As we get into the Halloween season, there is an extra worry that enters my mind. No, not how much candy to buy, how many times to watch The Paul Lynde Halloween Special, or even which pop culture icon to turn into a pun based costume (The answer is not Let's Go Brandon Lee in which one dresses up like Joe Biden in Crow make-up.). There is often the extra worry of an impending Halloween party, full of acquaintances, strangers, and drunken debauchery which we both anticipate and simultaneously fear.
I've been dragged to so many last minut Pumpkin Day festivities, and you never quite know what you're going to get into. For a couple of years when I was younger, I went to a party hidden deep in the woods, down a long dark, private drive where the ambitious hosts, who were friends of friends, had spent months hanging fake bodies from the trees and setting up gory displays. By the time I finally arrived at the trailer and bonfire, existential dread had also arrived. Thankfully, it was just a wild party with acquaintances in the woods, and it wasn't some kind of Murder Party.
Despite the fact that the phrase an "average Joe" remains in the lexicon of colloquialisms, in the last thirty years the name Joe has taken a drastic drop in popularity. It seems that the average on "Joe" just isn't what it used to be. Speaking of Joes that'd defy the average, there's one that I like who frequently has highs and lows above a median line, and that is Joe D'Amato. Born Aristide Massaccesi, the Italian exploitation master, who hid out under a number of Nom de plumes apart from his adopted moniker, made an incredible string of almost 200 films before he died in 1999 at the age of sixty-two. While most of them ranged from soft-core to hard-core to oh, my, is it okay to film that?, D'Amato is best known for his horror movies, specifically Antropohagus, Buio Omega, and Absurd, but there was one that has somehow flown under my radar. So join me as Joe takes us on a futuristic ride, which looks like the 80s despite being filmed in the 90s, this is Return from Death (Ritorno Dallas morte) a.k.a Frankenstein 2000.
Back again with another slice of horror, and after tipping my hat to Dario yesterday, I thought it only fitting to talk about the other big name in Italian horror, Lucio Fulci.. The Godfather of Gore's career was winding down by the late 80s after a disastrous turn directing Zombi 3, and I expect he readily jumped at a job making a pair of Made for Italian TV films. He made two for the series, today's film House of Clocks (La casa nel tempo) and The Sweet House of Horrors. While late in his career, this is a Fulci trying to regain his game, and he did such a gory good job they wouldn't air the movies. So these went straight to a video release, which is a real shame because Fulci indeed did know what time it was. it was time for one last shot of adrenaline in a career that had hit many stumbles. So, Fulci took a moment to roll back the clocks to an earlier sharper flavor whole keeping plenty of murder, mayhem, and killer geriatrics in the 1989 film House of Clocks.
Once a Month, T.L. Bugg takes a day off and hands the keys of the Lair over to his lovely wife, Miss Directed, and best friend, Fran Goria. The Ladies of the Lair take this chance to shine a spotlight on some of the best and worst films out there, and you never know what might happen when it's Ladies Night! Take it away Fran....
Ricki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (1991) Director: Ngai Kai Lam Writers: Tetsya Sarauwatas (manga), Ngai Kai Lam Starring: Siu- Wong Fan, Mei Sheng Fan, Yukari Oshima, and Ka-Kui-Hu
Ricky-Oh is a martial artist with super human strength. Ricky-Oh will only fight if words will not resolve the situation. After his girlfriend, Ying, witnesses a drug deal, she is held captive by the gang. She becomes so terrified that she jumps out of a window and falls to her death. Ricky-Oh seeks vengeance for his girl’s death, and he kills the crime boss responsible. As a result, he receives a ten year prison sentence for manslaughter. Way back in 2001, prisons became privatized. Ricky-Oh is serving his sentence at Warden Sugiyama’s prison. Ricky-Oh must now overthrow the tyrannical warden and his pornaholic assistant, defeat the dreaded Gang of Four, stop an illegal opium farm, rally the inmates, and save the day. Did I mention the ass-kicking? Ricky-Oh must also kick ass.
Riki-Oh was a lovely film about fighting the establishment with super human strength and good old-fashioned kung fu. I quite liked watching the film. It is a must see for anyone who likes martial arts films mixed with pure campy goodness. From Ricky-Oh tying the tendons in his arm together with his teeth, to him punching an opponent’s lower jaw off, I was hooked. With that being said, this is turning out to be a difficult review for me to write. On the one hand, I adored the film, and on the other, I just don’t know what to say about it. Ricky-Oh shows up and kicks lots of glorious ass. The blood is beautiful and plentiful, and the English dubbing is a good time to be had by all. However, this alone does not make for a passable review. So I’m just going to jump in and see what does, or does not, happen.
When the film was originally released in Hong Kong, it received the dreaded Category III rating, due to its violence. Riki-Oh was the first non pornographic film to receive the rating. I have to say that I am a bit surprised by this. Okay, yes, there is some violence. Yes, there is blood and gore, but the effects are not great. I’m not sure if anyone else knows this or not, but in a porn film, the sex is real. Those actors are really having sex with each other. At no point in Riki-Oh did I think it was real. I did not believe, or even suspect, that the actor playing Riki-Oh could actually punch his fist through a dude’s chest. Nor did I think he could crush a skull with only his deadly, deadly hands. The point is, it is a shame that such a fun film got such a severe rating upon release. Although, the rating caused poor box office sales, it did not keep Riki-Oh from gaining a cult following. One good thing that has come from the Category III rating is that without it, this paragraph would have never happened.
Riki-Oh was a super fun film. I had seen clips of it here and there, but never knew the title. I was pleasantly surprised when T.L. presented it for Ladies Night. Now I can’t speak for Ms. Directed, but I had a great time watching it. The special effects were cheesy, the dubbing was bad, the action was way over the top, and it was AWESOME! I loved every bit of it. I look forward to watching it again, and I’m sure I will love it just as much as I do now. I cannot think of a single part of the film that brought me down. It started strong, stayed consistent, and finished strong. I should warn every one now, that the fun I had watching Riki-Oh has affected my rating by at least 1.
Fist Rating
We all have very strange talents. Some woman can put a cherry stem in their mouth and tie it into a little bow. I’ve tried that trick, and all I ever spit out is a bent up cherry stem. What I can do is remember very stupid things I have seen on T.V. I never thought this would come in handy until I started writing for the The Lair. Now it is, believe it or not, one of my most treasured skills. I’ll get back to that later. We take turns picking films for Ladies Night with it rotating between Fran, me, and the Bugg. I always get a little scared with it’s his turn. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but he watches some crazy crap. Some months he has been overruled. After all, it’s called Ladies Night. Today’s film was the Bugg’s pick, and I was relieved when he told us we would be reviewing Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky.
I had never seen Riki-Oh, but I had heard lots about it. Sometimes when I watch a movie that has been hyped to me, it’s just not as impressive as everyone made it out to be. Thankfully The Story of Ricky was all it claimed to be and a bag of chips. The movie took everything that is awesome about anime, made it live action, and they left the creepy tentacles at home. There’s so much great about Riki-Oh that it’s hard to know where to start. First off, it’s a story set in a prison, something I more often than not enjoy. I have always found prison is a great setting for action movies because it is the ultimate fight against authority. The bad guys run the prison, the warden runs the bad guys, and the poor inmates have to take the scraps. These are some super special bad guys though. Think marital arts super villains that are named after old movie serial characters, my favorite being Tarzan.
Ricky gets sent to jail because he was avenging his girlfriend’s death by drug lords. In all the flash backs, she seemed to be a real wet blanket, but a Riki has to do what a Riki has to do. Here’s where the tone of the movie gets messed up in fantastic way. On one hand you have our hero fighting of hordes of anime-esque super villains. On the other hand, Riki becomes more of a sissy with every scene. For heavens sake, playing a flute wasn’t enough, he had to play a leaf. It was like someone in Japan said, “I like that High Plains Drifter movie. You know what would be badass, lets make a similar movie but instead of Clint playing a harmonica, we’ll give our guy a leaf.“ All I can say is thank you Japan.
This is a movie you will want tell you will want to tell your friends about. The mix of the crazy story, and the over the top practical effects make this one of the most entertaining films I have seen in a while. Now, back to my special talent. While watching the Riki-Oh, there is a scene where a fellow smashes the head off an unfortunate gentleman, and I knew I had seen it somewhere before. Then it occurred to me, that cut was used in the opening of the 5 Questions segment on the Daily Show back when it was hosted by Craig Kilborn. So even if you haven’t seen the film, if you’re a Comedy Central fan there’s a good chance that you’ve seen that clip somewhere along the line. Down below the trailer, I’m going to embed the clip of the head explosion right under it. Overall, I thought Riki-Oh was really entertaining, and it was just the type of film that you want to invite your friends over to watch.
If there’s one Italian director who can make people wary of his films just by having his name attached to them, them it’s Ruggero Deodato. I’ll admit that it took me quite some time to sit down with CannibalHolocaust, and films like House on the Edge of the Parkand JungleHolocaust have been known to have as many (if not more) detractors than fans. Even his more innocuous fare like Raiders of Atlantis could scare people off, but that’s more a quality issue than anything (for more on that check out Episode IV of Sinful Cinema). When you enter into a Deodato film, you know there’s a good chance you’ll get extreme gore, rampant misogyny, animal violence, and the exploitation of native peoples. That’s just not some folk’s cup of tea and honestly, it’s not mine either. Yet I continue to watch his films because, for the most part, they are generally better than they have any right to be.
The movie I looked at for today is Inferno in diretta or, as it’s commonly known, Cut and Run (although the literal translation seems to be something to the effect of Directed in Hell). As Deodato states in the intro to the film included on the Anchor Bay disk, CutandRun was the product of the many requests he got for a sequel to CannibalHolocaust, and it completes the unofficial Jungle Trilogy that began with JungleHolocaust. The only similarity between Cut andRun and the two Holocaust films is the jungle setting and the appearance of a camera crew. Other than that, there is no connection between the two films, and they barely seem like the product of the same director even though only five years separate the two films.
Cut and Run stars Lisa Blount as cable news journalist Fran Hudson. After getting a scoop on a drug-fueled massacre, she and her cameraman Mark (Leonard Mann) investigate the scene to get some shocking footage. While she’s poking around she finds a picture of Tommy (Willie Ames), her boss’ long missing son. After showing her boss the picture, he dispatches her to the Amazon jungle to find Tommy and report on anything she finds. She arrives in the midst of a drug war, and soon Fran, Mark, and Tommy are struggling to survive in the jungle. When Bob Allo (Richard Lynch), a former devotee of Jim Jones, captures them, they find that the true danger in the jungle may not be the natives at all.
From the first scene of the film where Michael Berryman, of The Hills Have Eyes fame, leads a band of natives to lay waste to a drug manufacturing camp, Deodato puts his stamp on the film. Unfortunately, within the first four minutes of the film, there’s a pointless gang rape of two women who are staked down and their heads are then severed. Later on in the film, there is an implied rape perpetrated in the same fashion, but it’s not as if it becomes a major plot point. It seems the opening was there solely for Deodato to pronounce that the maker of Cannibal Holocaust was back. There is one other rape in the film featuring Valentina Forte, Deodato’s girlfriend at the time. (I just can’t imagine why those two didn’t work out.) Thankfully, after that, the misogyny takes a backseat to gore, including a great scene of a man being torn in half, and attacks by the natives on our heroes.
Speaking of our heroes (and villains), CutandRun did have a very strange cast. From the bit parts to the starring roles, there are familiar faces at almost every turn in this film. Lisa Blount, who plays Fran, should be recognizable to anyone who is a Carpenter fan from her role in Prince of Darkness, and Leonard Mann, who played the shrink in Silent Night, Deadly Night III, shows up here as Fran’s cameraman Mark. It doesn’t stop there though. As I mentioned earlier Michael Berryman makes an appearance as an assassin, Eric Le Salle, later of ER fame, appears as an informant pimp, Karen Black cashes a check as a TV exec, and John Steiner (Tenebre, Violent Rome) pops up as the leader of the drug manufacturers.
One thing that I can say for this film is how great it looks. Cinematographer Alberto Spagoli, who also worked on Bava’s Shock and Castellari’s Shark, really impresses here. The jungle footage is stunningly photographed, and except for a few insert shots, the whole film is very well shot. Especially in light of mess that was his pervious film, Raiders of Atlantis, Cut and Run is quite possibly the best-looking film Deodato ever made. It’s just unfortunate that the visual flair so outshined the material that it was depicting. There is one last thing that makes Cut and Run stand out, and that is the soundtrack by Claudio Simonetti, formally of Goblin. While so many of the synthy scores that came out of early ‘80’s Italy verge on annoying, Simonetti managed to create an exciting, driving score that carries the film through some of the duller moments.
If you’re a Ruggero Deodato fan, then CutandRun is a film that should be on your shortlist of films to see, and, overall, compared to many of his other films, Deodato reigns in some of his more graphic impulses. I could have done without the needless rape and misogyny, but as I said earlier, when you’re dealing with Ruggero then that’s kind of the status quo. While Cut and Run is an extremely good-looking film, it didn’t have the realized vision of Cannibal Holocaust or House at the Edge of the Park. In the end, I think this is one strictly for fans of ‘80’s Italian cinema, Deodato, or people who like dialog like this, “Think positive, look in two years calculators will be down to $9.95 apiece.” I know that made me feel much better about life in general.
Tom Petty once said, “The waiting is the hardest part.” If he wasn’t talking about Christmas morning, then he totally should have been. I recall how impatient I was for the day, scratch that, hour to come that signaled Christmas morning. My parents, being sane individuals, told me I couldn’t wake them until at least 8 AM for Christmas to begin. Now it was only later in life when I realized that (SPOILER ALERT) there was no Santa, and they might have been up a trifle late the night before. Being the kid that I was, I wasn’t about to let a silly thing like a time to wake up foil my wanton desire for Christmas goodies. So I would sneak down the hall ever so slowly. Sometimes I wouldn’t move a muscle for minutes if I thought I heard one of them stir. When I finally arrived to bask in the glow of Santa’s booty, I would pick one present and ever so gently peel back the Scotch tape on the end until I could un-wrap one side. After peaking in to see what gift it was (the one I recall most vividly was He-Man’s Battle Cat), I would piece the side back together until it was just as perfect as before. Then it was time to go back down the hall just as slowly as before.
You might wonder why I’ve taken up a paragraph telling you about my childhood hi-jinx on Christmas morning. That’s easy enough to explain. I just couldn’t wait until Christmas proper to open my gifts, and I also can’t wait to talk about today’s film which is strangely enough titled, Don’t Open Till Christmas. Thankfully, I didn’t have the troubles that the folks in this film encountered, and I also avoided the perils the production itself endured. So did I learn my lesson? Not really, but I did learn that good things sometimes come to those who don’t wait. So perhaps I should let you folks quit waiting and get on with the review.
It’s the Christmas Season in jolly old England, and there’s a murderer on the streets with a mind to take out St. Nick. Inspector Harris (Edmund Purdom) is assigned to the case, but he can’t seem to make any headway. While the killer guts, strangles, impales, and machetes his way through a litany of Kris Kringles, the intrepid Inspector can’t even seem to find a pattern in the killings. The only leads come by way of a mysterious reporter by the name of Giles (Alan Lake) who is keen to help Harris‘ partner Sergeant Powell (Mark Jones) solve the killings and cast suspicion on Harris at the same time. Meanwhile a young couple, Kate (Belinda Mayne) and Cliff (Gerry Sundquist), get wrapped up in the mystery because Kate’s Dad was one of the slain Santas. As Christmas approaches, the killer is still at large and no Father Christmas is safe from the killer’s wrath.
Having seen several killer Santa films, I was intrigued by the notion that the killer would be stalking Santas. With so many cinematic slashers interested in teenage girls, campers, or distant relatives, the killer’s M.O. seemed like a clever twist. Unfortunately, the film’s cleverness begins and ends right about there. All in all the film is a disjointed, poorly filmed, badly scripted mess, and somehow I still managed to mostly enjoy it. From what I’ve read, much of the blame for the film’s schizophrenic style comes from having at least three directors take a crack at the film. Star Edmond Purdom is credited as director, but at one time or another, screenwriter Derek Ford and film editor Ray Selfe both took over the reigns. The end result is a pastiche of styles, a load of jumpy camera work, and a narrative that never hits a stride long enough to establish any kind of suspense. There are very few films that I would encourage anyone to remake, but in the right hands, Don’t Open Till Christmas could be a quality fixer upper.
Usually I spend a couple of paragraphs waxing poetic about actors in any given film, but Don’t Open Till Christmas doesn’t warrant such in depth coverage. Suffice it to say that the performances range from dull to horrid with many shades in between. I will briefly mention the notables. Edmond Purdom, who played the clueless Inspector Harris, will be pretty familiar to fans of Italian genre fare. Over the years he’s appeared in Joe D’Amato’s Absurd, Sergio Corbucci’s The Man Who Laughs, and Martino’s 2019: After the Fall of New York. The career of Mark Jones, who played the easily mislead Sergeant Powell, had a more interesting route to his career. He started off with a small role in 1967’s Marat/Sade, followed it up with TV work in shows like Dr. Who, and then appeared in the British sex comedies Secret of a Superstud (1976) and Can I Come Too? (1979). Huge nerds might be able to pick him out as “Other Imperial Soldier” in TheEmpire Strikes Back, but as a Trek Nerd, all those Imperials look alike to me.
There are a couple of ladies that I would like to mention, but not lead actress Belinda Mayne. She was entirely forgettable, and Kelly Baker, who plays a peep show hostess, nearly has as much screen time for some reason that remained unclear throughout. The first actress I would like to mention is Pat Astley. This was Miss Astley’s last film role in a career that went from hardcore porn to softcore films to a stint on the British sitcom Are You Being Served. Astley plays a nude model in the film, and her performance is delightfully silly. The moment where she defends her nudity by flashing the Inspector and saying, “I’m a professional.” is one of the film’s high points. The other performer I have to mention is former B.L.O.G Caroline Munro who plays herself. Apparently at one point in Miss Munro’s career she fancied herself a pop singer, and the film features her performing a song only to be interrupted by, what else, a dead Santa.
Now I’ve spent most of this review pointing out the film’s shortcomings. There’s a reason for that. It’s easy, there are a lot of them, and the film all puts arrows pointing them out. That being said I still enjoyed it for the most part. What other movie could you see a Santa get his, um, South Pole chopped off? Or having his face burned in his own roasting chestnuts? Or getting a machete right to the face? I think you’d be hard pressed to find one. You’d also be hard pressed to find a film that falls apart more stupendously in the third act. The last twenty minutes seem to come out of some other film about some other killer until they finally roll around to the confusing reveal of his motivations.
I’m going to give this one a pretty low grade because it’s a pretty low grade film, but it’s not without its charms. It’s like the cinematic equivalent of Lady Gaga. It’s a little annoying, gussied up in some amusing garb, and yet somewhere deep down you still think there might be something worthwhile. Don’t Open Till Christmas is worth a watch, and if you keep your expectations low, then you’ll probably find it serviceably amusing. Well, that’s all for today, but I’ve got plenty more Christmas goodies to share with you folks in the next two weeks. Until then, I think I spy a present for me under the tree that’s a little loose on one side already.
Hello and welcome back to the last week of May, and the last B.L.O.G. girl of the month. This month as we’ve taken a look at XXX Divas gone mainstream we’ve seen the girls succeed, Rabid with Marilyn Chambers, and try their best, Ginger Lynn Allen in Vice Academy, but what we haven’t seen yet is when the formula fails. To illustrate this we must take a look at a film starring the woman sometimes called "The Queen of Porn".
Jenna started her porn career in 1993 with a pair of scenes with legendary porn stud Randy West. From these humble beginnings Jenna built an empire and became the face of porn for a generation of horny teens in the mid '90's. Nowadays she's often found in mainstream films such as her 2008 film Zombie Strippers, but there are some films a XXX actress might get involved in for a paycheck. The producers are looking to add to the fodder of direct to DVD releases on the shelves, and what better way to make sure your box gets noticed than Jenna gracing your cover. There's more to a film than a cover though, and sometimes inside what you find is...
Evil Breed (2003) starring Bonnie Phillips, Howard Rosenstien, Ginger Lynn Allen, Chasey Lain, Jenna Jameson. Directed by Christian Veil.
A group of college students travel to a house in the Irish countryside to study the rituals of the ancient pagan cultures that used to inhabit the land. Once there, they are warned by the caretaker not to wander into the woods lest they want to encounter monsters and death. Naturally, the teens wander directly into the woods and sure enough there is plenty enough monsters and death to go around.
The Bug Speaks
I’m going to tell you right here, in the first line of the first paragraph of what will undoubtedly be a venom soaked but rather short review, this film is horrible. Not as horrible as say, Blown, but pretty dang close to being as bad as Isle of the Damned. For anyone who’s familiar with The Lair knows that those two pictures are the epitome of bad around these parts, and Evil Breed now gains the dubious distinction of joining those films. That being said, I am going to spoil the hell out of this film because no one, for any reason short of a threat to their lives should make themselves watch this flick.
To explain how badly this flick goes wrong, I have a simple story to tell you, but first I must go off on a tangent. I love the NBA. It’s the only sport I ever got into watching, and for many years one of my favorite teams has been the Boston Celtics. Now we all know where the team got it’s name. There’s a leprechaun involved here after all, but surely, it is common knowledge that their moniker is a gross mispronunciation, Selt-icks and not with the hard ‘K’ sound that is intended (i.e. Kelt-ics). If everyone knows that, then why does Bonnie Phillips’ professor with a specialty in Druids and Irish mythology proudly announce that the students are there to study the ancient Selts.
That’s right, Selts. That’s what she says loud and clear.
And that’s what kind of movie we’re looking at here. There is no rhyme or reason to the goings on, and the plot that is intended to be a variation on the legend of Sawney Bean, the same ground Wes Craven covered in The Hills Have Eyes, makes little to no sense. I mean I should have known what I was getting into when in the first three minutes of the film they manage to kill off both Richard Greico, oh, he of 21 Jumpstreet and If Looks Could Kill fame, and porn actress Chasey Lane. When a film opens up and they kill off Richard Greico, arguably the biggest star name attached, and then you know you’re in some bad shape.
Then there’s the other big draw, Jenna Jameson. As you can see from the DVD cover, Ms. Jameson is front and center on the cover art, and if you could see the back of the box then you would see that two of the three stills from the film feature the porn queen. Unfortunately, these are the only two scenes she appears in. Jenna shows up once to establish she is looking for her friends (who we can assume were Greico and Lane), and then the second time she shows up to get gutted and her implant ripped out. Her total screen time, less than one minute.
Now the plot of the film, if you can call it that, has to do with these inbred mutants coming out on Samhain to gather girls to further their genetic line. That would make great sense if they didn’t kill every girl they see! While I am no big fan of Jenna Jameson (too plastic for my tastes), it still boggled my mind that the mutant things would rather kill her off than breed with her. You’re inbred mutants for fuck’s sake, don’t be so picky. They also put an end to another porn star when Ginger Lynn Allen meets her demise. Ginger, who as you know from my review of Vice Academy, is one of my favorite X rated stars, but in this flick, she deserved to die. I don’t know who thought that letting Ginger Lynn tackle an Irish accent was a good idea, but believe you me, folks, it was not a good plan. Generously, I would say that every third of fourth word, and the occasional line, was said with some kind of accent, but for the most part Ginger sounded like she had a cold. It was horribly embarrassing and the best part of the film was when she died. I nearly cheered in joy that she didn’t have to talk again.
I’m going to wrap this up because there’s nothing more to really say, and if I keep going then there will be a few more paragraphs of me tearing this film a new one. Now I understand that Christian Vale, the writer/director had this film taken from him after completion and almost the whole picture was re-shot. So I won’t pass any judgment on him as I don’t really feel like I saw his work. I understand that somewhere on the internets there is a bootleg copy of his cut that makes sense, has plenty of gore, and a fair amount of nudity. Perhaps someday I’ll track down his version and give it a whirl, but until I do, remember folks, you really can’t judge a DVD by the cover. What I thought would be a cheesy horror flick starring one of porn’s reigning queens turned out to be nothing more than a shiny, DVD shaped turd. Stay away from this one folks, seriously as far away as you can.
Bugg Rating
No Trailer for this one. Instead check out some clips dubbed into Spanish. At least you don't have to hear Ginger Lynn's accent.
Hello folks and welcome to week three of Mental Health Awareness Month. This week’s post is special to me not only because I once again get to revisit one of my favorite directors, but today is my 200th film review. I am very happy to have reached this milestone, and I hope to be here posting reviews for a long time to come. Some may say that kind of devotion is insane or that I’ve gone round the bend. It’s just something in me that I’ve got to get out like a….
Cat In The Brain (1990) [Italian: Un gatto nel cervello] [a.k.a Nightmare Concert] starring Lucio Fulci, David L. Thompson, Jeoffrey Thompson, and Malisa Longo. Directed by Lucio Fulci.
After filming a particularly brutal scene in his new film, director Lucio Fulci finds himself troubled by visions of blood and gore wherever he goes. Seeking the help of a psychologist, Professor Egon Schwartz (Thompson), Fulci undergoes hypnosis to rid himself of his nightmarish hallucinations. Unfortunately, Professor Schwartz is an aspiring killer himself. He implants a trigger to worsen Fulci’s visions and soon the director begins to believe that the Professor’s victims are his own.
The Bugg Speaks
I had long awaited seeing this film, and after tiring of the dreaded Netflix “short wait”, I went out and purchased the shiny new 2 disk edition recently released by Grindhouse Releasing. This film had long been out of print, and for starters, I’d like to say that Grindhouse did a bang up job on this one. It’s a gorgeous transfer, contains both the Italian and American trailers, interviews with Fulci, and a neat little book inside with pieces by Fulci’s daughter, Antonella, and the horror community’s favorite punching bag, Eli Roth. All in all, a wonderful package, and I only wish I had pre-ordered this flick so I could have gotten the limited edition holographic cover. But I digress; after all, I’m not here to review the set itself.
What I really want to talk about is the film, and what a film it is. Serving as a more meta (and decidedly more gory) version on Fellini’s 8 ½, Cat in the Brain is at once a film about the man Fulci and more importantly the myth. Surprisingly, Fulci, who had a habit, a la Hitchcock, of making cameos in his films, proves himself to be a surprisingly agile actor, and his decent into madness is both believable and highly entertaining. When it comes down to brass tacks, this film is a two person affair, and both Fulci and first time actor David L. Thompson do wonderful jobs and their performances are what really sell this film.
Throughout the film we are shown scenes of the different films that the fictional Fulci has directed. While a few of the scenes were culled from the recent Fulci flicks, 1989’s Touch of Death and 1988’s Ghosts of Sodom, many of the scenes are pulled from films that the Godfather of Gore did not direct. Scenes from Andrea Bianchi’s Massacre (1989), Leondro Lucchetti’s Bloody Psycho (1989), and Giovanni Simonelli’s Hansel e Gretel all make appearances. I think this mixture of Fulci’s own work and the work of his contemporaries not only adds to the gore quotient (and it does), but it allows the fictional Fulci to becomes something of a representative of all horror movie directors. In spoofing the reputation that directors of gory goodness get, that they are sick, disturbed individuals, Fulci was poking fun at all the rumors and suppositions that dog men in his line of work. It comes are no surprise that when Fulci is confronted with a photojournalist in the film, the man appears to him to be a Nazi in full regalia. Sensationalizing the aspects of the horror director character and exploiting it to full effect gives the film an edge of dark humor that I really liked.
Adding another layer of enjoyment to the film is the score by frequent collaborator Fabio Frizzi. This time Frizzi partially departs from the dark synthy sonics of his Zombi 2 or City of the Living Dead work and puts forth a soundtrack that features some jazzier numbers. One of them in particular had the feeling of a New Orleans jazz combo that I really liked. Another interesting musical cue comes via Edvard Grieg’s composition “In the Hall of the Mountain King”. Many film fans will recognize this as the tune whistled by Peter Lorre in the Fritz Lang classic M when he was stalking his prey. The tune accompanies many of the film’s murders and adds something extra to the feeling of the movie reality within the film.
Speaking of the movie world this film exists in, I think it might be one of Cat in the Brain’s greatest strengths and one of the things that will put some people off the movie quite quickly. As the film begins, we are greeted with an overhead shot of Fulci as he rattles off a laundry list of horrors. The camera moves in close to the bald pate of his head and then cuts to a very fake looking cat ripping away at some pretty unconvincing brain matter. This scene alone is laughable, but I think that’s the point. Throughout the film, the effects often look cheap and, in some cases, just plain bad. By utilizing effects that are not up to the usual graphic awesomeness of Fulci’s other work, he creates a world that feels more like the reality of a film set, something a director would know very much about. That Fulci’s character’s hallucinations share these characteristics is a stroke of genius, and I applaud him for taking the chance.
My favorite scene in the film has to be the nod to Hitchcock's Psycho. The infamous shower scene is recreated, and while it is nearly matched up shot to shot, Fulci adds his own twist, Replacing the chocolate syrup down the drain and Janet Leigh's near nudity, we instead get tons of blood and full frontal nudity from the young lady. This scene encapsulates the essence of Fulci, a reverence for the masters, but with the need to take it one step beyond decorum.
I loves me some Fulci, and I loves me some dark comedy. With Cat in the Brain, you get the best of both worlds. While there are inconsistencies and plot holes a plenty, they are easily overlooked. After all, there has to be some gore or Fulci in a sweater vest right around the corner, and the ending to the film is both deeply satisfying and laugh out loud funny. If you’re not versed in at least some of Lucio’s earlier work, the joke may be lost on you, but for fans of his work, this is an invaluable film.
