Halloween Horrors Day 8 - Massacro

Day 8 brings me to one of the films that is most known for being chopped up and having a bit recomposed into Lucio Fulci's film CAT IN THE BRAIN. For years it was the one I was most curious about because it is directed by a true Sleaze Titan, a cinemaniac whose work I really look forward to watching time and time again...Andrea Bianchi! With a laundry list of celluloid sins that includes Angel of Death, Malabimba, Strip Nude For Your Killer, Maniac Killer and one of my favorite Italian zombie films-Burial Ground-this guy is Eurotrash Royalty.
While I expected a horror film, what I got was something entirely different. Horror fans looking for Fulci gore get a few glimpses, but this is a sleazy bit of business where horror comes second to all that naughty behavior.

Massacre opens up with the sequence shown in Cat In The Brain as a prostitute gets chopped up in graphic fashion. A particularly brutal scene, I could not help but notice that the killer is wearing sunglasses and reflects his victim in a shot that looks very close to the American poster for Watch Me When I Kill! All this sequence does is tell us that a killer is on the loose and a young cop is on the case. Luckily, that cop reports to Eurotrash icon PAUL MULLER! I damn near fell out of my chair when he showed up.

The plot proper starts after the slaughter sequence is through and trash cinema fans will be in for a treat, while horror seekers will actively look for the fast forward button. A bit of violence occurs almost a half hour later-and then it takes to almost the 1 hour mark for more to arrive. But along the way we get to meet the cast and crew working on a film called DIRTY BLOOD, a title I think is damn near perfect for a Bianchi film by the way. The titles role as our heroine walks through a fog frosted cemetery to the sound of some chanting monks (ahh...Templar Terrors perhaps?)-when she finally joins the circle of hooded figures that are doing the horrific humming. Why? I have no clue, but she soon realizes that the skeletal hands that reach for her are not looking to comfort or cop a feel. THEY COME TO DEVOUR!


For Eurotrash fans, this scene is great fun because it looks like Bianchi is sending up the conclusion to his own masterpiece, Burial Ground! After a minute of running and zombie chest bumping the camera pulls back beyond the crew and the "ruse" is revealed. The above zombie is my favorite and bears a nice monster mask resemblance to the magnificent creatures from the earlier Bianchi film. What is even funnier is that the actor wearing that ridiculous rubber atrocity pulls it up and declares "This is a shitty film anyways!"
CUT!

With the "horror" out of the way, we get to meet the cast and crew-a bunch of unlikable people that you can only hope Mr. Axe Behind The Back from the first scene gets hold of quickly. The director of the film is serious however, he is arranging a seance (oh oh) to get his actors in the right frame of mind. The actors have different ideas as they grope each others genitals at dinner, plot lesbian seductions and mistreat each other. The lesbian angle is played in true junk cinema fashion-and played to the Bianchi hilt. This film actually taught me that I love the trash tropes such as this as much as I enjoy massive gore splats in a zombie film. When Liza (Silvia Conti), the perfectly trashy sexpot does a striptease to garner a little sapphic security, is interrupted by her loving husband and told to speed up her efforts it is a classic. The opening scene is a fairly good Eurogore highlight, but this line is better. "Now you have 24 hours to get that lesbian in bed with us. Otherwise pack your bags and go to the shithouse gutter!"
Doubled up with the hot and bothered click track n' Sex Sax music of Luigi Ceccarelli....my brain swells up with joy at the thought of watching it again.

Oh wait, the horror.... so, after we have a funky seance sequence that is loaded with nearly every off kilter shot Bianchi has used in the past someone starts killing the cast off! Not that we care really, but I could have gone for one more strip tease by Silvia Conti at the least. Most of the violence is offscreen barring a few low rent stabbing shots, but I have to tip my hat for excessive result shots by the ever reliable Guiseppe Ferranti. Yeesh! At the one hour mark the psycho killer from the opening is captured, but looks entirely different... I don't get that part, but it shows that someone else is now the predator. Another Eurotrash connection this film draws for me is that the original killer is captured after attacking a prostitute and her client in the woods. He kills the man quickly of course, but the hooker goes on the run, topless of course. I would swear that this scene is replicated almost exactly in the "Polish" slasher film FANTOM KILER. Only it is done better here...those things bored me to tears, and Massacre did nothing of the sort. Also, this scene is shot in low angle Jiggle Vision-while the FK films feature little jiggling thanks to massive breast enhancement issues.
Remember that seance...hmm...bad spirits? A gaping plot hole? The clue to the twist ending? A little bit of everything results. Also, you get that great shot above... when seances go wrong, Andrea Bianchi knows how to have some psychofunkydelic fun.

The finale is exactly what you would expect and delivers, stylishly even, the titular MASSACRE. With only Jennifer surviving the nights mayhem she must outrun and outlast the assailant-and when she finally destroys the possessed perpetrator it proves her undoing! Ah well...she was a terrible actress anyways.

The image of Maurice Poli pondering this strange plot twist and set of circumstance (accompanied by a bottle of J&B even in 1989!) is exactly the same as my reaction at the ending of my Halloween Horrors viewing, though my face does not have the same set of undulating ripples that make his mug so cool. Massacre is not a good horror film by any standard, but it definitely satisfied my love of Eurotrash and exploitation movies. A few good effects by Ferranti, the awesomely sleazy lesbian seduction story, a hysterically overplayed sequence of a particularly flamboyant actor running through a batch of female impersonations that ends with him strutting around topless as Marlene Dietrich, Maurice Poli staring at a J&B bottle and a tribute to Burial Ground make this a great 85 minutes for the right viewer. I may be in the minority, but I liked this film.
With a production company called CINE DUCK how can you go wrong? You can't! This is a good little trashy film made when the Italians had pretty much given up on the genre. I can dig it!