Dark Glasses - Dario Argento - 2022

★★★★★- Another Nightmare on Film Street challenge movie. This one for Italian films. Argento, the master of Italian horror, has a new film so that was an easy choice. A true return to form for him. Loved it.

Gist is a guy who is out there killing prostitutes. One played by Ilenia Pastorelli, a very pretty lady, loses her sight in a car accident that results when the killer pushes her car into oncoming traffic. Her car hits and orphans a Chinese kid. 

She eventually goes to visit the kid in an orphanage. He escapes and they make a deal. He’ll be her guide if she lets him stay there. Eventually, they get to tracking down the killer to get their revenge.

Like what they have going on here, the female lead and the Chinese kid. That is until the kid calls the killer thinking it's a cop the killer murders cop. By the by, this features a lot of incompetent Italian cops. You don't say, right? Anyway, the kid tells the killer where they are hiding out. Spoiler. Kids are fucking stupid. 

This all leads to a cool scene where her and the kid work together to try to shoot the killer. 

Another cool scene comes when Pastorelli’s character gets lost in the woods and feels her way to a building. Once there, she accidentally turns the lights on and has to get them off before the killer shows.

It becomes clear at one point that Argento doesn't know much/anything about snakes.

Great dog movie. Good girl. Also, it is a positive portrayal of sex work. That’s sweet. Like Dressed to Kill, but not transphobic.

Inferno - Dario Argento - 1980

★★★- Found it pretty boring. Beautifully shot but the action is meh. Not a lot happens. Style over substance. Was sort of a chore to get through. 

Didn’t like the cat attack scene. Giving little baby kitties a bad name. 

In typical Argento/giallo fashion, when I think the movie is wrapping it up, I check the time remaining and there’s still a half hour left. Gotta save room for the 17 twists you tack on to the end, I guess. 

There is a guy in this movie that has the most insane unibrow of anyone I’ve ever seen (yet still somehow doesn’t run away with the most absurd eyebrows in the movie award). He makes Anthony Davis look like one of us normals. He has more hair between his eyes so that he does on his head. Plus he is a cat killer. So yeah pretty much hate this movie.

The Cat O’Nine Tails - Dario Argento - 1971

★★★★ - No cats in this movie. I feel cheated. Still pretty good though.

Karl Malden is the big name in the movie. He plays a former newspaper man. The main character, portrayed by one James Franciscus (sort of a cross between Charlton Heston and Burt Lancaster), is a reporter forced to play detective after people start dying horribly with the police doing nothing, per use in the genre.

My favorite procedural or spy movies are the ones where a journalist or some other dude is thrown into the shit. Obviously some romanticizing/daydreaming on my end. The one last job, old guy movie doesn’t hold a candle to that shit.

Malden is Mr. Magoo I’ve decided. He is literally a blind detective in this movie. Fun facts about this guy. He grew up in Gary, Indiana. He won an Oscar for A Streetcar Named Desire. He was married to his wife for 71 years. Also, he seems to have some weird shit going on with a little girl in the movie. Says some shit like, “I don’t have any relatives. She doesn’t have any parents. We need each other.” Um, gross.

Get a good death by train murder. A paparazzi photographer gets a photo of it. It’s chaos, obviously, in the paparazzi or somewhere like, “oh shit, the starlet!“ And then go take photos of her forgetting about the guy cut in half. But then the picture is on the front page. Murder as it’s happening is some Pulitzer shit.

There is great I’m comfortable barber saying. Reporter guy is getting a straight razor shave after he wrote the murderer could’ve been a barber. The barber then plays fast and loose with a weapon next to his jugular. But then he explains why it couldn’t have been a barber so everything’s good.

Demons - Lamberto Bava (Cowritten by Dario Argento) - 1985

★★★★- Yeah, even though it’s called “Demons“, I thought it was giallo just based on the director and it being dubbed and all that shit. Adjacent, I guess you could say. This is full on supernatural horror. 

Gist is a mask causes a zombie outbreak at a movie premiere. Love a movie within a movie. The mask is completely unexplained, which is interesting. I like movies that just throw you in it like this. Anyway, the mask is featured in the movie and causes a zombie outbreak. If you know that, you know, maybe don’t bring it to the premier people to touch and what not. 

When shit goes down in the theater people don’t really notice because the screaming on the screen drowns out the real screams. Once a zombie/demon (these terms are interchangeable here) busts through the screen, it is too late. Obviously inspired the opening scene from Scream 2. 

Zombie kills are nuts. OG zombie vs. samurai sword movie. Plus some cool zombie vs. helicopter blade action.

Love the scene where a guy screams “smash everything“ repeatedly before smashing everything. He seems to be a pimp, maybe. He’s the only one who knows how to deal with the situation. Gives some orders and when people don’t follow them, he tells them they aren’t worth a shit. I identify, bra. These people get him killed. A real shame. 

Overall, super solid and at times legit terrifying with a lot of Cronenberg-esque body horror. If you’re looking for a disgusting, fast 90-minute movie with a killer punk/hair metal soundtrack, and lots of twists and turns, this has you covered.

Trauma - Dario Argento - 1993

★★★--It's no Deep Red. I don't think there is any way to take it seriously. I don't think any idea got thrown out. I loved it!

Gist is the main dude (sort of a combo of James Spaider and Tony Goldwyn) sees a young woman (the lovely Asia Argento) about to kill herself on the ledge of a bridge. He talks her out of it and she eventually lives with him. This girl is like 16 and in some clinic for mentally troubled kids. It's called the Faraday Clinic--basically a decapitation-based sex cult. Turns out she is bulimic which is more or less what the movie is about with some crazy murders thrown in there for fun. 

I like when the dude finds out the girl is bulimic, his friend at the TV studio he works at tells him all about her "anorexia" with such authority. "How do you know some much about it?" "I watch Oprah and Donahue." So a real expert. Not sure how we are supposed to take this, but however we are, it is hilarious. This guy is actually supposed to provide some insight and he got it from watching a few episodes of a talk show. Or, he is supposed to be an idiot with no idea what he is talking about but the main guy takes him seriously. Either way, dude takes this complete nonsense to heart. 

She is staying with him and is obviously infatuated. Should obviously know this, maybe does, but still brings this random coworker of his home to fuck with his door open. He seems to be a groomer type guy--yeah, a pretty unlikeable protagonist--trying to fuck with her mind while white knighting her. Obviously, this is a contemporary interpretation. He does end up having sex with her, by the by. Yeah. 

There is a kid in this movie, this little dork, that I hate so much it is alarming. He almost kills himself when he wraps the complicated murdering tool--this like drill with a wire loop on it that decapitates people--around his neck. When he is interrupted from self-annihilation, he kills this little lizard by squeezing it to death. Fuck this fucking turd. I can't even look at him. Absolutely no need for him in this movie. Also, Argento loves a slow decapitation. 

Finding these movies have these complicated, impossible-to-follow MacGuffiny subplots that speed the action along. Like the movie I watched last night had a bunch of nonsense about chromosomes indicating a propensity for violence and this being world-changing, this in the 1970s, long before DNA testing. This movie is similar with this whole Faraday Clinic/anorexia/main dude saving this young girl business. Clinic just keeps picking her up, she keeps getting broken out, people keep coming for them. This repeats throughout the movie multiple times. I assume this is all metaphorical. 

At some point Brad Dourif shows up. You are instantly like, oh, yeah, he's probably the killer. I won't say if he is or not, but you know it based on reputation. He doesn't disappoint and dials it up a time or two.  

Oh, and by the way, the "trauma" the movie refers to would indeed be the most traumatic thing to ever happen to anyone if it were real. In this bananas flick, the sheer impossibility of it it is so goddamned hilarious. Sorry if you watch it and whatever happens happened to you, lol.