WATCH ME WHEN I KILL (1977)

Like the American slasher, the Italian giallo can come in many forms. It can be a straight-forward horror-thriller, it can be like its American cousin the slasher, it can be a sleazy soft-core sex romp, or sometimes it can be something more: classy, with much more of an emphasis on mystery than on chilling murder sequences or titillating sexuality. That’s where Watch Me When I Kill (also known as The Cat’s Victims, neither title of which is relevant to the plot), comes in.

Directed by Antonio Bido (Bloodstained Shadow), 1977’s Watch Me When I Kill feels like the redheaded stepchild of the giallo sub-genre — not because it barely contains the same elements as more notable gialli like Argento’s Four Flies on Grey Velvet or Deep Red, but because it contains just enough giallo elements to still be considered one. And again, like the slasher, the giallo commands certain concepts that help to identify the films that fall within its confines. Above all else, is there a killer, masked or otherwise obscured, committing murders? Once the killer is revealed, is there some personal vendetta tied to the person investigating the murders, who may have been a potential target from the start, or who then becomes one after his or her investigation puts them directly in the killer’s crosshairs? According to those parameters, Watch Me When I Kill falls into that sub-genre, and while I’m not saying it’s not a giallo, it’s not the kind of experience one has come to expect--not in execution, and certainly not during the final reveal. 

Watch Me When I Kill is carefully and maturely rendered. We’re far from the sleazy shocks of Andrea Bianchi’s Strip Nude For Your Killer or the psychedelic dreamscape of Sergio Martino’s All The Colors of the Dark (both of which happen to star the gorgeous Edwige Fenech), but closer to one of Lucio Fulci’s most respected works, Don’t Torture a Duckling. I’ve seen other reviews describe Watch Me When I Kill as gory, bloody, and graphic, and sure, with this being both Italian and a giallo, there’s a bit of blood in this, but I’d never use the words “graphic” or “gory” to describe it. Maybe it’s because the film’s finale has depressing and melancholic real-world connections and implications, or maybe the film benefits extra from having been viewed alongside another Italian almost-giallo, Paganini Horror, which is the antithesis of this experience, Watch Me When I Kill feels patient, focused, and I’ll say it again: mature. 

Watch Me When I Kill has remained somewhat obscure over they years, but recently enjoyed a new lease on life thanks to its Blu-ray release from Synapse Films. The distributor mostly known for its recent stunning edition of Dario Argento's Suspiria continues to do strong work with their titles, remaining true to their release schedule of only focusing on a few titles at a time and giving them their full attention instead of relying on the assembly line approach that other third-party distributors tend to do. I like that they’re shining an additional light on some of the subgenre's more unheralded titles. So long as you’re not expecting the kind of slasher-film experience that other gialli titles offer, Watch Me When I Kill gets an easy recommendation.

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

PAGANINI HORROR (1989)

Luigi Cozzi’s Paganini Horror is one of those movies that doesn’t serve much of a purpose—an Italian horror curiosity that’s neither good in general, nor bad enough to be “good.” Though it’s based on a lunatic concept—the “ghost” of long-dead Italian composer Niccolò Paganini coming back from the grave to avenge an ‘80s girl-pop band for stealing one of his last and unreleased compositions to save their fledgling new album—the movie simply doesn’t do enough with it. You might be thinking, “What more could you want?” but you’ve just answered your own question: more. Paganini Horror simply doesn’t know what to do, spending long, looong sequences with characters creeping through hallways of the crumbling estate where they’re staying while they record their new album, only intermittently killed by a masked madman dressed in old timey Halloween costume dudes. Is it truly the enraged spirit of the composer, or a member of the girls’ own party donning the garb to exact some kind of personal revenge, or is it none of the above? Being that this is Italian, just know one thing: regardless of the reveal, it won’t make a lot of sense, but the flick will be so in love with itself that it doesn’t care whether you buy it or not.

Paganini Horror actually proves to be fairly frustrating after a while being that the death scenes contain that perfect combination of gore and incompetence. In fact, the entire movie almost works as a garbage classic because of the hilarious, over the top dubbing, making the performances strange and heightened, along with the too-dramatic camerawork. (Italians love that zoom lens.) Among the cast is Daria Nicolodi, the ‘80s Italian equivalent of Adrienne Barbeau, in that she was romantically involved with a famous horror director (Dario Argento and John Carpenter, respectively), and appeared in many of her husband’s works, though it’s hard to comment on her performance, as it’s mostly overtaken by the hilarious dubbing. Sadly, the same can be said for Donald Pleasence’s very brief appearance as Mr. Pickett, which runs the gamut from appearing to be completely useless to being completely beyond belief. (Pleasence did not dub his own voice in post-production, so unfortunately it’s one less reason to ever try sitting through this mess.)

Even with a scant running time of 83 minutes, Paganini Horror feels like it’s crawling across the finish line. Among the more almost-trash-classic Italian flicks I can think of, they share one thing in common: a strong first act, a stronger third act, and a pitifully drawn out second act. Paganini Horror can’t even claim that, as after a very amusing and engaging opening act, the film remains a flatline through the very end, and not even a dummy crashing through a windshield and bursting into flames can save it.

Just after directing Paganini Horror, Cozzi directed 1989’s The Black Cat, also known as Demons 6: De Profundis, which actually has nothing to do with the Demons series, but was made to serve as an unofficial sequel to Dario Argento’s Suspiria. (Don’t ask. Fake sequels are a hallmark of Italian genre cinema.) Though it’s just as ham-fisted as Paganini Horror, it offers a better pace and a more engaging plot (being loosely based on the Edgar Allan Poe story of the same name), and I hope it proves to be a future release from any of our Italian-horror-resurrecting distributors. I was hoping for a fun, silly, and campy good time as essayed in other Italian horror flicks from this era, but Paganini Horror only proved to B flat ha ha! 

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

FIST OF FEAR, TOUCH OF DEATH (1980)

After watching 1980's Fist of Fear, Touch of Death, and then doing some research into the film after the fact, I'm still at a loss as to what it is I actually watched. Marketed primarily as a documentary about the life of Bruce Lee interspersed throughout a karate-style championship taking place in New York City's Madison Square Garden, Fist of Fear, Touch of Death is actually some kind of strange, experimental, horrendously unfunny comedy of sorts in which a group of disparate fighters take to the ring to prove who is the ultimate heir to Bruce Lee's legacy. Apparently, Blaxploitation star Fred "The Hammer" Williamson is one of them, though he spends the first third of the film lounging or walking around New York City while being repeatedly mistaken for singer Harry Belafonte. If you know your history, then you know that Bruce Lee was quite dead by the time this film went in production, having died seven years prior in 1973, which makes Fist of Fear, Touch of Death, one of several films made to capitalize on his death. (Another is the subtly titled Bruce Lee Fights Back From The Grave.) There are enough of these films that a phrase was coined to group them into one disposable bucket: Brucesploitation.

Fist of Fear, Touch of Death is a grody, low-budget, ugly looking film that has the appearance of being scraped off a city street. With 2020 eyes, it's also quite offensive. The film's main narrative push – that of the championship fight – is often interrupted with clips taken from some of Bruce Lee's earliest films, only they've been redubbed by clearly American actors so that the fictional characters are now meant to be Lee and his own family, including his domineering mother who impugns him for wanting to seek a future in martial arts. That the same "oriental" sounding stretch of music plays over and over in the background of some of these clips doesn't help, nor does the fact that these so-called explorations into the China-born Lee's earliest beginnings are total fabrications, including the hilariously offensive revelation that Lee's grandfather was a "samurai" – you know, the breed of warrior from the entirely different country of Japan. The whole gimmick actually manages to impress by being both racially and aesthetically offensive while also showing an ungodly amount of disrespect to the legendary Lee, as the film suggests that his actual history wasn't interesting enough to maintain interest in the audience. I should mention that the flick opens with an "interview" with a fighter who claims that Lee actually died by the so-called "touch of death" – yes, the finishing move that Beatrix Kiddo uses on Bill in the finale of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol 2. (The famed director found himself in a little bit of hot water following his release of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood for his own depiction of Lee, which was accused of being not just racially insensitive but also presenting Lee in his limited appearance as a show-boating, egotistical diva.) 

As a viewer, I'm normally open to the mockumentary approach to filmmaking, which so far has been utilized almost primarily in horror, though there are notable exceptions across every genre. Seeing that technique applied to Bruce Lee's legacy while exploring his legacy and effect on a new generation of "fighters" (read: Fred Williamson) had the potential to be something more. Director Matthew Mallinson, who it should come as no surprise was primarily an editor during his career, had ample ground to play around with bigger ideas, like the implications of being a legend, how that status can turn an ordinary human being with extraordinary skills into a larger-than-life figure, and what it's like for the next generation of fighters to exist in that shadow. Instead, we're left with some kind of half-assed comedy that manhandles Bruce Lee's legacy, botches his biographical history, and most damning from the audience's perspective, bores the hell out of you. In spite of Williamson having said of the film, "It was never meant to be a serious martial arts movie; it's a comedy and satire," IMDB lists this monstrosity as a "documentary," offering the false impression that Fist of Fear, Touch of Death contains real, actual information pertaining to the life of Bruce Lee beyond the most broad of strokes, like he was alive once, was a really good at martial arts, and then died. The rest is bullshit.

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

ZARDOZ (1974)

Budding cineastes slowly developing their love for cinema in the Internet Age have likely become aware of Zardoz's existence through the infamous image of Sean Connery dressed as a viking by way of a Prince music video while grasping a rather modern looking pistol and smiling right into the camera. It's an image that invokes thoughts of, "Oh man, I need to see this...but, maybe later." 

Before it went out of print, home video distributor Twilight Time resurrected this strange title for another lease on life. The definition of a cult film, Twilight Time ran through its typical allocation of 3,000 units quicker than many of its other titles, and after having seen Zardoz for myself, I can understand why: it's so goddamned weird that it's clearly the kind of title that only appeals to a very few, and those to whom it does appeal, it appears pretty hard.

Frankly, I'm at a loss as to how I might adequately provide even the loosest iteration of Zardoz's plot, so I'm not going to try. Twilight Time's own synopsis:

Writer-director John Boorman’s fabulously bizarre Zardoz (1974) is a visually stunning science fiction/fantasy fable starring Sean Connery as the spanner in the works of a dreamily languid future society. A primitive Adam, Connery’s Zed charges like a bull through the china shop of a civilization from which all signs of lusty humanity have been drained.

Added to that: by film's end, Connery will end up in a wedding dress before he turns into a skeleton, all while holding hands with...another skeleton.

Zardoz is an entirely maddening, confusing, frustrating, highly amusing experience that cannot be easily summarized into mere words. To try would be to harvest from the film its identity, its uniqueness, and its complete lunacy. Zardoz is artistic expression unrestrained, anchored by the presence of former James Bond Sean Connery, whose involvement wrongly assures the most mainstream of audiences that he's made a film that appeals to everyone who enjoys going down to the cinemas on a Sunday afternoon looking for a brief slice of harmless escapism. Zardoz's "story" is baffling. Zardoz's "message" is baffling. That Zardoz was produced and distributed by a major motion picture studio is utterly baffling. But it's here: now, and for all time. It's recently turned forty-five years old, and its legend remains firmly intact. It's wonderfully and weirdly captivating, and deserves to be seen once. Though it may demand more than one viewing to fully appreciate how utterly mad it is, the jury will be forever out on who would ever do such a thing.

A good friend of mine put it best: "Sean Connery turned down both The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings because he 'didn't get' them, but he said yes to Zardoz."

You figure that one out.

Zardoz is less of a film and more of an experience. Like that fever dream you once had following your all-night puke-a-thon the last time you got that really nasty stomach bug from the half-KFC/half-Taco Bell, Zardoz probably makes sense somewhere in the outer-reaches of artistic creation, but here on Earth, it's frankly one of the most absurd and deeply abstract 105 minutes of your lifetime. What on the surface may look like a silly B-movie accidentally starring Sean Connery is actually an art-house experiment straddling the line between erotic thriller and science-fiction extravaganza purposely starring Sean Connery. Those interested by such a breakdown may possibly use Jonathan Glazer's 2013 film Under the Skin, another unorthodox film about cross-universe alien races driven by a deconstruction of sexuality, as a guide to determine what kind of experience Zardoz may provide. One thing is for sure: you've never seen anything like it.

Zardoz has spoken.

OFFICER DOWNE (2017

If we can thank the bloated 2007 double-feature film Grindhouse for anything, it would be the impending encouragement to filmmakers who appreciate the obscure, pulpy, over-the-top features from the 1960s and ‘70s that allowed its filmmakers to side-step more traditional story presentation. Together, though it wasn’t a total success, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez unashamedly cobbled together a well-meaning grindhouse theater experience, complete with a host of trailers for fake films weaved in between. One of these, Hobo with a Shotgun, would later become a feature film starring Rutger Haur in the titular role. And from those loins it would seem that Office Downe, though based on a graphic novel of the same name, would emerge.

In a sort of mishmash of Robocop, Batman, and perhaps Bill Lustig’s Maniac Cop trilogy (coming soon as a series from producer Nicolas Winding Refn and Universal Soldier sequels director John Hyams), Officer Downe takes all the primary colors, unrelenting violence and insanity, and sense-assaulting presentation of Hobo with a Shotgun and implants it into a more (kind of) accessible story (and I use that term loosely, and in comparison with its cinematic roots). Designed with a Gotham City/Arkham Asylum mentality, the very proactive Officer Terry Downe works his way up the crime ladder of Los Angeles, encountering one strange group of bad guys, led by one strange semi-lead villain, after another, until he reaches a mastermind with whom he eventually meets his match. The villains are straight out of comic books, complete with garish wardrobes, operatic presentations, and a metric ton of dastardliness. Which is appropriate for all kinds of reasons.

The main reason to see Officer Downe is for its outlandishness, as well as Sons of Anarchy's Kim Coates having a grand time hamming it up, bad-ass style. Much like other grindhouse films both new and old, the gimmick is what draws in its audience. Very few grindhouse flicks felt the need to engage its audience with any kind of social message, though if you wanted to look hard enough I suppose you might find one every so often (mostly in the Blaxsploitation movement). It’s not that Officer Downe is about nothing, but it’s much more about spectacle than it is about substance. In real life, our relationship with the police has never been shakier, and seeing an undead(?), immortal(?) cop systematically resurrected from the dead to continue his very violent assault against the criminal underbelly of Los Angeles neither assuages nor solidifies our real fears of the police. The closest Officer Downe gets to a message is that we need cops like Terry Downe to do the things that we know need to be done, even if we have to play God in order to do it. But, when your “hero” spends much of his screen time blowing the heads off villainous nuns or mutilating a squadron of enemy ninjas, it would probably be wise to check your brain at the door and enjoy Officer Downe for what it is, rather than what you think it should be.

Fans of Grindhouse, Hobo with a Shotgun, Sin City, and other heightened silliness should have a reasonably good time with Officer Downe. Very low on substance but high on spectacle, violence, flying limbs, nudity, outlandishness (animal-masked villains, intentionally poorly dubbed villains, all the practical and CGI blood you can stand), Officer Downe never professes to be anything more than what it presents in its trailer: hard-bitten carnage courtesy of a beloved supporting actor enjoying a rare lead role and relishing in every moment. Casual film fans should look elsewhere, but those who seek the offbeat and the depraved should, at the very least, enjoy the ride, even if it’s a one-way trip.

THE LAST WITCH HUNTER (2016)

If nothing else, give The Last Witch Hunter credit for one thing: it doesn't attempt, yet again, to concoct a period horror piece draped in drippy surroundings, Viking beards, and really heavy-handed themes about God and faith (which were a lot more relevant back then, being that there were only about thirty people on the entire planet, and 28 of them believed in God). Filmmaker Christopher Smith has already had the first and ultimate word on the subject with his excellent and criminally overlooked Black Death, but then a major studio felt we needed a cheap imitation, and so they made their own version with Nicolas Cage. (It was Season of the Witch. It sucked.) Though The Last Witch Hunter may lack in most areas, at least the writers and director Breck Eisner had the idea to fast-forward the plot after its plague-era opening into modern times. It's a silly concept, made sillier by seeing how it actually plays out, but if a film is going to be mediocre, at least it can do so in the streets of New York and not slimy caves or muddy swamps where the audience has no choice but to be depressed and underwhelmed.

The Last Witch Hunter plays out in a very post-Supernatural world, making sure to include small batches of people working toward the cause of eradicating a supernatural threat (in this case, witches), along with the idea that witches just kind of hang out with each other in dusty New York lofts, so taking them out in large chunks at a time is pretty easy. Runes, sigils, finely dressed monster hunters, and a horde of CGI is on-hand to invoke the endless debacle of the Winchester Brothers, only this time it's not a decade-running horror series that actually started off excellently and then began running out of ideas halfway through, but a bloated feature film that pretty much didn't know what to do right from the start. In a film called The Last Witch Hunter, the titular hero hunts exactly one witch...twice. He may be the last, but he certainly ain't the best.

Vin Diesel isn't an actor so much as he is a performer. He is frequently cast because studios and/or directors want their audience to just know what kind of experience to anticipate before they ever see a single trailer or production still. Diesel, who hasn't given anything resembling a performance since 2006's Find Me Guilty, has skirted by all this time on his admittedly physically intimidating appearance despite the fact that he kinda/sorta looks like a giant cartoon baby -- a giant cartoon baby that, for sure, could rip my head off and throw it behind his over-sized crib. But intimidation can only get you so far. Predictable and similar critiques have been thrown at guys like Schwarzenegger and Van Damme over the years, but at least they had the foresight to embrace the why of their popularity and show signs of life every so often. Lack of acting abilities could be reasonably counteracted by charisma. Vin Diesel has not gotten this memo. He recites his dialogue like an idling engine, and if his face moves, that means he's trying to emote. He's infinitely more interested in twirling his head-smashing weapons behind him as they make that whoosh sound so his prey knows he's really, really good at head-smashing. Fill the screen with all the bodily mayhem and CGI you want, but if your hero is boring, then your movie is boring. That's movie science.

The supporting cast of Michael Caine (I'm still trying to figure out that one), Elijah Wood (Maniac), and the beautiful Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones; last night's dreams) threaten to offer much needed variety to the plot, but everyone's roles unfold with such telegraphed predictability that there's nothing left for them to do besides go through the motions: Caine looks sad and old, and says things sadly and oldly; Wood looks wide-eyed, precocious, and dorky; and Rose Leslie, well... The Last Witch Hunter's running time would've been better spent with her reading aloud from the script while every so often pushing a stray hair behind her ear and looking directly into the camera -- all while knowing she was looking only at me.

Director Breck Eisner hasn't exactly hit any of his films out of the park, as he's released one slice of studio tentpole escapism after another that have resulted neither in critical favoring nor box office success (although I unashamedly enjoy his redux of The Crazies). While he is capable of some decent directorial flare (again, I'm talking about The Crazies), The Last Witch Hunter drowns in so much CGI that it's hard to see what's going on around it. The buzzing flies and the smoky vapors and the screaming witch faces and the fire and the oh my lord it's all just so exhausting. The combination of Vin Diesel, Breck Eisner, and PG-13 monster violence was likely never going to result in a modern classic, but it could've at least made for 100 minutes of reasonable entertainment that, when it was over, didn't make you think, "I don't even remember what happened." Maybe it was black magic.

The Last Witch Hunter isn't Vin Diesel's worst movie, but it's not up there anywhere close to his best. If you're a fan of goth chic/GQ wardrobes, witches, and Vin Diesel smiling every half hour, The Last Witch Hunter has come to bewitch you.

"You're a witch!"

THE WAX MASK (1997)

If you’re a horror lover, and if you’re on this site you likely are, then by now you’ve likely seen Vincent Price’s 1959 horror classic House of Wax, itself a remake of 1933’s Mysteries of the Wax Museum. Based on the unpublished short story “The Wax Works” by Charles Belden, the concept about an owner of a wax museum moonlighting as a killer and turning his victims into wax dummies as a means to get rid of the evidence has been used numerous times, the most recent example being 2005’s House of Wax. The Price version is certain to go down as the definitive take on the story (with an honorable mention for Tourist Trap), but as you can see, that didn’t stop people from trying new iterations. 

One of those attempts is 1997’s The Wax Mask, produced by legendary horror director Dario Argento, who also provides the story alongside another legendary horror director, Lucio Fulci. Those familiar with House of Wax will definitely find similarities in The Wax Mask, right down to actor Robert Hossein, who with his pencil thin mustache bears a striking resemblance to Vincent Price. Despite the similarities to House of Wax, produced by Warner Bros., Argento and Fulci decided to lean on Gaston Leroux's short story "The Waxwork Museum" to offset any legal claims made by the studio. Somehow this worked, even though The Wax Mask is clearly borrowing many elements from Price’s most infamous feature, but if Italian filmmakers know how to do one thing, it’s skirt trademark infringement.

Though The Wax Mask bears the presence of several Italian heavy hitters, and though it’s both set in and shot in Rome, the most frustrating aspect of The Wax Mask is how un-European it feels. If you’re well versed in Italian films, you’ve come to expect them to feel a certain way: gaudy, opulent, and very stylistic. The Wax Mask is none of these. Directed by special effects artist Sergio Stivaletti after Fulci, who was originally going to direct, died in 1996, The Wax Mask feels less like an Italian horror production and more like something that would’ve been produced by Charles Band and his cheap mini-studio Full Moon. Subsisting almost entirely on close-ups, the scope of the flick feels stunted from the start, and though there is admirable costume and production design, one can’t help but walk away after having watched the production and thinking you’ve just watched something made for television or the direct-to-video market. Also missing, considering the personnel involved? Fun and gory set pieces. That’s not to say that The Wax Mask is a chaste production because it’s not. There’s plenty of flesh to stoke your fires along with some flying limbs, but when it comes to the latter, especially given the film’s concept, it doesn’t feel like nearly enough, which is odd, given director Stivaletti’s special effects background. The visual effects, though scarcely employed, are dreadful. However, the final twenty minutes are so ludicrously stupid that they more than make up for the previous plodding two acts. 

Italian horror consistently remains a watermark for many horror fans, who point to various aspects as the selling point for them, whether it’s the fluid style, the lurid content, or something less definable. As a film, The Wax Mask doesn't quite work. Though it certainly boasts some heavy Italian personnel, with Argento, Fulci, and producer Giuseppe Columbo coming together for one project, but it’s a shame that this Italian production doesn’t feel very Italian.