Tuesday, March 20, 2012

THE WAX MASK

(Sergio Stivaletti, 1997)
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This turn of the century period horror opens with the brutal murder of an Italian couple, living in Paris, by a metal-clawed madman who tears out their hearts. Unknown to the beast is that their daughter Sonia, hidden beneath their bed, is alive and the sole witness to the carnage.
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Years later, in Rome, Sonia becomes employed as costume designer in a new wax museum opened by artistic genius Boris Volkoff. There she meets photographer Andrea, who's drawn to the museum and it's eerily life-like collection of wax automatons, after a man, dead of fright (in an obvious homage to Tourneur's "Figures De Cire/ The Man With Wax Faces"), is found there. As more of the locals begin to disappear, Andrea and Sonia begin to suspect that there may be more to the wax figures' realism than meets the eye.
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Producer Dario Argento originally intended to give the director's seat to Lucio Fulci, who co-wrote the story with Daniele Stroppa and Argento himself, but Fulci's untimely death prior to filming left the direction to special effects wiz Sergio Stivaletti. One would think, from watching The Wax Mask, that Dario had directed this himself. Stivaletti emulates (successfully, I might add) Argento, but the film moves more quickly than most of the maestro's work. The story's basically an ode to the house of wax films of yore, with a little giallo thrown in. Nothing new, but it is a stylish, visually pleasing film.
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Argento's use of colour and lighting give TWM a touch of retro appeal and a heap of horrific atmosphere. His fetishistic images of gloved hands, bondage, needles, broken glass, and water are also inserted lovingly, once again leaving the impression that Dario was at the helm. The acting's not all that bad, though, as usual, the overdubbing is somewhat cheesy. It's a pity Fulci didn't live to direct, as his visual style mixed with Argento's might have produced something magical. The fact that the two were finally collaborating makes it all the more tragic. Still, it's a decent twist on an old story, and a fun watch.
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Wednesday, March 14, 2012

OPERA

(Dario Argento, 1987)
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Things aren't looking up for opera singer Betty (Christina Marsillach), an understudy who has just been given the lead role in MacBeth after the original diva had an unfortunate accident (the first of many to come!). An insane fan of Betty's lurks in the wings, waiting until she's alone to tie her up and tape needles under her eyes so that she can't shut them as he mutilates her friends in front of her. Sadism's the name of the game though, and he releases Betty after each killing...
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Opera may just be Argento's last great thriller before he Americanized and lost his identity. The plot's a familiar one, but here Dario inserts a little commentary and black humour, no small feat considering his humour normally falls flat on it's face. In Opera he also continues with his fairy tale theme, presenting Betty, like Jennifer in Phenomena or Suzy in Suspiria, as a girl drawn suddenly into an unfamiliar nightmare world. This is again reinforced through camera angles and set design. Another theme further explored is his love of animals, in this case crows, and the uncanny abilities they supposedly possess. Still don't get it, but meh...
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Visually speaking, Opera is just as vivid and memorable as Dario's prior efforts. He throws in a couple of new tricks here, creating swooping bird's POV shots, and even a slow-mo closeup of a bullet passing through a peephole. He also managed to insert his/ Mario Bava's trademark coloured lighting. Other than the weak acting and story (used to it by now!), my chief complaint, as in Phenomena, was the juxtaposition of dreamy opera with thrashy metal in the soundtrack. I can see how it might be appropriate in the gore scenes, but it makes the film feel a bit disjointed.
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On the plus side, however, there's an abundance of blood and kink onboard, and a cast of familiar Italian horror players, including Barbara Cupisti, Coralina Cataldi Tassoni, Urbano Barberini, Daria Nicolodi, and others too numerous to mention. Definitely worth a watch.
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THE BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA

(Paolo Cavara,1971)
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Here's another title that helped define the genre. It has not one, not two, but THREE Bond girls (Barbara Bach, Barbara Bouchet, Claudine Auger), a sometimes dreamy, sometimes menacing Ennio Morricone score, and of course, a rubber gloved, fedora-clad maniac.
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Inspector Tellini (Giancarlo Giannini) is in pursuit of a madman responsible for the muders of several beautiful women. The poor girls meet a gruesome end, each paralyzed by a needle through the neck so that she's forced to watch herself being disemboweled, a practice, Tellini learns, that's typical of a certain type of tarantula-killing wasp. True to form, the killer is always one step/ victim ahead of the police, and is quite aware of where Tellini lives, and his growing proximity.
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TBBOTT is classic giallo, and has most, if not all, of the conventions, storywise and visually. Expect swingin' sets, retro fashions, nudity, violence, (cheap) gore, mannequins, shining blades, and so on. There's an odd visual cue, that of a fringed swag lamp being turned off by the killer prior to each murder, that I found sinister and intriguing, much the same as the killer observing the painting in Dario Argento's The Bird With The Crystal Plumage. With the exception of the set-pieces, the cinematography here is a bit dull when compared to it's brethren, but the violent and sensual aspects, heightened greatly by the aforementioned Morricone soundtrack, should hold most viewers' interest well enough. Definitely recommended.
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