Tag Archives: 1989

USA UP ALL NIGHT: I Was a Teenage TV Terrorist (1985)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: I Was a Teenage TV Terrorist was on USA Up All Night on January 14, April 29 and October 13, 1989.

Directed by Sanford Singer (The Body Politic) and co-written by Singer and Kevin McDonough, this film was produced by Lloyd Kaufman’s sister, Susan. Paul (Adam Nathan) and his girlfriend Donna (Juliet Hanlon) move to Jersey City, where he works for his father’s Romance Entertainment and she acts in asparagus commercials. He makes a deal selling forgotten equipment and runs into problems with his boss, Murphy (Mikhall Druhan). Somehow, this all turns into Paul and Donna kidnapping a CEO and being live on the air terrorists with a bomb threat. Remember when people did those?

This may have been distributed by Troma, but it isn’t a Troma movie. It’s too smart for that. When you’re young and bored, you really will try anything. I really liked Guillermo Gonzelez, who plays the Cuban building manager Rico, who should be in this a lot more than he is. It’s strange — most people who have discussed this online either think that it’s vapid or smart enough to be a cynical take on movies that are just like this. That’s a hell of a balancing act.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CAULDRON FILMS BLU-RAY RELEASE: House of Lost Souls (1989)

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Hell yeah this is Ghosthouse 3 — yeah, I’m way into the Ghosthouse and La Casa movies — and it is filled with all the magic and absolutely baffling things that make the original film something that I love like others feel appreciation for fine paintings or great food.

Directed and written by Umberto Lenzi, this movie has the most basic of outlines, as a group of people stay at a cursed hotel. And then, as I like to say, hijinks ensue.

There’s a ghost monk that wouldn’t exist if Romero didn’t include a Hare Krishna in one of his movies, as well as a bear trap bloodbath that is pretty darn upsetting and all the head lopping, knife stabbing and a child killed by a washing machine, which is the kind of thing that makes Italian horror — even at the end of it all — so worthwhile.

Plus — Claudio Simonetti makes music that absolutely works for this. Seriously, the ghost movies of Lenzi are the hot chocolate at the end of a cold day, a balm for my constantly besieged and worried soul.

This Cauldron Films release is for the non-box set retail edition of House of Lost Souls. It has a new 2K restoration and extras including two commentaries, one with Rod Barnett and Adrian Smith and the other with Samm Deighan. There are also interviews with FX artist Elio Terribili, composer Claudio Simonetti and Umberto Lenzi. You can order it from MVD.

Bonus: You can hear me discuss these movies on my podcast:

 

CAULDRON FILMS BLU-RAY RELEASE: House of Witchcraft (1989)

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La casa del sortilegio (The House of the Spell) finds our old friend Umberto Lenzi making a TV movie that fits right into his Ghosthouse style, and I, for one, could not be happier.

This is one of four films in the Doomed Houses series, which also includes his The House of Lost Souls and Fulci’s The Sweet House of Horrors and The House of Clocks. And he decides that what this movie needs is lots of the hero having visions of losing his head and having it thrown into cauldrons and giant vats of soup. And you know what they say, there ain’t no fake severed head like an Italian fake severed head.

Also: our hero Luke has a tarot-obsessed wife named Martha, and if I know my Italian exploitation conventions — and you know I do — anyone named Martha is evil.

Also, Italian directors hate cats, and Lenzi says, “I guess I’ll continue that tradition,” and has a scene where someone throws a black cat at the TV, and it explodes on impact.

You better believe that the words La Casa were huge on the posters for this. I mean, by posters, it played on TV. Ah, you know what I mean.

Lenzi makes a film that may not be a narrative wonder, but if you made a supercut of all its weirdest scenes, you’d find a priest being beaten to death with a crowbar by a witch, a boyfriend chopped into pieces and dumped down a well and a basement where it snows and the daughter becomes a ghost. And maggots!

“You have to have maggots in this sauce,” screamed Lenzi, mad with cooking energy in the kitchen.

This movie is also called Ghosthouse 4, and for that, I love it sixteen times as much. Also: I went deep on the La Casa movies in this article.

This Cauldron Films release is for the non-box set retail edition of House of Witchcraft. It has a new 2K restoration and extras including commentary by Eugenio Ercolani, Nathaniel Thompson, and Troy Howarth, and interviews with FX artist Elio Terribili and cinematographer Nino Celeste. You can order it from MVD.

Bonus: You can hear me discuss these movies on my podcast:

CAULDRON FILMS BLU-RAY RELEASE: The Sweet House of Horrors (1989)

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If you read the description for this movie — a young couple who are murdered by a burglar return as ghosts to watch over their two young orphaned children and save their home — you may think, “Ah, a nice movie for the whole family.”

You may also ask who directed this. Well, good news. It’s Lucio Fulci, which means that the murder of the parents is so gory that it even gave me pause, and then the rest of the film is very family friendly and has numerous scenes of kids laughing and having a good time at the ghost antics. The dad’s head gets crushed and the mom’s eyeball pops out and oh Lucio, I love you so much. You can’t help but be you. Only you would make a horror movie for kids and have a man get run over by a truck and his intestines show up on the outside of his body.

Somehow, Fulci did show some restraint by having Cinzia Monreale in his movie and not having a dog tear her throat out with its teeth.

Sarah (Ilary Blasi) and Marco (Giuliano Gensini) don’t want to leave their house. And why should they, as their parents can make toys float and throw rotund men down the stairs, which will never not be funny and I’m a rotund man and feel that I can say that.

After all manner of attempts to get them to leave, the parents decide to put their essences into two small stones so that they can be with their children forever, which is as sweet as Fulci gets.

He follows this by having a spiritualist try to take those stones, which quickly melts his hand into a bloody stump of goo. The kids find this uproarious fun and laugh as they freeze for the credits.

Fulci spoke very positively on the two made for TV films made for the La case maledette series — the other is House of Clocks — telling Roberto Curti in Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1980-1989 that they were “Fantastic! Excellent filmmaking!” and “two of his best films he made!”

I kind of am on his side on this one. I mean, what other Fulci movie has a ghost shove a large man down the steps and kids dance and sing “Sausage is dead!”?

This Cauldron Films release is for the non-box set retail edition of The Sweet House of Horrors. It has a new 2K restoration and extras including commentary by Eugenio Ercolani and Troy Howarth, and interviews with Massimo Antonello Geleng, Cinzia Monreale, editor Alberto Moriani, Gigliola Battaglini, Jean-Christophe Brétigniere, Lino Salemme and Pascal Persiano. You can order it from MVD.

BONUS: You can hear me discuss these movies on my podcast:

CAULDRON FILMS BLU-RAY RELEASE: The House of Clocks (1989)

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Lucio Fulci made two movies in the Houses of Doom series of TV movies, this one and The Sweet House of Horrors, and both of them are totally his vision, and we’re all better for that.

House of Clocks brings several narratives together: Victor and Sarah are an elderly couple who live in the titular house and are very protective of what they own to the point that they’ve already murdered their money-hungry nephew and his wife, as well as the maid who grew suspicious. But hey, Al Cliver still loves them, even if he has one eye, and he protects the grounds.

Meanwhile, Diana, Tony, and Paul are shoplifting and killing cats — welcome to Italy — when they hear about the old couple and how rich they are. Diana talks her way into the house, but things unravel quickly, and before you know it, they’ve killed everyone in the house, and the clocks start moving backward, and the dogs that patrol the grounds have them trapped.

So they do what anyone else would: they get high and Diana and Tony make love, leaving Paul all sad and soon dead at the hands of the revived occupants of the house, with Sarah coming back to stab Diana’s hand directly to a . Tony Tony getting pulled into a grave before the nephew and his wife assert themselves.

The trio wakes up in their car and is sure that they must be really high and all of this was in their head, but then that cat comes back from the dead and kills them all. Well done, cat.

Everyone in this movie is horrible, and they all deserve to die, and they all do several times. The best part of all of it is that Fulci made this for TV, and it has multiple stabbings, geyser sprays of blood, old women being shot, murdered cats and someone stabbed so deeply through the stomach that you can see sunlight through their body. Suffice it to say that it never aired and eventually played Japanese theaters.

This Cauldron Films release is for the non-box set retail edition of The House of Clocks. It has a new 2K restoration and extras including commentary by Eugenio Ercolani, Nathaniel Thompson, and Troy Howarth, and interviews with cinematographer Nino Celeste, composer Vince Tempera, 1st AD Michele De Angelis, FX artist Elio Terribili, and actors Paolo Paoloni, Carla Cassola and Al Cliver. You can order it from MVD.

Bonus: You can hear me discuss these movies on my podcast:

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Beverly Hills Brats (1989)

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Aug 11-17 Whoopi Goldberg Week: She’s become a corny tv lady these days, but let’s not forget that at her peak Whoopi was one of the funniest people alive.

Scooter (Peter Billingsly, not just Ralphie) is a teenager ignored by his plastic surgeron father (Martin Sheen) and his sblings, Sterling (Ramon Estevez) and Tiffany (Cathy Podewell). He decides to work with two criminals, Clive (Burt Young) and Elmo (George Kirby), to kidnap him.

This was directed by Jim Sotos. Yes, a kid movie by the man who directed Forced Entry. Well, he also made Sweet Sixteen and Hot Moves. Again, not the guy I’d pick to make this movie for children. It was written by actress Terry Moore, along with her husband Jerry Rivers and Linda Silverthorn.

Whoopi shows up to say the name of the movie. You have to love that.

Tab Hunter and Henry Silva were originally going to be in this, and Peter Billingsley and Henry Silva are the buddy movie team that I never knew I needed.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Loverboy (1989)

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July 7-13 Teen Movie Hell Week: From the book description on the Bazillion Points website: All-seeing author Mike “McBeardo” McPadden (Heavy Metal Movies) passes righteous judgment over the entire (teen movie) genre, one boobs-and-boner opus at a time. In more than 350 reviews and sidebars, Teen Movie Hell lays the crucible of coming-of-age comedies bare, from party-hearty farces such as The Pom-Pom Girls, Up the Creek, and Fraternity Vacation to the extreme insanity exploding all over King Frat, Screwballs, The Party Animal, and Surf II: The End of the Trilogy.

Directed by Joan Micklin Silver and written by Robin Schiff, Tom Ropelewski and Leslie Dixon, Loverboy casts future heartthrob Patrick Dempsey as Randy Bodek, a guy slacking through college and living with his girlfriend Jenny (Nancy Valen) when his dad (Robery Ginty!?) calls him home, refusing to pay for school any more.

After getting a job at Senor Pizza, he soon learns that the drivers hook up with customers, which leads to the improbable affair between him and Alex Barnett, played by the angelic Barbara Carrera. All the love notes — and the fact that his son is dressing better — lead Randy’s dad to think he’s gay. 1989, everyone.

Every order for extra anchovies means that Randy will be both sleeping with an older woman and learning how to be a better lover and partner, thanks to them, romancing a series of clients, including Kyoko Bruckner (Kim Miyori), Dr. Joyce Palmer (Kirstie Alley), and Monica Delancy (Carrie Fisher).  The husbands soon learn that this is happening and start to hunt down Randy. One of those husbands is Vic Tayback and there’s also a scene where Randy almost sleeps with his mom Diane (Kate Jackson). What a cast — E.G. Daily and Robert Picardo are also in this.

This being 1989, the fact that everyone thinks Randy is gay saves the day. Of course, he has no male clients. What male escorts sleep with other guys? Right?

JUNESPLOITATION:L.A. Bounty (1989)

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June 25: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Wings Hauser Tribute!

This movie is a dream.

Worth Keeter, moving up from the Earl Owensby studios, is directing.

Sybil Danning as vigilante ex-cop Ruger in a movie made to get away from her sex symbol status but just look at the cover of this with her holding a rifle and man, it’s just what 17-year-old me was afraid of, that there were girls out there that looked like Sybil Danning and someday I might have to talk to them. She also wrote and produced this effort, which happened when International Video Entertainment realized how well the Sybil Danning Adventure Video releases they made — she just hosted — did so well.

Gary Graver is shooting it.

Wings Hauser as Cavanaugh, a drug dealer who is, as all Wings Hauser bad guys must be, absolutely beyond evil and out of his mind. He’s also a painter in this. An insane painter.

A candidate for mayor of Los Angeles has been kidnapped and his wife nearly killed, saved only by Ruger shooting first at the criminals. The politician’s wealthy wife, Kelly Rhodes (Lenore Kasdorf, Rico’s mom!), doesn’t dig that Ruger lives in a filthy trailer like she’s Martin Riggs or something, but they quickly bond over, you know, hating drug-dealing scuzzbuckets and being hunted by that very same drug-selling villain.

The sad part is that Steve James was supposed to be in this, and then they even shot photos of Danning with him for Ruger: L.A. Bounty 2, but yeah, I still don’t want to admit that Steve James is dead. Danning kept pushing for this character, as Ruger was in the comic book Concrete Storm with James as Major Washington Lyons and another comic in 2015, too.

And this from Rock Paper Shotgun: “This could well be the single weirdest E3 announcement. 1980s action-movie “star” Sybil Danning is making a “cloud-based” action shooter. It’s called Ruger, and will be loosely based on the 1989 movie L.A. Bounty. The baffling press release states: “While it is still early in the development cycle, Ruger will be a highly stylized, almost comic book styled shooter. The story, written by Sybil, is being held close to the vest, but watching L.A. Bounty is sure to shed at least some light on what it’s all about. There is definitely room in the faux-retro market for more names than Tarantino and Rodriguez, and Sybil Danning certainly has the pedigree to be credible. Incredibly, the game and a Ruger film are being developed simultaneously.””

If I ever meet Jim Rossignol, who wrote that, we may discuss why he put star in quotes about Sybil Danning.

Ruger speaks 31 words in this entire movie, which also has Anthony Kiedis’ dad Blackie Dammit, Frank Doubleday — Romero from Escape from New York — and Robery Quarry in the cast.

Every fact about this movie is that Sybil didn’t dress sexy and was wearing high-waisted jeans. Have you seen Sybil Danning in 1989? She could dress like an aging U.S. Senator and be volcanic.

But yeah. Wings Hauser. He talks to God, he paints naked women, he builds death traps and kills everyone around him, friend, foe and bystander. They should put heat this movie in a spoon and shoot in my eye.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Chattanooga Film Festival 2025 Red Eye #2: Baoh the Visitor (1989), Call Me Tonight (1986) and Dragon’s Heaven (1988)

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A triple feature of anime in the middle of the night. What better way to spend the evening?

Baoh the Visitor (1989): This movie takes over a year of manga and makes it fit into a 45-minute  original video animation (OVA). Created by Studio Pierrot and distributed by Toho, this is an early release by Hirohiko Araki, who would go on to make JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

17-year-old Ikuro Hashizawa has been taken by Doress and given a parasitic worm which transforms him into BAOH (Biological Armament On Help), giving him incredible superpowers which will also kill him in 111 days when the worm eats his brain. RFK, eat your stupid heart out.

BAOH is trying to escape along with 9-year-old psychic Sumire and her marsupial, Sonny-Steffan Nottsuo. They are being watched by Dr. Kasuminome, who created — perhaps too well, as he says — BAOH, along with his assistant Sophine and an army of monsters, including Number 22, Colonel Dordo and Walken, a psychic killing machine who melts objects before they can reach him. He sees BAOH as a worthy target and even burns the sigil for the creature onto his chest like some deranged Dr. Manhattan.

Hideaki Anno, who co-directed Shin Godzilla, was an animator on this movie.

Call Me Tonight (1986): We’ve all been there before, right? Phone sex girl Natsumi Rumi decides to actually meet one of her callers, Sugiura Ryo. The problem? When he gets worked up, he turns into a monster. She tells him that she’s familiar with Freud and decides to work out his issues.

So yeah, an anime, My Demon Lover, but also one that has references to Fright Night. It also doesn’t skimp when it comes to the transformation parts, as each time it’s almost a totally different monster. For all the promise of tentacle sex that you would expect in this, it’s more about titillation, as Natsumi wants to keep teasing Sugiura until he can control his transformations. Then what? We never find out, as another girl — and some bikers — ruin everything.

Dragon’s Heaven (1988): In the year 3195, humans and robots have gone to war. During one of the battles, a sentient combat suit named Shaian loses its pilot and shuts down for a thousand years. His enemy, Elmedin, is still alive, but Shaian has found Ikuru, a junker, who joins him as his new partner.

Obviously, creator Makoto Kobayashi loves Moebius, as this looks like his art come to life. He was also a major name in Japan’s scratch-build model world, which means that in this, he decided to make human-sized versions of the robots and have them fight in a live-action opening to the film.

Since making this, Kobayashi has worked as a mechanical designer on Space Battleship Yamamoto 2199 and on everything from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure to Giant Robo, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam and Urotsukidôji: Legend of the Overfiend.

I’ve never seen anything look this gorgeous in an anime. Thanks to the Chattanooga Film Festival for introducing this to me!

SEVERIN BLU RAY RELEASE: High Tension: Four Films by Lamberto Bava

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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.