The second movie in the Paul Naschy Collection sounds good on paper, but is ultimately a bit of a bore. An Indian mystic (played by Naschy) is at the center of a series of mysterious murders committed by a rubber-masked voodoo phantom. A the body count increases, various women are zombified to do his will. There are plenty of eye catching scenes especially a satanic dream sequence but the story didn’t grab me. There is also an unnecessary scene in which a chicken is killed. Disturbing real animal violence seems to be thing in these Naschy films.
I really enjoyed this giallo despite its lack of the more traditional motifs of black gloved killers and stylized mayhem. The Designated Victim leans heavily into character drama. Our hero wants out of his loveless marriage and gradually becomes involved with a rich thrill seeker who will gladly kill his wife in order to experience that last kick. One thing leads to another and the story quickly becomes one of a man falsely accused who is being goaded by the killer into doing their bidding. The tension and stakes are high to the very end and there is a nice philosophical undertone to whole thing.
I recently impulse bought the 5-disc Paul Naschy blu-ray collection having only seen a couple of his films (Panic Beats really impressed me). I’ll admit that the pacing and visuals don’t quite rise to Italian standards but there’s something about Naschy’s commitment to these silly roles that give his movies a certain charm. In this first movie from the collection a pair of medieval sorcerers are condemned to death but eventually return to modern day (well, 1970s modern) France to enthrall half-clothed women, eat bloody hearts, and raise the dead. This is Gothic horror almost on par with Bava.
A serviceable zombie movie whose hook is its communist Cuban setting. The characters refer to the undead as dissidents and Yankee imperialists all while trying to make a buck as zombie killers. The plot meanders from one encounter to the next and doesn’t really amount to much more than that. There is a little bit of character stuff near the end, but much of the film is a lost opportunity to comment on life in Cuba, good or bad.
I am hesitant to call this a giallo even though it often appears on lists of the genre’s films. There is a minor mystery here, but this is mostly three bikini clad characters milling about on a rocky shore, swimming back and forth to their boat, and hooking up with a hunky fugitive. There is some stylish costuming, but about the most this has going for it. The story is beyond boring. Nothing makes sense until the last five minutes and even the twist is dumb and pointless.
Two hippies prance across Italy spreading peace and love while selling naked photos to finance their debauchery. After getting in trouble with the law, they go on the run and end up pulling into a country mansion looking for money. The woman of the house is initially antagonistic, but she soon joins into the swinging 60s fun. That is, until things get all murdery. Despite the title, there is no horror here and, aside from the hedonism, no thrills. The movie is colorful and groovy but the plot feels like an afterthought in which the characters could do any of a thousand things to get themselves out of the predicament they are in but always do the dumbest thing possible. Stupid hippies.
The Talos Principle is a solid puzzle game in which you manipulate objects around rooms to connect light beams, stack object, etc. in order to get to a prize. The more prizes you collect, to more puzzle zones are available. All the while there are tons of terminals with messages to read that try to world build and pose philosophical ponderings about consciousness. In the end, I really couldn’t care less about the “story” and I eventually just gave up about halfway through the game. The puzzles started to get too tedious and a wall of text was not a good enough reward for success.
One would think that a meta movie about horror director Lucio Fulci being overwhelmed by the gruesome images he films and then hallucinating about becoming a murderer himself would be a surefire hit. Unfortunately, this one just drags on and gets repetitive after about the second death. It does have quite a bit of the usual fake close-up gore, but that’s about it.
The Big Gundown is a top-tier spaghetti western that has a similar plot structure to Tuco’s story in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Lee Van Cleef is hunting down a charismatic and wily Mexican outlaw only to come to question his own brutal ways. The story may be simple, but the characters are enjoyable and the pacing is very good. If you are keeping record, this is the Italian western that features a gun vs. knife showdown.
There was so much mud in this movie it made me uncomfortable. C’mon guys, wipe you feet before you saunter into the saloon dragging your coffin. Despite the exaggerated violence, this Italian western doesn’t quite rise to the heights of a Dollars movie (really, what can?). The red-hooded villains are a nice touch and, of course, the machine gun too, but there is something off about the acting and plotting that kept it from being great instead of good.
