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 They clue you in to the fact that this is the same guy that directed Burial Ground, calling that movie a "gross-out zombie classic" and claim that Massacre was made under "supervision" of Lucio Fulci. They also say that the plot
centers around the making of a zombie movie (oh, so that's what Dirty Blood was supposed to be about). Girls get killed in "grisly fashion by a
perverted maniac." It is said that this movie "lives up to its name..." 1989, 90 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
I think it was heavy metal legend Cinderella that said it best when they
crooned "don't know what you got 'til it's gone." As I sat dumbfounded
throughout the duration of this meatball-sized kidney stone of a slasher movie,
I begin to reminisce about the good times that the movie Delirium and I had.
You remember Delirium, right? It was that stupid Italian slasher film from
Mario Bava's little boy Lamberto. It involved centerfolds getting waxed,
savage bee attacks, crippled perverts, and a deviant brother. As
Andrea Bianchi's opus unfolded before me, I was thinking back that perhaps I
had been a tad harsh on Delirium. After all, here in front of me was living
proof that Lamberto did in fact have a minimal amount of style. Andrea's
sloppy shooting style, uninteresting scene compositions (That scene where
they're all at the dinner table and the camera just sort of stays on the same
shot for awhile before drifting a little to focus on one or two characters is
textbook film making, right?), music that was obviously rejected by Lamberto as
being too repetitive and atonal, and a story that made you wish Andrea had just
stuck to ripping off George Romero rather than trying to write his own story
all combined to
show us how it is possible for to appreciate a subpar effort like Delirium. If you caught the George Romero reference then you've already fired
up the Bat signal in an effort to get help since you know this Andrea is the
same Andrea that squeezed out the dingy zombie film Burial Ground. Like Burial Ground, Massacre is rife with the same "I have no idea how to hold a camera"
style of filmmaking that is apparently the hallmark of Andrea's work. Of
course Burial Ground had that whole "dwarf playing son sucking on mom's boobie"
scene to immortalize that film, making it instantly better than Massacre, which
has no such defining scene.  I guess this movie revolves around a bunch of murders that are happening around
the
filming of a horror film called Dirty Blood. Dirty Blood looks like your
typical Andrea Bianchi film, what with its murky visuals and story line, but
the bits and pieces of it what we get to see being filmed make it apparent that
it would probably be more entertaining than the one we are actually sitting
through. Now, I said it would be more entertaining, but that should in no way
be equated with being any good. In fact, I couldn't make heads or tails of
what this Dirty Blood movie was supposed to be about. The first big scene we
get to see is the star played by our main character Jennifer, running for her
life as guys in really cheap monster masks lunge out at her in a graveyard, all
the while these other monsters or monks or whatever are sitting around the
campfire doing some really scary chanting. The only other scene that I can
remember being shown is where the gay guy in the movie is dressing up as Liza
from Cabaret and Marilyn from The Seven Year Itch. Then we have this guy
prancing around in an outfit where half of him is a woman while the other half
is a man. I wasn't too sure what this cross-dresser had to do with Jennifer
getting terrorized by singing monks in a cemetery (and what was she doing out
there at night anyway?), but it seemed more interesting than all these whiney
characters that made up the film crew. The movie doesn't actually open with
any of this film within a film gimmick though (didn't Lamberto do this in Demons?) because we are treated to our very first graphic kill! With music
that sometimes sounded like a junior high Goblin cover band playing it (Where
were the scary nuances and soulful playing on the pulsating synthesizer tracks
we've come to expect from all Italian horror flicks?) a dude dressed up like
the Unibomber gets out of his car or van (probably a van - you know how these
Italian guys with sweatshirts, sunglasses, red gloves and really big knives
are), meets up with a streetwalker, chops of her hand, then beheads her. The
effects are very graphic and also very bad (How could they have treated a
mannequin head like that? Someone notify Al Snow!). The cops show up, including a captain named Frank. Frank is a good guy. We
know that because he doesn't like it when his underlings call him "boss" or
something like that. He's getting a lot of heat from the chief (good cops
always do) who is under pressure to solve all these bad special effects murders
that keep cropping up like a hairy mole on Frank's mama's face. Frank assures
the chief that he'll get his man and that he's hot on the trail of the killer
no matter where it takes him. Especially if it takes him to the set of his
girlfriend's new horror film. Frank and Jenny are an item and he drives up to
see her on the set. All the people involved with making this movie are full of
skanky secret desires. The assistant director Mira is a lesbian who spends
most of her time trying to get Jenny into bed, there's another guy who is the
writer or something who spends most of his time trying to get his wife to get
Jenny into bed for a threesome. There is the male lead who spends his time
looking a bit gay, but watches with delight as the writer's wife preforms a
little strip show for him through the hotel window. Then there is Jenny who
spends her time taking showers with Frank and taunting the lesbian assistant
director by asking her to do typical assistant director tasks like attaching
her garters to her stockings for her. Not much beyond all these dirty
shenanigans goes on after the first hooker gets killed and if your thing is
seeing Italian women in various states of undress, but invariably in black
lingerie, then you'll probably be able to hang on until the killing starts
again. The director shows that he's smarter than Andrea Bianchi, because he
realizes that his horror movie sucks and just isn't all that scary. This
prompts him to stop shooting it in the middle of things and causes the crew to
go back to the hotel where they can indulge their various alternative
lifestyles. The director determines that what he needs to do to get his movie
that big, scary vibe he's looking for is a good old fashioned seance. That's
probably what all of us were thinking! Usually these mediums don't perform in
public like this, but since this was a chance to get into show business, the
medium he brings in makes an exception. She comes in and has a little seance
where everyone sits in a circle holding hands and she tries to contact her
regular spirit guide, but gets a wrong number and some spirit named Rack tries
to bust a move on everyone. This Rack guy is so persistent that he's even
busting up the hotel bar where Frank (Don't call me boss!) the cop is hanging
out banging back whiskey. Frank falls to the floor from all this ectoplasmic
tomfoolery and then he hears screaming coming from the room where the seance
was taking place. 
Frank kicks the door in and rescues everybody from nothing. The director
declares his idea a success and is convinced this is the sort of spark they
need to make a really effective horror film. The medium leaves and then gets
herself killed. Some of the film crew find her and she's staked up to a fence
or something. Later on at night, the wife of the writer goes out, not to get
Jenny for her husband, but to meet the guy that she did a little striptease for
earlier. Along the way she meets someone in a dark alley, but never comes back
home. The next day when the gay guy goes to retrieve a tennis ball he hit out
of the court (you know how gay guys are at returning serves) he spots this
woman all dead and bloody and riding around on a carousel that's running for no
real reason. The police roll in to check things out and Frank puts a man on
the hotel to make sure the rest of the Dirty Blood cast and crew don't bite it.
The next thing I know, we're with couple out on a date and they start going at
it in the park when suddenly this dude shows up and starts stabbing them to
death. I wasn't too sure why the killer had suddenly switched his focus from
gouging everyone involved with Dirty Blood, but I was just glad to see the
police converge on him and bust him. It was too bad they couldn't have done
all that before he stabbed the couple seventeen times. Oh well, the important
thing is that they got this lunatic off the streets. Eventually. So now the
case is all solved (Did he admit to doing all the rest? Did they have evidence
connecting him to the Dirty Blood killings?) and everyone can breathe
easier and get back to what they do best - try and get in each other's
stockings! The lesbian assistant director gives Jennifer a note asking to meet
her at the canoe docks at 9:00 sharp. Since the slasher part of this movie is
so dull and without any suspense (Do I think more people are going to get?
Yes. Is any of it going to make any sense in the end? No.), you can't help but
root for these two Italian women in black stockings to find true love together.
Of course they don't, the lesbian gets spiked, but not until the killer rips
her skirt off, so it wasn't a total loss. Two other guys, including the gay
guy, go looking for her when they hear her scream and they get spiked as
well. Back at Frank's place, he gets a message on his machine calling him names and
threatening Jennifer. Oh my God! The real killer is still out there
somewhere! He calls HQ or Radio Shack or someplace and tells them to analyse
the voice on the tape. Then he rolls out to the hotel to protect Jenny. When
he gets there, the dude he told to guard Jenny until he could arrive is waiting
for him. Frank wants to know why he isn't with Jenny and the guy tells him
because the voice on the tape was Frank himself! Frank has a flashback to his
encounter with the spirit in the hotel bar and reaches into his glove box where
he keeps his trusty railroad spike and goes to town on this guy. He ends up
chasing Jenny down an alley, she shoots him six times, and the movie ends with
Jenny being blamed for all the murders and the guy with read gloves appears
with a switchblade in the very last shot. Nothing resolved, nothing explained,
nothing worth sitting through. The DVD claims that Lucio Fulci presents this,
which is interesting since I thought the Lucio had croaked a while back, but
then again I see a new V.C. Andrews book once a month at Target, so who knows
how these things work. I'm guessing that he "presented" this because he had
some interest in the material. I have no idea what interest he could possibly
have, but he apparently used the gore scenes in this movie in his own Nightmare
Concert (aka A Cat In The Brain). I haven't seen that movie, but I can only
assume that it was as part of a blooper reel or something. I understand
stealing stuff from people, because you're too lazy and talentless to do it
yourself, but why would anyone steal anything from Andrea? Least of all Fulci.
You can say a lot about Fulci as a filmmaker or lack thereof, but gore was
never his
problem area. Anyway, Massacre is as messy as a hooker with her head and hand
chopped off and just about as appealing. I guess Frank got himself possessed
by a spirit or something and that is about the only thing that is different
from this Italian slasher movie and all the rest (except the rest aren't nearly
as poorly executed). The movie isn't helped any by the junky print used by EC.
It doesn't matter in the long run because the movie is so bad (How many times
in a movie can I see people get stabbed and spiked with blood running out of
their mouth, before it becomes old hat? How many times do I have to see the
"real killer" escape to kill again before I lose interest - I mean, I know that
he'll never be caught, so anyone that runs into him is dead - where's the
suspense there? How much bad organ music is there - only applies when bad
synthesizer music isn't playing.) and I only note it so that you know this
movie has absolutely nothing going for it - not style, not originality, not
presentation. Here's my idea on how to get your money's worth on this if you
were snookered into getting it: Watch this movie, then watch Delirium. This
movie will still smell like a wet fart, but Delirium gets instantly better
looking (it's like having a fat, ugly friend with no personality to hang out
with).
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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