Blowup

Hurrah! I’ve seen my first great movie of 2009!

Well, it’s not a film of 2009, exactly. It’s a film of 1966, but I saw it for the first time in 2009. Oh, and I’ve actually already seen two other pretty great movies this year (Rogue and Sydney White*) but this one’s on another level entirely. So, okay then, I guess you could say I’ve seen my first truly great movie of 2009... Jeez, just get off my back, will you? I’m trying to tell you about a great movie here!

[*What can I say? I love Amanda Bynes.]

So, onto Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup. It’s a masterpiece. It’s a mystery about a murder that might not be a murder. In fact, it might not even be a death. It’s a movie about mysteries, and a mystery about movies. It’s about what you see, what you think you see, and whether anything can really be seen at all. You see?


You could talk in circles about Blowup like this all day and, at the end of that day, all you’d be left with is smoke, mirrors and possibly a headache. But it’d be a good headache: the kind that means you’ve been thinking really hard about something meaningful.

I’ve never seen another film quite like Blowup and, in the 42 years since it was made, I’m not even sure there’s been one. Interestingly, two of my favourite directors have made their own reimaginings (to coin a phrase). Dario Argento was purportedly so exasperated by Blowup’s distinct refusal to solve its own mystery that he signed up its star (David Hemmings), cast him in another elaborate enigma (Deep Red), and this time ensured that everything was properly explained by the last scene. Brian De Palma, ever eager to get his homage on, swapped Blowup’s themes of things seen for things heard and came up with Blow Out, which incidentally turned out to be one of his best efforts.

Both of these films are reminiscent of Blowup, but neither is like it. Neither says so much with seemingly so little, nor burrows so deep into your consciousness that you know you’ll never watch movies in quite the same way again. Sometimes, while watching a film, I become aware that it’s not going to be my only viewing of said title, and that I’ll undoubtedly be revisiting it again at some point in the future. With Blowup, I was anticipating that second viewing every step along the way, wandering further into its labyrinth and falling deeper under its hypnotic spell, my only reassurance being that, next time, I’d be that little bit better prepared to understand it that little bit more.

What of that plot then? Blowup sounds stupidly simple. It spends a day and a half or so in the company of a playboy photographer played by David Hemmings. And, by that, I mean he’s a photographer who’s a bit of a playboy, not a photographer for Playboy. This is London, after all. Hemmings, whose character is never named, spends his time chasing skirt (although it often chases him) and taking pictures. He’s buying property in an up-and-coming area full of “queers with poodles” and makes ostentatious impulse purchases, like the giant wooden propeller he picks up at an antique shop while flirting with the sales assistant. Somehow this seems significant.

What’s definitely significant is the strange meeting he has in a windswept public park with a woman (Vanessa Redgrave) who demands that he surrenders to her the film he’s just used to take snaps of her cavorting with her lover. She won’t say why, and he won’t find out why until he gets back to the darkroom and thinks he notices something funny in the background.

I could reveal more but it really wouldn’t tell you anything because this is a film that has to be experienced before it means anything to you. You already know that Blowup’s mysteries aren’t resolved in the usual way – and I’m in two minds about having told you that – but it’s a fairly famous aspect of the film, which you may already be aware of. It’s also the kind of thing that might ordinarily put me off a film, so I mention it both to warn you beforehand and reassure you that, thanks to a few twists, Blowup’s incredibly evocative openness to interpretation will actually enhance your viewing of it. It’s that clever.

Don’t pass up Blowup because you like your mysteries to come with solutions. You’ll never find a more intriguing one.

Rating: 5/5

Too Scared to Scream

Too Scared to Scream is one of those 80s movies that’s too nasty to be a mainstream thriller, yet too mired in the conventions of mainstream thrillers to be a proper slasher (other examples might be The Fan, 10 to Midnight and The Majorettes). None of this would probably have mattered if Brian De Palma had directed it – but he didn’t, so the end result here is pretty uneven and uninspired, albeit worth a go if you like slashers.


I like slashers. You know that. And I particularly like slashers set in big cities. In theory, if you’re being chased by a killer, it should be scarier to find yourself stuck in the middle of nowhere (like a summer camp in the woods or a remote, abandoned house) but what if you were actually completely surrounded by people, only no one could – or would – help? Now that’s a scary thought. Some flicks that explore this idea cleverly include:

• Scream 2 – That opening in the crowded cinema is probably the cruellest and most disturbing of all the trilogy’s kill sequences. Wes Craven contrasts the collective excitement of the audience with the isolation of the victims in a way that I actually find quite upsetting... What is wrong with me?!


• Terror and Black Lace – The first half of this “Mexican giallo” concentrates on the increasing loneliness felt by its bored housewife Maribel Guardia. After that, it’s terror (and black lace!) all the way in the second half when a scantily-clad Guardia finds herself chased by a killer in, around and over the apartment building as a noisy party takes place just out of reach...


• Slumber Party Massacre III – This slasher sequel (which I’m actually a big fan of) is interesting because it plays out on a normal suburban street, with the “remoteness” of the location coming from the fact that the killer does a really good job of trapping his victims in the house.

There’s probably dozens of other examples of this freaky film phenomenon; in fact, Joe D’Augustine does a great job of describing it in relation to Argento’s Four Flies on Grey Velvet at his blog, Film Forno. The reason I mention the notion here is that I’d been hoping beforehand that Too Scared to Scream would also tap into it, being set as it is in a New York high-rise – the kind of place where people live piled on top of one another and, if my understanding of Seinfeld is correct, frequently burst in on each other without knocking, not to mention find themselves embroiled in all kinds of humorous scrapes.

As it turns out, Too Scared to Scream does have some nice urban-living scare sequences, employing such things as empty laundry rooms and painfully slow elevators to suspenseful effect. It also has more than its share of crazy shit going down – crazy shit that causes all kinds of pacing problems and, well, just general weirdness that ultimately distracts and subtracts from it as a whole.

Plot-wise, tenants of the aforementioned apartment building are falling prey to an in-house killer at an alarming rate. The cops suspect creepy doorman Vincent Hardwick (Ian McShane)... After all, he’s smarmy, British, and lives with his mother, a paralyzed car-crash victim who, in an instance of that crazy shit I was telling you about, has no scripted lines but is played by Maureen O’Sullivan (in a far cry from her Tarzan days).

Further investigation of the murders leads Lieutenant Alex Dinardo (Mannix’s Mike Connors) in the direction of a chauffer with some sort of S&M fetish that’s thankfully not explored in too much detail (oh, except for a shot of his naked behind covered with cigarette burns), as well as a drunkard played so heartbreakingly by Murray Hamilton that his one scene is actually distressing. There’s also a shoot-out outside a porno theatre, and a scene-stealing cameo from John Heard as – if I’m remembering this correctly – a coroner. Quite frankly, after all that, I’m too scarred to scream. Mentally, that is.

Had your fill of crazy shit yet? No? Well, next there’s our junior detective – and final girl – Kate Bridges, played by Anne Archer (who had also starred in an episode of Mannix ten years previously!). Archer is easily one of the best things about this film, whether she’s cunningly disguised as a bag lady with a fake nose, or jiggling herself crazy in woolly legwarmers as part of some aerobic nightmare set to a pumpin’ 80s beat. Kate also attempts to seduce the blatantly gay doorman by jogging up to him in the park and stopping to stretch her spandex-clad thighs on a bench, just inches away from his face. (I was honestly waiting for his wheelchair-bound mother to slowly roll into the pond in the background.) It’s detective work at its finest... Sorry, no, I meant camp comedy at its finest.

Too Scared to Scream is a slasher with a large dose of mystery and, while the identity of the killer didn’t come as a shock to me, his/her motivation was something I really hadn’t seen coming – even though the clues are certainly there. Another thing I hadn’t anticipated was our heroine’s choice of weapon as she prepares to face the killer at the climax – namely, a telephone receiver. (Well, phones can be deadly, remember!)

With all the 80s horror remakes doing the rounds at the moment, I almost wouldn’t be surprised to see this one plucked from obscurity, even if it’s just to cash in on the caché of the title... 2 Scared 2 Scream, anyone?

Anyone?

Rating: 3/5

Horror That Made Me #8

Most of the entries from my countdown of the ten “Horror Films That Made Me” are movies I experienced at an early age, but not this one. I was at least 24 when I saw for the first time Dario Argento’s...

Phenomena (1985)

I’d seen Argento movies before this: Trauma, unwittingly, in the early nineties, when I’d rent any horror film that came to my local video store; Suspiria a little later, when I discovered it in a big branch of HMV and read Leonard Maltin’s enthusiastic review. Opera and The Stendhal Syndrome were early DVDs I picked up when the availability of American releases in the UK meant that uncut versions of films became possible to get hold of for the first time. Still, the buzz around the director’s work eluded me. I found them confusing, artificial and ultimately unsatisfying.

Phenomena was different. I can even pin down the moment when I suddenly “got” Argento. It occurred as Phenomena’s heroine arrives at her destination thirteen minutes into the film and, from nowhere, a gravelly male voiceover gravely intones: “And so Jennifer arrives in Switzerland from the New World to pass her first memorable night at the Richard Wagner International School for Girls...”

The voiceover is never explained, never continued, and it’s the only time it’s heard in the film. Its sheer randomness, however, was the finger that flicked the switch inside my head, and I suddenly knew that I loved Argento and would be returning to all the films of his I’d previously seen to evaluate them in a new light. What I didn’t know at the time was that I’d become an obsessive collector of the man’s work, or that he’d become my favourite director of all time. But I am and he is, and for those reasons Phenomena secures a place on the list of Horror That Made Me... Plus the fact that it’s a fantastic film in its own right – the very definition of a horror fairytale.

Lesson learned: You never know when horror will grab you.

Door Into Darkness: The Doll

Theories abound as to why Dario Argento decided to save The Doll for the fourth and final episode of his 1973 TV series, Door Into Darkness. Some say it’s due to the experimental nature of the story; others point out it’s the episode that Dario had the least involvement in. Me, I think they put it last because it’s a bit rubbish. Would anyone have tuned in the following week after this?

Let’s see why The Doll doesn’t really work as a mini suspense movie. Two reasons:

1. It’s padded... Boy, is it padded. If I’d had to sit through one more scene of someone walking down a street, I swear I would have flicked off the TV and gone outside to play Frisbee. With the DVD. In traffic. The Doll could easily have made a half-hour Tales of the Unexpected episode, rather than the 60-minute slog here.


2. It cheats... Boy, does it cheat! And not like the forgivably amusing, clever-clever misdirections of an M. Night Shyamalan movie, either. This story cheats so bad it gets caught cheating, lies to cover up its indiscretions, gets caught lying, then buys you a bunch of flowers to throw you off the scent... but none of that changes the fact that it cheats. Shamelessly. To the point that it barely makes sense when it’s all over.

Our story starts with that trusted cliché: the mental hospital break-out. Someone with a handheld camera and wobbly POV has escaped from the Rome Home for the Criminally Deranged to become, as Dario Argento himself puts it in his introduction, “a sick mind wandering a small town, apparently normal, in matter of fact incandescent... Its aim: to kill.”

Soon after, we’re introduced to a moustached stranger-in-town (played by Robert Hoffman) who’s checking into a local hotel along with his mysterious attaché case. While he’s out roaming the streets a little later, a redheaded fashion designer meets a sticky end when, after some enjoyably giallo-esque spooky stuff involving multicoloured mannequin heads, she’s killed by an unseen assailant.

Back on the street, Moustache Man spots another redhead (Mara Venier) in a doll shop and decides to make her acquaintance by embroiling her in a bit of unwitting shoplifting à la Twisted Nerve. Not only that, but he manages to invite himself round to her house... and that’s where the nastiness begins.

And it’s about time, too, seeing as how we’re over halfway through The Doll and much of the running time so far has been taken up by people just walking along. What follows is fairly tense – although you’ll likely find it a little hard to swallow that our heroine not only lets Creepy Moustache into her home, but quickly agrees to get changed and go to the movies with him. Still, that’s nothing compared to the ending, which is harder to swallow than a saucepan full of wasps.

As with some other gialli, the problem with The Doll isn’t the way it’s made, it’s the way the plot’s contrived. There’s plenty of intriguing camerawork and the basic idea is sound, but I’m all for renaming it “The Dull”... The Cheating, Lying Dull!

Rating: 2/5

Picture post

Here's a nice screenshot from Eyewitness that I couldn't quite shoehorn into yesterday's review:



It occurs as Roberta and her husband drive the stretch of road where Roberta claims to have witnessed the murder.

Is it me, or have the Human League based two album covers on this image?

Okay, you can go back to work now.

Door Into Darkness: Eyewitness

Well, I did promise I’d be having a look at Dario Argento’s TV anthology series Door Into Darkness, but I never said I’d be watching the episodes in order. (Please, I’m not that organised.) So here we go with episode 3 of the DVD set, which actually aired second according to some sources... Anyhow, no matter – it’s not like Lost, where as long as you watch it all in order it all makes perfect sense. No, Door Into Darkness presents four different stories, and this one’s called Eyewitness.

Straight off, let me point out that many of Eyewitness’s plot elements probably seemed a lot fresher back in 1973, before three decades’ worth of TV actresses played murder witnesses in three decades’ worth of TV movies, and subsequently found themselves in various degrees of TV movie-permitting peril. Here, it’s Marilù Tolo playing housewife Roberta Leoni, whose life is so dull and empty she spends most of her time dressing up in outfits that match her stylishly mod furnishings:



All that’s about to change, however, because soon Roberta will be on high terror alert after a woman runs out in front of her car in the middle of the night and drops down dead in the road. When Roberta gets out to help – being careful not to get any of that icky blood on her new orange flares (well, they do go lovely with the futon) – Mystery Woman turns out to have a bullet wound in her back. But that’s not all: Mystery Murderer is waiting in the bushes beside the road with a gun in his black-gloved hand... Run, Roberta, Run!

Luckily, there’s a diner nearby and Roberta has soon ordered a nice cup of coffee. Oh, and summoned the police. But when she takes the detective back to the scene of the crime, the body has disappeared – along with any trace of blood and, indeed, anything out of the ordinary. Has Roberta imagined it all? The police and her husband (Riccardo Salvino – sort of a better-looking version of Dario Argento, although with the same tombstone forehead and lanky hair) seem to think so, but we’re left in no doubt when a cutaway reveals someone suspiciously burning a pile of bloodstained clothes...

Ah, sweet, naïve, innocent Eyewitness, you had me gripped up until about this point, when you decided to turn into a decidedly mediocre stalker thriller. Roberta returns home to the now-ubiquitous ominous phone calls and half-hearted attempts on her life, while events slow-burn to a rather predictable conclusion. I know it’s not your fault, Eyewitness. You were probably once the hottest thing since open plan interiors:


But now you’re more like this clock – dated and slightly pointless:


I mean, can you tell the time on that? Anyway, the plot of Eyewitness has become so standard that it really doesn’t offer much in the way of suspense or excitement any longer, despite the fact that it’s well staged and particularly nicely scored (by Giorgio Gaslini – Deep Red). I don’t want to make it sound like it’s a worthless waste of time – I’d recommend it unreservedly to giallo/Argento fans – but time hasn’t left Eyewitness with much to remark upon. Except, of course, those fabulous interiors.

Rating: 2/5

Doorway to Dario

Oh, how bittersweet... Gorezone reports that Dario Argento’s 1970s TV anthology series Door Into Darkness is coming to region 1 DVD in February 2008, courtesy of NoShame. That’s great news for Argento fans, of course, but bad news for snobs like me who sought out the out-of-print, hard-to-find and now soon-to-be-less-valuable German release from a couple of years ago.

Still, I can take some consolation from the fact that lazy buyers of the easily-available new set will be stuck with an even less flattering caricature of the famous director on the cover:

Me, I’ll be laughing it up with my incomprehensible German-language slipcase and the accompanying 16-page booklet I can’t actually read. Not to mention a bunch of walking skeletons that seem to have wondered in off the cover of Army of Darkness:

Look out for indignant reviews of each of the four Door Into Darkness episodes soon!

The Sect

Let’s talk about sects, baby...

Or, to be specific, let’s talk about Michele Soavi’s 1991 Italian horror-fantasy, The Sect.

And the first thing I want to talk about is how damn underrated this film is. If you’re any kind of fan of the films of Dario Argento (particularly Inferno or Phenomena) you really owe it to yourself to see this one. It’s not the easiest film to find, thanks to the lack of a UK/US DVD release, but the Italian release I got hold of (from the intriguingly named Cecchi Gori company) has an English-language audio option and is well worth seeking out.

Argento himself produced and co-wrote The Sect (known as La Setta in its home country) and his blood-smeared fingerprints are all over it. Tracking shots... check! Gory murders... check! Insects... yuck! Weird dialogue... that would rather appear so! In fact, there’s barely an Argento base left uncovered.

The movie is definitely the work of director Soavi, however, and he leaves a personal stamp on it via the excellent characterisation and driving plot – not always two of Argento’s greatest strengths. Soavi has also suggested that he gave Dario carte blanche to create the prologue sequence in the hope that he’d leave the rest of the script alone. So what of that opener? Welllll...

Southern California, 1970: The livin’ is easy and the lovin’ is free. A group of hippies are busy listening to The Eagles, throwing rocks, and decorating each others’ breasts with paint. But there’s a snake in the grass... Literally, there’s a snake, it’s in the grass, and it makes a little boy cry, before heralding the arrival of a mysterious, Christ-like stranger, who looks a bit like Donald Sutherland and quotes Rolling Stones lyrics in scary fashion (although, to be honest, all the fashion in this scene is scary).


Oops, did I say “Christ-like”? Make that “Charles Manson-like” because soon all the hippies are being slaughtered by the stranger’s accomplices as he yells, “Scream! Scream your fuckin’ head off!” Obviously, they belong to some kind of cult... A sect, you might say. They’re waiting for their “time” to come, but an unseen master-villain observing from his car assures Manson-man that the time’s not right just yet.

The prologue over, we skip ahead to Frankfurt in 1991. After some funny business involving a stolen human heart, an unfortunate pickpocketing incident on a tube train, and a public suicide (all this in less than five minutes!) we’re introduced to a young teacher, Miriam, played by Kelly – sister of Jamie Lee! – Curtis. Miriam is driving home one day when she narrowly avoids running down an old man (Herbert Lom) carrying a mysterious parcel (is there any other kind?). Soon, she and her new buddy are bonding over tea at her country cabin, which she shares with a pet rabbit and 9,000 bunny ornaments. Evening falls, Mysterious Old Man falls asleep, and Miriam also decides to turn in for the night.


From here on in, things follow along a pretty predictable path: the old man sticks a prehistoric beetle up Miriam’s nose as she sleeps; Miriam dreams of being pecked to death by a stork; and the house turns out to be built over a giant secret chamber. To reveal any more might make it all sound a little outlandish, so I’ll quit while we’re ahead. Except to point out that we’re still only about twenty minutes in!

I really couldn’t get enough of The Sect. It’s everything you expect from a good Italian horror film (stylish, nightmarish, ingenious) and more besides (gripping, well paced, coherent). There’s a definite Alice in Wonderland vibe as Miriam follows her white rabbit down a hole in her basement, opening up a world of extraordinary sights and hidden horrors, but the film is nevertheless a true original.


Miriam herself is a fantastic character, and Kelly Curtis fills her with endearingly believable quirks (I particularly liked the way she pushes a cupboard door closed with her forehead after making tea at one point). Barely a scene goes by in which she doesn’t make some kind of freakish discovery and, though these aren’t all entirely explained, they combine to create a bizarre and mesmerising atmosphere.

If The Sect had been directed by Dario Argento, I’m convinced it would be regarded as a classic. I’m a huge Argento fan myself but have to concede that this outing actually outdoes some of his work – even in what you might call its Argento-ness! So quit waiting for The Third Mother, the conclusion to Dario’s supernatural nightmare trilogy begun by Suspiria and Inferno... It’ll have a hard time surpassing The Sect.

Rating: 5/5

The Torturer

“What’s the giallo film up to these days?” I wondered, as I slipped The Torturer into the player this evening.

The only major director keeping the genre going seems to be its longtime lord and master, Dario Argento, whose Do You Like Hitchcock? and The Card Player are among the few examples of the last few years. The Torturer comes from another established giallo generator, Lamberto Bava, whose 80s efforts A Blade in the Dark and Delirium: Photos of Gioia I’d consider classics... Classics of camp craziness, but classics nonetheless. His last contribution to the cause was Body Puzzle – an unspectacular but solid effort – over 15 years ago. Would The Torturer represent a triumphant return to the genre? Does it even belong in the genre? And how many more times can I say the word “genre”? Let’s find out!

First, however, a warning: if you found Lucio Fulci’s The New York Ripper – with its systematic mutilation of female flesh – in any way misogynistic or distasteful (or in any way both) you should probably stay clear of this one. Whereas the Ripper merely ripped, the Torturer uses blowtorches, barbed wire whips, nails, claw hooks and all manner of sharp implements on the naked bodies of his female victims here – usually in graphic close-up. I bought this film on DVD in Amsterdam and, to be honest, can’t see it going through the BBFC without cuts if anyone tries to release it in the UK. But, while breast-mutilation is a big no-no with the British censors, it’s all in a day’s work for The Torturer.

Ginette (Elena Bouryka) is a young actress trying out for a role in the latest film by her favourite director, Alex Sherba. The audition turns out to be a bit creepy: Sherba remains hidden in the shadows while calling out commands through a voice-distorter – commands such as “Take off all your clothes” and “Show me how far you’ll go to be in a film”. To cap things off, Ginette finds an earring on the floor that looks suspiciously like one belonging to her missing friend – missing, that is, ever since she applied for an acting job over the internet and went off to audition...

Things get even weirder when Ginette visits the director’s home and is introduced to his unstable mother, who constantly complains of hearing strange voices and is wearing an earring that matches the one Ginette has found. Clearly it’s time for some snooping!

Meanwhile, a trio of other actresses has arrived at the manor to audition for Sherba’s film. As a storm blows in and Ginette prowls the grounds of the house in search of clues, these three women will be subjected to some truly horrifying screen tests...

It’s strange to imagine the real-life auditions that must have taken place for The Torturer, in which hopeful actresses were no doubt required to scream in pretend pain as pretend weapons jabbed at their all-too-real body parts. Much of the film itself follows the same pattern (with the addition of some pretend body parts, such as the rubbery-looking breasts wrenched asunder in the opening sequence). When we’re not watching torture sequences like these, we’re more likely than not watching Ginette creep around in the dark – which she spends a rather excessive portion of the film doing. I wouldn’t say I was bored, exactly, but I can’t promise that you won’t be.

All this poking around a mysterious villa, interspersed with gory murders, is in fact highly reminiscent of Bava’s previous A Blade in the Dark, while the auditions-gone-wrong scenario recalls the 1983 slasher movie, Curtains. But, where those films tended to err on the overplotted side, The Torturer certainly won’t torture you with twists. It’s a resoundingly simple story, in which Bava seems most concerned with staging Saw-like set pieces – albeit without Jigsaw’s complex motives – that throw as much hardware into the mix as possible.

As for my questions above... Is The Torturer a triumphant return to horror for its director? Well, not really. It’s nasty, occasionally stylish and, above all, watchable – but there’s very little suspense and nothing to really get your teeth into (although one of the characters gets her teeth knocked out at one point...).

Is it a giallo? I’d say so, yes. There’s elaborate murderisation, strange clues found in spooky mansions, and a modicum of mystery. Plus, everything harks back to a traumatic childhood incident, complete with an annoying baby-voice theme tune. It’s like Deep Red, but nowhere near as deep.

And how many more times did I say the word “genre”? None! Psyche!

Rating: 3/5

Demons 3: The Ogre

What is it with Italian TV? Some of its prime-time TV movies dating back to the 1980s are so violent and gory it's only recently that the BBFC have seen fit to pass them uncut (for an extreme example, see A Blade in the Dark). While the same can't quite be said for 1988's Demons 3: The Ogre, I doubt we'll be seeing Amanda Redman in anything as slimy anytime soon.

“It’s not every day that one goes on vacation and finds the basement of one’s childhood fantasies,” remarks American horror novelist Charel Bates-Mancuso (Virginia Bryant), referring to the fact that the cellar of the Italian castle she’s rented with her family looks just like the one she dreamed about as a little girl growing up in Oregon. “Then you add to that a lost teddy bear and another person obsessed by the same nightmare—” Oops! Steady on, Charel, let’s not give too much away!

It seems that, as a child, Charel was plagued with Simon Boswell-scored nightmares in which she would tiptoe down into an enormous, creepy – and enormously creepy – basement on a dark and stormy night. Once there, she would discover a pulsating cocoon hanging from the ceiling, and witness the “hatching” of an ogre-like creature that not only chased her around the cellar, but also stole a flower from behind her teddy bear’s ear. No wonder she grew up to be a horror writer!

Now, twenty years later, Charel is married with a badly-dubbed child of her own, and is torturing touring the Italian countryside in a prominently featured Cherokee Chief (that raised suspension may well come in handy for backing over troublesome ogres later on). Having stopped off at a cafe for directions, the Bates-Mancuso family find that the locals go ominously quiet at the mention of the remote castle they’re heading for but, as Dad explains, “People are strange in small towns,” and soon they’re settling in at the vast country estate.

It’s not long, however, before things start to get a little, well, spooky… The castle’s basement looks strangely familiar to Charel – and, not only that, but she finds a teddy bear down there that looks just like the one she lost as a child. She also discovers collection of teeth inside an old desk, which inspire her to start a new book entitled A Drawer Full of Teeth: Fantastic Novel by Charel Bates-Mancuso (well, they do say you should write what you know). Then there's the ogre-shaped handprints she keeps finding everywhere... Could her long-ago dreams finally be coming true? And, if so, will Charel be able to escape the clutches of... [Demons 3] The Ogre?!

Despite coming from the same director, this mixture of gothic horror and haunted house story bears no relation to Demons and Demons 2 (the latter of which – confusingly enough – also starred Virginia Bryant). In fact, it’s one of four TV movies Lamberto Bava made in 1988, and was originally titled La Casa Dell'orco (The House of the Ogre) before being renamed for international audiences. While the Demons movies weren’t high art, they were fast-paced and very entertaining, something that unfortunately can’t be said for this film. For, while there’s an interesting story in place, it would have required considerable padding to stretch it out to the one hour-mark, never mind the 90 minutes of varying tedium on offer here. If you’re looking for another Demons film, you’d be better off with 1989’s The Church (itself also known as Demons 3 in some quarters!).

That said, it’s not a complete waste of time if you can get past the slow pace. The dream sequences, with their skeletal, slime-covered demon, are pretty effective, and the whole scenario is just off-the-wall enough to hold the interest. There’s also an interesting sequence in which Bava essentially recreates the famous underwater scene from Dario Argento’s Inferno – a set piece often mistakenly attributed to Mario Bava (Lamberto’s father). As such, the idea works on several levels, not least of which being the fact that it’s one of the more exciting sections of this film.

Anyway, here are a few things I learned about ogres from this movie:

• Ogres “mate with women who smell of orchids”.
• Ogres prefer medieval dress, incorporating a light, sleeveless tunic and ruffled collar.
• Fully-grown ogres hatch from a glowing green egg sac, often found suspended from ceilings in abandoned basements.
• For the ultimate scare, ogres may burst out from inside wine barrels.
• Ogres leave distinctive handprints in flour, which disappear when you try to show them to anyone.
• Ogres may or may not collect teeth and leave them in drawers (who the hell knows?!).

Ultimately, nothing in Demons 3 makes any real sense – which wouldn’t be a problem if it had the shock-logic of City of the Living Dead or the whirling intensity of Suspiria. Instead, everything remains unexplained in favour of a frustrating gag ending. With a little more belief in itself, this might have achieved a real sense of creepiness; as it is, it’s the silly moments you’re more likely to remember.

Rating: 2/5