Severin has a fantastic new release coming. Let me quote them here:
“In the late ‘80s, Lamberto Bava agreed to direct a four-part anthology series for Italian TV under the title High Tension. But when executives saw the completed features’ extreme themes and graphic violence, their broadcast was blocked for nearly a decade and they have only existed as grey market bootlegs since. Severin Films now presents their Official Worldwide Blu-ray Premiere: Tomas Arana stars as a horror director stalked by evil forces in The Prince of Terror, written by Dardano Sacchetti and featuring grisly FX by Sergio Stivaletti. In The Man Who Wouldn’t Die, adapted from a short story by poliziotteschi novelist Giorgio Scerbanenco, the survivor of a home invasion seeks vengeance. Daria Nicolodi stars in School of Fear, which is about a student academy with a dark secret. And in the giallo shocker Eye Witness, Barbara Cupisti stars as a blind woman who sees a murder. All four films are scanned in 2K from the original camera negatives with Italian and first-time ever English tracks, plus over 5 hours of Special Features and a Soundtrack CD curated by Simon Boswell featuring music from High Tension, The Mask of Satan, Demons 2, Delirium and more.”
The Prince of Terror: I’ve made a real 180 on Lamberto Bava. Maybe it’s because the first of his movies that I watched was Devilfish. I should have really started with Macabre, A Blade In the Dark or any of his TV movies and then I’d feel a lot different. And years ago, I unfairly compared him with his father instead of allowing him to be judged on his own merit.
I am sorry, John Old Jr.
This movie pulls the Body Double fake out as soon as it starts, as you get the jump scare of a woman — Magda (Marina Viro) — escaping an RV only to see her boyfriend drown in a swamp and become an inflated zombie and begin stalking her through a swamp.
This isn’t happening.
Instead, it’s the set of director Vincent Omen’s (Tomas Arana, The Church) latest movie. He hates the script from his longtime writer, Paul Hilary (David Brandon, who was the director in Stage Fright, so dumb that he let his cast stay in the theater where a killing machine was hiding), so he gets him fired before heading out to play golf. While he’s hitting the front 9, he’s interviewed by a reporter (Virginia Bryant, The Barbarians) who asks him about the rumors that he’s much older than 37 and his public perception as the “Prince of Darkness.”
He holds up one of his golf balls, which has 666 on it. Obviously, he’s into this persona.
After he finishes playing, he goes home to his wife Betty (Carole Andre, Yor Hunter from the Future), daughter Susan (Joyce Pitti) and dog Demon. Yes, he is definitely into this demonic side. That evening, he and his lovely spouse are supposed to join his producer (Pascal Druant) and Magda for dinner. And then, golf balls explode into their home, sinister phone calls start and end only when the phone lines are severed, and their cute little dog is killed—by having his fur removed, and then he’s just thrown in the garbage—because this is an Italian movie. Then, a bald killer with a huge knife (Ulisse Miniverni) appears.
By the end of the movie, Omen gets shot, his wife gets her leg ensnared in a bear trap and his daughter gets buried alive in the basement. Plus, the toilet flushes blood and the security guard is replaced with a robot. It’s an all-over-the-place plan from Paul, the writer, and actor Eddie Felson– the bald monster — who both want to get back at Vincent.
Special effects maestro Sergio Stivaletti got a workout here, as when Vincent gets his revenge, he starts attacking people with golf balls, including one that blows up a man’s wrist and another that goes Fulci and blows up an eyeball. There’s also a good Simon Boswell score.
I wonder how much of this story was writer Dardano Sacchetti getting his scripting revenge on former friend and co-creator Lucio Fulci. That scene where he’s accused of stealing ideas and it becomes obvious that Omen has no ideas of his own, as well as a bloody script emerging from a toilet, seems to lead one to feel that way. It’s fun in a TV movie way—I love this era of Italian TV movie horror—but it certainly doesn’t aspire to the heights that Fulci reached.
Extras on the Severin release include commentary by Mondo Digital‘s Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth, author Of So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years Of Italian Giallo Films and interviews with Bava.
The Man Who Wouldn’t Die: This was originally going to air in 1989. Due to concerns about the violence of these films, it didn’t play on Italian TV again until 2007. The other three aired in 1999.
Written by Gianfranco Clerici (Strange Shadows in an Empty Room) based on a short story by Giorgio Scerbanenco, this is about a gang of five burglars that art dealer Madame Janaud (Martine Brochard, Murder Obsession) hires to steal art from a rich man’s villa. Led by Fabrizio (Keith Van Hoven, Demons 3), the thieves (including Lino Salemme, who did coke out of a Coke can in Demons and Stefano Molinari, the demon in the movie on the TV in Demons 2) tie up the man of the house and his wife, then take everything they can get their hands on so that Janaud can sell them to art collector Mr. Miraz (Jacques Sernas).
The problem is that one of the gang, Giannetto (Gino Concari) screws over the gang and cuts up the most expensive thing they take, Renoir’s “After the Bath.” He hides in the villa’s garage and returns for it later.
That would be bad enough, but Giannetto attacks the husband and then assaults his tied-up wife while the man watches. He gets enraged and kicks the offensive moron in the head and kills him. Fabrizio kills both the husband and wife, then wraps the body of Giannetto in a carpet. The gang argues about what to do, so instead of killing him, they strip him and dump him in the woods. Somehow, he survives and comes back to life in the hospital. He wants revenge, but he’ll be lucky to stay alive, as a giallo killer starts to murder all of the gang, with one’s face getting smashed, another being done in by toilet—head smashing and drowning, and a smooshed head for the last crook.
This was originally to be made by Lamberto’s father, Mario, who had been working on a script with Rafael Azcona and Alessandro Parenzo. It’s not Lamberto’s best work, but the kills are very well filmed and the Simon Boswell score is good.
Extras include interviews with Bava and Dardano Sacchetti.
School of Fear: Directed by Lamberto Bava and written by Dardano Sacchetti (who wrote nearly every Italian movie that you love), Roberto Gandus (Macabre, Madhouse) and Giorgio Stegani (Cannibal Holocaust), School of Fear is part of the second series of TV movies that Bava was hired to make.
If you have children, let me remind you never to allow them to attend European educational facilities like the Swiss Richard Wagner Academy for Girls, the Tanz Akademie or the Giacomo Stuz private school. I mean, a child drowns at the beginning of this movie, and that’s moments into it.
Diana Berti (Alessandra Acciai) arrives at the school and instantly encounters problems. There’s a deformed child in the shadows, her skirts are too short for the school’s leader (Dario Nicolodi), and oh yeah, she has past traumas that the school keeps bringing to the fore. You know what isn’t helping? The last teacher in her role died by going through a plate glass window, and they never fixed all that broken glass.
The real problem, as always, is the children. They play some secret game that the last teacher — the one who took a header through a closed window — was already worried about after she learned just how frightening it can be from one of her students.
This game takes them into the abandoned parts of the school, which are haunting for adults, much less little ones. These kids, however, are borderline monsters, able to hack into video signals, showing an image of her impaled on the front gate just like the last teacher and using Diana’s past sexual assault to remind her that no one will ever believe her when she tries to expose how horrible they behave.
They’re right.
The children are from the upper crust, the school has too good a reputation, and after all, look how sweet these young men and women are as they sing in the choir. Surely they couldn’t have done all this. Even her police inspector love interest, Mark Anselmi (Jean Hebert), thinks she’s being ridiculous about it all.
This movie is absolutely worth watching. It features a classroom of kids tearfully tearing to pieces the morality and art of Pier Paolo Pasolini while a child who looks like a dwarf in a red jacket runs wild on the grounds.
Extras include interviews with Bava, Roberto Gandus and Simon Boswell.
Eye Witness: Elisa (Barbara Cupisti) and Karl (Giuseppe Pianviti) are in a department store at closing time, waiting until no one is watching so that she can steal a shirt. She’s stuck there alone as Karl runs out to get their car and while the store is closed, she sees a secretary get killed by her manager (Alessio Orano)
Or, well, she doesn’t.
Because Elisa is blind.
Directed by Lamberto Bava with a script by Giorgio Stegani and Massimo De Rita, this is a made-for-TV giallo in which police commissioner Marra (Stefano Davanzati) investigates the suspects, who include the secretary’s lover (Francesco Casale), as well as Elisa and Karl. At the same time, the manager thinks that Elisa knows who he is because he believes she can sense him.
There are moments here, when it isn’t trying to be Wait Until Dark, when the film aspires toward the giallo of the past. I love the idea of a rehabilitation center for people with disabilities that tries to get them to expand their abilities. And of course t, he manager tracks Elisa in the hopes of killing her in a scene with echoes of Tenebre and “Blind Alleys” from Tales from the Crypt mixed with some incredible POV shots and great editing.
Unlike most giallo, we know the killer from the beginning. But that’s fine. The tension here comes from how close the killer gets to our heroine. And yes, as always, the cops are the absolute worst. Defund the giallo police, I always say.
Extras include commentary by Mondo Digital‘s Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth, author Of So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years Of Italian Giallo Films and interviews with Bava and Barbara Cupisti.
You can preorder it now from Severin.
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