Franco Fraticelli – Missile Test

October Horrorshow: Cemetery Man, aka Dellamorte dellamore

Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett) is drifting through life. No college degree — no high school degree, even. He admits that he’s only ever read two books in his life. One, he didn’t finish, and the other was the phone book. Did he finish that?

A dead end life inevitably leads one to a dead end job. In Francesco’s case, that’s as caretaker for the cemetery in the Italian town of Buffalora. His assistant is Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro), a sensitive idiot whose only spoken words are the first syllable of his name, spat out like a child saying, “Nyaa!”

It would be a normal and dull job if all the pair had to do was bury the dead and keep graves clean, but, in Buffalora, the dead have the habit of coming back to life and clawing their way out into the light. So, every night, Francesco and Gnaghi have the unenviable task of smashing the brains of the undead and sticking them back in their graves. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Cemetery Man, aka Dellamorte dellamore”

Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: The Church, aka La Chiesa

After the success of Demons 2, director Lamberto Bava and producer Dario Argento had begun to collaborate on another project. But, while Bava wanted to do another entry in the Demons series, Argento did not, leading to Bava saying his farewells and Argento bringing in Michele Soavi, who had directed the second unit on a number of Argento’s films. A screenplay for the film passed through no less than eight hands, including Soavi’s. The location changed from a plane to a volcanic island and, finally, to a Gothic cathedral in the heart of a modern European city. Thus, we have The Church, from 1989. Continue reading “Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: The Church, aka La Chiesa”

Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Deep Red, aka Profondo rosso

One guarantee for viewers of a Dario Argento film is a gorgeous experience. Argento is a master of the visual, with an artist’s sense of palette and a designer’s sense of space. His films take the ordinary streets of urban Italy, or wherever he has chosen to shoot, and turn them almost surreal, or liminal. The characters that occupy these worlds never seem to notice how uncanny their surroundings are. In Deep Red, Argento, along with cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller, takes the bustling city of Turin and turns it into a lonely, cavernous place seemingly built by giants, and now occupied sparsely by their diminutive descendants. Interior spaces are crowded not with people, but art, and none of it is remarkable to anyone who floats through these spaces. To them, the world might as well consist of blank walls. Everything shown on screen is not for them. It’s for us. Continue reading “Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Deep Red, aka Profondo rosso”

Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Demons 2, aka Dèmoni 2… l’incubo ritorna

Could lightning strike in the same place twice? Lamberto Bava and Dario Argento must have thought so. It only took them a few months after the release of Demons to start work on a sequel, hoping to mirror the success of the first film. How did they plan on doing so? By remaking the first film.

Released just a year after Demons, in 1986, Demons 2 sees the return of Lamberto Bava in the director’s chair, working from a screenplay credited to Argento, Franco Ferrini, Dardano Sacchetti, and Bava, himself. The previous film had set up a sequel at the end, where the demon-possessed zombies of the first film escaped the doomed theater and spread across the city of Berlin, and it is implied that civilization itself is collapsing. Bava and company decided not to build on this. Instead, Demons 2 takes place in an apartment building in Hamburg. The events of the first film are alluded to, but that’s about it. Continue reading “Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Demons 2, aka Dèmoni 2... l’incubo ritorna”

Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Demons, aka Dèmoni

I praised Lucio Fulci for his storytelling in Manhattan Baby. But, truth be told, I wouldn’t mind it at all if every film I watched for The Italian Horrorshow were as wild and unhinged as Lamberto Bava’s Demons, from 1985. Bava proved with his film that it isn’t necessary to have a complex, or even coherent, plot for a horror flick to be a success. In fact, this jumble of sensory overload is one of the most enjoyable films I’ve seen from one of horror’s golden ages. Continue reading “Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Demons, aka Dèmoni”