Lima

A pleasantly straightforward script that retains mystery throughout, and the sombre mood is priceless. This is typical Fulci as I like it: provocative in its naturalistic depiction of violence (too detailed and disgusting for many people) and powerful in evoking a sultry horror atmosphere. And there’s also the legendary scene of the drill to the brain.

A young man cannot live without his dead girlfriend, so he decides to dig her up from the grave, take her home and mummify her. This sets off a chain of events that leads to three murders. This film is considered by many to be D'Amato's best work. Yet, or perhaps because of this, I cannot help but be disappointed. I can ignore the stupid dialogue and the awful actors, they aren’t that important in the gore genre. What's worse is that the film has zero atmosphere, the bright, garish colours don't have much of a horror feel and even the music by The Goblins, otherwise so great in Argento's Suspiria, doesn't really fit. The murders themselves are not very sophisticated, they aren’t very “gore”. In this respect, perhaps only the bathroom scene with the butcher's cleaver and the acid will satisfy die-hard gore fans. Ironically, the most impressive scene is the one that doesn’t show a drop of blood, when Amato alternates between shots of the full mouth of the dining housekeeper and the remains of a body dissolved by acid. That moment will make you lose your appetite.

If you're a fan of bad movies, you'll be thoroughly entertained. The direction is terrible in an Ed Wood kind of way, the dialogues are hammy, the performances are awful (in this respect the black actor with the artistic name Dakar stands out, in Fulci's Zombi 2 he plays the doctor's assistant Lucas, here he plays the same character, this time called Moloto). The gore effects aren't bad, there are plenty and you don't have to wait long for them. Otherwise, the resemblance to Fulci's Zombi 2 is striking: the same main characters, two women and two men, a blonde and a bearded man, the same weird doctor and his black assistant (Dakar yay!), a similar script, filmed in the exact same location, which is not surprising, given that the same producers and the same make-up and special effects artists worked on it. All in all, it was so bad that I had a pretty good time with it. More than Fulci's "little brother", although the latter is of course two orders of magnitude higher in terms of filmmaking.

Another one of those many charmingly naive Hollywood science fiction films from the golden era of the genre in the 1950s. The inhabitants of planet Metaluna invade Earth and, with the help of alien scientists, want to discover a new source of energy to help their planet avoid extinction. One of the scientists, Dr.Meacham, along with a promising female scientist, discovers the aliens' nefarious plans to take over Earth, and is abducted to Metaluna... Nothing much happens for the first 45 minutes, it's mostly conversational, but the kidnapping of the scientists really gets the film going. There are some really good visual effects scenes (for the time, of course): laser beams, a look inside a flying saucer, a hybernation cubicle, X-ray cuts through bodies, a small hint of a space battle, a look at the surface and the inside of Metaluna, charmingly naive futuristic buildings, drawings, models, frequent use of interludes. Aliens are distinguished from humans by their high foreheads and white wigs. There's even a fight with mutants. Everything is so incredibly silly and naive, but that's the beauty of it!

Yeah, those were the days, the golden 50s, when Hollywood was teeming with mutated creatures. The title of the film promises much, but there is no real threat to the world. Rather, the two monsters, which look like caterpillars but live in snail shells and leave slime, move confusedly within a few kilometres. They're not too scary, they have trouble getting through ordinary doors and all you have to do to drive them away is poke them in the eye with a paddle. But they're really adorable with their cute peepers. Admittedly, the final showdown lacks charge and is very unsatisfying in that regard, but the final "dramatic" scene from the lab makes up for it. All in all, it's awfully naive, but terribly charming. Proper 4*!

Director and screenwriter Meir Zarchi deserves a thorough examination in a psychiatric clinic, I think his psychological profile would be really worth seeing. I see it like this: Zarchi and his mates got together and said "Guys, let's rent a camera, go to Gunther's cabin and shoot some brutal stuff there over the weekend. We'll take Camille, she's up for any mischief and it won't cost us anything, just the petrol and the paint. It doesn't matter that we don't know shit about filmmaking and that there are unbelievable logical flaws in the script, which I fucked up in twenty minutes, everyone will watch it anyway just out of curiosity."… I have to agree with those who summed up the qualities of this film on imdb by slightly changing its title "I Spit on this Crap!". And on top of that, it’s terribly boring.

It was my first encounter with Lucio Fulci and I can't say I was disappointed. Although he doesn't live up to his nickname 'king of death' until the last half hour, even until then it's still worth a watch. About halfway through there is an extremely charming, and for me personally unintentionally comical, fight scene between a zombie and a two metre shark. Although it’s quite short, it's definitely worth checking out, you won't see anything like it in another film. There are also small hints of morbid "appetizers", but the real carnage starts about 20 minutes before the end. A zombie picnic over a fresh corpse, desserts for zombies in the form of Molotov cocktails, blood spurting merrily in all directions, the zombies are cheerful, playful and want to cuddle, lol. The final shot of the zombies marching towards Manhattan and the absence of the classic happy ending is very satisfying.

Nothing happens for a long, long time in the beginning, and even after the cannibal first appears, it's hard to talk about anything shocking, or at least suspenseful. It’s just a borefest, and the awful keyboard claps do get on your nerves. In the last twenty minutes D’Amato kicks things up a bit, there are two "appetizing" scenes, and the "dessert" with a human fetus is really very creepy. Oh, by the way, George Eastman, the cannibal is really handsome. I'm surprised I've never seen him on a teen-mag poster, I'm sure there would be a spot on the wall of a lovelorn fifteen year old's room :)

Right at the beginning of the film, the detailed scene of the cutting of skin and eye, accompanied by the leaking of the eye filler, suggests that this film will be no pushover. And indeed, what follows is a quality, suspenseful thriller, spiced with four brutal murders, two of which are very cleverly executed. One of the murders is accompanied by a long rape scene in a car, the director is a psychopath. The ending with the surprise moment didn't scare me, it made me laugh. The overall impression is a bit awkward, but for the few macabre moments and the clever photo-flash scene I won't go below 3*.

This film is absolutely disgusting, stupid, idiotic, I didn't like it at all!... No, no, no, no, this film is absolutely brilliant and riveting!… What's truth and what's fabrication? That must have been the feelings of the audiences of Andy Kaufman, a master of misdirection, a man who lived an exciting, crazy, funny and sad life at the same time. And that is what this film is like, and I mean it. Forman knew that a life story like this was worth filming. His direction is downright brilliant, fresh, as if by a young filmmaker at the peak of their powers. Jim Carrey certainly doesn't ruin it, he's wonderful, but I liked him even more as Kaufman's alter-ego Tony Clifton, I cracked up laughing. Those two hours are watchable in one breath. Bravo!