An Argento Blind Act: Black Glasses (2022)

Black Glasses (Occhiali Neri) (Italy, 2022) (AKA "Dark Glasses")

Rating: ***

Starring: Ilenia Pastorelli, Asia Argento and Andrea Gherpelli

Last we saw of Dario Argento in the horror business, it was 2012 and he decided to do a creative take on Dracula, this including shooting the entire project in 3D and giving the titular vampire lord the ability to turn into a man-sized praying mantis for shits and giggles. Unsurprisingly, that little stunt sets a new low for one of Italy's horror maestros and we didn't see another horror flick from him until a decade later, in what can be described as the man's attempted return to form. And the key word here is "attempted".

In Black Glasses (2022), modern day Rome is terrorized by a serial killer who is slaughtering their way through sex workers with a cello string. One such high-end escort, Diana (Ilenia Pastorelli), gets a very close call to being another corpse for the bodycount when, after attending a client who got a tad too handsy on her, she suddenly finds herself being attacked by an obscured assailant. As she made her way to her car and speed off, her attacker catches on with their cargo van, leading to a pursuit that ends with Diana crashing through another car.

The accident leaves our leading call girl blind after her spine suffers a hemorrhage. She also learns that the occupants of the other car, a Chinese family, is survived by a single boy named Chin (Xinyu Zhang), now under a church's care home after the crash killed his father and slipped his mother into a coma. As Diana learns to cope with her condition, she finds help through a friendly educator named Rita (cult favorite Asia Argento), gets a trained guide dog and tries to make amends with Chin by visiting him at the care home.

Chin, tired of the racist kids he have to put up with, decided to run away and stay with Diana. The two soon bonds and will eventually have to rely on one another when our killer, keeping a close eye on the one who got away, starts to stalk them with the intent to finish what they started, murdering anybody who got in their way in the meantime.

From start to finish, Black Glasses (2022) practically runs on cheap thrills and basic slasher tropes which is something you'll either loathe or tolerate depending on how well you take your B-grade celluloid. Frankly, there is a lot of opportunities for the film to go a little deeper in its story considering the number of angles the plot could've focused on like Diana adjusting to her blindness or being a surrogate mother to an orphaned boy, but all of it was rushed and shallowed to make way for a more standardized slasher plot, complete with uselessly inept cops, a stalk and chase sequence in the woods and a moderately sizable killcount. (Curiously, though, for a film wherein the protagonist is a prostitute, we don't get a lot of onscreen sleaze here. Some boobs, yes, but that's it)

Any hinted mystery regarding the killer's identity also gets the short unexplored end as halfway into the movie, we're unceremoniously treated to a reveal that isn't really all that surprising, even more when the killer's motive behind their killing spree is so underwhelmingly staple. This leaves us to a whole final act of Diana and Chin running, limping and hiding in a countryside backwoods from the psycho, which does takes its sweet time bringing in as many shenanigans as possible (random snake attack, a couple of hunters getting into a brawl with the killer) before treating us with a climax that have our villain squaring off with Diana's guide dog (Carnivorous flies and chimpanzees in Phenomena (1985). Ravens in Opera (1987). I'm starting to see a pattern here, Argento...) at the sacrifice of a good spot of suspense that's unrealized throughout.

It may all sounds like an uninspired mess and you're probably right about that in many aspects, but Black Glasses (2022) does make itself worth its time with its slick pacing, efficient enough performances from its casts, a rocking electronic synth scored by Arnaud Rebotini and a better-looking production value all in all. Its outrageous premise is simply fun for how hammy it is, garnering some unintended humor, all the while delivering on the red stuff whenever the film felt like giving us a gruesome death so I wouldn't call it a complete loss as clunky as this movie in properly developing its plot and characters. 

It's entertaining in its efforts and if you're not looking for much, then I can safely say that this flick should do fine as a mid-tier horror genre offering, a somewhat sincere reflection to what Dario Argento used to do best.

Bodycount:

1 female garroted with a cello string, bled to death from throat cut

1 male had his head crushed in car crash

1 male hit with a van

1 female knifed in the back

1 female strangled with a rope

1 female implied to have succumbed to her injuries from a car crash

1 male mauled in the neck by a dog

Total: 7

Bite Sized Giallo Bits: Body Puzzle (1992)

Body Puzzle (Italy, 1992) (AKA "Misteria")
Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Joanna Pacula, Tomas Arana and François Montagut

A 90s giallo affair from Demons (1985) director Lamberto Bava, Body Puzzle starts with a frustrated pianist (François Montagut) showing off some talent on the ivory keys as he recalls a tragic rainy night many years ago, involving a friend in a motorbike fatally crashing during a car chase. This flashback somehow ignites a murderous spark from the man and his first victim is a candy store owner who he knifes to death before slicing off an ear.

Tracy (Joanna Pacula), a young widow grieving over her brother's recent passing, gruesomely finds out that she has caught the attention of our killer when not only did she discovers the dismembered hearing organ in her fridge, but her late husband's grave was also found defiled and his body missing. This prompts Detective Michele (Tomas Arana), lead investigator of the case, to question her possible ties to the killer as it appears the madman has to have full access to her home in order to leave the body part so easily. Tracy cannot recall or think much of anybody mad enough to twistedly harass her like this, though she fears that she will be targeted next the further this escalates.

And, true enough, the killer strikes again and again, taking parts from each victim and leaving it for Tracy to find, even after she moved to her parent's mansion under heavy police surveillance. Just who is this killer and why is he offering her all of these freshly harvested body parts? 

As far as Italian giallo affairs go, Body Puzzle mostly hit its good notes when it comes to horror set-pieces, plenty of them coming from the murders committed by our seemingly random loon for how savage and dark yet outrageous they can get; one moment he's simply knifing a candy store owner to death, next would have him stalking a lady into a mall's loo to hack off her hand with a hatchet or offing a teacher in front of an entire classroom full of blind children listening to some badly narrated fairy tale. There's certainly a sense of finesse and black humor laid out in the film's direction to keep things as interesting as they can be, something I find passable even if the ridiculousness contrasts with the intriguingly twisted conundrum behind our killer's motive a tad too close into poking fun at itself sometimes.

At most, Body Puzzle tries to maintain a straight-faced story despite the cheesier instances. I love the mystery's concept wherein we already know what the killer looks like and that we're just left hanging as to why is he killing people to collect parts from them. Sadly, the abundance of plot holes and incredibly lackluster police work cheapened the impact of the story's development, more so when the movie finally reveals in the near end the twist of the whole situation. Without giving away much, it opened more questions than answer them, one of which being the ineptness of the coroner when they were embalming that body and how much legal trouble would they get for that mistake. 

Nevertheless, Body Puzzle remains wholly entertaining albeit its flaws when one would account its unintentional hilarity and cheese. I mean, how often do you find yourself watch a killer hide inside a freezer full of meat (and a corpsicle) for a surprise attack just on that slim chance someone might open it, or have sped-up shots of casual drives be passed as "car chases"? There are times half-witted jiffs like these are what save movies from being dull and this one definitely have more than enough to leave a good impression without completely straying away from being dark, macabre and stabby. 

Not exactly the finest giallo out of Bava's filmography (I would bravely give Midnight Killer (1986) and Delirium (1987) that title), but it's a divertingly fun puzzler of a horror thriller to a degree and that's okay on my book!

Bodycount:

1 male killed in a vehicular accident

1 male knifed to death

1 female had a hand chopped off with a hatchet, later found gutted

1 male castrated with a knife whilst swimming, bled to death

1 female had her throat cut, eyes plucked out

1 male crashes unto a car, killed in collision 

Total: 6

Stick A Pin In An Understudy's Eye: Opera (1987)

Opera (Italy, 1987) (AKA "Terror At The Opera")

Rating: ***

Starring: Cristina Marsillach, Ian Charleson, Urbano Barberini

In a way, I understand the cult following this late-80s Dario Argento giallo made for itself as the film is a mad masterpiece visually, but this isn't to say I don't have my set of reservations about it.

Taking cues from Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of The Opera, the film sets off when the leading lady of a production of Macbeth gets into a car accident after ranting about the opera's experimental direction. (Apparently she's not a fan of ravens. Or laser beams) This leads to a young understudy, Betty (Christina Marsillach), to step into the role, something she's not entirely thrilled about as she sees this as an omen of terrible things to come. The Macbeth curse, if you may.

And surely enough, as Betty sings her part that night, we see a gloved individual sneak into one of the closed-off opera boxes to get a better view of the show and we know this creeper is up to no good when they start to reminisce about that one time they attacked a woman while another was bound and forced to watch. Their little impromptu private viewing gets interrupted, however, when a staff finds them, leading to the gloved fella to brain the man dead against a coat hook, their struggle causing a set of stage lights to go hurling down.

Despite this fiasco, the show is a somewhat success, much to Betty's and the rest of the production team's delight, though the incident with the lights did lead to the police and an attending inspector to investigate and find the murdered staff. Freaked out by this, the young starlet chooses to cool off by hanging out with her stagehand boyfriend and make love with him at his apartment later that evening, only for it all end with Betty getting tied to a pillar and have pins placed under her eyes by the gloved and now-hooded prowler, forcing her to watch them brutally dispatch her lover before simply cutting her loose and exiting the scene.

In shock, Betty wanders off into the rainy night and gets picked up by the production's director, Marco (Ian Charleson), who happens to be driving by. As she confides with him of what just happened, Betty also vaguely recalls a nearly-forgotten childhood memory of the same hooded killer murdering her mother some time ago, which may mean that the killer knows her and it won't be long before they target her once again, killing anyone who gets in the way.

By the 1980s, a decent lot of Italian giallo films start to resemble less like crime pulp fiction as much of their focus swayed more on keeping up the splatter and kill count high, a response towards the rising popularity of American slashers around that decade. This is evident in Opera (1987)'s vividly bloody murder set-pieces, which is undoubtedly among director Dario Argento's most memorable contributions to giallo horror for their nightmarish nature and strikingly creative execution. While not overly gory, the bloodletting is generous and the attacks are simply ferocious, done with the key extravagance of a creative eye only the likes of Argento possess as his signature visuals of color tints and expressive camera work make their way into brutal close-ups of a stabbed jaw, or an amazing gun murder involving a slow-mo shot of a bullet going through a door's peephole, through an unfortunate victim's head, and finally to a nearby phone, destroying it.  

What doesn't work, however, is the overall quality of the film's mystery; with the way the plot flows through its run, Opera (1987) indefinitely shows little care about the suggested whodunits as there are hardly any police presence and very little of the characters introduced got any further development than a single (and often strange) note. (Though, I got to say I love the fact that we never saw the original leading lady's face. Makes me chuckle for reasons) This meant that our killer could have been anyone among the crowd, which cheapens the story halfway into an exploitative slasher flick, all the way down to its ridiculous climax of using vengeful ravens to out the killer, as well as the mountain of mad ramblings and expositions in an attempt to piece things together and look smart or dramatic. 

I'm also not a big fan of some of the murders being clashed with heavy metal for what I take is symbolic chaos. It's too obnoxiously on-the-nose and it just doesn't work for me, but even that's vanilla compared to my biggest gripe about the movie; you see, Opera (1987) could have ended in, well, the opera, as Betty is forced at gunpoint by the killer to enter a room filled with paperwork. The killer ties her up, locks the room and douses everything in gasoline, intent on ending both of their lives in what's best described as a lovelorn murder/suicide. A fire broke, an intense escape happens and then we're suddenly in the alps. The fucking alps. Weeks later. Without spoiling much, we have ten to fifteen minutes to spare (depending on which release you got), the killer is still out there and then we're treated to one of the most convenient endings I've seen in a giallo, ruining whatever gruesomely gothic atmosphere this movie had before we're in the fucking alps.

Opera (1987) is as standard as any late 80s bodycounter is and I'm willing to accept it as a flawed cult classic seeing all the best things about it is undeniably enjoyable. What it lacks in intrigue and a satisfying ending, it makes up with an eloquent aesthetic and carnal display of brutality and madness. See it if you like and maybe you'll enjoy it enough to compel somebody else to see it, hopefully without taping pins under their eyes...  

Bodycount:

1 male repeatedly beaten against a coat hook

1 female killed, method unknown (flashback)

1 female killed with a dagger (flashback)

1 male gets a dagger through the throat, stabbed to death

1 female strangled, stabbed in the chest with a pair of dressmaker shears

1 female shot through the head

1 male found knifed in the gut

1 female mentioned strangled

1 female shot

1 female found knifed on the chest

1 male knifed to death

Total: 10

A Drug Trip For Pounded Flesh: Death Walks At Midnight (1972)

Death Walks At Midnight (La Morte Accarezza a Mezzanotte) (Italy, 1972)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Nieves Navarro, Simón Andreu, Peter Martell

When fashion model Valentina (Nieves Navarro) volunteers to be an anonymous human guinea pig for a new experimental drug called HDS for her journalist friend Gio (Simon Andreu), she didn't expect seeing a vision of a girl getting her face caved in with a spiked iron gauntlet by a maniac in large shades. Worse even is that Gio didn't stay by his word to keep her anonymous, exploiting her freak out from the vision by taking and publishing pictures of the session, crafting a sensationalized tabloid piece for the city to see and read.

Rightfully angry about his deceit, Valentina confronts Gio about the stunt as it costs her a magazine job, vandalizing his office in the process, but she'll soon learn that something worse is stirring up for her; presumably to cover his tracks, the killer from Valentina's vision begins to stalk her, spiked gauntlet at hand, and has come pretty close to killing her in more than one time. When the police fails to properly recognize her stalker, it's up to Valentina to figure out who this is and stop him for good.

An intriguing labyrinthine plot is always a good expectation to meet from a well-crafted giallo and Death Walks at Midnight certainly delivers on that point; there's no mystery that killer from Valentina's drug trip actually exists, but their identity and motive is what keeps the story going, especially with the twists that the murder she saw was actually committed six months prior and, apparently, a different set of victim and murderer was involved. It's a twisty situation and the increasingly tangling dread subjected unto our lead makes for a good practice of paranoia that heightens the  curious nature of this conundrum, getting further muddled and oppressing the more the plot goes.

Despite the growing strangeness of the story, soon tainted with talks of suicidal women and drug addiction, Midnight impressively keeps a focused direction to all of these set-pieces and revelations, giving us a palpable stream of prowling sequences and an atmosphere of crippling helplessness that sustains the story with enough thrills and haunts to entertain its audience. A drawback here is that it can get too talky with its expositions, force-feeding us one info to the next before we can even properly sink everything in. There's also the matter that the movie nulls over exploring Valentina's relationships from her artist boyfriend and on-off journalist friend to a creepy talker and an inspector who believes she's holding out information from the crime, more often branching the story into character drama territories before kicking itself back into a murder mystery.

Nevertheless, it all ties up neatly at the final act in which the movie shift gear to a hammy action thriller with bad guy monologues, giggling assassins and a drawn-out brawl up at a rooftop in broad daylight. It's also in these parts wherein the kill count starts piling back up, the bloodiest it can get being another spiked gauntlet beating and one hilarious looking drop in which the unfortunate sap's brains get splattered out.

A crafty example of the giallo form, albeit less graphic and sleazy and putting more emphasis on curving plot lines, Death Walks at Midnight works an engaging enough tale that may have spiraled  out of control in some parts, its certainly isn't lacking on blood splatter and vintage cheese to occupy us in the midst of the madness. Rewarding us a fair payoff for sitting through its tricky little devil of a plot (I say fair because I don't even think they bother explaining how drugging Valentina got her seeing visions in the first place), it's an invitingly fun piece of Italian horror/thriller cinema well worth your time.

Bodycount:
1 female beaten to death with a spiked iron glove
1 female found knifed on the chest
1 male found dead with chest wound
1 male found knifed on the chest
1 female beaten to death with a spiked iron glove (flashback)
1 male falls off a building, brains splattered upon impact
1 male shot through the back
1 male shot
Total: 8

Under Shades As Big As Hatchets: Massacre (1989)

Massacre ("Massacro") (Italy, 1989)
Rating: **
Starring: Gino Concari, Patrizia Falcone, Silvia Conti

The film opens with a guy in large shades enjoying a morning car ride before spotting a hooker in the middle of the roadside. Thinking she scores a lonely dude looking for a quickie, the lady approaches the man in shades only to get a nasty surprise when he produces a switchblade and a hatchet. Off with her head and shift scene to a graveyard at night.

Here we now follow a filming crew busy creating a horror masterpiece (?) but the director isn't feeling any of this. Thinking the production needs to get in touch more with the otherworldly to get the eerie feeling right, he hires a medium and arranges a seance to be held at a local club. His crew, in the meantime, have their own drama and antics to take care of, including the abusive relationship between the producer and his bare-it-all wife, a drag show photo-shoot, and the movie's leading lady Jennifer getting hot and steamy with her boyfriend Walter, a police detective investigating the opening murder which he believes is connected to four others from the last few days.

At the night of the seance, hired medium Madam Yurich attempts to enlighten the crew by beckoning her usual spirit guide, but her session gets interrupted by an altogether different spirit. Something strong enough to knock everyone off their seats and cause a paranormal tremor. The seance is ended no soon after but, little do these people know, a massacre awaits them as they are now marked for death.

Released under a marketing ploy by producers Antonio Lucidi and Luigi Nannerini to have legendary Italian director Lucio Fulci stamp his name over their series of low-budget horror flicks, Andrea Bianchi's Massacre (1989) doesn't quite capture the same level of shock and sleaze many early day Italian giallo titles have. What it is able to do, though, is walk a line between cheesy bodycounting and convoluted murder mystery, only dragged down by a somnolent script where endless hammy dialogue overshadows horror scenes. This have the film hobbling its way through the possible suspects with police procedural and tantalizing character antics bearing little suspense to speak of, but this isn't to say it didn't try to break expectations.

The fact that we get to see the killer's identity as early as the pre-credit murder meant we're up to something a tad different for our mystery, and this is hammered further by a few more twists the further we go. It wasn't until Massacre (1989) reaches its climax that we get some stalk-and-stab action and blood work going, plus some bouncing topless nudity for that exploitation taste, though its somewhat neat ending felt unsuitably hokey with its last reveal and unanswered parting shot.

Nothing much else to speak of, frankly. Massacre (1989) is just too linear to be an old-school giallo, but it's punctuated with enough murders, cheese and curveball in its plot to be a fun occasional rental, or a must-have for Italian horror junkies considering its rarity.

Bodycount:
1 female gets her hand lopped off with a hatchet, decapitated
1 female killed offcamera, body found propped in a merry-go-round
1 female found skewered through a gate railing
1 male knifed to death
1 female had her throat sliced repeatedly with a knife
1 female murdered offcamera, later seen covered in wounds
1 male gets a hook to the neck
1 male repeatedly stabbed on the gut with a pick
1 male stabbed on the gut with a pick
1 male stabbed on the gut with a pick
1 male stabbed to death with a pick
1 male shot to death
Total: 12

The Virginia Claw Massacre: Night Killer (1990)

Night Killer (Italy, 1990) (AKA "Non Aprite Quella Porta 3")
Rating: **
Starring: Peter Hooten, Tara Buckman, Richard Foster

When a slasher film you're watching is only a slasher thanks to gory re-shoots insisted upon by film producers who weren't happy with the director's original work (and said director is none other than Claudio Fragasso, who masterminded the infamous cult classic bad movie Troll 2 (1990)), you know a lot of things are bound to go South. Way down South.

In Virginia Beach, a maniac in a cheap Halloween mask and half a pair of long-nailed monster gloves is murdering women after assaulting them and it appears their next target is Melanie Beck (Tara Buckman), a house wife whose self-empowering mantra includes flashing her breasts out to rub them while watching herself in a mirror doing this. (No. Really.) One creepy caller is actually inside the house gag later, Melanie finds herself face to face with the disguised murderer who found a way into her house and next thing we know, she's in a hospital with a total mental block of what transpired after the creep got in and seemingly had their way with her.

This amnesia frustrates local cops who were hoping to have Melanie identify the attacker so they can finally make an arrest, but none of them are as miserable as Melanie herself, now thinking the only way out of a meaningless existence is to commit suicide by pills. In broad daylight. At a beach. Fortunately for her, a random guy spots her chug the pills and recognizing this as a suicide attempt, forces her (as in, shoves her entire head underwater) to ingests salt water so she can vomit them out, thus saving her life.

Unfortunately for Melanie, however, her would-be good Samaritan is actually a creep who has no problem locking her up in his place so he can toy around with her suicidal tendencies and fragile state while munching on french fries and KFC chicken. Could this man be the raping sicko murdering women every chance they get? Or has Melanie, in her worst luck, just jumped out of the frying pan into the fire with this one, bound to endure another psycho's wrath?

With the film's original concept being a psychological thriller, it's not hard to see that this is the film's proposed little mystery for us and, in all honesty, I could see it working on a serious (or at least somewhat serious) direction but considering this movie's writing and acting being so sporadic, sleazy and off the wall, I'm not surprised to see it cheesed up like the insides of a pizza crust, so much so that it's phenomenal and the fact that this movie had not imploded into a completely unwatchable rancid curdled mess is just mind-boggling at best.

In a sense, Night Killer (1990) is a popcorn movie meant to be riffed for how hilariously bad it is from the cheap and obvious Freddy Krueger cash-in to thespian talents that is limited to overacting or underacting. (notice the lack of "from" and "to" ?) It doesn't look like it's striving to be a competent horror film with a high and creative kill count or scares aimed at the two living brain cells in our noggins that's overworking themselves to make something coherent out of this movie with how much exposition, twists and psycho-babble it cobbled altogether, but what it lacks is made up for the amount of zany energy, laughable set-pieces and the undoubted hammy tone that's just too out there to completely hate. (The key word is "completely")

It's certainly not a movie meant for those looking for a traditional thriller, but lovers of bad cinema, of the so-bad-its-good brand, would see Night Killer (1990) as a strong recommendation that goes so well with a cold six pack of beer and half a brain that's just looking for something to cackle at.

Bodycount:
1 female ran through the gut with a clawed glove
1 female had her throat cut and her gut ran through with a clawed glove
1 female ran through the gut with a clawed glove
1 female ran through the back with a clawed glove
1 male stabbed on the groin with a butterfly knife, shot dead
Total: 5

Slashers, Snuffs And Stefania Stella: Fatal Frames (1996)

Fatal Frames (Fatal Frames - Fotogrammi mortali ) (Italy, 1996)
Rating: **
Starring: Stefania Stella, Rick Gianasi, David Warbeck

So here we have an Italian giallo released midway into the 90s, couple of decades past the spaghetti crime thriller's golden years. It has all the workings of a stylish 70s Italian murder mystery, taking cues visually and thematically from films like Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento, as well as star giallo familiars like Ugo Pagliai of The Red Queen Kills 7 Times (1972) and Suspiria (1977)'s Alida Valli, plus Western horror icons Angus Scrimm, Donald Pleasence, and Linnea Quigley in cameo roles. Promising, right? Well it would have been if the whole damn thing wasn't a two hours long of dull "tribute" to the giallo sub-genre as dampened as an overused cutting tool.

Still bummed after finding his wife decapitated in their own apartment, American music video director Alex Ritt (Rick Gianasi wearing a mane that would many any stallion jealous. Or confused) decided to take a music video job at Rome to help launch Italian singer Stefania Stella's career overseas and, too, take his mind off all things relating to his recently deceased life partner. Trouble, unfortunately, say nae to that and just happen to be right around the corner as a figure cloaked in black and brandishing a machete decided to terrorize Rome by hacking to death one of the dancers Alex wanted to meet later that night.

With Alex witnessing the crime, he immediately flags down the cops who proceed to find absolutely nothing. No body. No blood. No weapon. Confused but puffing up air of assurance, our long haired protagonist tries his hardest to convince everyone that there is indeed a murderous figure out in Rome slicing girls apart, but only to come out suspicious with his short temper and refusal to cooperate any further with the police. The officials, after receiving a tape recording of a murdered woman, would soon find out that Alex could be telling the truth and ties the kill with that of a certain "Videokiller", a serial slasher who have been terrorizing the US soil by slicing up women and video taping their handiwork, before sending the records to the cops. Has the "Videokiller" found their way to Rome to start a new killing spree? Or is it a copycat who somehow struck a demented motive to terrorize Alex for reasons unknown?

Looking through the bog that is Fatal Frames (1996), the movie definitely has most of the familiar elements associated with an old school giallo such as a fedora and glove wearing killer with a fetishistic motive, a focus on police work and amateur snooping, and red herrings getting offed in bloody yet stylized ways, complete with slow mo's and tinted lighting. These bits of spaghetti mystery goodness would mean well with a competent story but that is where Frames more or less tripped and fall over and over, resulting to a subpar interesting but overall idiotic plot that I'm sure could have been done and over with a bit sooner given that the characters and the production itself would stop doing one dumb decision to another.

Basically, there's a reason why Frames has a running time of two hours despite having a considerably straight-forward story compared to the giallo titles it is inspired by. The direction can be sum up easily as repetitive, cycling from unlikable an uninteresting characters getting shook up by a murder before going into the police procedural route to our long-haired lead trying to bitch his way out of the predicament, only to fall witness to yet another murder that mysteriously cleans itself up.  Making matters worse are the random intermissions of Stefania Stella music videos that's supposed to be alluring, but all they did was wig me out from the sheer amount of ego it reek, as well as halt the movie for no other reason than just to showcase some 30 something "Pop Sensation" and her very confusing assets with little pay off that matters. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Scripting for the film may as well added more dents to the far from sterling production here, seen from the number of actors with possible little grasp of English (Stefania being one of them, gods help me), reciting concerning dialogue in robotic tones. Heck, even the stars this movie managed to snag from the States couldn't help delivering their dialogue like toddlers in their first school plays, like Angus Scrimm from the Phantasm series doing a bit of ghoulish exposition as a spooky cameo ranting about our inner urges to "Kill! Kill! Kill!" Halloween franchise's Donald Pleasance also has a minor role here as an FBI agent, though his lines are dubbed over by someone else probably due to the matter that he allegedly died during this movie's filming. (Making this his last film to star in, and that one nod to John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) bittersweet in its hilarity)

What saved this film from being a total car wreck for me were the cheesiness of these performances (I welcome anything that brings me unintentional laughter!) and the crazy twist ending that is needlessly over-complicated. Director Al Festa’s background as a music video director is undoubtedly shown here through the many stylish shots and editing (and the number of focus shots on his wife, Stefania. Yeah, now you know why she's almost in every screen here), but the net result here is still a laughable giallo littered with questionable and wasted performances, too many distractions and a padding problem that could have been fixed through rewrites. Fatal Frames (1996) can be a dreck, but, at times, it is a visually competent looking dreck.

Bodycount:
1 female slashed and disemboweled with a machete (snuff)
1 female slashed and nearly decapitated with a machete
1 female seen slaughtered, nearly decapitated with a machete
1 female seen decapitated with a machete
1 female seen slaughtered, nearly decapitated
1 female seen slaughtered
1 male found dead with a gut wound
Total: 7

The Massachusetts Home Horror: Ghosthouse (1988)

Ghosthouse (Italy, 1988) (AKA "La Casa 3")
Rating: ***
Starring: Lara Wendel, Greg Rhodes, Mary Sellers

Ghosthouse (1988) is something you would get when a haunted house movie like, let's say, Poltergeist (1982) suddenly gets a body count under the direction of a bad slasher flick only Italians can conjure up in the late 80s. (For this movie's case, producer Joe "Antropophagus (1980)" D’Amato and director Umberto "Cannibal Ferox (1981)" Lenzi. Which should mean we would be seeing a lot of batshit insanity you thought only exists in your wildest fever dreams. Gods help us)

We start this cluster of madness with a girl murdering a cat offcamera in her family's basement, with pops eventually finding out and punishing his spawn by locking her up down there until she learns what she did is cruel and wrong. What follows is a double murder perpetrated by a mostly unseen ghoul with rotten hands, hacking the father's head with a hatchet while his dear wife gets an exploding mirror to the face before being throated with a knife.

Twenty years, ham radio enthusiast Paul tells his girlfriend Martha about the strange signals he have been getting from his equipment, which mostly consists of repetitive carnival music, odd chanting and a couple of people screaming. They soon figure out the location of where the screams are originating from, by which one car ride and one annoying encounter with a hitcher later reveals to be the same -and now dilapidated- house where the opening double murder was committed.

There the two encounter a band of four teenagers, out for your typical horror film road trip and two of whom sounding much alike the screamers from Paul's mysterious radio audio. Now dead curious of what's going on, the two parties decided to help each other out and uncover the truth behind the odd screamings, consequently leading to some weird hauntings involving ghost hounds, stretchy explosive bottles and an evil clown doll, as well as murderous groundskeepers, knife-wielding death specters and a killer electric fan.

As with most guilty pleasure movies, Ghosthouse's a whole lot like a double edge sword; on one end, you have this thing that's not all too well put together and feels more like a hodge-podge of supposedly scary scenes done with the feistiest cheese and questionable (and I think mostly dubbed) acting. Cliches upon cliches of horror tropes are to be expected, from the creaky dark Gothic houses and people investigating weird noises alone only to get murdered, to bloody faucets and a creepy doll and girl combo, while weird scripts make their way through thespians with lines like " You should believe in ghosts, pea-brain". (To be fair, it WAS (again) the 80s) It makes Ghosthouse tedious to watch, honestly, taking a good toll on any of its attempt to build atmosphere and suspense, but the silliness of it all does work in the movie's favor through another angle. The so-bad-its-entertaining angle.

When Ghosthouse goes for the ghoulish and brutal, may it be a bisection from random guillotines or an acid bath that somehow found its way underneath a house, it goes for it with a gut and a sense of energy and creativity to make itself worthwhile after each of its slow moments, leading itself to a fair killcount. At the times it is not violating our screens with gruesome deaths, in turn, Ghosthouse puts its randomness to good use by treating its audience with a cavalcade of  "scares" mostly borrowed from more well known supernatural horror movies like The Amityville Horror (1979) and The Omen (1976), dated and hammy for its effects but laughably fine for good fun.

The film's cinematography effectively captures the moody ghoulishness of its fever dream-like plot, though I find the accompanying composed score to be, while effective when timed properly, a bit repetitive and bordering annoying, particularly the case with the unholy backmasked carnival music emitted by the clown doll. Still, Ghosthouse (1988) is a passable entry to the late 80s incoherent cheesefest that is Italian horror, one that finds a welcoming home among horror fans as a fan favorite midnight movie haunting their video collection. Or late night cable viewing. Far from a masterpiece, but entertaining either way.

Bodycount:
1 cat had its throat cut with a pair of scissors offscreen
1 male had his head split open with a hatchet
1 female gets pinned to a door with a knife through her throat
1 male gets a projected fan blade slice through his throat
1 girl mentioned found left for dead inside a cellar
1 male brained with a hammer, left for dead inside a coffin
1 female chopped in half by a guillotine
1 male found hanged
1 male found dead with a head wound
1 male repeatedly stabbed in the back with a pair of garden shears
1 male hit by an incoming bus
Total: 11

Dissipated Spirits: A White Dress for Mariale (1972)

A White Dress for Mariale (Un bianco vestito per Marialé ) (Italy, 1972) (AKA "Spirits of Death")
Rating: **1/2
Starring: Ida Galli, Ivan Rassimov, Luigi Pistilli

Before directing the depressing 80s cult slasher flick and Video Nasty Nightmares in a Damaged Brain, Romano Scavolini directed this barely discussed 70s giallo about trauma, murder and batshit insane masquerade parties.

As a child, Mariale saw her father turn a gun to himself after he murdered his wife and her lover after catching them canoodling under the sun. Now as an adult, Mariale is married to Paolo, a wealthy man who goes through many lengths to keep her drugged and stuck inside his ancient gothic pallazo, in an apparent attempt to cut her off from the world. But it appears that Mariale have successfully made contact without her husband's knowing, as her friends suddenly arrive one day in response to her invitation. Now with no other choice but to entertain these guests, Paolo lets in Mariale's former lover Massimo, a racist husband named Gustavo and his black wife Semy, and a polygamous trio, Joe, Sebastiano and Mercedes to his crumbling abode.

While Paolo gives a tour around the pallazo (both parts renovated and not-so-renovated), Mariale confides with Massimo about her rough living conditions under her husband and his brutish manservant, though it seems she's not that keen on bringing all of this up with the rest of her friends and it even looks like she's not all up there. The situation becomes further surreal when an indoor storm breaks in the pallazo's cavern-slash-basement and the gang's primal and hedonistic nature seemingly awakens as they all dress up in Renaissance clothing and partake in unrestrained lewdness.

By this point, A White Dress for Mariale cemented itself as a giallo of the more artsy and psychedelic kind as all sorts of strangeness and uneasiness break into one wild mess, this including a lengthy dance scene with a nearly naked Semy and a traumatized character being "calmed" down with homosexual sex. It's pretty confusing and a tad too bizarre for its own good, but it kinda works well in the sense that it introduced a feeling of uncertainty and tension to the film's final third, in which both the characters and plot gets back in track and transitions into a more standard murder mystery, or at least it tries to.

An issue I have with Dress is that not a lot of its characters are that likable. I understand that not all movies has to have relatable characters to work, but with most of the male casts here depicted a brutes and the women are often seen sexualizing themselves, it does make them a little of a chore to watch, albeit still pretty interesting for most times with their random antics, cheesy overacting and uber-sexual kookiness. Since I find it hard to feel for most of our thespians, (save Giallo heavy hitters Ida Galli, Ivan Rassimov and Luigi Pistilli as Mariale, Massimo and Paolo respectively, the only characters I can enjoy without looking at them oddly) it leaves many of the killings at the latter act feel empty despite being adequate enough with its blood work, a point that doesn't help the somewhat predictable twist reveal introduced in the end.

What really works in Dress would be the surreal gothic touches and eeriness it sets throughout the film. The plot may have taken a toll from the wildly bizzare nature of the narrative (or putting it more bluntly, the middle act which felt more like an overly long fever dream of political incorrectness) but it does make this giallo stand out a bit above straight-faced Italian mysteries, even more given how effectively lasting the tone it sets, as well as some of the artsy visuals tend to work in favor of the direction's psuedo-supernatural aftertaste.

Not exactly a fine giallo in terms of grounded mysteries or plot development, but A White Dress for Mariale is definitely an entertainingly trippy one. I would say those who are new to gialli movies should save this one for a later time as its insanely wild nature can be overwhelming, but veteran Italian thriller fans can certainly find a thing or two to enjoy from this giallo.

Bodycount:
1 male shot
1 female shot dead
1 male shot
1 male brained to death with a hammer
1 male stabbed with a dagger
1 female repeatedly beaten with a staff, drowned
1 male mauled apart by dogs
1 female murdered offcamera
1 male slashed to death with razor
1 female shot with a shotgun
1 male shot with a shotgun
1 male shot with a shotgun
Total: 12

The Eyes Shall See: Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971)

Short Night of Glass Dolls (La corta notte delle bambole di vetro) (Italy, 1971) (AKA "Paralyzed", "The Short Night of the Butterflies")
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Ingrid Thulin, Jean Sorel, Mario Adorf

To some horror fans, the term giallo is likely be associated with violent 70s Italian murder mysteries under the works of Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci or Dario Argento, which will become a strong influence to the existence of slasher movies, mainly because some gialli practiced the use of splashy yet methodic murders for their bodycounts, something that would become the key element to their more stalk-and-stab grandchildren. However, once in a while we get subtle oddities of a giallo that are much closer to noir thrillers than a bodycounting dead teenage flicks. Oddities like Perfume of a Lady in Black (1974), Death Laid an Egg (1968) and this title here, Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971).

From the very start, Glass Dolls catches our attention with a strange premise; on an early morning at a park in Prague, a body of a man is found by the park keeper who, assuming it is a corpse, phones the ambulance to pick it up. Upon arriving at the hospital, the body is identified as Gregory Moore, an American journalist, and somewhat baffles the nurses as one of them points out that it suffers very little rigor mortis. The reason for this is quite terrifying as it turns out Gregory is in fact still alive, but paralyzed in a death-like catatonic state and his situation will soon turn deadly as he is eventually deemed dead and to be dissected for a medical class.

Desperate for answers, Gregory has no choice but to try and recall what lead to his predicament and it is here we see what went on days earlier: while visiting the country, he fell in love with a local girl named Mira and promised to help her escape from Prague. She, unfortunately, disappeared after attending a social event, prompting Gregory and his two colleagues to investigate this when local police failed to do any form of progress on the case. What Gregory didn't expect is that this isn't the first time such a disappearance happened and there are people at high places working to keep it all a secret and they're not afraid to dispose a body or two.

Since it has a stronger approach on building an intriguing mystery than exploitative kill counts and sleaze, Glass Dolls does a commendable effort in bringing the serious out of its surreal plot as it begins with trailing through what could have been a standardized crime thriller, only to end up with a nightmarish scenario that greatly and effectively plays on paranoia. It can get a bit over-the-top with a few hiccups of cheese and the fantastic littered here and there, but the execution of its mystery in a near-whole is realistic at most and captivating enough to follow through even if the ride can get a tad bumpy, if not overlong at times.

The film looks and feels wonderful with its artsy use of visuals and haunting scores, both used quite often here to emphasize the dream-like quality of the story, as well as act as visual and auditory pieces to many recurring themes. Its editing and direction can leave the movie a bit too brooding for its own good, especially around the first half where our characters were given some form of development before they begin looking into or falling victim to whatever is going on within the city. It can get a while to get things going in turn, but once the movie crawls its way to its climax, the surrealist nature eventually sobers down and patiently works its way to a possibly grim conclusion.

Talents involved were okay-ish for most parts, including Jean Sorel as our now-victim-then-cocky-journalist Gregory Moore who does a good run on his slow character transformation, and Barbara Bach as the mysterious Mira who is more or less a pretty face before she becomes a simple name that just drives the plot to wherever it needed to go. Suffice to say, not a whole lot to discuss about acting as it's hardly that bad, but it's not that spectacular either.

Since the murders are often offcamera and whatever gets to be shown onscreen aren't all that creative, those expecting the same kind of brutality or showmanship on the killing department may need to look elsewhere, or at least try to loosen up. For its worth, Short Night of Glass Dolls is a recommendable giallo title for those who love a good mystery on their Italian thrillers and don't mind a little tameness and strangeness along an incredible setting.

Bodycount:
1 male seen dead
1 female body found near a river
1 male thrown off from an overpass, falls to his death
1 female seen dead underneath flowers
1 male murdered with a switchblade offcamera
1 male stabbed on the chest with a scalpel
Total: 6

To Survive an Axe man: My Little Sister (2016)

My Little Sister (Italy, 2016)
Rating: *1/2
Starring:  Lucia Castellano, Alberto Corba, Astrid Di Bon

Oh look! A slasher in the woods! Quaint, is it?

Not much.

In this oddly titled offering from Italy, couple Sheila and Tom are venturing into the woods to meet and catch up with some friends for a fun camping weekend, only to find their friends missing and a random axeman showing up to give them the usual "stay-here-you'll-die" doomsayer spiel which, of course, the two did not heed. It wasn't too long before our maniac, also oddly named "Little Sister", shows his ugly masked face and starts hunting the couple, which soon leads to a formulaic and nearly repetitive stalk-escape-stalk-kill gig that gets really boring quick.

To be fair, My Little Sister did came up with one neat twist to a would-be familiar trapping; it was a neat take on a classic slasher scene in which a victim tries to impersonate "Little Sister's" dead family member ala Jason and Ginny Field in Friday the 13th Part 2, though instead of having it work in favor of the victim at some level, the whole shtick instead backfires and ends up with another victim dying at both "Sister's" and the impersonating character's hand. Apart from that though, I mostly remember being bored by the painfully dull execution of pretty much everything else about this film as it reeks low budget from every corner of the production such as lighting, audio and special effects. Obviously not a great sign this movie getting on my fair side.

The paper-thin story being a challenge already, I at least expected some good tension and plot development from My Little Sister, but the movie definitely overdid the intensity to the point that it all felt overly stretched into nothingness and whatever character our leads have felt more of the same throwaway slasher victims that barely made an impact for me once they bite the big one. There was a neat reveal at the end showcasing what lead into the creation of "Little Sister", but the tag-along twist it came it was hardly that surprising, certainly something we all could have seen an hour before the damn movie brings it up again.

At that, I will say My Little Sister may have sent Italian horror back a few years. It's boring, mostly predictable, and it's really nothing more than one big chase scene between a random horror victim and a random slasher with a stupid name and mask. For those who enjoyed it, I believe this Sister is yours, not mine.

Bodycount:
1 male had his face flayed off
1 female eviscerated with a bushwhacker
1 male found rotting dead
1 male hacked with an axe
1 male bled to death from axe wounds
1 female stabbed with a pair of scissors
1 girl hacked with an axe
1 female ingests acid
Total: 8

A Pocketful of Rye: Formula For A Murder (1985)

Formula For A Murder (7, Hyden Park: la casa maledetta ) (AKA Formula Per Un Assassinio) (Italy/US, 1985)
Rating: ***
Starring: Christina Nagy, David Warbeck, Carroll Blumenberg

Our intro? A guy dressed as a priest handing a doll to a girl, only to give chase and implied to have broken the girl's back during this attack.

Twenty five years later, our opening victim, Joanna, is now a wealthy and wheelchair-bound heiress who plans on using a good chunk of her money opening sports centers for paraplegic people, as well as donate some to her local church. This benevolent goal, however, isn't sitting too well for some people, to the point that they are willing to start murdering in hopes of getting their hands on the moolah. But who could it be? Joanna's live-in caretaker with an obvious lesbian attraction? The motorbike-riding priest who is seemingly unaware that another priest was murdered earlier in the movie? Or perhaps it's Joanna's doctor who seems to know more about our lead girl's paraplegic conditions?

Well, if you stick around about 30 minutes into the film, not only will you find out who's behind the killings, but Formula's plot switches from a potential whodunit to a crime thriller with afternoon soap opera theatrics and a small dosage of bodycount horror.

As a giallo, Formula For A Murder isn't really a good one; while the early curveball definitely threw away any good opportunity of a decent mystery, there is still a good chance the movie could have been more interesting should it deepened its characters and took its plot a bit more seriously, but instead it decided to stick with a straightforward story that really isn't all that original (I believe the whole "scare the heiress dead to get their moolah" shtick was done before in Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) and The Spiral Staircase (1946) kinda did the terrorized disabled lead a tad batter) and campy as heck.

Formula may as well shown some of the ongoing signs that pure breed Italian gialli were slowly losing their touch by the 80s, but it did make up for the lack of strong sleuthing and plot development with trashy exploitation craziness such as murder attempts involving bloodied dolls, TV soap heart conditions that are triggered by extreme fear but not when making love (?!), and unexpected betrayals which ultimately leads to a good old-fashioned 80s slasher stalk-and-stab with a killer that just keeps on going despite the fatal punishments unleashed against them.

Perhaps it is better that these trashier tropes have a significantly stronger presence in the overall final product seeing we pretty much knows who and why all of the gruesome stuff is happening, as at least Formula For A Murder tries to be entertainingly crazy and hammy. It does succeed at that quite fairly and I find myself satisfyingly enjoying the preposterous twists and turns on a what should have been a too conventional giallo. So long as blood works are flowing, the over-the-top villains are plotting, and the tone be cheesing from this film, I am glad to say that I am a part of an audience who are content to have seen this cheddary guilty pleasure and I will have no quarrels seeing again in the future.

Bodycount:
1 male had his throat cut with a knife
1 male bludgeoned and hacked to death with a shovel
1 female slashed to death with a razor
1 male dies from his wounds
Total: 4