There's Something About Mary

 

When your opening credits play out like a V.C. Andrews keyhole book cover come to life by the power of Italian synth rock, you've got me. 

Quick Plot: Julia is a fairly content teacher at a school for the deaf, while her twin sister Mary rots away in a hospital, a rare skin condition slowly destroying her from the outside in. Julia doesn't seem to mind, since Mary was a cruel child who made Julia's young life a living hell.

Despite a satisfied, well-adjusted life, Julia is swayed to visit Mary by their uncle James, a rather awful Catholic priest who seems intent on the girls reconciling in time for their shared 25th birthday. Mary is in even worse shape than Julie remembers, but somehow, the maladjusted patient manages to escape the hospital and embark upon a killing spree with the help of bloodthirsty Rottweiler.

Look, none of us animal lovers want to ever watch a lovable dog turned into a weapon (particularly when one of its targets is a sweet cat...and I suppose a nice blind kid) but when said dog attacks use a body double less convincing than Triumph the Insult Comic, I'm oddly okay with this choice.

Madhouse is a hoot, which isn't a surprise. Director Ovidio G. Assonitis (who eventually went on to head up Canon Films for a stretch) was well-experienced in spinning out blood-soaked cheese, and he doles it out with relish here. This is a movie that has a woman discussing how nice her favorite fourth grade student is only to cut to his immediate mauling one scene later. 

There's a lack of discipline about Madhouse which, depending on your level of taste, is either a very good thing or possibly just plain dumb. You have kernels of a murder mystery that are instead materialized into plot when a killer rather randomly reveals themselves to be a killer. The potential challenge of whether Julia has sinned by casting off her sick sister adds up to absolutely nothing. But hey! We are treated to one of the greatest tropes to survive the slasher boom:

the dead guest party reveal!

So that's what you get: a fun, fast mess that works because it simply throws whatever it has at the audience. Some of it sticks. Most of it will come off. 

High Points
Most films of this particular ilk invest very little in their performances, but Trish Everly manages to make Julia an instantly sympathetic heroine worth rooting for

Low Points
Maybe it's my fairly fresh viewing of The New York Ripper, but I've been thinking a lot about Lucio Fulci lately and how he managed to explore and even challenge convention, all while making splattery boob-filled schlock. I bring this up because (SPOILER) it's hard in some ways not to compare Madhouse to another Italian horror flick seeped deeply in some of the complications of Catholicism: Fulci's Don't Torture a Duckling, which has a lot to say about the religion. Madhouse, on the other hand, features a priest as a sick villain without, it seems, having any interest in his pathology. It feels more like an economy of characters rather than a statement about faith and violence, and while I don't in any way require deep introspection from my puppet dog killing '80s horror, it just seems like a missed opportunity

Lessons Learned
A sister is the seed of your father and a miracle of your mother's body

The secret to successful surgery is good interns

It only takes 48 hours to train a Rottweiler to murder everyone close to your twin

Rent/Bury/Buy
Madhouse isn't a high point in Italian-American genre cinema (especially when you realize Assonitis had a key hand in bringing the bananas The Visitor into our world) but it's a fun, messy time. I watched it via the library streaming app Kanopy, which is, I'm sure, what Socrates always intended.

Positively Shocking

Normally, a movie that makes me covet the death of its child character in the first reel is a painful slog. Thankfully, someone like Mario Bava has earned himself enough cred to allow me to power through with decent success.

Quick Plot: Dora is recovering from a nervous breakdown in the countryside estate she once shared with her late husband. Now remarried to a pilot named Bruno, Dora finds herself and her young, obnoxious son Marco changing in their new/old home.

Statues come to life, razors fly, and little Marco begins developing some peculiar habits. Is he possessed by the spirit of his late father, or did Dora's doctors move a little too fast with her release?

Shock is the great Mario Bava's last film, made in 1977 with some assistance from his son, Lamberto. While it's far from the top tier of the Italian genre master's output, it has a fair share of strengths that make it interesting enough.

Frequent giallo muse Daria Nicolodi gets one of her meatiest parts, and she makes the most of it. The score blends every popular element of its time into a gloriously bizarre mix of frantic jazz, electronic beats, and classical piano used to randomly spooky effect. Even the isolated country setting works to Shock's favor.

The downside comes with the pacing, which makes the impossible 110 minute run time feeling even longer. The climax seems to ramble on for decades, a sort of clumsy Repulsion-esque mania that just doesn't end. In fairness, when it does, it does so with a generous, eerie bang.

High Points

It's always hard to truly judge a dubbed performance, but Daria Nicolodi manages to do some genuinely deep work with the troubled Dora

Low Points

Dubbed giallo is fairly infamous for its weird/obnoxious children, but Marco is particularly grating, possibly because he reminds me far too much of my current most hated television character, Noah Brat Benson

Lessons Learned

Name your son Marco and life is a constant game of wanting to shout "Polo!"

There's nothing worse for an Italian marriage than sending the husband off without  his coffee

Living with an abusive drug addict, spending half a year in a sanitarium, and getting '70s style electro-shock treatment just might affect your parenting skills slightly

Rent/Bury/Buy

I stumbled upon Shock via a random TCM Underground airing, which worked for a lazy kind of Sunday viewing. It's enjoyable as a relic of Bava's last years and as a showcase for Nicolodi, but probably isn't worth a large investment in your own energy.

Birthday, Baby Bugg…Birthday!

Though I typically avoid all things ventriloquism due to the art form’s innate sense of PURE EVIL, it felt fitting to bestow some upon my blogging brother in arms, Zach T.L. Bugg Kelly. You see kids, this month marks the five year anniversary of The Lightning Bugg’s Lair, one of the Internet’s most splendifically splendiferous sources for genre movie writing.

And that same Internet tells me one celebrates a five year anniversary with wood.

 

Shudder

Zach is not only a great writer, but also, a true friend. I can assure the world that no man rocks a smoking jacket quite like this southern gentleman, and rarely is there a better movie swapper than the same South Carolina stud. Hence the return of the Deadly DollBugg’s Lair Crossover!, wherein Zach and I assign each other a film to watch and review. This being a celebration, I of course had to dig into Netflix Instant’s top shelf output for what I would deem the very best:

Tony Curtis dressed like a wizard, a muscular little person Native American born through a neck tumor , AND lasers?

All I got for my fifth birthday was a lot of Care Bear stuff.

On my end, Zach also went benevolent with Mario Bava’s 1966 ghost story, Kill, Baby…Kill! Overly punctuated title aside, it’s a good one.

Quick Plot: In the early 20^th century, an Italian village is cursed by the vengeful spirit of a bitter 8-year-old girl who died during a drunken town festival. The spooked locals know that anyone who catches a glance of the eerily blond Melissa Graps will inevitably meet their own bloody end, though visiting out-of-town coroner Paul Eswai brings the typical man-of-science doubts. As bodies begin to pile up, Paul and the lovely Monica Schuftan—a long-lost daughter of the area who’s returned at exactly the wrong time—must defeat or escape the evil haunting.

As stories go, Kill, Baby…Kill! is quite straightforward. There are a few mysteries thrown around the narrative (Monica’s secret past, Mama Graps ambiguous place in the mechanics of the haunting) but very simply, this is the tale of a ghost. A creeeeeeeeepy girl ghost who giggles incessantly, throws her ball around like she’s auditioning for The Changeling kickball team, and telepathically convinces otherwise normal (if extremely anxious) townies to stab themselves or impale their bodies upon strategically placed spiked fences. Throw in a few dizzying spiral staircases and a whole lot of very thick spider webs and you’ve essentially got the perfect ghost story for a dark stormy night.

A film like this requires the proper design and atmosphere, and Bava nails it with his camera. From winding overhead shots of carefully colored stairs to the slow suicidal terror that manifests in an ill-fated tavern girl’s wide eyes, Kill, Baby…Kill! is clearly devoted to being a good old fashioned scary story.

And it succeeds.

High Points

Considering so much of Italian horror can stumble when it comes to handling female characters, it’s incredibly refreshing to see how Bava portrays his women. They’re both the chief instigators of the horror AND the only ones fully equipped to fight it. There’s also some intriguing subtext to how Paul, your typical leading man, can’t seem to quite comprehend some of the power inherent in the good and evil woman around him, and it’s the men in authority that seem to pay the highest price

Also, dolls. Lots of freaky ass dolls

Low Points

There’s a rather glaring plot/character hole regarding the character of Monica, primarily in how the town’s burgomaster assigns her to assist in an autopsy despite her secret past (that only HE knows of) rendering such a move quite dangerous to all concerned

Lessons Learned

Touching the dead is against nature. Also, kind of icky

Poverty and ignorance + superstition = something sorta like the devil 

The best way to expel an evil ghost child is to beat yourself a little with a birch branch, Russian banya style

Rent/Bury/Buy

Kill, Baby…Kill! is streaming on Instant, and at just under 90 minutes, it’s the perfect answer to a quiet night at home. The film has some flaws (dubbing that nibbles at the tone, an oddly paced ending that mishandles its tension) but overall, it’s an outstanding exercise in atmosphere, from the period setting to the grandly conspicuous instrumental score. It may be the Lightning Bugg’s Lair’s birthday, but this was a true gift.

I mean, it didn’t have LASERS, but still…

A True HOOT-Done It!

When an '80s slasher opens on the kind of frenetic Broadway dance performance that makes Sylvester Stallone's sweat-drenched solo in Staying Alive look classy, something called love happens in my heart.

Welcome to Stage Fright.

Quick Plot: A snooty and intense theatre director is torturing his cast with one last rehearsal before opening night of their “intellectual musical.” What are they rehearsing? Why, only THE GREATEST STAGE PERFORMANCE OF ALL TIME.

There's a man with a giant owl headpiece. And he dances. A lot.

I think he dances about rape? Or prostitution? Or about being raped, because seriously: what prostitute is NOT going to want to rape the dancing man dressed like an owl?

It's more amazing than something as limiting as words can describe, so just go with it and I'll get to the murdering.

After the leading lady sprains her ankle, she and the wardrobe mistress head to the nearest mental asylum for a wrap-up. There they learn that the famed Irving Wallace, legendary actor turned serial killer, is admitted as a patient. Before you can say 'Macbeth' in a theater to piss off annoyingly superstitious actors, Wallace has tracked the ladies back to the now-locked-from-the-inside theatre to shed some blood, where the overzealous director is doing an 11th hour restaging to properly take advantage of his show's newfound infamy.

Cue figurative AND literal axings!

It’s not long before the bodies start piling up mid-rehearsal. Our murderer is refreshingly creative, utilizing everything from hunting knives to drill bits. If you, like me, have spent long nights dreaming of the day you’d see an owl man tear through snooty theater directors with a chainsaw, I don’t know that there could possibly be a better choice out there than Stage Fright.

Directed by Michael Soavi (The Church), Stage Fright is a fairly standard slasher enriched by a fair amount of fun theater tricks. A few hunt scenes offer some genuine tension, while the basic ‘there’s a killer dressed like a giant owl’ trick simply gets me every time. Soavi gets some good pokes in surprising places, like framing real blood oozing over a spilled jar of red stage paint or focusing the camera on our final girl as she watches her understudy get knifed an inch from her face. 

And when in doubt, there’s neon workout gear, dummy violence, and a MAN DRESSED LIKE AN OWL DOING BALLET.

I’m a fan.

High Notes

Though I sometimes have a problem with the electro-techno soundtrack style so popular in ‘80s Italian horror, it’s used quite well here and not JUST because one song bears a ridiculously strong resemblance to the music played when Sarah first enters the labyrinth in a little movie you might have seen called Labyrinth

Low Notes

Michael Soavi’s direction is about as good as it can possibly be. The problems with Stage Fright are found in the by-the-numbers script, one that produces virtually no surprises in plot development or character quirks

Lessons Learned

It’s surprisingly easy to knock someone’s head off with one axe swing

On the flip side, turning a key in a lock can be exceedingly difficult

Grizzled janitors like to bet their bottom dollars, just like Annie

The Winning Line

“Your character will no longer be an anoynmous owl”

Based on what I know about actors, this is pretty much a synonym for ‘living the dream’

Rent/Bury/Buy

Stage Fright is far from a masterpiece, but it’s a darn good time. Sure, it’s technically a typical ‘80s slasher, but the theater angle makes it infinitely more interesting than your regular hack ‘em up. The DVD from Blue Underground is fairly bare bones, but it still includes INTERPRETIVE DANCING BY A MAN DRESSED LIKE AN OWL. In other words, why WOULDN’T you seek out this film?

Let's Ride An Italian Stallion To Stationary Independence!

If you’re like me this summer, the word 'vacation' has no meaning. Isn't that awesome? Think of all the stab-happy hillbillies you won't have to flee, the cell phone signals in your office so strong they'll leave bruises, and the now unnecessary adorable but sickle-wielding Amish kids who hate you because corn told them they should.

That’s right, think positive. We're not talking about all the pina coladas we're not drinking, the fanny packs not usefully serving as storage and belly fat coverup or the license plate keychains we don’t even get to search through for our names. If you mention such glories of vacation, I'll have my cell phone signal punch you in the face.

So to combat the utter sluggishness of, you know, not going anywhere, let's GO somewhere! Virtually! It's like a futuristic road trip without the leg cramps and motion sickness.

First, break out that gold chain and spray tan for The Blood Sprayer's Italian Invasion! The always busy horror site is busting with special posts on giallo, Bava, cannibalism, and more. It's way better than Domino's pizza, unless you're drunk and Domino's pizza is then way better than just about anything in the world that ever existed ever. If you need a starting point, head yonder here for my own review of my frenemy Dario Argento's 1987 pseudo-Phantom adaption, Opera. 

Yup, this happens.

My, that was exotic! International even! We need to balance this virtualation with some good old fashioned American moviedom, namely, a bunch of indie flicks over at Rogue Cinema.This month, I reviewed the found footage horror Evil Things and the unique mystery Dogs Lie. There's plenty more in the August Issue, including an interview with Tim "Doll Man" (or more excitingly to me, Gangland) Thomerson.

He's the one that reallllllly wants to get to Arizona.

Wasn’t that fun? And look, there was no humorless fondling by TSA agents or socially awkward hitchhikers to make us feel uncomfortable with the stat of Texas. Heck, nobody even broke into our house when we were gone to steal our famous jewels and then get stuck inside an evil death trap orchestrated by our no-good exterminator! 

Maybe vacations aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

Keep telling yourself that Emily.