Shadow

Shadow received its world premier screening at the 2009 Frightfest film festival and for me it became “the” movie of the whole festival. It stood out most of all because it was one of the movies that I was seriously debating not watching. From renowned Italian rock star Federico Zampaglione this gritty genre jumping horror is one that is seriously worth looking out for.

When soldier David (Jake Muxworthy) takes a well earned holiday, having just returned from a tour in Iraq; he follows a good friends advice and heads for an area known as The Shadow in Eastern Europe. A keen cyclist David has almost total freedom of the area. Stopping off at a small café he meets fellow traveller Angeline (Karina Testa) who is also visiting The Shadow on her bike.

After a fight with a couple of hunters, the two set off separately only to later be joined together when strong winds cause David to lose his tent. Now travelling together the couple get to truly enjoy there holiday, that is until they run into the hunters again. Just prior to them meeting up again Angeline tells David of a strange part of the valley where all the villagers were slaughtered in a fire, and now nobody dares enter that area. And sure enough, while being chased by the hunters the quartet crosses that boundary.

The prime reason why I love Shadow so much is because you never quite know where its going, part Deliverance, part Blair With Project, then moving sharply on to the likes of the Saw and Hostel movies; Shadow swings you round in so many different directions that you never quite get to catch up before the movies story seems to have morphed into something else.

Shadow has a real ambiance about it Zampaglione really knows how to frame and deliver a story to the audience. From its opening, a scene of real beauty to suck you in, to an airy feeling of vast space, before restricting you and making you feel almost claustrophobic the director takes you on a whirlwind adventure that few other directors would have the guts to take you on.

Shadow is not all perfect please don’t get me wrong, it leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but leads you in such a way that perhaps maybe it does not really matter.

What Shadow does most of all is put Italy back on the map when it comes to horror film making. For years the Italian horror industry has been in decline, with Dario Argento seemingly being the only quality force, but even he has past his prime, his movies being very similar. Zampaglione delivers a fantastic new bloodline to the Italian horror legacy, and hopefully will continue to deliver such high quality scares.

The special effects in the movie are just great, there is an amazing scene in which one of the characters has their eyelid removed and you are then forced to look at them eyelid free for the immediate future.

The movies best asset of all however is actor Nuot Arquint, who on first appearances (as the camera pans his hands and legs) you could easily believe to be a woman. This actor is just plain scary to look at, when he’s angry its scary, when he’s smiling its all the more horrific. I predict a bright but scary future for this as yet unknown actor.

The other performers do well Muxworthy a regular US TV actor delivers a convincing lead, while Testa best known from the movie Frontiers gives an edgy, your never quite sure performance as the love interest. While you sympathise with Hunter Buck played by Chris Coppola, you wish his colleague Fred (Ottaviano Blitch) only the worst as he is possibly one of the most unlikeable characters in a movie for some time.

The humour of the movie, while thin on the ground is well timed and appropriate, a walk through a corridor of portraits featuring war criminals gives a proper belly laugh as you reach the final, somewhat surprising "dictator". Nuot's drug addiction delivered in a somewhat unexpected fashion.

It would be very easy to dismiss Shadow as another Saw-alike, if you love Saw you'll love this, if you love horror and hate Saw you'll still love this. It's difficult to put Shadow into the same genre of horror from anything you have seen before. This is a proper "scary" movie, not one states it's scary, but when you see it fails to live up to expectations, from the edgy "disappearances" to the burning of of an animal which despite not happening onscreen creates an depiction of horror in your mind that makes you believe you have seen it.

If you are a fan of Argento movies, and more specifically the musical scores of Goblin, you are in for a roller-coaster of musical excellence, a big ear busting sound, that works terrifically in a cinema. When you are first introduced to the character played by Nuot, the score is like a far advanced version of Goblin's Suspiria soundtrack, who ever thought a movie could take that crown.

Shadow is a beautiful looking movie, it has a very 70’s inspired soundtrack that gives it a heightened edge, but the chief thing is it does what its meant to do, its horrific, enchanting and keeps you firmly pinned to the edge of your seat until the very end. This truly is one to watch when it receives a release in the UK from April 29th.

On a personal side, I not only really loved the movie, but received a wonderful accolade from the producers who used my taglines from a review to promote the movie across the world. From The Shadow website, to posters, trailers and DVD cases. A kind of buzz i'm sure you'll agree, money can't buy.

Suspiria - Blu-ray

There was a time when the ultimate baptism of fire for any future partner would revolve around how they reacted when I showed them Suspiria. If they could stomach Suspiria without the exclamation “you’re really f**ked up!” that the relationship had any chance of surviving. For the uneducated Suspiria is a harsh vivid depiction for horror, for the more educated it was probably one of the tamer movies I had in my collection.

Dario Argento’s 1977 horror movie has always been one of the greatest assaults on the senses of any horror movie. With its lavish sets, vivid ear trembling Goblin soundtrack, and gross out prolonged gore; Suspiria is a sceptical on any level. To look at it is a thing of beauty, even if the story itself suffers some flaws. The 21^st Century has bought something new to visual entertainment, something that Argento’s spectacular movie was made for, the wonder that is high definition viewing.

The movie itself surrounds a young American woman who travels to an acclaimed school of dance in Europe. Susie Banyon (Jessica Harper) is immediately offended by the German manners she encounters, the taxi driver is rude and insensitive and her expected warm greeting at the school is just a locked door. But Susie witnesses something, a strange series of events, these events lead to the death of one of her potential classmates in a highly unusual manner. Susie’s stay is drenched in further unsociable behaviour, and more equally disturbing deaths. In a strange country, and the talk of witchcraft banded about like it’s perfectly acceptable, Susie’s stay slowly gets worse.

In 1977 and for considerable years after, few movies had quite the same effect as Suspiria. The movie clearly put Italian cinema on the map in respect of horror, and gave the very stagnant horror styling’s of American and British horror a much needed wake up call. This was a movie that ticked all the right boxes and gave horror movies across the world something they craved, a really good scare. Its amazing to think but it took over two decades for American cinema to catch up, now the sort of terror you receive in Suspiria is commonplace in cinema, but well ahead of its time.

Suspiria is quite unpleasant in its character depictions, everyone in the movie including the character of Susie is fairly unlikeable, all very blunt and to the point, with appalling attitudes and beliefs. The main negative result of this is that when characters die you are not particularly bothered. Its not all bad it’s the unpleasantness that also gives the movie part of its charm.

For me personally the most impressive aspects of the movie are its style and soundtrack. Argento goes out of his way to deliver some of the most impressive looking architecture you could ever wish to see on film, the colours are so vivid, the structures so over the top and overstated. The décor for the movie is incredibly “loud”, from the bright red exteriors, to the lavish blue velour interiors; you really would be incredibly hard to find something that looks anything like this.

Onto the movies score, performed and composed by Italian Prog. Rock band Goblin. The wonder of their score is that you do not need to see the movie, only hear the music to get a glimpse of exactly how terrifying the movie is. Suspiria is a movie that’s main mechanism is its score, from heavy pounding electric guitars to haunting vocal whispers. Never has a movie been so well served by its soundtrack, take the soundtrack away and you have less than half a movie.

From a special effects perspective Argento delivers something quite spectacular, victims are slowly bleed on razor sharp wire, throats are ripped out, and hearts stabbed in ripped open chest cavities. While the blood effects are over the top, they are representative of the movies other vivid colours. Like the depiction of horror Argento was decades ahead of more popular horror cinema, to the extent that it has taken all this time for English speaking movies to catch up.

I wont lie, the acting needs a little to be desired, and its not even the fault of dubbing. It could however be on the part of Argento’s direction however, trying to take the viewer on a more ghostly experience by making the performances a little less animated than they should. You don’t quite get the impression that a couple of the characters are fighting for their lives, and this is in some ways an inexcusable flaw.

Praise put aside Suspiria does have a bit of a problem, and that is after an initial viewing it never quite lives up to the excitement of the first viewing (unlike a lot of other Argento movies), personally I have found Suspiria quite difficult to watch the whole way through for a few years now. It still impresses with its gore, overwhelms you with its soundtrack but needed something new to take it forward. That “new” is the wonder of Blu-ray, the experience is like a fresh one, the definition of colour has never looked so amazing, the clarity of vision a shining example of why high definition came about, I would go as far as to say that Suspiria on high definition makes a viewing experience that will take a long time for anything to catch up with it or equalled. Imagine taking something that already looked a step ahead of other high definition movies, then ramped the visual feast up a level. Few movies matched up to Suspira on DVD, now I find it hard to believe anything will match up to the movie in its Blu-ray format. Photographs cannot capture what has happened here, neither can text, but believe me when I say you’ll never see anything like this, and even if you are not a fan of the horror genre, you’ll find some redeeming features here.

Special Features:

Fear At 400 Degrees: The Cine-Excess Of Suspiria:- This talking head feature has some quality talking heads, but is head butted full force by the banal ramblings of Xavier Mendik a cult movie specialist. Mendik is the variety of soul who will chuck as many big words as he possibly can into a sentence, whether it’s a because of a severe dictionary beating, or whether its to sound impressive it just spoils what would otherwise be a quality release. Talking like he lives in the world of the tongue twister, (Peter Piper springs to mind) Mendik baffles then mispronounces as many works as he can, leaving a thick dirty taste in my mouth. The documentary is further hindered by the bizarre ratio it’s presented with. After a beautiful crisp clear widescreen movie, you then get this bizarre, poor quality print documentary that sits centre screen surrounded by borders. The legend that is Kim Newman, Patricia McCormack, Norman J. Warren, Claudio Simonetti and last but no means least Dario Argento adds the quality element to this otherwise odd documentary.

A very real audio commentary finds Kim Newman and Alan Jones discussing the movie in a very unscripted manner, some commentaries are put together almost scripted. Here you believe your listening to two great friends discussing a movie that in a number of ways has changed their lives.

Finally Suspiria Perspectives is a series of conversations with the characters outlined in the main documentary, its kind of like watching the edited bits not quite suitable for the documentary, but on the whole is just more elaborate discussion of the wonders of Suspiria.

Suspiria is available only in the UK at present on the Blu-ray format.

Watch Me When I Kill

Few people really understand the influence of Italian cult cinema upon the world of the popular movie, many do not even realise there was a time that Italy knocked out hundreds of movies a year; I recently enlightened a mind when I explained the term Spaghetti Western, leaving the person in question quite surprised as to the roots of this often used phrase. While the movies of Italy focused on what was popular inAmerican cinema and copied it, seldom do you hear the reverse. America however frequently borrows heavily from Italy, Quentin Tarentino reaches into Italian cinema history to steal aspects for his movies, I think I can draw some reference for everyone of his movies that stems from Italy. So inspired is the director that this year we will see a remake of the Italian classic Inglorious Bastards, a movie he frequently raves about. Also this year we will see another Italian classic get the re-make treatment in Suspiria, originally directed by Dario Argento. The Italians realise talent when they see it, and the need to copy ideas that work; this brings me to the latest Shameless release Watch Me When I Kill (Aka il Gatto dagli oochi di giada, The Cats Victims, The Cat With Jade Eyes), this movies writer/director Antonio Bido was clearly so inspired by the Dario Argento movie Deep Red (Profondo Rosso) that the movie mimics it.

Watch Me When I Kill is a rare delight; it’s one of those seldom seen movies that is often discussed by fans of the Italian thriller genre. The trouble being that those lesser seen or less popular movies suffer terribly without careful preservation. Apparently the movie rather surprisingly was one of the highest grossing Italian movies of the 70’s, but unlike movies like the aforementioned Deep Red was not kept alive by the fans. Shameless Films struggled for months to hunt down the best source material, and get specialists in the field to give the movie some new life. I think this needs some praise as it’s a common thought that companies that buy movies to sell on their independent labels are assumed to be literally chucking movies onto discs willy nilly with little thought about quality. It was all the way back last summer that my contact at Shameless told me they were trying to get some better footage... If you want to be taken seriously in the world of DVD production then look to these guys on how to do a job properly, imagine spending half a year preserving a movie before you even know how it will be received?

Onto the movie, about time I hear you cry. What you have here is an effective little thriller, clearly shot on the hoof but with a reasonable amount of time piecing the story together. With Watch Me When I Kill the movie surrounds a shared secret, something that happened in the past that connects a group of seamlessly un-associated characters. The whole series of events begins with the murder of an old pharmacist one day while working in his store. Nightclub performer Mara (Paola Tedesco) stumbles across the scene of the crime, and by association puts herself in the line of danger. When old flame Lukas (the late Corrado Pani) comes into the picture, he starts to connect all the pieces of the puzzle.

Watch Me When I kill is like a typical blueprint whodunit style thriller (this specific type of Italian thriller has become known as Giallo), lots of random murders, and a whole bucket load of red herrings along the way to keep you guessing the movies killer until the very end.

The movie has dated far more than any Italian thriller I can think of, and I’m not referring to the print quality. It’s clear to anyone with the slightest knowledge of Italian thrillers that director Bido is trying to replicate the power of Argento. What Argento is clever to do though is hide tell tale signs that give indication to the movies age, so that with the exclusion iof fashion his movies could have been made anytime. Bido on the other hand throws ever bit of 1977 culture, and technology he can into the movie, meaning that by 1980 the movie already would have looked quite dated. This is not a digging criticism in fact it gives the movie a little charm, anyone researching late 70’s lifestyles would have a field day here; it’s really quite delightful to watch. When not focusing on the culture aspects Bido rushes around Padua, Tivoli, and Rome like you’re a tourist on a 24 hour break, I wonder how much the landscape will have changed.

There are not any real scares, or moments of fright in the movie; however this does not stop the movie from at times being quite disturbing. Using “state of the art” 1977 technology in one rather long scene Lukas takes his neighbour Giovanni Bozzi to a recording studio to dissect a tape recording of noises played down the telephone to the neighbour. The recording is not too pleasant on its own, but when the various aspects are broken down it gets a little more eerie. A movie could have been concocted off the back of this recording alone, and had you shown any signs of flagging on this movie then this would certainly alert your senses.

The story is pieced together quite nicely, with a good flow of action, mystery and a scattering of romance. For those who love those gritty moments of death, there is quite a healthy body count to keep you amused.

This is not a movie that should have been dubbed into English, it does somehow cheapen the movie, making all the actors come off as being a bit cheesy and just plain wrong, for the time you had a collection of reasonably respected actors and public celebrities, who now seem like amateurs due to rather lax dubbing techniques. Early on in the movie Mara drops in rather casually that someone had tried to kill her, the dubbing artists emotionless words make it sound more like she forgot the sugar. This is not a flaw on the side of Shameless but of the producers of the movies that ordered the dubbed version. It’s worth adding that few Italian movies would make sense in their native tongues, as cast members were often plucked from around the globe with no understanding of Italian, using the much mentioned now Deep Red, British actor David Hemmings was dubbed into Italian, but because vast portions of the original soundtrack were scrapped he was then dubbed back into English; in recent years as more of that movie has been recovered the issues of this have become far more obvious.

Sticking with Deep Red, there is this series of scenes that literally copy the movie with new eyes; shadowed figures, a table of totally random items, and false jumps. Just in case you were starting to think it was all copied, Bido curveballs you with a connection to another Argento movie, Suspiria. Musicians Trans Europa Express burst in with a Suspiria inspired soundtrack. The group did not only rip off Goblin/Argento hits, after the initial smack in the face of obviousness you get something far more subdued, almost dreamy, even beautiful.

Watch Me When I Kill is not necessarily a movie that you watch and become an immediate fan of, it can at times be fairly hard going. I chose to watch the movie twice, and knowing the movies hidden secrets the second time round I was more alert, more involved, and as a result I enjoyed it all the more; what went from pretty average rose a few levels in my opinion.

Special Features:

On Watch Me When I kill you get something quite unusual on a Shameless release, and that’s a very frank conversation with Antonio Bido as he talks about the movie in detail, and allows you through his words to see the movie through his eyes. The director is quick to try and put a halt to any Argento comparisons saying these are coincidental, and that if he copied anyone he was following Alfred Hitchcock. Bido also explains about the impact of the movie on Italian Cinema history, the failure of the stereo soundtrack, and the reason the print quality (now pretty well restored by Shameless) has not lasted well with time. On a nice touch the director also addresses his failures and his regrets.

After their previous commentary track, experts on all things Giallo “The Wilson Brothers” have put together a far more relaxed commentary track allowing you to enjoy move the movie and the text that accompanies it, still however managing to retain their unique sense of humour.

There are two trailers for the movie, both the American and International versions.

An alternate opening credits sequence gives an interesting spin on the movie.

There is a pictue gallery and trailers for other Shameless movies including Strip Nude For Your Killer, Baba Yaga, Torso, Oasis Of Fear, The Designated Victim, and The Phantom Of Death.

The movie is available to buy in the UK from the end of February.