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 Richard and his family go to visit his aunt who has just been released from the mental hospital. "All seems well until, one by one, the family is butchered in extremely gory fashion by an unknown assailant." 1988, 86 minutes, DVD
Who is the black-gloved killer that is slashing and decapitating his way through the ugly Italian family that is spending the weekend at their crazy Aunt Martha's house? Is it Thomas, the creepy caretaker? Or maybe it's Thomas, the creepy caretaker. Then there's always the chance that they'll pull a fast one on us and have it turn out to be Thomas, the creepy caretaker.
The Murder Secret is the kind of movie where the killer is that obvious (especially since virtually everyone else in the cast has been slaughtered by the one hour mark), but The Murder Secret is also the kind of movie where they tack on one of those "so strange it makes no sense" type of endings favored by people whose idea of keeping the audience off balance is to have the little kid imitate the voice of the crazy aunt to scare his older and rather jumpy sister. I will confess though that this sort of thing does provide some laughs when the little turd torments his sister while she's taking a shower by holding up a rubber lizard in front of the shower curtain like some type of Crocodile Hunter Norman Bates.
If you haven't already been tipped off by the presence of a creepy caretaker, a homely family that alternately spends their time on vacation getting into and out of showers and getting beheaded, and an ending that makes no more sense than the rest of the movie, this is an Italian idiocy served up by Mario Bianchi by way of Lucio Fulci. I think we all recall the last time these titans of tawdry trash teamed up on us with the hit film (and by hit film, I mean EC Entertainment got me to pay twenty bucks for it) Massacre. Though I'm a bit fuzzy on the particulars of that movie, I seem to recall that it was about as rotten as the maggot-infested corpse of Aunt Martha laying in the locked basement that Thomas, the creepy caretaker, makes out with when he's not busy explaining the plot to her.
The front of this EC Entertainment DVD proclaims that "Lucio Fulci Presents" The Murder Secret while the back of the DVD indicates that he not only presented it, he also supervised it. I am quite confident that I made some churlish comments about the wisdom of having Lucio supervise much of anything beyond your average maggot storm or sending him out on a dry ice run in the review of Massacre, so I'll refrain from taking any potshots at this time. I will say though that I have no idea who the blonde hottie peeking pensively over her shoulder while clad in a skimpy nightie on the DVD cover is, since the cast of this film looks like they were all rode hard and put away soaking wet.
The story takes a little while to get going in this one (and by that I mean it's not until about thirty minutes in before I see someone get murdered, though there is a suicide sooner that that). Richard and his family are driving out in the country on their way to visit Richard's aunt who is back in the country after an extended absence. A thirty year extended absence to be exact. Yep, Aunt Martha is finally coming back to Italy after three decades in South America. And what pray tell has she been doing down there all those years? Managing her diamond mine? Writing award-winning poetry about the struggle of the gauchos? Staying locked up in an insane asylum?
Hmmm, Richard and I think a flashback might be in order. Way back when he was fancy lad and wore short pants and knee high white socks (he should have been locked up for thirty years, not Martha!) his mom took him to the local mental hospital where Martha was being held and banging her head against the wall. Now, Richard's mom isn't a bad parent, so she obviously didn't take little Richie there until after Martha had been subdued and was being strapped to a gurney. And I whined about having to go visit my fat, crabby grandma at her stinky dairy farm every Sunday when I was a kid! I never realized I had it so good!
After their trip to the nut hut, Richard's mom tells him that he needs to write a letter to the doctors about Martha. Richard and I both wondered what the devil that was all about, but she told Richard to go off to school and as soon as he leaves the room, he hears a scream and the next thing I know little Richard is staring out the second story window of his mother's bedroom looking down at the twisted body of his mom, who apparently had mistaken the open window for the hallway outside her room.
Back in the present, Richard almost runs into a semi. Normally you could write this off as merely a cheap way to generate a jolt as well as some rather inattentive driving by Richard, but the movie returns to this scene during its closing moments for its incredibly stupid ending, so we'll note it here and return to it during the closing moments of this incredibly stupid review.
Having apparently survived the car trip to Aunt Martha's (is there something wrong with me if I keep wanting to type "Aunt Blabby" instead of "Aunt Martha?"), Richard and family arrive and meet creepy caretaker Thomas. Thomas helpfully informs them that Aunt Martha has been delayed and wont be able to make it in until the next morning, so go ahead and make yourself at home, just don't try to go through the locked door into the basement because Aunt Martha's decaying corpse is down there taking a dirt nap. It's pretty much the usual rap that creepy caretakers had out in such situations. There must be a class at the local vo tech college for creepy caretakers where they teach this stuff.
Later that night, a mysterious man with a rifle starts stalking about on the property. He goes all through the house until he gets to the bedroom where Richard and his wife are sleeping. Richard has heard the noise though and is awake and is suddenly face to face with Charlie, his older son from his first marriage! Charlie has made it a little later than everyone else and just like most of us would do when arriving late in the middle of the night, has prowled around with a firearm until he runs into someone he recognizes. He feebly explains to his dad that he wasn't sure which room they were in. Well, that explains why you're coming to Aunt Blabby's house armed and ready for action. During all this commotion, Richard's current wife manages to take a cheap shot at Charlie's mother for no reason. Since Charlie will be dead by morning though, it will forever be destined to remain a rather inconsequential exchange that Mario and Lucio probably fooled themselves into thinking passed for character development. Listen, in a movie like this, the only character development I'm concerned with is when do these characters develop an axe in the head!
Later on, we see Charlie's bloody body hanging upside down outside. This is during the suspense-filled scene where Richard hears something and goes out and discovers that the wind is banging a gate against a fence. Whew! I was worried that it sounded an awful lot like a creepy caretaker pulping someone's head by bashing it against a cement floor! These Italian horror guys can play me like the $99 synthesizer they use to compose the bulk of the music in these things!
Morning arrives and brings news that Martha is once again delayed so Richard goes off to the creepy caretaker's house for some reason, while his wife goes shopping. His daughter sets about taking a shower, while his younger son is out playing with rubber lizards. The shower scene from Psycho is completely ripped off, but of course done infinitely worse. A shower scene just isn't the same if the shower in question is one of those wimpy hand-held deals that barely spurts water out of it. Are you taking a shower or watering your marigolds?
Once that slut is all stabbed up, we hit the best part of the movie. As soon as this family started on their little drive, I was praying that every single one of them would meet a horrible end, especially that little turd kid who took delight in annoying everyone else in the movie, even taunting his dad about crazy Aunt Martha (okay, that was pretty cool). Would this movie really have the meatballs to kill a little kid? You bet! Best death scene in the movie, too! The kid walks right into a chainsaw and gets his head completely separated from the rest of his bratty body! Seeing an eight-year old kid get decapitated was very cathartic and while I can't recommend this movie for normal viewers, the more disturbed among you might want to check it out solely for this scene.
Meanwhile, Richard is at the creepy caretaker's house and the construction guys there tell him that there ain't no such thing as any creepy caretaker! While most of us would probably rush back to Aunt Martha's to make sure our family is okay, what with bogus creepy caretakers running around, Richard asks if he can use the phone. He calls up the asylum in South America (uh, did he mention to those guys that his phone call was to a different continent?) and they tell him to call back in a few minutes (huh?). So, he does and they tell him that Aunt Martha was released last year!
Now he decides to rush back to Aunt Martha's, but first stops to look at this little impromptu graveyard that has sprung up on the way back. He brushes back the dirt and leaves obscuring the gravestones and is surprised to see the names of his family on them. And their date of death is today (and even more scary - that date is the very date that I'm writing this - scariest movie ever!). The funniest bit though is that he really freaks out when he sees his own name and death date! "It was only mildly distressing to see my wife and three kids listed among the dead, but holy crap - I could be next! Yikes!"
Back at the house, Richard confronts Aunt Martha about why she killed his family and then set their corpses around the kitchen table. She replies that she's miffed that his mom sent her away so that she could have all of Martha's money and that Richard didn't do anything about it. Of course, this ends up making no sense because Martha is in fact rotting away in the basement, but we'll just chalk it up to Richard being stunned by his name on that gravestone, and also because the bodies of his murdered family are staring him in the face.
Richard ends up down in the basement where he sees Thomas (remember him? He was the creepy caretaker.) telling Martha that he finished the job for her, what with her being dead and all. A fairly long and poorly shot and acted fight between Thomas and Richard ensues and just when it looks like Richard is about to be killed, we find ourselves back on the road where it turns out that Richard didn't avoid that semi after all! His family is now dead in the car wreck instead of hacked up by the creepy caretaker, but Richard is still alive and then we flash to Martha who is still alive and in the crazy house and she's babbling about making him suffer and continues babbling even after the credits begin to roll.
For aficionados of fake severed heads only. This is just another one of these hyper-cheap Italian flicks that practically shriek "made for obscure Italian cable channel" and other than possibly maggot wrangling, I'm not real sure what Lucio Fulci had to do with anything other than give Mario pointers on how to shoot a really ugly movie. The DVD is pretty crappy with a grainy full frame picture that only adds to the movie's "1980s straight to video" vibe. Dubbing is suitably atrocious, though Italian language and English subtitles are available for that authentic feel (though anyone who really wants to see this can't read, so I'm not sure why that option is available). EC tops off their weak package with a still gallery that consists entirely of two stills! They also manage to misspell Mario Bianchi's name in the credits on the back of the box as "Biancho" when citing him as the director, even though they spelled it correctly a few lines up when they were accusing him of writing it. All in all, the package compliments the film perfectly.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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