Macabre

Macabre (Macabro, Frozen Terror) Directed by Lamberto Bava (LamBava) starring Bernice Stegers, Stanko Molnar, Veronica Zinny, Roberto Posse, Ferdinando Orlandi (1980)

-Reviewed by Richard Glenn Schmidt

Mom Of The Year/Wife Of The Year for 1980 runner-up Jane Baker (Bernice Stegers) waits until her husband leaves for work so that she can abandon her two kids and meet up with her lover in his apartment. I don’t know if this is normal or not because this story -“inspired by actual events”- takes place in New Orleans; that could just be how they roll there. What Jane doesn’t know is that her daughter Lucy (Veronica Zinny) is a complete wacko. In a desperate plea for attention she fucking drowns her little brother! Dang, those tween years are murder!

When she gets the call that her son is dead, Jane and her lover Fred (Roberto Posse) -fresh from making the sex act- jump in his VW Bug and head for the house. Because she’s having a nervous breakdown in the passenger seat, Fred loses control of the car and is killed in the ensuing crash. Jane has to spend some time recovering in the loony bin. Once she gets out, Jane heads home to patch things up with her long-suffering husband and deal with the clearly insane Lucy. Just kidding, she heads right to Fred’s apartment to be even more of an asshole than she’s already been thus far.

This is not about Hurricane Katrina.

Enter Robert Duval. No, not Robert Duvall (with two L’s), Robert Duval (Stanko Molnar), the blind son of the former landlord who lives alone in the same building as Dead Fred -not Drop Dead Fred. Stop distracting me, IMDB. I’m trying to write about Macabre! He has always had a crush on Jane and now that she’s single, he’s ready to make his move. But is she single? Robert immediately notices that Jane is acting rather strange. She has nightly rendezvous with someone she calls “Fred” and is having about a thousand loud orgasms during these encounters.

Never date anyone with anything less than a Passat.

Skip this paragraph if you don’t want the film spoiled for you. But if you’ve seen the completely unsubtle VHS art for this film under its Frozen Terror title, then you know what I’m about to say. Somehow Jane has managed to save Fred’s severed head in a freezer and has been making love to it since she got out of the nuthouse. How the hell she managed to score this little trophy is beyond me. Robert and Lucy figure out the truth at the same time. He wants to help Jane and presumably hook up when she gets back from a possible second trip to the place with padded walls. Lucy decides to use her knowledge of the severed head of Fred to torture her mother for reasons unknown. I’m telling you. Tweens, man.

The doctors dilated my pupils years ago, I kept the glasses.

In case you ever wondered if British actress Bernice Stegers (of Xtro) is batshit insane, Macabre can answer that one for you. Her performance in this is completely unhinged and ludicrously over-the-top. I love it! Of course, it doesn’t hurt that she’s voluptuous as hell and her character is dangerously horny with a slightly (sarcasm) unhealthy dose of sexual obsession and necrophilia to boot. If her half-assed altar to the memory of her deceased lover doesn’t make you snicker, then I don’t know my business.

You can never wash off the Stanko.

A huge part of what makes this all so brilliant is Jane’s epic cockteasing of poor Robert. And for reals, part of me wants to think that she’s genuinely interested in Robert but she’s so damn bonkers that she can’t let Fred go, even in the face of a seemingly normal encounter. Robert repairs brass musical instruments for a living so you know he’s good with his hands! Give the guy a chance, lady.

Possessing one of the finest names in history -second only to Fabio Testi- is Croatian born Stanko Molnar. He’s really good in this one and I wish he’d done more Italian horror and giallo. Of course, the real MVP of Macabre is Veronica Zinny. Her portrayal of the diabolical and unintentionally hilarious Lucy really carries the movie when Bernice Stegers isn’t chewing giant sexy holes in the scenery. I wish that this wasn’t her only screen credit. I would have liked to have seen those constantly narrowing, sneaky eyes in more Italian horror flicks.

No one plays Minecraft anymore.

I kept misremembering this film as having a 100 minute or longer running time but no, it just feels like it does. While the same can be said to a lesser degree of his follow-up, the hilarious giallo A Blade in the Dark (1983, see review here), LamBava’s feature film debut is disastrously methodical in its pacing. Add a couple of megaton bomb level annoying brats and a one note mystery to the mix and you’ve got a film that I find tough to recommend but enjoyable enough for seasoned Italian horror fans. Just don’t expect anything remotely insane like the director’s own Demons (1985). This is the un-Demons.

Tastes like Fabio Testi.

The music by composer Ubaldo Continello (Trauma, Play Motel) is spare when it’s not ramming a saxophone, harmonica, or wildly heavy handed percussion and strings up your ass. I really think this film would have benefited from some synthesizer freak-outs to fill in the long stretches without music. Hey LamBava, I know you probably thought that less is more but it’s not true. Less is just less, duder. Do I really think that blogs speak directly to all them fancy directors in Hollywood?  How long has LamBava lived in Hollywood anyway? Eh, probably since Body Puzzle (1992) came out.

So yeah, I have mixed feelings about Macabre. There’s quite a bit of atmosphere, lavish set decorations, great locations, unexplained plot weirdness, mind-melting histrionics, and abrupt, comedic violence. The director admits that the idea for the film started as a joke and/or is based on a real case. I’m thinking it’s the former but you know what, why not? New Orleans doesn’t have laws against this kind of thing happening. Just like Ft. Pierce, Florida, anything goes. The aforementioned slowness of the plot is kind of a deal breaker but I might give Macabre another viewing someday. Or not. The music score certainly doesn’t do the film any favors because let’s be honest, the harmonica is the butthole of musical instruments.

Can you necro-feel me, dawg?

A "Demons" Series Overview

THE “DEMONS” SERIES: A 'THEATER OF GUTS' SPECIAL INVESTIGATIVE REPORT

by Goat Scrote

     Only three of the "Demons" films (Italian title “Dèmoni”) are 'real' entries in this (in)famous Italian horror series. They can be identified by their contagious slime-oozing demons and their awesome soundtracks, each one showcasing a completely different style of music. All three of the originals are worthwhile monster movies with plenty of gloopy special effects. They don't work very hard at making sense but they're lots of fun to watch.
     The films were reasonably successful internationally.  Many unrelated Italian horror movies were released or re-released in foreign home-video markets (particularly Japan and the United States) with new titles that placed them within the “Demons” series. At least nine movies have been marketed under the “Demons” flagship at one time or another, including three different flicks vying for the position of 'part 3', in the hopes of milking a few more lira, yen, dollars, and pounds out of an unsuspecting public. None of the pseudo-sequels actually features anything resembling the slime-demons from the original films. With only a couple of exceptions, the phony sequels are erupting volcanos of suck which are not fit for human consumption. This has sown confusion and a not inconsiderable amount of despair throughout the world.

     My sanity is already too far eroded by three decades of watching this kind of shit. That's why, for an especially grueling marathon project like this, we had to test the films on animals. We strapped mutated, schlock-resistant bunny rabbits into the seats in one of the environmentally-sealed theaters at TOG Laboratories, wedged open their little eyelids, and pumped the adorable fuzzy-wuzzies full of our own patented blend of psychotropic drugs. Then we wired their brains to our malevolent super-computer, Proteus. (He starred opposite Julie Christie in the 1977 film "Demon Seed", which is not the first “Dèmoni” film no matter what Proteus claims.) Proteus collated the results of the bunnies suffering to produce the following list. For you. We did it all for you. To prove that our love for you isn't 'weird' like you keep saying.

     Please observe a moment of silence and perhaps offer a prayer (to Satan, of course) on behalf of all the innocent bunnies killed or driven hopelessly mad by these films. Let us also remember all those brave humanoid explorers before us who made the mistake of delving into the murky depths of the “Dèmoni” series and never returned. We've already discussed my eroded sanity, right?
     Okay, on with the list. The movies are placed based on the position they hold in the series and/or wherever I felt like putting them. That means the pseudo-sequels are presented roughly in the order that they were re-released as a “Demons” movie, not in order of original release dates. Multiple authors are presented in alphabetical order. In these summaries I have tried to avoid any major spoilers.  If you want plot details, each of the movies has been (or soon will be) given the full review treatment here on Theater of Guts. A little internet searching will turn up the majority of them streaming for free under one of their many titles.
     There is an official authorized comic book sequel to the films which has been published, titled "Demons 3". I haven't read it but I am intrigued. Apparently it is a prequel telling a story involving Nostradamus and the demons.

The Originals

“Dèmoni” / ”Demons” (1985)

     Bunny Survival Rate: 80%
    Directed by Lamberto Bava.

     Produced by Dario Argento.

     Screenplay by Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava, Franco Ferrini, and Dardano Sacchetti.

     Music: METAL.  \m/

     Murderous demons possess and terrorize the audience in a movie theater. The victims are lured in by a creepy metal-masked host played by Michele Soavi, who would later direct the third film. Anyone who gets scratched becomes possessed and physically transforms into a monster. Plenty of slime and chaos. Pus spurts all over the place. One of the demons bursts open to release an even more awful demon. The hero fights back with a samurai sword while riding a dirt-bike through the theater. A helicopter crashes through the roof at exactly the right moment for no goddamned reason whatsoever. And yes, there is an eye impalement. You bet your ass this is highly recommended.

“Dèmoni 2… L’Incubo Ritorna” / ”Demons 2” (1986)

     Bunny Survival Rate: 70%
     Directed by Lamberto Bava.

     Produced by Dario Argento.

     Screenplay by Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava, Franco Ferrini, and Dardano Sacchetti.

     Music: 80's post-punk / New Wave

     Also known as ”Demons 2: The Nightmare Returns”, which is the literal translation of the Italian title. There's a bit of wordplay that doesn't translate into English. The Italian word for nightmare (“incubo”) comes from the name of a type of demon which was thought to create night-terrors.

     A demon comes out of a television to slaughter and infect the residents of an apartment complex. Most of the effects are solid and well-conceived but the demon-dog and a few other bits are entertainingly bad, more goofy than gross. It doesn't have the same off-the-wall, anything-goes energy as the first movie but there are plenty of demons and buckets of green ooze. The film ends with a disappointing anticlimax that was lethal to a number of the test rabbits. (I wish they had gone with the super-gory ending rumored to have been in the original script, with a demon-possessed fetus that would have ripped its way out of its mother.) Recommended, although not quite as highly as the first and third movies.

“La Chiesa” / ”The Church” (1989)

     Bunny Survival Rate: 85%
     Directed by Michele Soavi.

     Produced by Dario Argento.

     Screenplay by Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini, and Michele Soavi.

     Music: Modern classical / Prog rock / “New Age”

     Michele Soavi takes on directorial duties for the third movie. The demons ooze their way into our world again, inside a cathedral built to contain the site of an ancient outbreak. Slimy bloody mayhem ensues. A cool goat-headed boss demon, Rube-Goldberg-style deathtraps, and demon sex bring additional flair to the proceedings. The giant beast rising through the floor of the cathedral, made out of the writhing bodies of the possessed clinging to one another, is prime nightmare fuel. Highly recommended – my personal favorite of the originals.

     Some of the bunnies exploded during the demon-on-human sex scenes. I don't think that should count, but Proteus says that my thumbs-up reaction to soft-core monster porno is abnormal. He claims my perspective has been warped by years of mining video stores and the internet for the weirdest things I can find. Personally I think Proteus just feels threatened because demons are his biggest competitors in the field of unnatural human impregnation.

The Pseudo-Sequels

DEMONS 3-B

“Dèmoni 3” / ”Black Demons” (1991)

     Bunny Survival Rate: 30%

     Directed by Umberto Lenzi.

     Produced by Giuseppe Gargiulo.

     Screenplay by Olga Pehar.

     Director Umberto Lenzi is best known to gore fans for the iconic “Cannibal Ferox” (1981). “Dèmoni 3” bears several distinctions among the 'fake' sequels. For one thing, it was released with a “Dèmoni” sequel title from the beginning despite being a zombie movie. They were openly cashing in on the “Demons” series right from the start. Even though a third movie (“The Church”) already existed, there wasn't a movie actually titled “Demons 3”, so that left the market open. This one doesn't have any writing, directing, or production staff in common with the original three. I can respect the deliciously exploitative shamelessness of it all, but unfortunately it's not a very watchable movie.

     Vengeful voodoo-style zombies kill a few tourists after one of them plays a tape recording of a Macumba religious ritual in an old slave-plantation graveyard. They linger on the gore from time to time, but a couple of gruesome meathook eyeball-gouges can't save this one. Unless you really must see every Italian zombie movie ever made, you should flee in the other direction if you see this movie coming. Whatever you do, don't look back because it might be gaining on you.

DEMONS 3-C

"La casa dell'orco" / “Demons III: The Ogre” (1988)

     Bunny Survival Rate: 20%

     Directed by Lamberto Bava

     Produced by Massimo Manasse, Marco Grillo Spina.

     Screenplay by Lamberto Bava, Dardano Sacchetti.

     A silly made-for-TV movie by the director of the first two “Demons” films. Also known as “House of the Ogre” (the literal translation of the Italian title) or “The Ogre: Demons 3”. It was also released as "Ghost House II". "Ghosthouse", the first one, was directed by exploitation-master Umberto Lenzi and that movie was also called "La Casa 3". "Evil Dead 2" was marketed in Italy as "La Casa 2".  In other words, "The Ogre" has also been marketed as a fake sequel ("Ghost House 2") to a series which sprang from a fake sequel to the "Evil Dead" series ("La Casa 3"), the latter fake sequel (aka "Ghosthouse") having been made by a guy who also made a fake sequel ("Dèmoni 3") to a series created by the guy who made the former fake sequel (aka "Demons III: The Ogre").
     You follow that? Yeah, me neither.
     That is why we require the assistance of a supercomputer.

     The movie tells the story of a magical ogre with a sexual fetish for orchids, and the family vacation which he ruins. It's got a few nice visuals but it's even dumber than it sounds, has hardly any blood, and very little nudity or sexuality despite the racy premise. The characters are unlikeable and the monster is dull. The most interesting thing about it is the layer upon layer of deceptive marketing used to sell it. Most of the bunnies died of sheer boredom, and the survivors were driven mad with outrage by the lame ending. Avoid.

DEMONS 4

“La Setta” / “The Sect” (1991)

     Bunny Survival Rate: 60%
     Directed by Michele Soavi.

     Produced by Dario Argento, Mario Cecchi Gori, Vittorio Cecchi Gori, Andrea Tinnirello.

     Screenplay by Dario Argento, Giovanni Romoli, Michele Soavi.

     Also known as “The Devil's Daughter” and “Demons IV: The Sect”. This is the only pseudo-sequel also connected to Dario Argento. I like this movie. Not quite as entertaining as any of the original three “Demons” films but firmly in second place among the faux-sequels. It's pretty to look at, and maintains an oppressive dreamlike atmosphere.

     A young school-teacher's life swirls down the drain when she moves into a house over a watery Hellmouth and she is targeted to be the mother of the Evil One's baby. A convoluted story involves a worldwide network of cultists, a prehistoric species of Satanic brain-eating insect, an innocent-looking possessed rabbit, and slimy blue worms crawling through the plumbing. A woman gets her face ripped off with hooks during a black magic ritual. A deadly handkerchief/death-shroud kills a couple of victims, which sounds dumb on paper but is actually quite creepy and reminded me of a similar element in “Drag Me To Hell” (2009). Recommended, although I think the bunny test may have been biased because of the prominent role of the devil-rabbit, who racks up a couple of human kills along the way.

DEMONS 5

“La maschera del demonio” / “The Mask of the Demon” (1991)

     Bunny Survival Rate: 50%
     Directed by Lamberto Bava.

     Produced by Lamberto Bava, Renato Camarda, Federico Llano, Andrea Piazzesi.

     Screenplay by Massimo De Rita, Giorgio Stegani.

     Also released as “Demons 5: The Devil's Veil”. Director Lamberto Bava tells a tale inspired by his father Mario Bava's “Black Sunday” (1960) and Nikolai Gogol's short story “The Viy” (1835). It draws a great deal of imagery from both sources but goes off in its own direction. This is another movie that Bava made working in Italian TV, but it is superior in every way to “Demons III: The Ogre”.

     A dead witch imprisoned by an iron mask seeks resurrection through spiritual possession of a group of skiers in the Alps. She turns into a series of nasty, foul-looking creatures while trying to devirginate the hero... monster porn raises its ugly head once more. Very little blood but there are some nice visuals and the final half has some entertaining monster effects. There's even a bit of slime here and there. Slightly recommended.

DEMONS 6

“Il gatto nero” / “The Black Cat” (1989)

     Bunny Survival Rate: 25%
     Directed by Luigi Cozzi.

     Produced by Lucio Lucidi.

     Screenplay by Luigi Cozzi.

     Also known as “Demons 6: De Profundis”, originally just called “De Profundis”, meaning “From The Depths”. Reportedly, Daria Nicolodi was also involved with the writing. This was Cozzi's version of the conclusion to Argento's “Three Mothers” series ("Suspiria", "Inferno"), making it yet another instance of an unofficial entry into two different Italian film series. It was also re-titled for its initial release to make it seem like it had a link to Edgar Allen Poe. (It doesn't.) Cozzi's “Starcrash” (1978) is one of my favorite bad movies, but I dislike this one quite a bit.

     Levana, an undead genetic-mutant psychic witch tries to return to life through a movie production which features her as a villain. The witch torments the star of the production and stalks her infant child. The murky annoying story careens to a dreadful, disappointing ending. Cozzi tries to copy elements of Argento's style from "Suspiria", but mostly it doesn't work. Really quite terrible. Avoid.

DEMONS '95

“Dellamorte Dellamore” / “Cemetery Man” (1994)

     Directed by Michele Soavi

     Produced by Conchita Airoldi, Heinz Bibo, Tilde Corsi, Dino Di Donisio, Michèle Ray-Gavras, Giovanni Romoli, Michele Soavi.

     Screenplay by Giovanni Romoli.

     It's smart, macabre, gory, surreal, unpredictable, and it has a wicked sense of humor. This is the best movie on this list, bar none, and a standout among Italian horror movies in general. Has anyone ever seriously referred to it as “Demons '95”? Apparently so. The original Italian title contains rhyming wordplay, literally translating to 'Of death, of love' or 'Of death and love'. It's based on a novel by Tiziano Sclavi, author of the “Dylan Dog” comics.

     The corpses in Buffalora's town cemetery always rise a few days after burial. A gravedigger named Dellamorte and his assistant must kill their returning clients a second time, because it's easier than filling out the paperwork to report the mysterious problem to the town bureaucracy. Then things get weird.
     Highly recommended. The bunnies all died, but they spontaneously returned a few days later. Proteus and I disagreed about how to score this so I unplugged him and won the argument.

     Bunny Survival Rate: 100% undead goodness!

A Blade In The Dark

A Blade In The Dark  Directed By Lamberto Bava, Starring Michele Soavi (1983).

After seeing House By The Cemetery did you want to tear your ears off with a claw hammer while suffering through the whiny, shrill, middle aged woman's voice of Bob, the small fry? Or did you think, what's that delightful little moppet up to anyhow, well here he is in Lamberto Bava's Blade In The Dark.

Home Alone: the prequel

   All of the pasta-land talent is represented in this flick like Dardano Sachetti, who I totally lost respect for after Aladdin, and even soundtrack dude Guido Maurizio De angelis (who seems to be channeling Simon Boswell here). This got a "good stuff" recommendation in the Deep Red catalog, so it must be decent right? 
   I have a phobia of Lamberto Bava, some would say Lambertitus (not this definition though http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Lambertitis ). 
   I mean if you've noticed it's been a long while since I've seen his films (my favorite one still being Delirium: Photo's Of Gioia and the first Demons). Goat Scrote on the other hand has seen everything as far as I can tell, I put him on these special assignments because he does such a top notch job. Look forward to more Demons review coming soon (which I refuse to watch).

Did you get that official Cosby sweater I sent?

   Michele Soavi makes an appearance once again (he mentions that his dad in this film is stuck in an oil war in 1983, not very topical yet).

Bruno the soundtrack composer is played by former Conquest actor Andrea Occhipinti, donning a sweet ass Cosby sweater instead of a loin cloth.

I'm gonna write a tune about Jello Puddin Pops

   The director of the film decides to put him up in a creepy haunted villa to inspire his work, which has to resonate the perfect amount of spookiness. The composer stuck in a ghostly mansion premise sort of reminds me of The Changeling.

   A Geena Davis look-a-like shows up and is super forward and annoying. He accidentally finds her diary (which is in Italian and littered with Snoopy stickers). There's killer lurking in the shadows that uses an x-acto knife on Katya (the fake Geena Davis).  

    

Waaahh, get that knife outta my face--Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice

Bruno hears a strange voice on the reel to reel as he is working on a song for the film's soundtrack. Bava steals some of this from Depalma's Blow Out, which I thought was a pretty flawed effort to begin with, so it's an improvement to rip from it. Sacchetti has been disappointing me lately, did he lose a bet or did the producers put a gun to his head and he patched together some Hitchcock and Depalma in three seconds in order to stay alive? This hypothetical situation is retarded I know, but I need to tell myself this in order to justify the awful dreck I've been seeing with his name attached lately! 

   Not much happens for awhile and then another girl shows up, a former date of Bruno's who's very jealous. They establish a slimy wino caretaker character who has Playboy centerfolds everywhere and makes scrap books, he seems like the obvious murder suspect. 

   A third girl shows up (who looks sort of like a chunky Brinke Stevens), she swims around and finds the murder weapon at the bottom of the pool. As she washes her hair in the sink, a Mrs. Bates copy cat plunges a blade into her hand then wraps her head in plastic wrap.

Let's recreate that Kids In The Hall Citizen Kane sketch

The pacing is excruciatingly slow and the worst crime of all is its lack of gratuitous nudity! I mean you could leave the room, get some chores done while they try to solve the mystery and you don't miss anything! The ending is worth sticking around for, even though its pretty derivative. Snore…..

Stop prank calling me about Mickey, I'm not Toni Basil!

IF YOU WANT AN INSTANT MIGRAINE THEN BY ALL MEANS PROCEED!

   

Demons 3: The Ogre

THE OGRE (1988, aka “Demons III: The Ogre” or “The Ogre: Demons 3”, original title “La casa dell’orco”, “House of the Ogre”)

Directed by Lamberto Bava

Screenplay by Dardano Sacchetti
Reviewed By Goat Scrote

    This is a made-for-cable-TV movie about a magical ogre who gets sexually aroused by flowers. There are no slime demons, no spiritual possessions, and no physical transformations. It's just one horny monster who drools over catalogs of FTD gift bouquets like my dad with the latest Victoria’s Secret mailer. This is one of three different movies that have been marketed as “Demons 3”. The legitimate part 3 is Michele Soavi’s “La Chiesa” aka “The Church” from 1989, and there’s also Umberto Lenzi’s unofficial 1991 entry “Dèmoni 3” (1991) aka “Black Demons”, which is a voodoo-zombie picture. “The Ogre” has no real connection with the “Dèmoni” films and if you’re expecting the same kind of movie, you will be severely disappointed. It would have made more sense to call it “The Shining 2”, since it’s about the family of a writer who may be going crazy in a big empty vacation house, there’s a hedge maze out back, and the main character even has psychic visions warning her of the danger waiting at the estate. Or they could have called it “Troll 3: The Ogre”. Why not? If they were releasing “The Ogre” today and wanted to attach it to a successful franchise, the “Shrek” series is a natural choice. Can you imagine the beautiful chaos, showing deceptively-titled Italian horror movies to theaters full of weeping, traumatized children…? “Mommy, what is Shrek doing to Donkey’s eyeball with that corkscrew!?!”

The Shining 2: Shrek's Revenge?

    Actually, “The Ogre” is virtually blood-free and mostly goes for creep factor rather than explicit violence. It’s not for kids thanks to sexual themes, but still tame enough for 80s cable TV. There’s some nudity when husband and wife take a bath together (55 minutes), a surprisingly casual scene of domestic violence (62 minutes), an implied sexual assault by the ogre (69 minutes), and a somewhat more explicit assault near the end (85 minutes). There are some macabre effects in the recurring image of the ogre being born out of a cocoon of cobwebs, slime, and bones. The house is effectively used to build up the atmosphere of looming danger, but the villain himself is uninspired and just not very frightening. He’s most effective early on when all we see is one menacing claw. The more we see the creature in action, the more it looks like a cosplayer at the Renaissance Faire. 

care for some mead and a turkey leg?

 The story is not very exciting, the characters aren’t engaging, and the finale is unsatisfying and hard to make sense of. I recommend seeking out one of the other, much better Bava/Sacchetti collaborations available. I usually like Lamberto Bava’s monster movies, they display a lot of imagination, but this one is best avoided.

    The movie begins in Portland, Oregon. Some bad shit is going down, according to the musical score (by Simon Boswell). A little girl is having a bad dream. She runs through a huge empty European castle filled with creepy suits of armor. Lamberto Bava seems to have a signature special effect, where a stretchy sheet is used to create the illusion of an artistic image coming to life in an unnatural way.  It crops up right away here in “The Ogre” with the paintings in the nightmare hallway. In a dark, cobwebby basement there is something with claws waiting for her. She drops her teddy bear and runs, and the claw plucks an orchid from the bear.

unpleasantly magical

    As the movie goes on, it establishes orchid-plucking as a symbol for sexual desire, which makes the subtext of this first scene really, really unpleasant: The monster wants to do more than just kill her. The girl awakens from her nightmare just as the monster attacks, and her teddy bear has vanished from the waking world. She tells her mother about the monster in her dream and Mom reassures her that “we create monsters, in our minds.”

I'm deep sea diving for Nilbogs

   Many years later, Cheryl (Virginia Bryant) has grown up into a famous horror novelist with a family of her own, husband Tom (Paolo Malco) and son Bobby (Patrizio Vinci). They travel to rural Italy to stay at a posh rented villa. Dad lets the young boy get wired on cappuccinos while Mom declares her hatred of orchids. What kind of twisted, horrible, Grinch-like freak holds a grudge against flowers? No wonder the ogre wants her to suffer!

    The vast vacation estate is eerily familiar to her. Her childhood dream returns, and nightmares continue to plague her throughout her stay. The first night she dreams that she has become a child again. There is something lurking inside (or maybe forming out of) a nest of bones and cobwebs hanging from the ceiling. When slime comes gushing out of it, she runs and hides. The creature’s arms burst through a wooden barrel, grab her from behind, and… wait a second, is the monster feeling her up or killing her?!? Her husband wakes her up because she’s screaming her head off.

    The nightmares have inspired her writing, and the next day she is clacking away at her typewriter. For all you post-computer-age kids scratching your heads thinking “what’s that?” a ‘typewriter’ is a slow, noisy mechanical text editor driven by human musclepower. Very steampunk, don’t you think? One of the black beetles infesting her workroom gets lodged in the works and wrecks her typewriter ribbon. She tries to buy a replacement in town and when the shop won’t take her American Express card they taste the nuclear fury of her ugly American wrath. She makes a friend in town when Anna (Sabrina Ferilli) helps her buy the typewriter ribbon. She hires Anna’s sister, Maria (Stefania Montorsi), as a babysitter for Bobby.

What the fuck is that?

    In the villa, unexplained things keep occurring, such as claw-shaped handprints that appear and disappear. Cheryl explores the basement of the castle for the first time and makes an impossible discovery… it is the basement from her dream, and furthermore her childhood teddy bear is there! She flashes back to her nightmares, where the terrible ogre (played by Davide Flosi) comes to life. It actually does slightly resemble one of the creatures from the Demons movies, at least from a distance. The ogre is dressed in a surprisingly effete, lacy period costume. He is also disappointingly lacking in the slime-oozing department, despite his gooey birth. Back in reality, Cheryl hears weird squishy noises and green goo drips on her face, so she gets out. Her dickhead husband thinks she has an overactive imagination.

Why is daddy such a dickhead?

    Meanwhile the kid Bobby seems to be flirting with his much older babysitter Maria, and their mutual orchid-plucking seems to confirm it.  Later all the characters get together at a dinner party with the family of Anna and Maria. Anna “dabbles in parapsychology” and she believes Cheryl has psychic powers. They discuss the wild orchids which grow in the area: “The flower preferred by ogres”; “It drives ogres wild with delight.” This sounds like a marketing campaign for a perfume. “Wild Orchid fragrance, for refined ladies who want to die impaled on ogre cock.” The upshot of all this flower talk is that ogres mate with human women who smell of orchids, which generally seems to end in death rather than baby ogres (you decide which fate would actually be worse).

    Hubby gets mad that Cheryl’s losing touch with reality and smacks her, because, you know, that’s how you treat a woman when her uterus starts making her act all crazy and female. She hits him right back without hesitation, and I cheered a little bit. Seriously, honey, you gotta dump your man, he’s a piece of shit. Even so, they’re all smiles a minute later when he rescues her from a cow that chews its cud in a vaguely threatening manner and wanders aimlessly in her vicinity.

    Babysitter Maria and Bobby are alone later, playing hide and seek. She goes looking for him in the basement – while wearing an orchid in her hair. Oh shit!!! The Ogre appears for real, sniffs the orchid, and then rips off her shirt. Maria hasn't showed up by the time Mom and Dad get home, so Tom goes out to search the road while Cheryl stays home with the sleeping kid. Cheryl decides to go explore the basement and finds Maria’s shoe floating in a vat of greenish water, along with some missing pages from her novel. Luckily a waterproof flashlight just appears out of nowhere. When she goes into the water she bumps into Maria’s corpse and several other human skeletons clamped into  various torture devices. She surfaces in a panic, and the ogre is there – and then it’s not the ogre, it’s her husband Tom. (Once again, you decide which fate is less appealing.)

Ahem pardon me madam I forgot my pants

    Somehow Cheryl is now psychically linked to the ogre, and she sees in her vision that it is stalking Anna. It attacks Anna in her room, ripping off her nightie. Tom just thinks Cheryl’s crazy… until the ogre shows up for real. Tom fights it while Cheryl and Bobby flee. It chases after them so Cheryl rams it with the car and drives back and forth over it a few times. She’s a plucky gal! The ogre fades away like a dream. The ending is total crap already, but it manages to get worse. The next day everybody that was killed is alive again because, in reality, they were all off doing other things aside from dying at the time they were murdered. (Huh???) The final dialogue sort of vaguely hints that Cheryl went back and re-wrote her story to give it a happy ending. If she’s got that kind of power, why didn’t she also re-write the character of her condescending chauvinist husband? Now she could have Fabio instead!

Or me I'd make a better husband

Demons 5

LA MASCHERA DEL DEMONIO (1989)

Directed by Lamberto Bava.

Screenplay by Massimo De Rita and Giorgio Stegani.

Review By Goat Scrote

According to the marketing, this movie is “Demons 5: The Devil’s Veil”. According to the cheap-ass credits onscreen I am watching a film called “La mascara del demonio”, literally “The Mascara of the Devil”. Will the demons work their corrupting influence through the eyelashes of their victims? Am I about to enter some unfamiliar subgenre of Italian “evil cosmetics” films? Is this a typographic error that nobody noticed? Is the title in Spanish for some reason? Or is somebody having a little joke on us? I’m pretty sure I’m watching “Lamaschera del demonio", “The Mask of the Devil”.

That’s the original title of Mario Bava’s “Black Sunday”, too. This movie is a reimagining of “Black Sunday” done by Mario’s son, Lamberto.  Both movies draw inspiration from the 1835 short story “The Viy” by Nikolai Gogol (http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/g/gogol/nikolai/g61v/) about a dead witch who torments a brandy-swilling seminarian. (That’s a student at a religious school, you dirty buggers, nothing to do with bodily fluids.) It is not a direct remake of “Black Sunday”, since virtually everything about the two stories is different except for the origin of the witch and her desire to return from the dead at any cost. The name of the character is Anibas, not Asa, and it seems to be about an entirely different villain who met a similar fate. It could be considered “Black Sunday 2” but it’s a poor fit for the “Dèmoni” series. Possession by an evil force is a feature of the story, but it’s the undead Anibas doing the possessing. These are not the homicidally whacked-out contagious slime-creatures we know and love from “Demons” and “Demons 2” (also directed by Lamberto Bava) or “The Church” (directed by Michele “mee-KEH-leh” Soavi, who also plays the first victim here in “La maschera del demonio”).

Don't blame me for all this confusion, I just played the victim

This movie is somewhere in the middle compared to other L. Bava movies I’ve seen –- pretty entertaining, but he’s done much better. There’s not much here for splatter-hounds except a bit of slime and one bloody death, but it’s still a pretty decent low-budget fantasy-horror movie thanks to the imaginative monstrous special effects that start showing up in the final act. The movie is at its strongest when the witch’s magical powers are on display. This is a made-for-TV movie, I believe, so it’s light on blood… yet it lays on the insectoid date-rape fairly thick. Different TV-censorship standards than the United States, I suppose! For some wild monster makeup (and/or disturbing monster sex) be sure to tune in to the best effects sequence which starts at 58 minutes and the climactic confrontation starting at 75 minutes.

The Original Demons 5?

The first half is mainly interesting for the “Black Sunday” connections. The details of the story don’t make a heap of sense but the overall plotline is pretty straightforward: An undead witch is trying to return from the dead and she kills or psychically controls everyone but the hero, who must figure out how to stop the witch and save his beloved. Almost none of the characters has a distinct individual identity or a purpose in the plot. With a trivial change to the story the number of cast-members could have been cut in half. The score by talented Simon Boswell is uninspired and has some outstandingly weak spots, definitely not his best work. Parts of it sound like he fell asleep with the tape still rolling. During an otherwise pretty good fistfighting scene, for example, the keyboard goes on autopilot as a single spooky chord is sustained with no accompaniment for about 87 seconds. (Yes, I fucking timed it just so I could complain about it, you wanna make somethin’ of it? I do these things for the sake of advancing human knowledge!)

H.R. Giger designed mask of satan that acts like an icy/hot patch

The movie begins with a swarm of skiers who take a helicopter up into some remote mountains. Supposedly there are eight thrill-seekers but I never bothered to count them because it just seemed like too much math. The happy horde is swallowed by a deep hidden crevasse. Sabina (Debora Caprioglio) breaks her leg. The skiers notices something man-made sticking out of a big block of ice nearby and chip away at the ice around an ancient metal mask. The mask resembles an alien facehugger (which should be a warning right there) and it has spikes inside, but only a couple of skiers are observant enough to notice that there is a human face impaled underneath. The rest are all much too distracted by Michele Soavi clowning around with the metal mask (a little nod to his super-creepy nameless character in “Demons”).

Lookout! Here comes an Italian Wampa

The entombed face seems to rejuvenate partway, the ice block starts shaking, and the cave starts coming apart. Sabina’s broken leg has mysteriously healed, which is lucky since now she has to run for her life. The skiers comment on this but soon forget all about it. Soavi’s character Bebo is impaled during the collapse, still clutching the mask. His friends soon forget all about that too, so I guess I don’t have to care either. They really are a pretty unsympathetic bunch right from the beginning.

The sets are very stylish. The quake reveals a passage to a tomb full of pillars, which exits into a strange hidden ghost town. They have pet dogs in Italy, don’t they? I only ask because when they meet one, the skiers seem to have no idea what the fuck they are dealing with. The barking dog frightens them, but if that’s a wolf then I am a ninja assassin. They’re even more spooked when they meet the master of the place, a pale, blind, very odd priest (Stanko Molnar). They spend the night in his creepy old church.

Not in the face, It's Eve not Barbara Steele!

At 21 minutes or so, the backstory is filled in as the priest reminisces about the good old days when spectral evidence was still admissible in court. We rewind to the 1600s, when the villagers led by the priest (who looked much more ordinary) condemned the witch Anibas (Eva Grimaldi) for witchcraft. They sledgehammer the spiked mask onto her face. The mask-hammering scene here doesn’t manage the same intensity as the original but it’s still a nasty fate. Before she goes, Anibas re-affirms her dedication to Satan and lays down her curse. The specifics aren’t very clear but I’m assuming one of the consequences is that the priest gets stuck as an immortal guardian over her tomb, has all his melanin drained, and gets his eyesight taken away. (Or perhaps he’s supposed to be a descendant, I wasn’t totally sure.)

Keep your mouth closed Giada De Laurentiis

Back in the present, the women wake up with brand new eating disorders and the men fight like drunks in a honky tonk bar. (It’s the Jerry Springer Show, Italian style!) The skiers play cruel tricks on the blind priest, cackling wickedly while they do. Only Davide (Giovanni Guidelli) seems unaffected. The priest finds out that they took the mask off the corpse and he immediately understands that the group has become possessed. Why didn’t he ask about that right away, given that the one function of his long, miserable, sexless life is to keep the mask on the witch’s face?

The possessed skiers trap the priest inside a confessional booth, join hands, and circle around chanting “Anibas”. Their impaled buddy Bebo comes back as a zombie and joins them. The confessional walls warp and bend inward, threatening to crush the priest, but the dog attacks the circle and scatters the wimpy minions. Alas, this canine hero is later assaulted by a gang of angry housecats and dies off-camera. The priest, though, turns out to be a little better at this game than expected. He ambushes and takes prisoner a couple of the skiers to try to exorcise them. Zombie-Bebo intervenes, and then the priest gets dragged down under the floorboards and there’s a short but gory scene where he is eaten by slimy monsters under the church.

Davide is befuddled by love and cannot believe Sabina is part of what is going on, and she is willing to play along. He ‘rescues’ her and they hide from the others in a stable. Sabina convinces Davide to make love to her, since she doesn’t want them both to die virgins. This leads to the creepiest special effect of the film. During the foreplay she becomes the abominable gray-skinned witch, grows giant grasshopper legs, and molests the hell out of him before he stabs her with a pitchfork. I didn’t know it was going to be a rape-revenge film!

This ain't The Dark Crystal starring that Gilf Aughra

He returns to his friends and they’re all cleaned up and acting disturbingly normal all of a sudden. They aren’t fazed when he reveals that he just killed Sabina. He asks for the priest and they don’t know who he’s talking about. He finds Sabina down in her room, just fine, and Davide isn’t quite sure if he’s going crazy or what. He almost kills her but flees instead, to tell his friends what he finally noticed… Sabina is Anibas spelled backward! They still act like he is nutty, and when they find Sabina again she is bearing wounds like he inflicted on the nymphomaniac witch-bug from the stable. She appears to die and they lay her in the tomb. Even as a corpse, the possessed Sabina goes on trying to seduce Davide. Oddly enough, he doesn’t seem interested in corpse fucking, even if she is still pretty fresh.

Let me eat that donut Jeff Goldblum "Brundlefly" style

All the stops get pulled out at this point. The magical battle here uses some of the action and other elements from the confrontations in Gogol’s “The Viy”. The camera swoops through the tomb, from the perspective of the unseen witch. Little winged monsters attack Davide. There’s a sort of confusing Obi Wan Kenobi moment where the disembodied voice of the priest utters a latin prayer, which allows Davide to use supercharged holy water to create a protective magic circle that glows around him. The crypts levitate and the frescoes on the walls swell and come to life. Sabina springs to life again, too. She begs Davide to save her from the fresco-people. He falls for it and leaves the circle, but it’s almost as if the possessed are letting him win… as if they had some other plan… and sure enough Sabina recommences trying to get it on with him. Her pickup lines are really subtle: “All I want is your flesh!” Ah, the rotting, putrid stink of romance. The witch seems to need the two virgins to make humpy humpy.

Turn on the lights before Wham's Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go plays

The next stage of her smooth seduction involves turning into a blue-skinned medusa-like figure with twitchy tentacle-dreadlocks on her head, glow-in-the-dark teeth, and a three-foot-long prehensile tongue. Anibas, sweetie, a bit of advice for next time you get a shot at resurrection. Unless you met the guy on the internet, he’s probably not into this shit. Try a glass of wine by the fireplace, and never, ever turn into the Overfiend before the third date.

The demons return to life, overpower Davide as a group, and try to physically force him to have sex with their evil mistress. It’s pretty much the weirdest 80’s music video ever. Davide manages to break away and grab the mask, which is still in Bebo’s hand where he was impaled… hey wait, didn’t he return as a zombie and go inside the church? And who keeps their own kryptonite lying around like that? Davide forces the mask back onto the icebound corpse and Anibas is returned to her ages-long sleep.

somebody hand me some industrial strength witch summers eve feminine hygiene spray!

With all her evil illusions dispelled, Davide can see that his friends are a pile of corpses still dressed in their skiing gear, frozen quite solid. It’s a pretty dark ending! I thought he would at least save his co-virgin. Even though he is half naked, Davide scrambles back out of the crevasse in a panic. Yes, he survived the witch, but without skis and warmer clothes he’ll just die out on the mountain… come to think of it, I’m okay with the idea of Davide dying before he gets a chance to enter the gene pool.