While I've already awkwardly discussed
Joe D'Amato before, I thought that I would begin by telling a story. Nearly twenty years ago, around the time when I would have been either thirteen or fourteen, I received Joe D'Amato's
Horrible (aka
Rosso sangue) (1981) on VHS, in a large, oversized box under the title,
Monster Hunter. Here's a pic (still have it today):
My old man purchased it late Christmas Eve out of the cheap bin at K-Mart. I don't know if he was lured by its over-sized box or its lurid (and misleading) cover, but I was happy to receive it the following day (along with a buncha other literally cheap and trashy flix). I remember opening the big box and watching it. My initial impression was that this was an American production and not an Italian one (all of the credits revealed mostly Anglicized names); spoken in English and out of synch with some of the characters' voices; set in America: there was a Rams/Steelers game on t.v., and the priest, who was Greek, was called a "foreigner;" and most of all, this was my bread and butter,
Monster Hunter was low-budget horror (immediately apparent from the black-and-white opening credits to the opening shot of
George Eastman jogging followed by the shuffling
Edmond Purdom). I recently received the Mya release on DVD, under the title
Horrible (although the credits title the film
Rosso sangue) and gave it a spin.
Joe D'Amato's
Rosso sangue (aka
Anthropophagus 2) is about a Greek killer (Eastman), Mikos Stenopolis, whose on the run from from a Greek priest (Purdom). At the Bennett villa, young Katia Bennett (
Katya Berger) is confined to bed as a parapalegic, drawing circles with her compass. Ms. Bennett (
Hanja Kochansky) sits at her side and offers Katia comforting words of hope of her getting better, while little brother and son, Willy (
Kasimir Berger) hears a noise out in the yard. The door opens to reveal the noise as Eastman, who has disemboweled himself attempting to climb the rod-iron fence. Mikos passes out on the Bennett floor and is rushed to the hospital.
As the doctors are stitching large Eastman up, the surgeon notes to nurse Emily (
Annie Belle) that the patient has "remarkable recupertative powers." Emily exits, as Eastman recovers, to the Bennett villa to tend to young Katia. Meanwhile, Sgt. Ben Engleman (
Charles Borromel) is exiting the Bennett villa after his police inquiry of the Mikos self-impalement en route to the hospital. Along the way, Engleman picks up a older man, walking alone in the evening, a "foreigner," whose car has broken down, and takes him to a mechanic. The Sargent arrives at the hospital and finds Greek coins in Eastman's large jeans and notes the coincidence that the older man whom he earlier picked up was Greek also. The older man is now at the hospital, and Eastman's Mikos wakes up, not happy to see the other Greek and in a psychotic frame of mind.
Evocative of John Carpenter's classic
Halloween (1978), from the music to the one-night setting to the plot line, Joe D'Amato delivers an effective low-budget slasher. However,
Rosso sangue will more than likely alienate most horror fans and casual fans of the genre for its low-budget roots and familar plot, but it should be fried gold to Eurocult cinema enthusiasts and D'Amato afficionados, such as myself. To begin with, the cast of
Rosso sangue is a roll call of familiar D'Amato actors and Eurocult stars (or participants linked to a Eurocult star). The Bennetts, save Papa Bennett, are real-life mother and children (Katya and Kasimir Berger are the daughter and son of Hanja Kochansky and genre stalwart, William Berger). The couple which appears on the television delivering soapy dialogue, who also light a flame of anger under young Willy, are D'Amato regulars, Mark Shannon (for example,
Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (1980)) and Lucia Ramirez (for example,
Orgasmo nero (1980)). Edmund Purdom appeared previously in Tonino Ricci's excellent
The Big Family (1973), Massimo Dallamano's
The Night Child (1975), Fernando di Leo's off-the-wall and awesome
Mr. Scarface (1976), and subsequently appeared in Sergio Martino's
2019: After the Fall of New York (1983) and Di Leo favorite,
Killer vs. Killers (1985), for example. Ms. Annie Belle, as Emily, is a true titan of Eurcult cinema and she clashed with other Eurocult titans, Lili Carati, Al Cliver, and Laura Gemser, in favorite D'Amato's
The Alcove (1984). Belle previously appeared in Jean Rollin's
Fly Me the French Way (1974) and his poetic and haunting,
Lips of Blood (1975), Brunello Rondi's
Black Emmanuelle, White Emmanuelle (1976), and Ruggero Deodato's
House on the Edge of the Park (1980), for example. Also, look for frequent Eurocult small-role actor and future director, Michele Soavi amongst others.
Last but not least is friend of and creative collaborator with director Joe D'Amato, George Eastman as Mikos Stenopolis. Tall and muscular Eastman spent the 60s and the early part of the 70s appearing primarily in Westerns before his role in Corrado Farina's excellent
Baba Yaga (1973). Eastman would later, for example, appear in D'Amato's surreal
Emanuelle's Revenge (1975), Alfonso Brescia's
Knell, the Bloody Avenger (1976), and D'Amato's infamous
Anthropophagus (1980) before
Rosso sangue. Subsequent to his performance as Mikos, Eastman would appear in some seriously heavyweight Eurocult cinema: Enzo G. Castellari's
The New Barbarians (1982) and
1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982), Umberto Lenzi's fantastic
Ironmaster (1983),
2019: After the Fall of New York (1983), D'Amato's stellar
Endgame (1983) alongside Al Cliver and Laura Gemser, Lamberto Bava's essential
Blastfighter (1984), and Sergio Martino's
Hands of Steel (1986), for example. Eastman is also a prolific screenwriter with numerous credits, including
Rosso sangue, with my favorite being Michele's Soavi's
Stagefright (1987). The script of
Monster Hunter is perfunctory, like
Halloween, and is a by-the-books formulaic slasher. All of the performances are good, especially Belle, Purdom, and Eastman.
D'Amato's signature visuals and his strong atmosphere is spotty in
Rosso Sangue. He attempts to mimic the cat-and-mouse chase of the priest and police after Mikos with a choppy, intercut story, from the Bennetts, to Eastman, to the priest and police. The final third is very good claustrophobic horror. The gore scenes are meaty and bloody, and like
Anthropophagus, Eastman and D'Amato went out of their way to rack their "brains" for some creative (and if need be, unnecessary) kills. The score by Carlo Maria Cordio is fantastic and the synthy flourishes are nice. Overall,
Horrible has that unique Eurocult "vibe," so familar and addictive to genre fans, such as myself. Long absent from DVD, the current Mya release is essential for the Eurocult cinema lover. Buy it
here or
here.
In the non-documentary film where one of the actors (or participants) is filming the action of which he/she is also participating, the technique not only breaks the "fourth-wall" of traditional cinema but also creates a myriad of logical problems for the discerning viewer. I ain't one of them and will not address that issue. I will say, however, that Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust (1980) is a masterful use of this technique. Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza's [Rec] (2007) adopts a similar formula for its approximately eighty-minute run time. [Rec] is a fantastic piece of horror cinema, no doubt aided by its "news-reporting" technique and other fantastic flourishes.
[Rec] begins with the pushing of the record button by its camera man, Pablo. He's filming Ángela (Manuela Velasco) at a fire station for their television program "While You Were Asleep," as the sun begins to set. Discovering that life for firefighters is fairly mundane and boring during the evening (dining, sleeping, movie-watching, and pick-up basketball games), Ángela hopes and prays that the alarm will go off, allowing Pablo and her an opportunity to film the firefighters in action. Ángela gets her wish. She climbs aboard a truck with firefighters, Manu (Ferrán Terraza) and Álex (David Vert), who are going to an apartment building in the middle of Barcelona to come to the rescue of an older woman, locked inside of her home. As Ángela, Pablo, Manu, and Álex enter the building, the residents are huddled in the lobby, and two police officers are already there. Inside the old woman's apartment, the old woman is disheveled and moving like a caged animal. A police officer attempts to provide some care and is rewarded with a bite attack from the ravenous woman. She is subdued by the crew, who quickly exit to attend to their wounded comrade, only to be stopped at the building's entrance by the local police force, who has locked down the building in a quarantine. Ángela and Pablo, filming all the while, seemingly have gotten the action they so have desired.
[Rec] is focused: no clunky expository dialogue; no peripheral characters; no ridiculously over dramatic music accompanying the action; and nothing glaringly artificial to take the viewer out of the experience. The lack of exposition gives [Rec] real credibility towards creating its "live-on-the-scene" atmosphere and creates also a disorienting effect: the viewer doesn't know anything until its revealed (no foreshadowing), so almost everything is unexpected. Álex and Manu are both characters which seem like real people (the types of folks who would grow up to become firefighters); the apartment building's residents are a diverse crew of tenants (each standing out as his/her own unique character); and Ángela and Pablo are amazingly credible as a professional couple (a true sense of these two working together for quite awhile is apparent, as each seemingly knows what's on the other's mind). Of course the lack of music only heightens the tension, and Balagueró and Plaza are able to focus their audio on more interesting touches, such as a very interesting use of audio when a character falls from the stairs to the screams and screeches of the antagonists and the victims to the sounds of bones crunching, feet pounding up the stairs, the loud report of a gunshot, and the clamoring of steel doors. In [Rec] the primary location of the very real-looking and large apartment building creates a excellent sense of claustrophobia to make the film almost a perfect rendering of survival horror. 
Manuela Velasco, as Ángela, gives a terrific performance, and her character carries the film: it is really through her eyes that the viewer experiences [Rec] and not through Pablo's camerawork. Balagueró and Plaza use a filming technique that's rarely employed effectively and execute it nearly seamlessly. [Rec] is also an excellent blend of atmospheric and gore-laden horror, enough of each to satisfy the modern horror fan. The red of the blood looks like it's from a recent crime scene, and the old Spanish architecture of the apartment building looks as if Erika Blanc could sashay downstairs at any moment. The directorial duo also effectively knows when to slow down the action to punctuate the extremely intense horror sequences, and when [Rec] goes into its final act, the film flies to a nail-biting conclusion. Above all, [Rec] reveals at the end and revels in its most enduring quality, so lacking in today's modern horror cinema: creativity. See it.
With the credits glowing in neon characters upon gravestones with a throaty narrator quoting from the book of sayings which Confucius did not say about vampire/ghost lore in a rambling fashion, I knew that The Vampire Who Admires Me was going to be a treat. Cut to a couple in the cemetery laying in front of a headstone, with the portrait of a distinguished-looking older gentleman at its head, and the two are about to do the deed. Unfortunately, the young lady cannot proceed any further, because "someone" is looking. The young gentleman, in truly gentlemanly fashion, tosses a coat over the portrait for her comfort. Compounding problems for both is the cut on the young lady's hand, deep enough to draw a stream of blood, which lands smack on the grave and into the corpse below. The young lady's blood gave a little frisson to the corpse which is now reanimated. The two decide to leave and while walking away, the young woman gets pulled into the ground by a rotting hand rising above.
Cut to the awakening of lovely Macy, who's late for her appointment this morning. Her equally lovely friend Bibi arrives and the two depart to their photo shoot, where top model and diva, Chelsea is about to burst on to the scene. Young, handsome and wealthy Mr. King is running the model shoot, under the coordination of lovely Kimchi and the flamboyant photographer, Roman (
There are three police officers, Wayne, Mann, and Fine, on East Dragon Island, and save Uncle Faye's pissing in front of the police station, there is no crime to speak of on the island. The models and crew arrive via ferry for their photo shoot. Wayne and Mann are quite excited about that but not really excited about their new boss, the lovely Ms. Chui. She's by-the-books and stickler for the rules. Upon arrival at the villa, Mr. King wonders where his servant, named Victor, has gone. Victor appears and looks sickly. He is also the young gentleman from the coupling in the cemetery at the beginning. At the police station, while Ms. Chui chews out the officers for their lackadaisical style and poor investigative techniques, a older woman arrives with a complaint. Her daughter, Jill, has been missing for the last three days. Good, says Ms. Chui, the officers have a crime to solve. Jill is the young lady from the coupling in the cemetery at the beginning. Let the hijinx ensue.
The script of The Vampire Who Admires Me is from the brain of HK film maker, 
In Rule #1, Yue plays Lee, a young cop working the beat. One evening in a parking garage, Lee stops a speeder and cites the speeder for not wearing his seat belt. Cut me a break, says the speeder, I'm late for my son's birthday party. Lee steps aside to let the man drive on but stops him again. The tail light on his vehicle is out, and Lee asks him to pop the trunk. Noticing that there is blood coming from the trunk's seal and the trunk pops open, revealing a corpse, Lee unclasps his pistol. However the driver is faster with his pistol and kneecaps Lee. The driver, now maniacal, stands over the wounded Lee, firing shots in his other joints, such as his elbows, in preparation to give him the final bullet. Out of the open trunk pops the corpse, distracting the driver, and Lee shoots the driver in the head. 
Lee, after a lengthy recovery, returns to work. Check this report of the parking garage incident, says his superior, and see if there are any changes that need to be made. No changes are necessary: Lee is not wavering that he saw a bloody corpse rise up from the trunk. Perhaps because of this admission, Lee gets reassigned to the "Miscellaneous Affairs Division," appropriately located through a door in a garbage-strewn alley. Inside, Lee meets a man in a wheelchair, who says nothing but gives him a piece of paper, telling Lee that it's his first assignment. Lee arrives at a public swimming pool, where an old man tells him that since the drowning death of a little girl about a month ago, everyone has been hearing these loud moans coming from the building. Lee checks the location and finds only his new boss, Wong (Cheng), who says get to work, rookie. A bunch of hair is clogging the pool's filter, perhaps the cause for the wailing sound inside the building. Hong Kong police receive about a hundred and eighty-five calls a day, says Wong, and one hundred and eighty of them, robbery, murder, kidnapping, and the like, are handled by Hong Kong police. About five of those calls, a day, are unexplained, like mysterious noises and bizarre phenomena, which the "Miscellaneous Affairs Division" handles. Just remember Rule #1 cautions Wong: there are no ghosts.
I had only previously seen Kelvin Tong's supernatural The Maid (2005). While The Maid wasn't overall completely satisfying, Tong made an interesting film which had both creepy supernatural sequences combined with some very human touches. He succeeds and improves on this dichotomy in Rule #1. A truly creepy sequence involving a laughing young girl, who is hanging herself, gets juxtaposed with cute sequences involving a young delivery girl on a bicycle, who becomes Cheng's only friend and confidante. Tong smartly adds romantic subplots to both Yue and Cheng's characters, giving the film an emotional depth and richness to the characters. Around the forty-minute mark, Tong introduces a very unexpected and well-handled sequence, which really launches Rule #1 into its thriller plot line. Nearly all of the supernatural and action sequences of Rule #1 are exciting and very well-done, especially a sequence at a school. 
Shawn Yue is an up-and-coming HK actor, whose previous performance in Pou-Soi Cheang's Shamo (2007) was appropriately icy and nasty. Like Cheng, Yue is extremely good looking yet, more often than not, mostly wooden. Yue is good in Rule #1, like Brad Pitt's character in David Fincher's Seven (1995), and Yue plays Lee as not-to-sharp, impulsive, and passionate. As for Cheng's performance, my hat has to go off to him, but I'm not ready to start throwing dollar bills at him anytime soon. Cheng's Wong is an alcoholic in the film and Cheng, seemingly, put on about fifteen to twenty pounds or so for the role. I suppose that's as far as his vanity will allow him to go. Cheng labors through his only Pacino-like speech in the film and while it didn't move me to tears, Cheng did the best that he could. This role is a good change of pace for Cheng, and in the comedic and human touches that Tong provides in the film, Cheng shines.
I love a good thriller, and Rule #1 delivers on this front. Tong also provides enough creative flourishes to elevate Rule #1 above most recent thrillers. I've grown a little closer to Ekin Cheng through Rule #1, and I'm glad that I broke that recent rule about him.
I awoke this morning groggy but was perked up immensely when Neil from The Agitation of the Mind awarded me these four:
...and I would like to award Neil at his excellent blog, 
Robert Towne's fine screenplay of 
If you couldn't tell by now (unless you knew me personally), I am being a complete asshole towards Hal Ashby's The Last Detail. The script, the direction, the authentic locations, and the performances, and about everything else, are all worthy of the highest admiration available. The spiritual glue (keep chanting) that keeps everything together is The Last Detail's overwhelming sense of genuineness and sincerity. From feeling the harsh snowy cold as the trio eat grilled hot dogs from sticks to the telling look on Nicholson and Young's faces as Meadows is quickly shuffled upstairs by two marines, The Last Detail feels so very real. In one particular scene, for whatever reason, had me laughing aloud. The screen becomes black, as Meadows turns off the lamp, and the trio goes to bed (in very close proximity to each other) and deliver this exchange:
