Buio Omega (1979)

... aka: Beyond the Darkness

... aka: Blue Holocaust

... aka: Buried Alive

... aka: Demencia (Dementia)

... aka: Final Darkness, The

... aka: Folie sanglante (Bloody Madness)

... aka: House 6: El terror continua (House 6: The Terror Continues)

... aka: In quella casa buio omega (In That House... Blue Omega)

... aka: Mroczny instynkt (Dark Instincts)

... aka: Saddo

... aka: Sado - Stoß das Tor zur Hölle auf (Sado: Open the Gate to Hell)

Directed by:

Joe D'Amato

Along with Lucio Fulci, Ruggero Deodato and perhaps a few others, D'Amato was one of a handful of Italian genre directors to get a huge boost in international popularity during the VHS era. In D'Amato's case, that popularity existed almost exclusively because of one title, this disturbing little number, which became one of the most notorious genre films of the entire decade on the home video market. Here in America, it was given an unrated theatrical run by Aquarius Releasing in 1984, followed by a big box VHS release from ThrillerVideo in 1986, both under the new title Buried Alive. Advertisements for the film were very memorable, with the theatrical poster promising such lovely sights as "acid bath revenge," "savage dismemberments," "pails of entrails" and women being torn "limb from limb" and getting "chewed to death," while the VHS box featured a huge yellow "WARNING" sticker on the front, followed by a disclaimer on the back stating "This motion picture is one of the most violent films ever made. There are scenes of sadistic cruelty graphically shown. If the presentation of disgusting and graphic material upsets you, please do not view this film." Of course that "warning" resulted in anyone who read it immediately snatching the film up and heading straight to the counter.

While D'Amato had other films on the market that received a bit of notoriety; most notably The Grim Reaper (1980) and Absurd / Monster Hunter (1981), both of which were prosecuted video nasties in the UK, and several entries in the Emanuelle series, none achieved quite the infamy this one did. So was all that hoopla warranted? Sure. While there have been countless more graphic and disgusting films made since 1979, placed within the context of when this was made, this is pretty strong stuff.

Frank Wyler (Kieran Canter) is a lonely young taxidermist who inherited a ton of money when his parents passed away in car accident and lives in a large gated villa (more like a compound) with his, shall we say, very dedicated housekeeper, Iris (Franca Stoppi). Frank's fallen madly in love with Anna Völkl (Cinzia Monreale) but, unfortunately, she's on her deathbed. Frank ensures her that "Death is not going to separate us" while giving her a final kiss... and boy does he mean it! In order to keep her fresh, he sneaks her injections of formaldehyde before she's buried. After the funeral, he sneaks into the graveyard with a flashlight, crowbar, shovel and sack, digs up her corpse and throws it in the back of his van.

On his way back home, he has to pull over to change a flat tire. An obnoxious, chubby tourist named Jan (Lucia D'Elia), who's been hitchhiking around the country, hops into his vehicle and passes out after smoking a joint. Frank returns home and leaves the girl in the van in his garage while he gets to work preserving Anna's corpse, which involves slicing her open with a scalpel, yanking out her guts, pulling out her organs, replacing her eyeballs with glass ones and sucking out her brains through tubes stuck in her skull through her nostrils (!) It does not involve eating her heart, though he does that, anyway. When Jan wakes up, stumbles upon the gory scene and starts attacking Frank, he pins her down, rips off her fingernails with pliers and suffocates her with a rag.

Soon enough, Iris finds out what Frank's up to. Instead of going to the police, she opts to help him out. After all, Iris is in love with Frank herself and was always jealous of his relationship with Anna, even to the point of trying to speed along her demise by enlisting the aid of a sorceress to kill her using voodoo dolls! Her and Frank's very bizarre relationship includes her comforting him by whipping out her tit and breastfeeding him (!) and helping him dismember corpses with a meat cleaver and dissolving them in acid baths. Now that Anna is dead but of no real threat to her, she helps dress her corpse, paints her fingernails, makes her look presentable and is even willing to give Frankie Boy a hand so he can get off ogling her corpse. Yikes.

Frank soon claims another victim. He brings an injured female jogger (Anna Cardini) back home, seduces her onto the bed he shares with his dead girlfriend, rips out her throat with his teeth and then eats the skin. He and Iris then throw the (still-living) girl into an oven and burn her alive. Their cozy little arrangement is threatened by a number of people, including a pair of police detectives (who thankfully barely factor into the film), an older gentleman (Sam Modesto) who starts snooping around, taking photos and occasionally breaking into the villa and Anna's lookalike sister, Elena (also played by Monreale), who shows up to say goodbye at a very inopportune time.

It's easy to see why this became such a favorite of gore-hounds and sleazy exploitation fans. There's plenty of bloody violence (a crotch is stabbed, a cheek is bitten off, a head and limbs are hacked, eyeballs gets ripped out with bare hands...), perversity, tastelessness and nudity, with three women going full frontal, including a blonde Frank picks up at a disco who comes back to his home and immediately jumps into the bathtub for some strange reason. There's also a pretty great Goblin score to complete the package.

Apparently having a leading role in an internationally-released film like this didn't do Canter's career any favors. He was appearing in hardcore sex films like Erotic Flash and The Bisexual Lover almost immediately afterward. He also played Satan in the filmed-in-Italy The Devil in Mr. Holmes (1987), which was the final film John Holmes made prior to passing away from AIDS in 1988. The female stars seemed to fair a bit better. Stoppi, who gives the best performance here by a country mile, went on appear in a number of Bruno Mattei films, like The Other Hell and Women's Prison Massacre, which some viewers may view as being only a small step up from porn. Monreale (who was sometimes billed as "Sarah Keller") would act for Lucio Fulci in three films, as well as Dario Argento and others, and is still acting today.

For decades, no one seemed to realize that this is actually a remake of a long-forgotten 1966 Psycho-inspired chiller called Il terzo occhio / THE THIRD EYE. That film, which starred a young Franco Nero and Erika Blanc, plays out almost identically to this one save for the ending. Naturally, the 1966 film features no explicit nudity or graphic gore like this re-do, but it surprisingly does maintain nearly the same level of perversity.

Original Italian posters featured a phony quote attributed to Alfred Hitchcock (who passed away in 1980) singing the film's praises! Even though this was primarily known as Buried Alive (a bit of a misleading title) in the U.S. through the VHS era, it's become much better known as of late as Beyond the Darkness; the title used for most of the subsequent DVD and Blu-ray releases from companies like Shriek Show and Severin. In Spain, it was released on VHS as House 6: El terror continua ("House 6: The Terror Continues") and it was re-titled and re-released in Italy to try to trick viewers into thinking it was an Evil Dead sequel.

★★★

Stage Fright (1987)

... aka: Aquarius
... aka: Bloody Bird
... aka: Deliria
... aka: Sound Stage Massacre
... aka: StageFright: Aquarius
... aka: StageFright: Theater des Todes
... aka: Théâtre de la peur, Le (Theater of Death)

Directed by:
"Michael" (Michele) Soavi

The same year he was second unit director on Dario Argento's similarly-themed OPERA (1987), Michele Soavi made his own stage theater-set slasher flick called Deliria. For the American release it was re-titled Stage Fright, which caused a little confusion with another 80s slasher flick with a theater setting from Australia called Nightmares (1980), which had also been issued on VHS as STAGE FRIGHT. Regardless of what title people saw it under (Aquarius, The Bloody Bird and Sound Stage Massacre were just a few of the other titles), it was the film that put the director on the radar of horror fans worldwide. Prior to this, he'd been mentored by a whole host of notable Italian horror / exploitation filmmakers; serving as an actor, writer and / or assistant director on films made by Lamberto Bava, Lucio Fulci, Joe D'Amato and others. It was the Argento connection though that echoed strongest; the two men had worked on over half-a-dozen projects throughout the 80s, and inevitable comparisons were drawn between Soavi's visual style and Argento's. Argento however was not at all involved in the production of Soavi's feature film debut. He'd actually been recommended for this job by D'Amato, who also produced the film. The screenplay was from "Lew Cooper;" an alias for sometimes actor / sometimes writer George Eastman, who's probably best known to horror buffs for playing the cannibal-killer in THE GRIM REAPER (1980); another D'Amato film.

The action centers around a minor stage production at a small theater called "The Night Owl," which is being put together by director Peter Connors (David Brandon). Peter is desperate for a hit (and money) and has concocted a "controversial" story line about a killer in a giant owl headdress who is raped by one of his resurrected female victims. He's also a pretentious prick who constantly screams at and berates his cast and crew and demands more "Sex... S-E-X!" from his nubile lead actress Alicia (Barbara Cupisti), who's at her wit's end with him. Other expected theater types are around, including sleazy / pushy producer Ferrari (Piero Vida), backstabbing diva Laurel (Mary Sellers), Peter's harried assistant Mark (Martin Philips), bitchy queen Brett ("John Morghen" / Giovanni Lombardo Radice), dancer Corinne ("Lori Parrel" / Loredana Parrella) and Sybil (Jo Ann Smith) and Danny (Robert Gligorov), a couple of actors dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. After Alicia injures her ankle, she and wardrobe mistress Betty (Ulrike Schwerk) sneak off to the nearest hospital to get it treated. They end up at a mental asylum instead, where psycho Irving Wallace (Clain Parker), who murdered sixteen people and chopped them up into little pieces, is being temporarily housed. Irving manages to kill an orderly, escapes the building and hides out in the backseat of Betty's car when they head back to the theater.

Not long after they return, Betty is found outside with a pick-axe through her head. The police are called in to investigate but there's no trace of the killer anywhere, so the show must go on. Peter decides to make some alterations to their play to cash in on the publicity of both the escaped murderer and Betty's murder, and rushes to get it all started. With a few police officers (played by Mickey Knox and the director) stationed outside just in case, Peter organizes an over-night practice session with his chief cast and crew. Naturally, the killer hasn't really gone anywhere and is just hiding out inside the theaters waiting to strike. He murders the guy playing the killer in the play, steals his owl mask and then begins bumping everyone off one by one. No one can get out of the building because there's just one exit (gee, talk about your fire hazards); an impenetrable steel door that can only be opened by a key that has turned up missing.

Though the film has its fans, and its moments, overall it's mostly just an average, watchable, unexceptional film in its category. For the entire first hour we're treated to little of interest: the plot is ordinary, the dialogue is terrible, the characters are annoying / unlikable stereotypes (not helped any by the awful English dubbing) and the whole thing plays out in an extremely predictable fashion. There's a great music score (from Simon Boswell), decent cinematography and art direction and some blood to help us along, though. Numerous victims are stabbed, a few are axed, an eyeball gets gouged, an arm and head get chopped off, a body is sawed in half, someone is set on fire and, since the theater also happens to have a woodworking shop inside, the killer even manages to get his hands on an electric drill and a chainsaw. Once everyone but our heroine is killed off, the film begins to improve significantly, with nicely stylized and composed shots and some suspenseful cat-and-mouse moments. Particularly good is a sequence where our heroine is under the stage trying to quietly retrieve a key wedged in a crack while the killer sits in a chair right above her with the theater's feline mascot Lucifer sitting on his lap.

Other scenes in the final half hour are lessened somewhat by idiocy. A good example is when the killer corners Alicia up on some scaffolding, gets knocks off and is left dangling from a wire and trying to climb back up. Our heroine, who has an axe in her hands, frantically begins chopping the wire when she could just as easily chop him and end it all. After the killer falls, she just drops the axe for no reason and walks back down to where the psycho is,  completely unarmed. A final "shock" scene was also grafted on at the very end that's really lame.

Though Stage Fright cost less than a million dollars to make, it was a theatrical flop in Italy. Here in the U.S. it received a very limited big screen release in 1989 before being issued to VHS later that same year by Imperial Entertainment. Anchor Bay was the first to get it out onto DVD and it has since been released on numerous other labels. Soavi went on to make La chiesa / The Church (1989), La setta / "The Sect" (1991; U.S. title = The Devil's Daughter) and the cult favorite Cemetery Man (1994), but has since pretty much bowed out of the horror genre. He even passed up the opportunity to direct From Dusk Till Dawn in 1995 during his hiatus and now mostly directs Italian TV movies.

★★1/2