Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop  BEYOND THE DARKNESS – Venerable Italian hack Joe D'Amato probably only made three or four good movies, maybe fewer if you insist on discounting 'Anthropophagous'. Out of that vanishingly rare bunch, this one is perhaps his 'masterpiece'. 'Beyond the Darkness' is gutter-lurking slime in celluloid form, but it's effective, and still manages to get under the skin after all these years. For anyone who hasn't had the pleasure, it's about a grief stricken taxidermist who can't handle the (black magic related?) death of his beloved fiance, so he runs off with her corpse and prepares the slab back at his mansion. He also finds time for a bit of pseudo-incest with his housekeeper and some slashing of young women. 'Beyond The Darkness' has the dumb, trashy quality of much bargain basement Italo rip-off cinema of its era, but somehow manages to attain quite a grim, sordid atmosphere, leaving any cheap laughs (like perhaps those at the expense of its awful small town nightclub scene) ringing pretty hollow in the end. The twisted, obsessive elements are really out in front – when lover boy does his DIY autopsy on his dearly departed, he bites deep into her engorged heart. Even more indelible are scenes like the one where taxidermy guy, whimpering, sucks the breast of his gaunt looking maid. 'Beyond The Darkness's universe is narrow, bleak and squalid, inhabited by completely unlikeable characters who are pathetic at the same time as they're hideous. Thinking about it now, although I mentioned it shares a lot with B movies made in Italy at the time, there really isn't a lot to compare it to. It doesn't exactly feel personal, but it's certainly unique. Foetid and vile without being particularly explicit, 'Beyond the Darkness' gets a full-on recommendation from me.
ABSURD – Another good JD'A flick, 'Absurd' is basically 'Anthropophagous part 2'. A lot of people seem to dislike the first 'Anthro...'. I can sort of see why, it's a pretty dumb flick and could potentially come across as quite dull, being one of the ultimate 'characters wandering around in the dark' type affairs. For some reason its atmosphere just clicks with me though, and I'm not ashamed to say that it's definitely somewhere in my Euro-grot top ten. 'Absurd' is a very different kind of movie. D'Amato seems to have been going for a more 'American' feel, and tries to import the basic elements of the original into a small-town slasher type framework. He also tightens up the pace and ladles on the gore. It works. E Purdom is some kind of vicar-assassin who's been charged with tracking down lumbering killer George Eastman in a trans-continental manhunt that's ended in Nowheresville USA. Eastman is apparently the outcome of some weird experiment, maybe involving the Vatican, which has resulted in him gaining superhuman powers of regeneration. He goes on a killing spree and ends up the house of a little girl with knackered legs. 'Absurd' is pretty great. Early European attempts to turn the screw and do imitation slashers rather than Gialli are always fun and slightly (or very) weird – see the likes of 'Bloody Moon' et al. 'Absurd' can be viewed along these lines. Effort has been made to make it fit with a 'Halloween'-ish template, but it's steeped in that far stranger, Euro-atmosphere. The soundtrack has a lot to do with 'Abusrd's basic 'feel', being a classic Italo-prog nightmare which seems perpetually on the brink of a cathedral orgasm. There are silly bits such as the scene where Purdom reveals his dog collar and the local detective blurts “turns out you're a priest!”, but 'Absurd' also makes room for the sheer dreaminess of the sequence where the little girl with knackered legs crawls and cowers whilst a blind George Eastman flails around after her in a house full of booming Messiaen-type organ music. And who could top the climax, where the girl decaps the beast and proudly brandishes Eastman's blood spattered mug? See it if you haven't already. |