Absurd

Eastman Colour

Absurd
aka The Grim Reaper
aka Rosso Sangue 
Directed by Joe D’Amato
Italy 1981
88 Films Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spoilers drilling into your noggin.

So after Anthropophagus (reviewed here) was, presumably, relatively successful, albeit being a banned film in the UK for many years due to being on the famous ‘Video Nasties list’, they tried to bandwagon that earlier film, somewhat, the very next year with Rosso Sangue, best known in the UK, where it was also banned for the same reason for many years, as Absurd.

Okay, so despite people often calling this a sideways sequel or follow up to the earlier film, Anthropophagus shares no characters with that first one and, although George Eastman plays the Greek antagonist of the movie, he is not a Greek cannibal. Instead, he’s the accidental creation of a ‘science priest’ played by Edmund Purdom of all people. Purdom has a very fake sounding Greek accent and many other people in this have extraordinary fake sounding Irish accents too, which leads me to believe the film is set in the relatively isolated Irish countryside, even though I did spot a red fire hydrant on the road in one shot (is this a thing in Ireland... really?). 

So Mikos Stenopolis, the character Eastman plays, is a man who just walks around looming at people and killing them... in mostly not so interesting ways... for absolutely no reason. We see him trying to get over a spiky fence and get into a house but he’s injured, with the help of Purdom, who we at first think is the villain of the piece. So do the police because, while the unconscious Eastman, with his insides hanging out (presumably a little nod to the end scene in Anthropophagus) is taken to hospital, Purdom is eventually held as a suspect in whatever funny business is perceived. 

Meanwhile, we have the story of a family going out for the evening to a friend’s house to watch an American football game and leaving their completely ‘bed bound and in traction for a spine injury’ daughter, in her early teens, plus her even younger brother, with a baby sitter. The sitter has instructions not to go home until the other baby sitter, who works at the same hospital where Eastman’s character was admitted, arrives to give the daughter her physiotherapy and carry on babysitting. 

However, it transpires that Purdom’s scientific experimentation has, while admittedly given Eastman superhuman recovery properties, also turned him into the mindless killing machine he has become and he harbours the seeds of evil in his brain. The police think Purdom may be telling the truth after all, when Eastman completely recovers from having his guts hanging out earlier in the day and, after putting a drill through a nurses head, escapes into the countryside to do more killing, as he heads towards the house from earlier, where the babysitter and kiddies await. 

After this it’s all, bandsaw through the head, pick axe through the brain kinds of shenanigans until it’s just the physiotherapist, played by Annie Belle (who you may remember from Lips Of Blood, reviewed here, although it’s evident here that no director other than Jean Rollin could make her look as good as she did in that movie) and the two kids, trying to stay safe in the house with Eastman on the loose and lurking everyone to death. One impressive, simply done but surprisingly good looking effect (essentially from Belle’s performance) is when he forces her head into an oven and slow cooks it, the camera crosscutting with other things and each time it returns, a new level of burn make up is applied to the actress’ head. 

And it’s, like Anthropophagus, a film which involves a fair amount of sneaking about and acting quiet and cautious in big interior spaces... yeah, they’re definitely trying to mine the same vein here. And to be fair, it has a lot going for it. 

Firstly, it’s technically better than Anthropophagus, with some nicely designed camera shots and less reliance on the handheld camera technique... which only crops up when it’s appropriate that it does so. And the actors are all, arguably, pretty good in their roles... fake accents aside. Katya Berger, who plays the mostly bed bound little girl (until the end when she becomes a monster in order to defeat the monster and is landed with that riff) is especially good in this, I thought. Not only that but, the score by Carlo Maria Cordio (which was released by Cinevox before a more expanded version by Beat Records was released on CD) is actually much better than the former film and sounds just like an Italian horror film ought to (which is not that many steps away from what Goblin or Fabio Frizzi might have done with it) and so it works very well here. 

So, good acting, quite good direction and good cinematography, good music... Absurd is so much better made than Anthropophagus. Why, then, did I much prefer the earlier film, which wasn’t really proficient in any of these areas, way more than I did this one? All I can say is the simplicity of the plot of the former movie maybe had more charm to it than this one but, even though Absurd is the more accomplished movie by far, I’m much more likely to rewatch Anthropophagus some day than return to this one, in all honesty. And, other than saying it’s absolutely ridiculous for a policeman to lend a priest, who he thought only a minute before was a villain, a firearm and then tell him they’ll both independently hunt Eastman... well... that’s me about done with this movie, I think. It was an okay time but not a great or even good one and I can’t say I’d recommend this one to anybody, alas.