Census Bloodbath: Slayboy

For the Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.

Year: 1987

Director: Lamberto Bava

Cast: Serena Grandi, Daria Nicolodi, Vanni Corbellini
Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes
MPAA Rating: UR

Italian horror in the late 1980’s was in a very strange place. The thrilling, erotic giallo genre had long since died down, but international markets were still demanding more and more slasher content. The two big Italian horror exports that year, despite sharing four crew members and almost a whole title, explored two polar opposite approaches. Those films were Deliria AKA StageFright: Aquarius and Delirium AKA Photos of Gloria. They shared a costume designer, composer Simon Boswell, star David Brandon, and writer/actor George Eastman, but they couldn’t be more different.

Michele Soavi’s StageFright resurrects the idiosyncratic visual style of Dario Argento and applies it to a delightfully gory romp through slasher excess, whereas Delirium: Photos of Gloria (our topic for today) takes a more self-reflective approach, wearing the faded patches of the giallo genre on its sleeve yet failing to find the energy to rise above being mildly intelligent softcore trash.

Nobody got out of the 80’s with their dignity intact.

Delirium assembled a robust team of the giallo old guard to bring its story to life. Legacy director Lamberto Bava (son of cinema legend Mario Bava) helmed a crew that included Don’t Torture a Duckling screenwriter Gianfranco Clerici, Five Women for the Killer editor Mauro Bonanni, and The Scorpion with Two Tails production designer Massimo Antonello Geleng. And that cast is a nonstop barrage of familiar faces, both old and new.

The story is simple enough. Gloria (Serena Grandi of Anthropophagus) is an ex-nudie model who now runs a men’s magazine. Unfortunately the women who pose for the cover start turning up dead, photographed in front of a massive blow-up of Gloria which was shot during an unpublished modeling session that very few people have access to. She and the useless Inspector Corsi (Lino Salemme of Lamberto Bava’s earlier Demons) must find out who the killer is before they turn their sights on her.

The suspect pool is rather large, as Gloria is surrounded with intimate friends and coworkers who have all been acting rather peculiar lately…. First there’s Flora (Capucine of the Pink Panther series), a matronly lesbian who wants to buy Gloria’s magazine out of revenge for her resisting the woman’s advances. The list goes on and on from there: Mark (Karl Zinny, also of Demons), her wheelchair-bound Peeping Tom neighbor; Gloria’s actor ex-lover Alex (George Eastman, the impossibly tall cannibal from Anthropophagus), who always seems to be conveniently out of town whenever the murders occur; the stand-offish photographer Roberto (the aforementioned David Brandon); her brother and partner in crime Tony (Vanni Corbellini of The Belly of an Architect); and her dutiful – almost too dutiful – assistant Evelyn (Argento collaborator/ex-wife Daria Nicolodi of Tenebrae, Deep Red, Suspiria, and so forth).

Shockingly, she actually survives this movie.

Even though the cast isn’t particularly small, it’s intimate. There are practically no other characters involved, and the interpersonal relationships between almost every combination of personalities are explored with some depth. This is a giallo with an exceptionally focused murder mystery plot (that’s a low bar, but still) because the people populating it are at least mildly interesting all across the board.

That’s just about the last unequivocally good thing I’ll be saying about Delirium, but let’s keep this positive train a–chuggin’ for another minute. Seeing how the film is such a blend of old and new, it really is an interesting reflection on the genre it more or less put out to pasture. Much like Dario Argento’s Tenebrae five years earlier, it’s as much a meditation on misogyny in the genre as it is a pristine example of it.

With the most phallic, penetrative imagery this side of Slumber Party Massacre’s giant power drill, Delirium is a 90-minute exercise in foregrounding the never-quite-subtle sexual symbolism evident in the slasher and giallo genres. If you don’t want spoilers (like anybody cares), skip until after the next image.

The killer here targets women as an outlet for his rage at his impotence, a theme that has never been explored more explicitly (except maybe in the chainsaw seduction scene of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2). When the killer finally confronts Gloria, he undresses her with his blade, sticking it in her mouth and rubbing it across her body until he’s literally shot in the dick and “ejaculates” blood all over her face. And every other death is so symbolically penetrative it’s almost obscene, especially the sequence where a nude young woman is stung to death by hundreds of bees.

Truly delightful.

The overtly misogynistic violence clashes against the film’s depiction of women who have sexual autonomy and hold high-powered jobs, manipulating the voyeuristic eye of the camera and the men holding it.

But mostly of course, this is all just an excuse to shove as many bare breasts into the frame as physically possible. It’s a shame such an intelligent, knowing visual theme has to be supported by a weak softcore plot and actors who perform like this is the very first rehearsal of a high school play. It also features a completely unnecessary and inexcusable rape scene, which tilts the balance too far over the edge into genuinely nasty exploitation.

Delirium: Photos of Gloria tries its best, but it’s a thin wisp of a film; a sad straggler from a genre that had more or less already been interred. If you’re going for a taste of 1987 Italy, StageFright bridges the gap between Italian giallo and American slasher with aplomb, whereas Delirium merely plummets to its demise.

Killer: [Tony (Vanni Corbellini)]
Final Girl: Gloria (Serena Grandi)
Best Kill: My fingernails never can survive a good bee sting death.
Sign of the Times: Oh, Simon Boswell. You really had a time and a place.

Scariest Moment: Gloria visits her husband’s grave and finds her photo attached to the next casket.
Weirdest Moment: From the killer’s perspective, one of his victims has a giant eyeball for a head.
Champion Dialogue: “I warn you, the hate of a woman can be very bad!”
Body Count: 4; shockingly low for this type of movie.

1. Kim is pitchforked in the gut.
2. Sabrina is stung to death by bees.
3. Susan is killed offscreen.
4. Roberto is hit by a car.

TL;DR: Delirium: Photos of Gloria tries very very hard to be artful and worthwhile, but flails behind abysmal acting and softcore plotting.
Rating: 4/10
Word Count: 1076

Census Bloodbath: Feta Sleaze

Year: 1981

Director: Joe D'Amato (as Peter Newton)

Cast: George Eastman, Annie Belle, Edmund Purdom

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

As we inch toward the dregs of Census Bloodbath in 1981, we’ll be seeing that, despite its reputation for being the Golden Year for slasher cinema, there’s still plenty of crap to go around. This was the slasher genre, after all. It’s not exactly renowned for its consistency and integrity, even in the early days. And there’s perhaps no genre in cinema history more prone to lapses in integrity than 80’s Italian horror, which is where we find ourselves right now.

Today’s topic of discussion is the Joe D’Amato flick Absurd, also sold as Rosso Sangue (Red Blood). Also sold as Horrible. Also sold as Monster Hunter. Also sold as Zombie 6. But mostly sold as Anthropophagus 2, the supposed sequel to Anthropophagus, a movie I quite like. For that reason only, I was jazzed for Absurd.

I should have known better.

In Absurd, two Greeks descend upon small town “America” without explanation during the night of the Big Football Game. One of these is Father Andres (Edmund Purdom, who made bad movie history as the Dean in Pieces), a priest who also studies biochemistry. The other is Mikos Stenopolis (George Eastman), a bloodthirsty killer with the power to heal dead tissue and coagulate his blood like, crazy fast, so wounds don’t hurt him or something. Science! It’s worth noting that he almost never actually uses this power, because they don’t have the budget to manage such extravagance. This is just a pseudoscience explanation for his Michael Myers strength.

We don’t know why this now officially superhuman Michael Myers and his perhaps even more useless Dr. Loomis appear in this small town, nor do we care. The Halloween riffing doesn’t end there (they literally call him the Boogeyman) as Mikos ditches the hospital and closes in on the Bennett home where a babysitter is taking care of the kids while their parents are out watching the Big Game, which has more or less incapacitated the entire police force as well. Not that the active officer Sgt. Engelman (Charles Borromel) is much help anyway. He spends most of his time asking the priest to recite exposition over and over again and then not investigating things until it’s already too late.

Anyway, these kids are Katia (Katya Berger) and Willy (Kasimir Berger). Katia is bedridden with a brace to correct her spinal column (rendering her as helpless as the deaf, mute, and blind Jennifer Jason Leigh in the same year’s Eyes of a Stranger), and Willy has a full time job being the most annoying child eve put onscreen, constantly whining and defying the instructions of every single adult trying to keep him alive.

If the goal was to make you sympathize with Mikos’ urge to kill children, it worked.

After finally watching Absurd/Anthropophagus 2, I feel like one of its alternate titles would fit the movie better: Horrible. Although there is a heaping helping of hilarious “Italians faking America” gimcrackery and some truly inexplicable bad-good scenes (one of my favorites is a surgery scene where the doctor snips vaguely at some intestines with scissors, frantically switching pairs of scissors once every .25 seconds like he’s doing a challenge on The Amazing Race), Joe D’Amato is working very hard to earn his reputation as Most Boring Italian Director.

What I have long come to associate with Italian horror is a certain reluctance to adhere to a straightforward plot but a masterful sense of composing surreal, horrifying cinematic images. D’Amato is the opposite. Absurd’s plot is an extravagantly cavalier rip-off of Halloween (besting even He Knows You’re Alone, which essentially cribs John Carpenter’s entire score wholesale), chugging flatly through a Babysitters in Peril subroutine with nary a narrative fillip in sight. 

So it’s at least comprehensible, but it comes at the expense of anything interesting to look at. D’Amato (also credited as cinematographer) shoots his scenes like they’re horses with broken legs. The devastatingly frequent woodland shots are brutally inelegant, murky, and ill-framed (trees tend to block half the action, because who has time to plan ahead when the director is heading two departments), and the interiors are lit like somebody told a sitcom lighting designer to achieve a “Walmart ambience.”

It’s not fair to compare Absurd to Anthropophagus (it’s also pointlessly romantic, considering that the only thing this “sequel” shares with that film is its director, star, and a certain predilection for disembowelment.), but this movie couldn’t even dream of achieving one iota of that film’s class, beauty, and elegance.

Remember, that’s the movie where a pregnant woman gets her fetus ripped out.

Absurd is just plain bad. No matter how much the score squeals, desperately proclaiming its terror, it can’t punch up the deathly dull chase scenes that perforate Absurd’s already tenuous pacing. There’s a chase scene between a hobbling handicapped girl and a blinded killer and it’s still the fastest, most action-packed moment in the film. Plus, the gore that’s meant to be Absurd’s shot in the arm curbs its creativity, limiting its especially grotesque kills like it’s on a blood-free diet. And the kills we actually get (most notably a wholly useless character getting his head split open by a band saw) are full of bungled close-ups so extreme you can’t tell whether you’re looking at flesh, bone, or maybe just the wall.

And don’t even get me started on the acting! Edmund Purdom is tedious as the useless priest, his only trick being holding his hand feebly to his collar in a sickly approximation of pious shock. But even worse is Kasimir Berger as Willy, who alternates between reading his lines like a robot whose batteries have just been removed and shrieking at the top of his lungs. Everybody else reaches a median of overly showy woodenness that the at least blends into the background.

Like I said, there are some campy fun moments sprinkled throughout like garnishes, almost apologizing for what you had to sit through to get to them: the biker gang that drives back and forth down the same street like they’re stuck in a Groundhog Day-esque time loop and the enormous suit of armor replete with battle ax decorating this rural Southern home are but two of the inane delights you can come to expect from D’Amato’s anti-masterpiece, but they’re hardly worth the hour and change of relentlessly boring, pallid horror they’re ensconced in.

Killer: Mikos Stenopolis (George Eastman)

Final Girl: Katia Bennett (Katya Berger)

Best Kill: The nurse is drilled in the temple using a magic bit that extends like Pinocchio’s nose all the way through her head.

Sign of the Times: Emily’s hair makes her look like a botched Annie Lennox clone.

Scariest Moment: The town drunk laughs maniacally after handing Emily something she dropped.

Weirdest Moment: The Forrests enjoy the game while chowing down on that classic, All-American football snack: spaghetti.

Champion Dialogue: “We’re just going down the road. After all, it’s not as if we’re leaving for South America.”

Body Count: 7

1. Nurse is drilled in the temple.
2. Mechanic has his skull sawed in half.
3. Biker is strangled.
4. Peggy is pickaxed in the head.
5. Emily has her head stuffed in the oven and is stabbed in the neck with scissors.
6. Father Andres is strangled.
7. Mikos Stenopolis is decapitated with a battle axe.

TL;DR: Absurd is a tedious, occasionally unintentionally silly slog.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1247