Zombi 5, Killing Birds: Zombi 5, Zombie Flesheaters 4, L'attaque des morts-vivants, Killing Birds - Raptors), does shoehorn in a couple of ominous shots of winged avians plus an early scene where a younger version of Robert Vaughan's character gets his eyeball gouged out by one, but this is otherwise another set-up where a group of college kids go to a isolated place because of student reasons, only to be attacked by reanimated corpses.  This happens well into the running time as a small handful of arbitrarily mysterious things occur first to pad out an already sluggish viewing experience.  After murdering his wife and her lover in the opening scene, Vaughan's character just becomes a weird recluse with too limited an amount of screen time for the audience to understand or care why.  The same goes for everyone else on screen who are interchangeably uninteresting, so that there is little to no suspense or emotional investment when they get picked-off in standard, boring slasher fashion.  Joe D'Amato co-directed with Claudio Lattanzi here, but their powers combined wield bland results.

DEEP BLOOD

(1989)

Dir - Joe D'Amato/Raffaele Donato

Overall: WOOF

 

Sharing directorial duties again, (this time due to Raffaele Donato's alleged disinterest once production began), Deep Blood, (Sangue negli abissi, Blood in the Abyss, Sharks, Shakka - Bestie der Tiefe, Bestie z hlubin), is Joe D'Amato's inevitable Jaws knock-off and it is a sentimentally sappy one at that.  Primarily shot in Florida with an American cast, it utilizes both stock footage and the final shark explosion from Enzo G. Castellari's 1981 movie Great White; itself an earlier Euro-cash-grab of Steven Spielberg's endlessly copied blockbuster.  While George Nelson Ott's script does allow for ample amounts of screen time to focus on a bunch of childhood friends that grow-up to have manageable, low-stakes squabblings with their parents, love interests, police officials, and local bullies, such pedestrian melodrama is endlessly lackluster.  A syrupy musical score handled by Carlo Maria Cordio creates the antithesis of a menacing tone, plus the shark attacks are repetitive, largely spread out, and lazily shot.  They generally just involve someone swimming by themselves, (which obviously broadcasts their demise), as a loved one stares without emotion from the beach, doing nothing to save them. 

1980s Joe D'Amato Part One

EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD

(1980)

Overall: MEH

 

His first of two erotic gore movies shot concurrently in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Erotic Nights of the Living Dead, (Le notti erotiche dei morti viventi), is a typically sleazy affair from writer/director/producer Joe D'Amato.  As is the case with any genre film that throws in hardcore sex, the story line is inconsequential as things regular detour into tortuously boring pornographic encounters, bloating up the running time to unacceptable levels.  Sans an early sequence in a morgue, the zombies do not become active until over an hour in and they are of the Knights Templar variety, meaning even slower than the sex scenes.  Even one of the characters proclaims at one point that their only advantage is that the ghouls "move at a snails pace", hence them surviving by jogging away from them and shoving a voodoo amulet in their faces.  Though the makeup effects are primitive at best and the gore plays second fiddle to the "erotic" elements of the title, the lumbering undead islanders emerge in a creepy enough day for night sequence set to low-key, ominous music from Marcello Giombini.  The scenery in general is both barren and lovely which juxtapose the garish violence, bright red blood, and maggot infested closeups.

 

ANTROPOPHAGUS
(1980)
Overall: MEH

Another gross-out foray from Italian exploitation filmmaker Joe D'Amato, Antropophagus, (Antropophagus: The Bepoast and The Grim Reaper), is equal parts dull and gleefully gory.  In an attempt to create an air of mystery and perhaps humanize the otherwise cardboard characters, D'Amato ultimately wastes nearly the entire length of the film which comes off as sluggish instead of effectively grabbing or atmospheric.  A psychic lady rambles boringly, a pregnant lady says "Oww" a lot, and some of them look and behave similarly enough to forget their names the whole way through.  Then for about an hour, they hang around an abandoned Greek island village and maybe two things happen.  When the bloody moments do randomly erupt, they raise the excitement level a notch or two above comatose, but then it is right back to us not caring at all about anything going on.  When both the plot itself and the structure of it raise little to no interest in the viewer, the film i dead in its tracks no matter how many gooey, cannibalistic lunch buffets we are presented with.  So on that note, watching a mere highlight reel of all the nasty bits will suffice just fine.

 

PORNO HOLOCAUST

(1981)

Overall: WOOF

Another entry in Joe D'Amato's Caribbean series, Porno Holocaust, (Delizie erotiche in Porno holocaust, Blue holocaust, Holocausto porno), is notable for being one of the worst paced pornographic films in the history of cinema.  Shot in the Dominican Republic's Santo Domingo, (just as more than a half a dozen other no-budget, genre mash-up, D'Amato productions utilizing hardcore sex scenes were), it recycles the same actors, locations, and loose, kind-of plot elements by throwing a group of boring, unemotive characters on an island for reasons, all so they can get slowly picked-off by the walking dead.  "Slowly" is the key word here as everything is so lackadaisical that it is as if D'Amato was purposely attempting to lure his audience to sleep instead of grossing them out and/or giving them boners.  The frequent sex scenes happen for the flimsiest of reasons, (usually people walking around to silence for several minutes before stopping and saying "let's fuck"), and despite one scene where a nuclear zombie face-rapes a poor woman with a fake dong, absolutely nothing else remotely memorable happens.  The fact that the film has a credited screenwriter is a bigger joke than any unintentional chuckles that can be found if someone is desperate enough to make excuses for any, so yes, this should be neglected at all costs.

 

ABSURD

(1981)

Dir - Joe D'Amato

Overall: MEH

 

Producer/director/cinimatographer Joe D'Amato and actor/screenwriter George Eastman's unofficial sequel to their exploitation gore-fest Antropophagus was the comparatively less outrageous yet still nasty Absurd, (Rosso Sangue, Red Blood, Anthropophagus 2, Zombie 6: Monster Hunter, Horrible, The Grim Reaper 2).  Also designed as an answer to Halloween as every turn-of-the-80s slasher movie was, it has a similar premise of a speechless "boogeyman" killer with relentless healing abilities and a type of non-bias, murderous rage that will target anyone who crosses his path.  Eastman plays such an unstoppable force with a wide-eyed fury that is in keeping with his portrayal in the aforementioned Anthropophagus and the kill scenes involve buzzsawing a guy's skull open, shoving a drill-bit into a woman's temple, and cooking another woman's face in an oven.  Such brutality is adequately sprinkled through the proceedings, which is a good thing since the structure is as one-note as any in the sub-genre.  The film hardly boasts a compelling story and D'Amato still lacks both a budget and a sophisticated cinematic sense as far as keeping it as visually showy as some of his Italian contemporaries were able to.  That said, it has a blunt, unapologetically ghastly charm to it that will easily appease Euro-trash fans.

1980s Lamberto Bava Part Three - (Brivido Giallo Edition)

GRAVEYARD DISTURBANCE

(1987)

Overall: MEH

 

The first of four feature-length films done by Lamberto Bava for the Brivido giallo television series is the largely moronic yet visually competent Graveyard Disturbance, (Una notte al cimitero).  Bava's attempt here was to deliver something more farcical and tongue-in-cheek than his previous supernatural and giallo work, but the asinine plotting is more lazy than funny.  The five unlikable hoodlum characters that we are forced to deal with make such unbelievably idiotic decisions that is appears as if they are under a "dumb people in horror movies" spell the entire time.  Elsewhere, a barrage of elements are thrown in haphazardly which never amount to anything, in typical Italian-style fashion.  Bava and the script by frequent collaborator Dardano Sacchetti toys with nightmare logic and the idea that the protagonists are dead and ergo entering a hell dimension, but the final reveal clashes with all of this in the most laughably disappointingly way.  In doing so, the story opens a barrage of unanswered questions, which, (coupled with the unsuccessful tonal shifts),  makes for a messy, boring, and borderline incompetent mess.  On the plus side, the film looks great with oodles of fog, cobwebs, grotesque makeup, a ghoul in a Kiss t-shirt, and candlelit catacombs creating the perfect haunted fun-house aesthetic.

 

UNTIL DEATH

(1988)

Overall: MEH

 

Tonally speaking, Until Death, (Per sempre), is a noticeable change of pace for filmmaker Lamberto Bava and is his first movie that does not adhere to any camp or unintentional idiocy.  It is still imperfect, but the sincere presentation is refreshing as well as impressive.  This was the second full-length episode of the Brivido Giallo television series made by the Reiteitalia production company and it is wildly different from the nonsensical buffoonery of the opening installment Graveyard Disturbance.  The story was allegedly worked on by Lucio Fulci and Dardano Sacchetti as a quasi-adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice; a project that did not get underway until it was used here, at which point Fulci's name was unceremoniously absent from the credits.  Whether or not Italy's "Poet of the Macabre" would have unleashed a far gorier finished product is up to endless debate, (though likely), but Bava's crack at the material is far more subtle than Euro-horror in general usually allows, let alone when compared his own frequently bombastic work.  Plot wise, it cannot overcome the monotony of its single setting and three person lead cast who end up running in circles too much to keep things moving, but it is atmospherically solid, void of humor, and has a chilling ending to boot.

 

THE OGRE

(1989)

Overall: WOOF

 

For The Ogre, (Demons III: The Ogre), screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti retreads similar terrain that he did with Lucio Fulci in The House by the Cemetery, concerning a family that moves into a new abode with a monster thing in the basement.  This time though, the results are far more abysmal.  By director Lamberto Bava's own assessment, part of the problem for the third entry in the Brivado Giallo series was the television format which he claimed did not allow for as many ghastly details as would have been appropriate.  The resulting snore-fest is a noticeably neutered affair in this regard, as the plot is insultingly repetitive with a toxically bi-polar couple bouncing between cheerily taking baths and laughing together to having the same argument over and over again which results in the husband pulling his hair out, (and smacking his horror fiction author wife around), over what is "all in her mind".  This long-tired cliche where an alpha douchebag treats any female who insists that supernatural activity is afoot with nothing but dismissive, aggressive scorn is beaten to an obnoxious pulp here, with very, very few frightening or even campy set pieces thrown in to break up the monotony.  It is a pointless, mind-numbingly boring watch with awful characters, an awful ending, the same piece of music played over a billion times, and a title creature that garnishes about thirty-five seconds of screen time.

 

DINNER WITH A VAMPIRE

(1989)

Overall: MEH

 

The forth and last film out of an initially planned five-movie run for the Brivido Giallo television show is another parody of sorts, as was Graveyard Disturbance which kicked off the series.  Dinner with a Vampire, (A cena col vampiro), has a less-than-clever premise of a stereotypically suave vampire staging a cockamamie movie audition scheme in order to ask a bunch of obnoxious characters to murder him while he simultaneously tries to kill them in his own labyrinth-like mansion.  He also lacks the foresight NOT to supply his own kitchen with garlic, something one would logically assume that a centuries-old member of the undead would have the good sense to avoid stocking.  As one could surmise then, logic does not play into director Lamberto Bava and co-screenwriter/collaborator Dardano Sacchetti's script and unfortunately, neither does humor.  On paper, it does all of the things that a lighthearted genre spoof is supposed to do while poking fun at various vampire tropes and making the main baddie increasingly less threatening and more farcically goofy as things go on.  The characters and scenarios are more lazily hammy than funny though, yet the set design and some of the more gnarly makeup effects make up for the overall weak story.  At least George Hilton seems to be enjoying himself by doing his best Béla Lugosi/Max Schreck impression.

1980s Lamberto Bava Part Two

MONSTER SHARK

(1984)

Overall: MEH

 

One of several D-rent Jaws knock-offs that were still regularly getting pumped out nearly a decade after the release of Steven Spielberg's initial blockbuster, Monster Shark, (Shark - Rosso nell'oceano, Devil Fish, Monster from the Red Ocean, Devouring Waves, Shark: Red in the Ocean), is unique enough to justify its existence yet lame enough to laugh at.  Four different screenwriters tossed in ideas from a story already concocted by Italian directors Sergio Martino and Luigi Cozzi, so it could be a typical case of "too many cooks in the kitchen" contributing to the silly structure involving completely forgettable characters with few if any distinguishing attributes attached to them, as well as a plot concerning an octopus/extinct Dunkleosteus hybrid that was genetically created for asinine military reasons or something.  Sadly, there are only a small handful of gory death scenes and one of them does not even involve the title creature, instead, (because sleazy Euro-trash), a naked women gets beaten and then electrocuted in a tub by some guy.  The pacing is wretched, none of the performances ham it up to appropriately laughable levels, and it was obviously made on a shoestring budget which means that the aquatic monster only gets shown in frantic close-ups, making it neither funny nor frightening and more just a case of "What am I even looking at?", which is likely not what the production team had in mind.

MIDNIGHT KILLER

(1986)

Overall: MEH

 

Coming after the one-two punch of off-the-wall, supernatural mayhem with Demons and Demons 2,  Lamberto Bava seems to be phoning it in with Midnight Killer, (Morirai a mezzanotte, To Die at Midnight, You'll Die at Midnight), a lackluster slasher movie with no flare or absurdity to elevate it.  By the director's own admittance, he was one of the rarest of Italian, exploitation directors that was not entirely comfortable making misogynistic giallos, so his female-murdering-death-scene-by-numbers work here backs up such a claim.  The victims, (all women), are numerous and their demises are formulaically brutal and predictable, yet Bava and Dardano Sacchetti's script does not even try to throw in any wacky or sleazy elements.  Everyone just gets stabbed and left for people to easily find as several characters argue over whether or not the murderer is a police officer with an anger problem or a back-from-the-dead killer, (spoiler alert, it is neither).  The outcome is both dull and stupid in trying to justify the least likely person as the one picking everybody off, but even the forced twist had long been standard practice for giallos going back two decades earlier.  On the plus side, the musical score from Goblin's Claudio Simonetti is fine and the pacing is not too horrendous, all things considered.

 

DELIRIUM

(1987)

Overall: MEH

A typically lame-brained giallo from Lamberto Bava, Delirium, (Le foto di Gioia, Photos of Gioia), is as by-the-books and therefor redundant as one would expect.  While Bava did not pen the screenplay, (that unfortunate task was left to Gianfranco Clerici and Daniele Stroppa), he claimed to be responsible for the two bizarre, fantastical moments where we see the killer's victims through his eyes, both of whom have an giant eyeball and bee mask on.  These sequences are never narratively explained, and they come off as more laughably arbitrary than interesting, but the rest of the proceedings have the standard amount of misogyny, exploitative nudity, asinine dialog, illogical character behavior, and a killer reveal that throws an incestuous angle in for good sleazy measure.  Star Serena Grandi noticeably chose to limit the on screen moments in her birthday suit in an attempt to distance herself from her sex pot image, but jumbo sized naked pictures of her are still present along with various other hapless women either getting photographed or getting murdered with their clothes off.  It is all nothing that has not been done several dozen times over, (both better and worse), which just makes this one seem like a derivative waste of time.

1980s Italian Horror Part Twelve - (Luigi Cozzi Edition)

CONTAMINATION

(1980)

Dir - Luigi Cozzi

Overall: MEH

 

For his immediate follow-up to the space opera Starcrash, writer/director Luigi Cozzi stuck with the science fiction angle on a meager budget with Contamination, (Alien Contamination, Toxic Spawn, Larvae).  Ridley Scott's Alien clearly inspired the basic concept of extraterrestrial spores that hatch from a mother baddie, but the story is set on earth to save on finances and is a wretchedly boring affair.  At the producer's insistence, barely noticeable James Bond elements were added to the script and this along with an already forgettable plot and equally dull characters further minimizes the already insufficient amount of money-shot set pieces.  The gore was substantial enough to make this a video nasty and it is a hoot when unsuspecting saps get too close to the musical monster eggs that spew green acid and make people explode.  Cozzi initially wanted to use stop-motion for the cycloptic alien in the finale, but a practical effects puppet was instead brought in; something that was probably for the best as the director's quick editing of it makes it look about as good as can be expected.

 

PAGANINI HORROR
(1989)
Dir - Luigi Cozzi
Overall: MEH

The infamous Paganini Horror is indeed one of the more hare-brained Italian horror films of the 1980s, yet because of this, it has an unintended, ridiculous charm that many other strictly humdrum affairs lack.  The title and wicked awesome poster by Enzo Sciotti came before one word of a story was ever jotted down and an entirely different version of it involving a surreal haunted house that reversed time was rejected before the final script was finished.  Producers ultimately vetoed a number of gore sequences and rushed the filming along on the cheap, resulting in a mess of a movie that meanders as much as it indulges in pure, Euro-horror silliness.  The premise of a terrible female rock band shooting a video in a villa after lifting cursed music from Paganini lends itself to people getting electrocuted by cartoon lighting, screaming "bastard" a lot, getting terrorized by a guy in a mask and a violin that has a blade protruding from it, and several prime opportunities for characters to be overly dramatic while yelling some more.  Several of these moments are positively wacky, but they are also few and far between, with the only constant being how stupid it all is.  Donald Pleasence shows up for three scenes at least though he could not be bothered to provide his own English dub, plus Daria Nicolodi, (who collaborated on the finished screenplay), is always a treat.

 

THE BLACK CAT

(1989)

Dir - Luigi Cozzi

Overall: MEH

From a production standpoint, The Black Cat, (Il gatto nero, Demons 6: De Profundis), was doomed to turn out like it did; meaning a hilariously incoherent mess of ideas that seem as if they were assembled by blindly throwing a dart at a wall.  One of about seven-hundred and ninety movies to be named off of the Edgar Allan Poe story, this one has the most nothing to do with it out of any of them and only features a few quick shots of felines that were allegedly added in post once the title was set.  Originally, this was to be the third in Dario Argento's Three Mothers trilogy, but once Daria Nicolodi turned in her script to potential producer Dino De Laurentiis, he passed on it, Argento moved on to other projects, and he and Nicolodi broke-up.  Director Luigi Cozzi then got involved and tried his best to separate it from Argento's series before new producer Menahem Golan of Cannon fame tweaked the project even more, thus rendering it a bonkers mess.  It has a meta angle concerning a script whose titular witch comes to life in Florence Guérin's dreams or something, the characters even sit around discussing Suspiria and the same collection of essays by Thomas De Quincey that inspired Argento's work, plus the famous Goblin theme from said movie shows up just to slam the point home.  From there, it all goes off the rails with nonsense about aliens, resurrection, hallucinations, Caroline Munroe almost getting naked, and Brett Halsey being an intense producer in a wheelchair.