Katrine Michelsen – Through the Shattered Lens

In the 1987 Italian film Specters, Donald Pleasence plays Professor Lasky. Lasky is investigating the catacombs underneath Rome. When he discovers a previously unknown tomb, he speculates that it may be the final resting place of a Roman emperor who was sacrificed to a pagan god by his own subjects. Lasky says that Roman historians tried to cover up the existence of the emperor because it was simply too scandalous to admit that he had been killed by the very people over whom he ruled. Now Lasky might have proof of his existence. But at what cost?

The main reason I watched Specters was the presence of Donald Pleasence. Unfortunately, as was often the case with Pleasence’s post-Halloween films, he doesn’t really get to do much in Specters. He appears in a handful of scenes, and he’s just as intense as always. Rather than being excited about the possibility of having made a major discovery, he seems rather worried about why the tomb was so well hidden in the first place. Pleasence brings his trademark intensity to the role. As always, it’s a joy to listen to the slightly unhinged timbre of his voice. That said, it’s hard not to wish that Pleasence had been given a bigger and more active role. John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, which was released the same year, showed that Pleasence was still capable of being a compelling actor when given the opportunity.

Instead, Specters is largely about Professor Lasky’s assistant, Marcus (John R. Pepper), and his girlfriend, Alice (Trine Michelsen). Alice is an actress shooting a horror movie in Rome, and Specters actually has a fairly clever sequence in which a scene of Alice being chased turns out to be a scene from the movie she’s shooting. For the most part, Alice just wants Marcus to stay home so they can have sex. Unfortunately, Marcus keeps getting called back to the catacombs. The one time they do have sex, we discover that Marcus has an incredibly hairy back, and it kind of ruined the mood for me. I will say that, as someone who owns over a hundred nightshirts, I was jealous of Alice’s collection. The nightshirt with all the months listed on it was to die for.

Opening the tomb releases an evil force in Rome. Lasky and his assistants are targeted, but occasionally the evil force seems to go after anyone who happens to be around. It’s not a particularly well-defined evil force, which occasionally makes the film effective. There’s a scene involving a suddenly erudite beggar that’s actually rather creepy. The film makes frequent use of a wind machine. Whenever the evil force is floating around, a big wind starts up and doors and windows are thrown open or slammed shut. At one point, Alice sinks into a bed, and we’re left to wonder if Freddy Krueger was sealed up in the tomb.

It’s a confusing film, one made up of multiple set pieces that don’t always seem to go together. The incoherence is not necessarily a bad thing. Fulci’s Beyond trilogy and Argento’s Inferno both showed that Italian horror cinema often benefits from dream logic. The main problem is that, with the exception of the underused Donald Pleasence, none of the characters are really interesting enough to hold our attention. The Beyond trilogy benefited from the presence of likable actors like Catriona MacColl and David Warbeck. Inferno may not have always made sense, but Argento was smart enough to populate his dreamscape with people like Daria Nicolodi, Irene Miracle, and Leigh McCloskey. (McCloskey may not have been the greatest actor, but his stolid presence grounded the film.) Specters just feels like a random assemblage of scenes that don’t really belong together. There are a few effective moments, but they don’t add up to much.

That said, it is always good to see Donald Pleasence. And Rome, as always, is lovely.

“I warn you, the hate of a woman can be very bad!”

— Dialogue from Delirium (1987

The 1987 Italian film Delirium is an odd combination of soapy melodrama and giallo horror. Someone is murdering models and taking pictures of their corpses. Some other people are plotting to take over a magazine. Obscene phone calls are received. Recorded taunts are heard. Oh, and one unlucky model is attacked by a swarm of bees.

That’s right — Delirium is the first and probably the only giallo to feature bees used as a deadly weapon.

Gioia (Serena Grande) is a former prostitute-turned-model-turned-men’s-magazine-publisher. When we first meet Gioia, she’s sitting out at her pool and watching a photo shoot. Her neighbor — a teenage boy who is confined to a wheel chair — calls her.

“You make my member hard with desire!” he tells her, “It wants to penetrate your flower and explode!”

Gioia calmly tells him to stop bothering her and then hangs up on him. And really, this scene pretty much establishes everything that we need to know about Gioia. She is a successful businesswoman who is just as comfortable dealing with the pervert next door as she is making high power deals. You think Donald Trump’s ruthless? Well, he’s got nothing on Gioia!

The other thing that you notice about Gioia is that she has an extremely voluptuous figure. There’s not a single scene that isn’t shot to emphasize that fact and yet, the unapologetic pride that Gioia (and actress Serena Grande) took in her body was actually very empowering and one of the better aspects of the film. Far too often, movies associate being busty with either being stupid or slutty and women are told that they have to hide their figure to be taken seriously. (Traditionally, in horror films, it seems like the bigger an actress’s cup size, the less likely she is to survive until the end of the film.) Speaking as someone who shares Gioia’s struggle, I was happy to see a woman with big boobs being portrayed as both an intelligent businesswoman and a tough, strong survivor.

Gioia has more than just the pervert next door to deal with. There’s also the fact that her models are being murdered and she’s receiving photos of their dead bodies in the mail. Who is killing Gioia’s employees? Could it be a rival publisher (played by Capucine)? Could it be Gioia’s neurotic assistant (played by Daria Nicolodi)? Could it be George Eastman, who plays Gioia’s former lover? Actually, it’s made pretty clear that it’s not George Eastman, which is odd when you consider how many movies have featured Eastman as a killer. (Eastman and Grandi also co-starred in the infamous cannibal epic Anthropophagus, in which Eastman was the killer and Grandi was the center of one of the most infamous scenes in the history of Italian horror.) Or could the killer by the pervert next door?

As is typical of films in the giallo genre, most of the murders are filmed from the killer’s point of view. What’s interesting is that, when the killer looks at his victims, he literally sees them as twisted monsters. It’s a neat little technique that leads to scenes like this:

Delirium was directed by Lamberto Bava, who has never quite gotten the attention that he deserves. Despite the fact that he directed such classics as the two Demons films and A Blade In the Dark, I’ve always felt that Lamberto is often overshadowed by the achievements of his father, Mario Bava. However, Lamberto Bava’s films are almost always entertaining when taken on their own terms. Delirium may not reach the heights of A Blade In The Dark or even Demons but it’s still an entertaining giallo. It’s perhaps not the film to use to introduce a newcomer to the genre but, those of us who are familiar with giallo, Delirium is an enjoyably crazed offering.