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. 

Beyond Darkness

Exorcise Regime

Beyond Darkness
aka La Casa 5
aka Evil Dead 5
Italy 1990 Directed by Claudio Fragasso
Severin Films Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: I guess this has spoilers.

Well, this will be a short review.

Okay... so I bought Beyond Darkness from Severin, mainly due to the fact that the film’s score by Carlo Maria Cordio was included on a separate bonus CD. Turns out though... that’s really only one of two things worth making this purchase for, the other being the special limited edition slipcase with the film’s more notorious and completely inaccurate alternate title of Evil Dead 5.

So the film has nothing to do with the much more famous Evil Dead franchise. However, the Italian title, La Casa 5 is also a direct reference to the Evil Dead movies (which were called La Casa movies in Italy) but, of course, none of these later films were continuations of those films... just a quick title to cash in on the success of the US franchise (so I really should watch those one day), much in the spirit of the gazillions of unofficial Django movies made in the wake of the original Franco Nero movie, most of which didn’t have a character called Django in them and were nothing to do with the first one.

So...  really wasn’t expecting all that much from this movie but I was expecting a much more fun time than I ultimately got. The film starts off with Father George (David Brandon) trying to read the last rights to a female serial killer on death row who says, basically, not to bother... I ate all the souls of the kids I killed and you’ll be joining me in hell soon. She also gives him a demonic bible and he now starts seeing hallucinations of her in his daily life. He then leaves the church world and becomes a drunken wino, who now sees things like the dead demonic lady driving the kids around town in a bus etc.

Meanwhile, Father Peter (Gene LeBrock), his wife Annie (Barbara Bingham) and their two sprogs have been moved into a possessed house with a portal to hell in the hopes that they can clear things up there (not that they find this out until demons from hell start turning up). It’s actually the same house in Louisiana that was used in Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond (reviewed here) so, you know, you’d think they would have known something was amiss.

And not much else happens and, when I say not much, I actually mean quite a lot happens but it’s all so dull and plodding that I was finding it really hard to make my way through this one. I mean there’s a black swan rocking contraption with a life of its own, a doorway to hell which calls to the kids, zombie like creatures in black, diaphanous robes invading the house in a fog a few times, a kidnapped child and various quick possessions as people’s eyes glaze over with white contact lenses every now and again when they enter what I shall only call ‘the fog dimension’... and then Father George turns up to try and redeem himself and help Father Peter exorcise one of his own kids in what must be the most boring exorcism scene I’ve seen committed to film. And David Brandon is not subtle in his scenery chewing performance... which is probably how he’s been directed to be because, lets face it, the film is not too subtle either. He’s also the only one who seems to have a strong personality in this so at least he’s mostly watchable in an otherwise unbelievably dull film, it has to be said.

The cinematography comes through with a penchant for stressing verticality in the shot composition a lot of the time (very easy to do in the jail and interior house scenes and it’s emphasised a lot) and there’s a nice shot looking down at one of the characters through the spoked sections of a door arch at one point but... yeah, the cinematography doesn’t even come close to saving this picture, I’d have to say. It’s dull, dull, dull and when there is a nugget of interest where Father Peter’s daughter is left with the man in the local church and finger points to him being someone more sinister, the plot thread is not only not investigated but the daughter drops out of the picture unexpectedly. We never see her in the narrative again and everyone just seems to have forgotten about her, which is strange and makes me think there might have been more planned for this movie and maybe the budget or shooting schedule got sliced at some point, perhaps.

Carlo Maria Cordio’s score was, it turns out, worth the purchase and I shall be putting on the CD later today but, I’d have to say that, while it’s typical of the sort of synthesised disco horror scores of the time in Italian cinema, when everyone was trying to be Goblin and were mostly failing miserably, it does feel inappropriate to the movie and really doesn’t help it any. I can tell it’s going to be good away from the confines of the movie though so, at least there’s that.

And I really have nothing more to say on this one. I haven’t had time to watch the extras on this but, you know, it’s Severin so it’s a shoe in they’re going to have good extras and, probably, they’ll be a darn site more interesting than the actual film. All in all, it’s another good package from Severin but a really dreadful movie, as far as I’m concerned and nowhere near as good as similarly themed movies such as Beyond The Door (reviewed here). Sorry, I just can’t recommend this one, even to the friends who, like me, usually love clunky Italian horror movies. It’s just not good.