Joe D'Amato's follow-up to Anthropophagous opens much as its predecessor had finished, with George Eastman's hulking man-monster literally spilling his guts.
The similarity ends there, however, as rather than consuming his own entrails and thus bringing about his demise, Eastman's character, Mikos Stenopolis, has the capacity to regenerate just about any damage he may sustain within a remarkably short period of time, much to the surprise of the staff at the local hospital.
This ability, it seems, is the result of some experiments carried out on Mikos in his Greek homeland, a plot device clearly intended to further link the character to the previous film, which had actually taken place on a Greek island.
If the experiment has left Mikos's near immortal - he cannot regenerate damage to his brain, leading to a variant on the time-honoured aim for the head scenario - it has also left him even more psychotic than he already was.
Mikos's nemesis, who was responsible for his initial gut-spilling, is a Greek Orthodox priest, played by Edmund Purdom with dubious accent. His role in the experiment is equally unclear. As he tries to explain to Charles Borromel's unsurprisingly uncomprehending police chief, "I serve god with biochemistry."
What is certain, however, is that Purdom's priest is Dr Loomis to Eastman's Michael Myers, with the bulk of the film - scripted by Eastman and possibly Bruno Mattei, under his Jimmy Matheus alias - playing out as a homage / rip-off of the first two Halloween films in setting and incidents. Mikos, an unstoppable force of evil, is even referred to as "the boogey-man" a number of times.
Rather than the occasion being Halloween, though, it is the big game between the Rams and the Steelers for "the championship". Whilst the intention here was clearly to Americanise the film, the attempt fails. First, as Kim Newman noted in Nightmare Movies, since the adults gathered for the game - conveniently leaving their children alone with the babysitter to face the monster - incongruously snack on pasta. Second, because the filmmakers' representation of the game is more like soccer or rugby than gridiron, going from end to end at a frantic pace. (It may also be noted that at one point the supposed quarterback according to the voice-off is clearly a running back from the hand-off play that is made and the jersey number he is wearing; in another a touchdown is scored just before half-time but there seems to be no point-after attempt.)
Whereas Carpenter had his characters watch The Thing from Another World, D'Amato has the children, played by William Berger's daughter Katya and son Kasimir, watch one of his Dominican Republic films. Thankfully, however, Mark Shannon and Lucia Ramirez are dubbed as for an innocent romantic drama rather than a horror-porn hybrid.
If D'Amato skips on the sex and nudity that represents one of the two major components of his film-making approach, he more than compensates for this with horror and gore, whether Mikos holding in his entrails at the start; drilling one victim through the head; subjecting another to an involuntary trepanation with a band-saw, or putting a third in an oven. In other words, the film is just as worthy of its Rosso sangue - Red Blood - name as its Absurd one.
Though D'Amato would be the first to admit he is no John Carpenter, he is also a better director than many would give him credit for, generating plenty of atmospheric and a particularly suspenseful final act in which the kids - one bed ridden - must somehow defend themselves against the unstoppable boogey-man.
Other points of note include an early role for Michele Soavi, as an ill-fated member of a motorcycle gang; a practical joke playing, mask-wearing kid, and on-screen role for dubbing-artist Ted Russoff.
Carlo Maria Cordio provides an eerily effective soundtrack of swirling and droning synthesiser-led themes that build to intense, percussive crescendos in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Goblin or Fabio Frizzi's work on City of the Living Dead, but which ultimately lacks their subtlety and imagination.
In sum, better than you might think.
Showing posts with label Luigi Montifiore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Luigi Montifiore. Show all posts
Wednesday, 31 December 2008
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
Blastfighter / Force of Vengeance / L' Exécuteur
Released from prison after serving eight years for killing the hitman who murdered his wife, ex-cop “Tiger” Sharp's first thought is to assassinate the corrupt District Attorney behind the crime. But after former colleague advises Tiger to think things over a bit, whilst also incongruously supplying him with an experimental, state-of-the-art, multi-function gun, Tiger instead returns to his old home in rural Georgia, complete with blind, mutant banjo player.
His peace is soon disturbed by the some of the local rednecks who are systematically killing the area's wildlife population to make into Chinese medicine. Their no-good leader, Wally, turns out to be the younger brother of Tom, with whom Tiger has a history. He was responsible for injuring Tom, leaving him with a limp that has kept him in the small town. It may have been a blessing in disguise, however, since Tom has subsequently built up a successful logging business.
Tom and Tiger
Out of mutual respect, the two men agree to disagree over the slaughter, though Tom also makes it clear what will happen if push comes to shove:
“You want a war?”
“Nope – you just tell your brother to leave the animals alone and I'll leave them alone.”
“Tiger – if something happens between you and my brother you know whose side I'm going to have to be on.”
And, with Wally and his idiot gang foolishly escalating the conflict, going beyond the point of no return by raping and murdering Tiger's daughter Connie, who had shown up wanting to bond with the father she has never known, this is exactly what happens...
Connie and Tiger
Though obviously drawing inspiration from both Deliverance and First Blood, this 1984 actioner from John Old Jr. / Lamberto Bava, Blastfighter seeks to be a bit more than hicksploitation through also throwing in touches of science-fiction, in the form of Tiger's experimental super-weapon; giallo, through a traumatic flashback scenes incorporating a black gloved killer that seems to pay hommage to his father's Blood and Black Lace and mentor Argento's Tenebre in equal measure; (super)cop on the edge poliziotteschi; western style a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do attitudes and settlings of accounts, and post-mondo / cannibal survivalism.
If the giallo and poliziotto elements are perhaps misplaced, its worth thinking about the western one in relation to Deliverance and First Blood themselves, as respectively a film in which the redneck is the equivalent of the unknowable Native American other and a film in which the hero is coded as the Indian against the white man, and what they thus highlight about the increasingly confused boundaries of Hollywood cinema around this time. If, that is, both films have certain western qualities, these are also those of the post-spaghetti western with its very different worldview.
Special make-up effects, rather than mondo / cannibal no-effects
As far as the mondo and cannibal filone are concerned, meanwhile, I say post here because in its pro-ecological message and avoidance of actual animal slaughter – thought apparently a deer suffered a seizure and died during the production – Blastfighter distinguishes itself from these earlier cycles, whose own logical end point, Cannibal Holocaust, he had worked on as assistant director.
Giallo imagery
If Bava seems to be atoning for this involvement here, his experiences on Deodato's film would seem to have also stood him in good stead, insofar as he works well with the rugged locations and up to the kinds of filmmaking challenges they pose – challenges very different, we might note, from the characteristically studio-based and more heavily resource-constrained films made by his father.
Michael Sopkiw makes for an agreeable lead, capable of being troubled and taciturn without turning the viewer off from caring about his character, whilst Valentina Forte is appropriately everyday attractive and sympathetic as the ill-fated Connie.
Though bad guys are written as a bunch of backwoods redneck clichés for the most part, being all 4x4s, plaid shirts and retrograde attitudes, the filmmakers also succeed in conveying something of their limited world through this, including the hostility it breeds towards those who are different from them and the desperate self-destructiveness that all too often result as they attempt to (im)prove their worth in abiding by outmoded doctrines of rugged and macho individualism.
It further helps here that the various Italian performers hiding behind Anglo-sounding pseudonyms also look and feel the part rather than standing out like sore thumbs; besides the always useful Luigi Montifiore / George Eastman we've also got the likes of Ottaviano Dell'Acqua as one of Wally's gang and Michele Soavi, credited as Michael Saroyan – and also performing second unit duties – as Connie's doomed forest ranger boyfriend.
The Deerhunter hunter
Things exploding
Nicely shot by Lawrence Bannon / Gianlorenzo Battaglia and scored by the Barrymore / De Angelis brothers with a combination of suitably mauldin Country & Western and energetic pumping action themes, Blastfighter is simply a good, unpretentious little filone film that accomplishes all it sets out to do in delivering action thrills, with plenty of things and bad guys exploding, and its messages, however rudimentary this may be to the (non-filone) cognoscenti.
His peace is soon disturbed by the some of the local rednecks who are systematically killing the area's wildlife population to make into Chinese medicine. Their no-good leader, Wally, turns out to be the younger brother of Tom, with whom Tiger has a history. He was responsible for injuring Tom, leaving him with a limp that has kept him in the small town. It may have been a blessing in disguise, however, since Tom has subsequently built up a successful logging business.
Tom and Tiger
Out of mutual respect, the two men agree to disagree over the slaughter, though Tom also makes it clear what will happen if push comes to shove:
“You want a war?”
“Nope – you just tell your brother to leave the animals alone and I'll leave them alone.”
“Tiger – if something happens between you and my brother you know whose side I'm going to have to be on.”
And, with Wally and his idiot gang foolishly escalating the conflict, going beyond the point of no return by raping and murdering Tiger's daughter Connie, who had shown up wanting to bond with the father she has never known, this is exactly what happens...
Connie and Tiger
Though obviously drawing inspiration from both Deliverance and First Blood, this 1984 actioner from John Old Jr. / Lamberto Bava, Blastfighter seeks to be a bit more than hicksploitation through also throwing in touches of science-fiction, in the form of Tiger's experimental super-weapon; giallo, through a traumatic flashback scenes incorporating a black gloved killer that seems to pay hommage to his father's Blood and Black Lace and mentor Argento's Tenebre in equal measure; (super)cop on the edge poliziotteschi; western style a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do attitudes and settlings of accounts, and post-mondo / cannibal survivalism.
If the giallo and poliziotto elements are perhaps misplaced, its worth thinking about the western one in relation to Deliverance and First Blood themselves, as respectively a film in which the redneck is the equivalent of the unknowable Native American other and a film in which the hero is coded as the Indian against the white man, and what they thus highlight about the increasingly confused boundaries of Hollywood cinema around this time. If, that is, both films have certain western qualities, these are also those of the post-spaghetti western with its very different worldview.
Special make-up effects, rather than mondo / cannibal no-effects
As far as the mondo and cannibal filone are concerned, meanwhile, I say post here because in its pro-ecological message and avoidance of actual animal slaughter – thought apparently a deer suffered a seizure and died during the production – Blastfighter distinguishes itself from these earlier cycles, whose own logical end point, Cannibal Holocaust, he had worked on as assistant director.
Giallo imagery
If Bava seems to be atoning for this involvement here, his experiences on Deodato's film would seem to have also stood him in good stead, insofar as he works well with the rugged locations and up to the kinds of filmmaking challenges they pose – challenges very different, we might note, from the characteristically studio-based and more heavily resource-constrained films made by his father.
Michael Sopkiw makes for an agreeable lead, capable of being troubled and taciturn without turning the viewer off from caring about his character, whilst Valentina Forte is appropriately everyday attractive and sympathetic as the ill-fated Connie.
Though bad guys are written as a bunch of backwoods redneck clichés for the most part, being all 4x4s, plaid shirts and retrograde attitudes, the filmmakers also succeed in conveying something of their limited world through this, including the hostility it breeds towards those who are different from them and the desperate self-destructiveness that all too often result as they attempt to (im)prove their worth in abiding by outmoded doctrines of rugged and macho individualism.
It further helps here that the various Italian performers hiding behind Anglo-sounding pseudonyms also look and feel the part rather than standing out like sore thumbs; besides the always useful Luigi Montifiore / George Eastman we've also got the likes of Ottaviano Dell'Acqua as one of Wally's gang and Michele Soavi, credited as Michael Saroyan – and also performing second unit duties – as Connie's doomed forest ranger boyfriend.
The Deerhunter hunter
Things exploding
Nicely shot by Lawrence Bannon / Gianlorenzo Battaglia and scored by the Barrymore / De Angelis brothers with a combination of suitably mauldin Country & Western and energetic pumping action themes, Blastfighter is simply a good, unpretentious little filone film that accomplishes all it sets out to do in delivering action thrills, with plenty of things and bad guys exploding, and its messages, however rudimentary this may be to the (non-filone) cognoscenti.
Monday, 26 May 2008
La Ragazza del vagone letto / Terror Express!
All aboard the overnight sleaze express...
Where do all the other passengers go once the action gets underway?
Our passenger list includes:
A man and his wife, who is seriously, even terminally, ill.
An outwardly respectable father and husband who has incestuous desires towards his 16-year-old daughter; you may recognise the actor playing the father, Roberto Caporali, from Zombie: Nights of Terror.
A cigar-chomping businessman and his put upon minion, whose first task is buying “all the porno magazines you have” for his boss from the station kiosk.
A bickering couple, Anna and Mike, played by the suitably mismatched pairing of Zora Kerowa and Venantino Venantini.
A by-the-book policeman escorting a prisoner across the border from Italy into Germany; said prisoner is played by another Gabriele Crisanti alumnus, Gianluigi Chirizzi.
A prostitute, played by top-billed Silvia Dioniso, who works the train in exchange for paying the guard for his services as procurer.
And, last but by no means least as catalysts for this Twentieth Century meets Late Night Trains meets Assault on Precinct 13, three young thugs looking for kicks, two of them played by Werner Pochath and Carlo De Mejo.
The guard and the gang
The attraction between Kerova and De Mejo's characters is immediately apparent.
Let's sit back and enjoy the ride...
Objectively, Terror Express! / La Ragazza del vagone letto (i.e. The Girl in the Sleeping Car; a reference to Dioniso's character) is not a very good film.
As is Dioniso's effect on the other passengers
The contrast between the exterior images of the train which repeatedly punctuate the action, and the studio interior recreation of a small subsection of it is somewhat jarring: how come no-one from any of the other carriages ever steps in or wonders where the guard has got to over the course of the entire night?
Late Night Trains worked a lot better in this regard because the second train, the one on which the rape and murder occur, was established as empty save for the smaller central group of five characters who board it, whilst also generally making a more convincing use of the possibilities of the train space.
The obligatory softcore sex and nude scenes are also awkward. Not so much in the sense that they make for uncomfortable viewing – porno rape and a father's incestuous desires towards his adolescent daughter should certainly be awkward viewing – but more because this awkwardness comes through director Ferdinando Baldi's unfortunate tendency to present everything throughout in what he appears to intend as the same an arousing way, complete with dramatic angles and inappropriate music.
The issue is most apparent in the scene where Anna goes off with one of the thugs, Ernie. She's clearly attracted to what he represents in contrast with her older, clearly conservative minded or even reactionary husband. As such, it's appropriate to have that sense of illicit thrill in the mise en scène, as something which is between the two characters: as they fuck, they are also fucking with the system, the man, as represented by the likes of Anna's older husband. But when another thug, Phil, sneaks in to the compartment and joins in, the power dynamics of the encounter change: Anna did not consent to this. Unfortunately Baldi's direction doesn't successfully convey this.
Still on the consensual side of things...
Nor do the violent action scenes quite convince, although the problem here is perhaps as much to with the difficulty of believing in De Mejo and Pochath as anything more than obnoxious bullies. They don't give off the same psychopathic aura as David Hess in Hitch-Hike or House on the Edge of the Park, where you genuinely believe he can back up his threats as and when the need arises.
But, then again, perhaps this actually works in terms of Terror Express!'s own dynamics. Specifically, it might be argued that what we have are three bad boys – emphasis on the boy – out to see how far they can push things, who then don't get pushed back until it is too late and things have gone far further than they had anticipated.
Beyond this, the characterisation is often unsatisfactory and the attempts at social commentary, courtesy of writer George Eastman/Luigi Montifiore, somewhat ham-fisted.
Yet, what saves the film and makes it so interesting and worth watching despite its flaws is the inclusion of this selfsame material, disregarding the way it slows down and complicates the narrative as you try to keep track of everyone, their relationships with one another and, most intriguing of all, to try to figure out where the filmmakers want to you stand regarding them all.
Rather than just class, it's also about gender, generation, political leaning and appearances against reality.
Thus, for example, when first confronted with the gang, the father asks his daughter if her current boyfriend is like that, a “social degenerate” before playing the “I only want what's best for you” card in his defence; a decidedly creepy remark in the light of later revelations.
Likewise, Anna, who had earlier welcomed the gang playing their radio loudly, responds to the quiet arrival of the prisoner and his guard in the dining wagon with the remark that their presence “shows a complete lack of consideration.”
Her husband's equally telling riposte: “Look who's talking, when you condone the outrageous actions of those three punks back there! God, it pisses me off!”
Father: “It's really hot in here”
Daughter: “I wish I could turn off the heating”
Father: “Why don't you take off your nightgown?”
Where do all the other passengers go once the action gets underway?
Our passenger list includes:
A man and his wife, who is seriously, even terminally, ill.
An outwardly respectable father and husband who has incestuous desires towards his 16-year-old daughter; you may recognise the actor playing the father, Roberto Caporali, from Zombie: Nights of Terror.
A cigar-chomping businessman and his put upon minion, whose first task is buying “all the porno magazines you have” for his boss from the station kiosk.
A bickering couple, Anna and Mike, played by the suitably mismatched pairing of Zora Kerowa and Venantino Venantini.
A by-the-book policeman escorting a prisoner across the border from Italy into Germany; said prisoner is played by another Gabriele Crisanti alumnus, Gianluigi Chirizzi.
A prostitute, played by top-billed Silvia Dioniso, who works the train in exchange for paying the guard for his services as procurer.
And, last but by no means least as catalysts for this Twentieth Century meets Late Night Trains meets Assault on Precinct 13, three young thugs looking for kicks, two of them played by Werner Pochath and Carlo De Mejo.
The guard and the gang
The attraction between Kerova and De Mejo's characters is immediately apparent.
Let's sit back and enjoy the ride...
Objectively, Terror Express! / La Ragazza del vagone letto (i.e. The Girl in the Sleeping Car; a reference to Dioniso's character) is not a very good film.
As is Dioniso's effect on the other passengers
The contrast between the exterior images of the train which repeatedly punctuate the action, and the studio interior recreation of a small subsection of it is somewhat jarring: how come no-one from any of the other carriages ever steps in or wonders where the guard has got to over the course of the entire night?
Late Night Trains worked a lot better in this regard because the second train, the one on which the rape and murder occur, was established as empty save for the smaller central group of five characters who board it, whilst also generally making a more convincing use of the possibilities of the train space.
The obligatory softcore sex and nude scenes are also awkward. Not so much in the sense that they make for uncomfortable viewing – porno rape and a father's incestuous desires towards his adolescent daughter should certainly be awkward viewing – but more because this awkwardness comes through director Ferdinando Baldi's unfortunate tendency to present everything throughout in what he appears to intend as the same an arousing way, complete with dramatic angles and inappropriate music.
The issue is most apparent in the scene where Anna goes off with one of the thugs, Ernie. She's clearly attracted to what he represents in contrast with her older, clearly conservative minded or even reactionary husband. As such, it's appropriate to have that sense of illicit thrill in the mise en scène, as something which is between the two characters: as they fuck, they are also fucking with the system, the man, as represented by the likes of Anna's older husband. But when another thug, Phil, sneaks in to the compartment and joins in, the power dynamics of the encounter change: Anna did not consent to this. Unfortunately Baldi's direction doesn't successfully convey this.
Still on the consensual side of things...
Nor do the violent action scenes quite convince, although the problem here is perhaps as much to with the difficulty of believing in De Mejo and Pochath as anything more than obnoxious bullies. They don't give off the same psychopathic aura as David Hess in Hitch-Hike or House on the Edge of the Park, where you genuinely believe he can back up his threats as and when the need arises.
But, then again, perhaps this actually works in terms of Terror Express!'s own dynamics. Specifically, it might be argued that what we have are three bad boys – emphasis on the boy – out to see how far they can push things, who then don't get pushed back until it is too late and things have gone far further than they had anticipated.
Beyond this, the characterisation is often unsatisfactory and the attempts at social commentary, courtesy of writer George Eastman/Luigi Montifiore, somewhat ham-fisted.
Yet, what saves the film and makes it so interesting and worth watching despite its flaws is the inclusion of this selfsame material, disregarding the way it slows down and complicates the narrative as you try to keep track of everyone, their relationships with one another and, most intriguing of all, to try to figure out where the filmmakers want to you stand regarding them all.
Rather than just class, it's also about gender, generation, political leaning and appearances against reality.
Thus, for example, when first confronted with the gang, the father asks his daughter if her current boyfriend is like that, a “social degenerate” before playing the “I only want what's best for you” card in his defence; a decidedly creepy remark in the light of later revelations.
Likewise, Anna, who had earlier welcomed the gang playing their radio loudly, responds to the quiet arrival of the prisoner and his guard in the dining wagon with the remark that their presence “shows a complete lack of consideration.”
Her husband's equally telling riposte: “Look who's talking, when you condone the outrageous actions of those three punks back there! God, it pisses me off!”
Father: “It's really hot in here”
Daughter: “I wish I could turn off the heating”
Father: “Why don't you take off your nightgown?”
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