I try to post up as much information as I can about Italian films that make it to the cinemas or DVD over there, but there are also a number of productions which never actually reach the big screen or manage to pass me by for one reason or another. So this is just a great opportunity to review the films that I don’t think have gathered a lot of – if any! – coverage anywhere else.
The big Italian horror films of 2009 were Dario Argento’s Giallo, Stefano Bessoni’s Imago Mortis and Francesco Gasperoni’s Smile, all of which I’ve covered elsewhere (apart from the Argento, I think, mainly because he gets so much press I don’t really see the point of writing anything about him!) All of these are undoubtedly deserving of an English language release, whether they’ll get one or not is another matter.
Beyond these, though, there were a number of other films as well:
Federico Zampaglione’s Shadow was shown in a number of festivals around the world last year, but hasn’t received wider distribution. Zampaglione is a pretty well known Italian rock star, and directed an obscure but curious sounding film called Nero bifamiliare in 2007.
Here’s a plot synopsis from Dread Central:
Plot wise, the film follows David (Jake Muxworthy), a young man returning from the war in Iraq taking some time out for his favourite pastime – mountain biking. At the recommendation of a friend, he visits the mountainous “The Shadow” in Europe. Within the first few minutes, David has fallen foul of a pair of hyperbolically brutish British hunters while protecting the beautiful Angeline (Karina Testa) from their unwanted advances. Shortly after, David and Angeline become biking buddies (and eventually romantic ones too) but a violent chase ensues when Angeline prevents the hunters from shooting a buck.
After some moments of mini-Deliverance, the four of them find themselves lost in an unnaturally foggy section of woods – a section which the hunters’ dog won’t even enter. From there, the dog is found charred (albeit completely unexplained at this point), David falls and is knocked unconscious, and the two hunters are attacked by an off-screen presence. [continues: http://www.dreadcentral.com/reviews/shadow-2009]
Reviews are middling, with critics veering between ‘OK’ and ‘not bad’. The cast includes American actors Jake Muxworthy and Chris Coppola.
Here’s the IMDB link: http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1425253/
Death of the Virgin, directed by Joseph Tito, is an Italo-Canadian co-production. According to IMDB, the plot goes like this:
May, a young Canadian woman with a horrifying past travels to the small highly spiritual town to take her vows into nun hood. There she begins to have premonitions of varies murders that seem to be related to the paintings of Caravaggio. When the inexplicable murders begin, May is plagued by merciless dreams and a tortured ghost that haunts her waking hours. In an escalation of terror and madness, she discovers an obscure secret that digs deep into the history of the town.
At the moment there don’t seem to be any reviews of this anywhere, despite it showing at a couple of festivals. It might, just might, get a wider release (in Italy at least), but we’ll have to see. The cast includes a lot of Candian (or American) sounding names, as well as Maria Grazia Cucinotta, who’s extremely busy nowadays. Tito and his co-writer, Silvio Oddi, both previously worked on the 2005 film Balla che ti passa, which I can’t pretend to have hear of…
OK, onto the charming sounding In the Market, the debut film from Lorenzo Lombardi. This would appear to be a low budget item, and the star is Ottaviano Blitch (who’s also in Shadow). Here’s the blurb from IMDB:
Inspired by a true story. David, Sarah and Nicole just got out of college. It’s a hot July day and they decide to take off for that long awaited trip that they’ve been dreaming about. A trip without any special destination beyond the first stop at the “GTO” concert, their favorite rock band. Things start getting mixed up when the three friends stop to get gas and wind up getting their money, docs and mobile ripped off. They try to call the police but the phone booth lines were cut and they have to jump back in their Wrangler jeep until they get to a Market. They decide to use the bathroom and think about making the phone call. The plans get messed up when they get the strange idea to hide inside, ending up spending the whole night in the Market. Their innocent fun takes a turn for the worse when the Butcher comes into the Market to fill the meat counter, but not with pork and beef.
Again, this has only been shown on the festival circuit, and I can’t see it ever getting any wider kind of distribution. There’s a positive user review on the IMDB, but then that could well have been written by the filmmakers, so maybe we should ignore that. However, the other review I’ve found is also broadly positive. Anyway, here’s the IMDB link: http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1520945/
Another film which only seems to have received a festival showing is the Manetti brothers Cavie, aka Human Test. The synopsis goes like this:
Six people with nothing in common, wake up handcuffed in the back of a truck. Dumped in the middle of a wood, without clues or any food, they’ll have only a box filled with weapons and a book: “How to win in war” by Brian Hill. There’s no way out. They’re not alone. Someone is chasing them and the wood is going to ooze with their blood.
Again, a brief search has failed to uncover any reviews, although as this only finished shooting towards the end of 2009 we might hear more about it over the next couple of months. I don’tr recognise any of the cast members, but the Manetti brothers are familiar names, having produced the 2006 film Il bosco fuori (The Last House in the Woods) and written and directed the thriller Piano 17 in 2005 (which I’ve been meaning to watch for some time…)
The IMDB link is here: http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1569363/
A weird one next: Monkey Boy, directed by Antonio Monti, here’s the typically incomprehensible IMDB synopsis:
A freak lived his entire lifetime closed down in a cellar far in the country. But one day the Monkey Boy, after the death of his “keeper”, an old lonely woman, is forced to explore the world outside. The story is set during one night only, a short time to discover the world, but enough time to find Agata, an autistic young girl, the only creature that seems to be able to communicate with him in that dark night full of weird lonely and unhappy characters called human beings.
So what the hell is this? A kind of fantasy, surrealist horror film? There’s a review up on QuietEarth which is amazingly positive, asking ‘Is Antonio Monti the next great Italian auteur? Considering the inventive storytelling and aphotic atmosphere, Monti’s Grimm style fairytale, Monkey Boy, seems a strong prologue towards an outstanding career…’
Anyway, here’s the link: http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1419346/
Uh oh, onto the inevitable comedy horror film. How does this sound to you:
Brought back to life by computer from the Aldebaran’s people, Adolf Hitler start an Earth invasion with spaceships in the shape of a swastika. The story is intertwined with the adventures of Matt and Rico, two idiots who have to recover the loot from their computerized raid in the imaginary city of Vistakovia tailed by Mordecai, a follower of Satan hired by the lord of darkness in person to retrieve the stolen goods.
Tempted, huh? No, me neither, but that’s the plot of L’invasione degli astronazi, directed by Alberto Genovese, another newcomer. There’s an Italian language review up on Nocturno which applauds it for it’s sheer dementedness if nothing else.