Absurd (1981)

People have written so much about Joe D'Amatos Absurd (aka Horrible aka Rosso Sangue), so I will try to keep it short. First of all, the Mya-release is a nice release. People are just silly talking shit about it. The print is nice, has some few scratches - but overall good. The vhs-parts are terrible, but we're talking about seconds here. Nothing be a cry-baby about. When big "respected" companies do the same thing people always seem to understand. It's just Mya that get's the shit. The only complaint, but it's not the first time, is that they haven't included english subtitles to the italian language track. It has probably to do with rights and rights cost money. You know the rest.

I like it, but the problem is that it's to banal. To basic. It dosen't offer anything new at all, and is a quite pale copy of the american slashers. It's far from the fantastic atmosphere that Anthropophagus (time to rewatch that now!) delivered, and the gore is plenty but very primitive and a bit uninspired. The good thing is that it looks great - as (often anyway) usual with D'Amato and has a great leading man with George Eastman as the killer. He's fucking big and looks scary. I would run if I saw that guy coming towards me in a dark house. Edmund Purdom is okey, but has done better before and after. The rest is just meat hanging around to be eaten by the big bad beard-man. One of the pieces of meat is Michele Soavi by the way. He's been killed in every famous italian directors movie now I think.

Yeah, the gore. The most famous part, with the electric saw, is a (dead) pig being cut in close-up (you can even see the nose or the neck of it on the side of the "head"). I guess one of the other impalings is made the same way. I can live with it, but it's a lazy approach to special effects and it never really looks good, even if it probably looks good in theory. ¨

But it's a movie that everyone interested in italian horror should own. Just don't expect a masterpiece.