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Domiziano Cristopharo
Italian film-maker that often takes classic horror stories, especially Edgar Allan Poe themes and stories, and re-interprets them as exploitation movies containing transgressive grotesqueries, gore, and gay erotica. Some of his movies make use of low-grade art-house surrealism, either combined with the above trash, or as stand-alone horror-themed stories with attempts at poetic visuals, often whimsical and incoherently put together. In other words, a trashy exploitation director with some artistic ambitions. But he is eclectic and makes a variety of movies ranging from old-school Italian horror films, to erotica, to campy exploitation. Very frequently collaborates with other directors in anthology films. Reviewed until 2016. For a good portion of the movie, this film seems to be heading towards Lovecraftian horror with references to Bahamut, sea-creatures, and nightmares involving fish-girls and tentacle births, all taking place in a mysterious fishing village. But the random horror elements never cohere, forcing another interpretation. This is actually a drama that uses fairy tales and horror symbolism to explore the psyche of a troubled young couple trying to escape their dark past and build a new life together. Even with this approach however, many scenes will make you scratch your head, and the artificial drama and flat acting don't help. A terrible crime in the past is revealed causing their strained relationship. The man pulls strange creatures from the sea invoking memories and dreams, zombie pirates haunt them in search of gold nuggets that symbolize their newfound tenuous happiness, he ritualistically enters a cave while naked, they adopt the clothes of previous tenants and dream of their lives, and so on. Of some interest, but feels like a random sequence of semi-poetic ideas rather than a coherent film. Inspired by Peeping Tom, this movie ambitiously combines transgressive horror, philosophy and psychology, pornography, exploitation and surreal art-house. It brings to mind several Hisayasu Sato movies that dived into the sleaze and violence but with a thoughtful, surreal and psychologically provocative attitude. A man has a deep obsession with his camera after his father filmed him growing up. Themes of voyeurism, exposure, and personalities shaped through parents inter-mix, with a fear of the unknown and of intimacy warping and merging with a fascination for grotesque S&M, pedophilia and scenes of violence captured on film. A very pretty neighbor girl and her bizarre dad show an interest in him that isn't what it seems. In between, the man visits a 'House of Flesh Mannequins' that is probably in his mind, where he enjoys a colorful variety of voyeuristic thrills combined with nasty surprises of sudden cruelty and torture, while the 'mannequins' spout philosophical platitudes. The climax disappoints with a conventional horror and gory shock ending. Cristopharo takes on Browning's 'Freaks' this time, thankfully without injecting his usual lurid trash. This is a semi-campy, semi-melodramatic, semi-artistic drama that takes place back-stage of a circus sideshow. The first half of the film seems to be merely a sequence of disconnected scenes of theatrical monologues, performances and dramatic interactions designed to set up this world of eccentric circus people. These include a dwarf manager, a tattooed man with implants, a bearded lady, a sword swallower, singing cross-dressers and so on. Enter Salome, who devises a plot to seduce the manager once she finds out he has a fortune. Jealousy and drama flare up to break up this troupe in melodramatic fashion, as Salome has to grapple with whether she is 'one of them'. What makes this film more interesting are the fantasy-surreal elements inserted randomly to enhance the atmosphere. These include a singing moon with a face a la Melies, a talking statue of the Virgin, ghostly figures hovering in the background, and a den of monsters. A more interesting piece from Cristopharo. By far the most incoherent and bizarre film by Cristopharo. Every few minutes, just when you think you know the genre of the film, it veers to a completely new genre and trope. This random film would spin the head of an 'American Horror Story' writer. If I had to guess, this was an attempt at a collage of and homage to every horror trope Cristopharo has ever seen, including many elements from classic Italian exploitation movies. Forget the story; just use this as a game to test your horror-movie knowledge. This has some youngsters and models working for a 70s magazine visit a castle with a dark past to try and create an 'authentic' photo shoot. Many tales from the past are revealed, while mad shenanigans overtake the group in the castle and its denizens. One minute the film features some medieval torture, then some cheesy softcore erotica, then sex with a hairy beast, Nazisploitation, a necrophiliac threesome with a skeleton and a eunuch (!), incest with a grandmother who looks like the old man from Texas Chainsaw, a random animated gore taken from a Quay Brothers short, a fantasy love story, an Agatha Christie murder-mystery, dungeon savagery with strange glittery blood, dreams involving erotica with an exposed bloody brain, a robot, and so on. Your brain will be porridge by the time this film is done. More pointless extreme nastiness. This movie is also 100% dialogue-free, character-development-free, and plot-free. A sociopathic man who is dead inside is shown in his boring daily life, waking up, masturbating, urinating, throwing-up, licking toilet bowls, mutilating his penis....you know, the usual stuff. He stalks a woman, uses a blow-up doll for his sexual fantasies and in his mind the doll becomes the woman in some disturbing scenes, then he finds out she has a boyfriend which triggers the first and only reaction in him, so he goes after the boyfriend and tortures him in very nasty and gruesome ways. The end. Well, kinda, as the epilogue is completely baffling and can only be attributed to a warped gay sado-masochistic fantasy. Features pornographic and very extreme detail in all of its scenes which gradually increase in their nastiness as the movie progresses. Gay pornographic take on the Jekyll and Hyde theme, only this time it's a mad doctor obsessed with finding a cure for his impotence who finds a potion that changes his gender and turns him into a sadistic and horny female killer. Note that it's the female version of himself that becomes a vicious killer... hmmm... However, this barebones plot not only unravels into nonsense towards the end, the movie also spends most of its two-hour runtime in sex clubs, sex scenes, S&M and completely useless, pretentious and random speeches given by various characters about sex, psychology and hedonism. Add to this a a lot of genital mutilation with knives that is not as graphic as it sounds, lots of hardcore bisexual pornography (but the camera is much more interested in the guys), some nasty necrophilia and fetishes for dead things, not including dead penises, and some lightly surreal nightmares involving the above themes. A trashy mess. Poe must be turning in his grave where he was buried alive. This is a sequel to the slightly better 'P.O.E. Poetry of Eerie', which featured 15 short movies based on Poe's stories and focused on the horror/atmospheric aspect of his stories. This one, however, tries to re-imagine seven stories as modern transgressive/nasty shorts with gratuitous brutality, gore and sex. 'Pit And The Pendulum' is transported into an ineffectual 'THX 1138'-esque sci-fi setting with a weakly imagined threat and no pendulum, 'Alone' is somehow converted into a torture-porn short, 'Loss Of Breath' is set amidst pornographers with a very graphic castration scene for no reason whatsoever, 'Morgue Street' is supposed to be a dark murder-mystery with a surprise murderer, but the mystery is completely ignored and is replaced with a graphic bestial rape and murder scene involving two drug-addict hookers, 'Tell-Tale Heart' about a murderer's guilt is a disjointed sequence of scenes in Thailand with transsexual thrown in (albeit artsy and unusual scenes), 'The System of Dr. Tarr' manages to invoke an insane atmosphere in an asylum and injects it with naked men tarring and feathering each other, masturbating and eating a face, and 'Premature Burial' finds a neat little twist for the buried-alive story. In summary, the last two find something only moderately interesting to do with the stories, but the rest are a waste of time and feature heavy, sometimes indecipherable accents. Those of you looking for Poe adaptations will be disappointed since these are suggested by (not inspired by) Poe's stories, at best. Followed by a forgettable third anthology where only one of the six stories has barely-extreme content. Cristopharo turns to Edgar Allan Poe themes and stories yet again only in order to molest them. This is an anthology of four shorts that are mostly just bizarre and uninteresting abstract artistic pornography. Basically, the shorts combine artistic visuals with pornography or erotica with only brief passing references to Poe's stories. The one exception with an actual storyline is the 'The Black Cat' which kinda tells the Poe story through a crudely drawn and extremely slow animation, only the evil cat interrupts and invokes animated hardcore sex scenes. Another short consists of a baffling collection of stills and sounds, hardcore pornography inserts, swords and Seppuku. A third short is gay porn inspired by 'Chant D'Amour' where two prisoners and a lookalike guard interact or abuse each sexually through prison walls, for some reason including a bizarre, symbolic floating rock. This one uses Poe's 'William Wilson' story which is about a doppelganger, so you can see how the themes are molested severely and don't really have anything to do with the original story. The final short is the most grotesque and bizarre, featuring 3D-animated necrophilia, a birth of a full human, and a demonic threesome that turns into a hellish nightmare. In between these shorts, a woman plays with herself while reading a book. There is no dialogue in the movie. A different kind of movie from the usual Cristopharo fare. This is an extreme drug-addiction body-horror film that can be taken as a metaphor for hell/purgatory. Unfortunately, the whole movie consists of a man in his filthy apartment either naked or in filthy underwear undergoing hallucinations, mental and physical suffering, and trying to get another dose into his body before his flesh falls apart completely. The drug of choice is a real one called krokodil which makes the skin harden and rot. While these gory and disturbing wounds are developing, he sees eyes in his walls, disembodied hands, and his own self as a body to interact with, his mind roaming in outdoor scenery while his body rots. I sure hope this isn't considered gay erotica. |
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