Definitely, It's Very: Absurd (1981)

Absurd (Rosso Sangue) (Panama/Italy, 1981) (AKA "Horrible")
Rating:***1/2
Starring: George Eastman, Annie Belle and Charles Borromel

Following the success of Halloween (1978) and the massive cult following of his Anthropophagus (1980), Joe D'Amato's next slasher shock opens with a priest in pursuit of an escaped maniac he revived through genetic engineering. This scientific mishap somehow gave the feller the ability to quickly regenerate through rapid blood coagulation, though this didn't stop him from getting his guts skewered and torn out on a railed gate when the priest tries to stop him from climbing over.

Behind the gate, a family witness the scuffle and calls in the hospital after the maniac falls unconscious. There, they fixed and stitched him up, bewildered to see him healing more rapidly than they could have imagined. In the midst of this, the priest gets caught by responding law enforcers and starts getting questioned about the pursuit, thus forcing him to share the details of his absurd experiments.

It isn't long before the maniac finally recovers and starts murdering his way to the same railed-gate house, now filled with a pair of babysitters, a young boy and his paraplegic sister, thus begins a deadly game of cat-and-mouse leading to one grueling conclusion.

While painfully unoriginal, lacking the creepiness and moodiness of the films it rips-off (Halloween (1978) and Halloween  II (1981)), Absurd (1981) comes to satisfy our slasher cravings instead with down-to-basics plotting littered with an intense display of gory demises, often going overboard with its visceral display with close-ups on torn flesh, dismembered bodies flying here and there, and prolonged murder sequences. It's all actually handled pretty well despite the shortcomings, and there are some high tension scenes riding on the brutality of the murders, especially once the killer starts skulking his way around the house and picking off whoever he can find and wrangle.

Nothing very big to talk about this film other than it completely follows the babysitter-in-peril/home invasion slasher format religiously, and the acting and scripting done here are hammy to say the least, but otherwise workable for a B-grade horror affair. The rest of the production value is still pretty acceptable albeit cheap, promising gorehounds a lovely little murder spree that's still red in places, with a generous amount of onscreen viscera. It bites a little but it's a worthwhile viewing for slasher fans alike.

Bodycount:
1 female gets a surgical powerdrill from temple to temple
1 male had his cranium sliced open with a bandsaw
1 male strangled to death
1 female pickaxed through the head
1 female had her head burnt in an oven, throat stabbed with scissors
1 male strangled to death
1 male beheaded with battle axe
Total: 7