Profondo rosso (1975)

... aka: Deep Red
... aka: Deep Red Hatchet Murders
... aka: Dripping Deep Red
... aka: Hatchet Murders, The
... aka: Les frissons de l'angoisse (Shivers of Angst)
... aka: Rojo profundo
... aka: Rosso - Die Farbe des Todes (Red: The Color of Death)
... aka: Suspiria Part 2

Directed by:
Dario Argento

Lithuanian psychic Helga Ulmann (Macha Meril) appears at a paranormal presentation taking place in Rome. After she gives a brief demonstration of her powers, she's overcome with feelings of terror as she sees visions of a child singing, blood and death. There's a murderer in the audience. Through her visions, Helga also believes she can identify the psycho. She returns home to gather her thoughts and write down her visions for the police but doesn't get a chance to give anything to them. The psycho has found her. He / she breaks in, murders her with a hatchet and takes her papers. While that's going on, British jazz musician Marcus Daly (David Hemmings) is heading home after a long night of practicing for an upcoming show. He hears Helga's scream and sees the very end of her murderer thought a window, which includes in the usual Argento head-crashes-through-glass climax. Marcus manages to catch a brief glimpse of the raincoat-clad killer running away plus believes the killer stole a painting from the house.

After going through the paces with the police, who naturally question his recollections about the evening's event, Marcus finds himself “fascinated by the whole event” and starts looking into matters all on his own. He gets in way over his head in the process... especially when the killer shows up at his apartment looking for him. Giving him an additional headache is the presence of journalist Gianna Brezzi (Daria Nicolodi), an annoying combination of nosy, overly-peppy journalist and pseudo feminist. She'd like to work with Marcus but, after bruising his ego beating him at arm wrestling, he passes. As a retort, she threatens to start her own parallel investigation and does just that, though the two eventually decide to start helping each other out.

Other characters flutter in and out of the main story, including Marcus' friend and fellow musician Carlo (Gabriele Lavia), a depressed gay drunk with a transsexual lover who tries to discourage Marcus from sticking his nose into the investigation and suggest he leave town, as well as Carlo's kooky mother Marta (Clara Calamai), a former movie star forced to quit the business by her controlling husband. And then there's Professor Giordani (Glauco Mauri), a psychiatrist with an interest in parapsychology who was “keeping” Helga and eventually helps in the investigation, much to his detriment. Children's book author Amanda Righetti (Giuliana Calandra) had written a book that may have inspired the killer. Bardi (Piero Mazzinghi), the caretaker of a certain spooky decaying mansion has an imbalanced daughter named Olga (Nicoletta Elmi) who gets her kicks torturing lizards.

Clues lead Marcus first to a haunting children's song he hears being played when the killer shows up at his place, which then leads to a book on urban legends and folklore, which then leads to an abandoned house that used to be the home of a German ghost story writer who'd long since passed away, which then leads to a school housing some important drawings. As Marcus tries to piece the clues together and avoid being killed himself, a number of the supporting characters get bumped off in gruesome ways that involve a face seriously scalded by hot water, a head getting squashed by a car, decapitation via elevator and some major dental damage after an open mouth is slammed into a mantle and desk, plus a few garden variety stabbings. (The alternate title The Hatchet Murders is a bit misleading as there's actually only one murder by hatchet and the butcher knife used isn't even called a hatchet here in America.)

Profondo rosso is generally considered one of the director's finest films and it's easy to see why. This ably combines an engrossing mystery plot with bloody and elaborately staged murder sequences and has a better screenplay and slightly more developed characters (including a male lead who acts human for a change and exhibits fear and confusion in the proper places) than his usual, plus a unique and memorable (albeit sometimes grating) music score from Giorgio Gaslini and Goblin. Though there's some clunker dialogue (“There's somebody in the house...g...uh... a-absolutely trying to kill me, ya know?”) and it lags a bit here and there, it more than makes up for that with impressive horror / suspense set pieces, which are stylish, imaginatively shot, sometimes pretty startling (two words: creepy doll) and range from good to downright brilliant.

Argento fans will eat up the various camera shots, the fact the camera seldom stays put and odd camera placements throughout, which include several long close-up shots prowling around a table looking at various objects, low level POV shots gliding along the floor, a shot titling into a spinning record album, a shot following a blade down into a victim and an exterior crane shot of a house. The cinematographer was Luigi Kuveiller, who'd previously shot those sleazy, campy Andy Warhol-produced adaptations of Dracula and Frankenstein.

Originally conceived as La tigre dai denti a sciabola (“The Sabre-Toothed Tiger”), this started life as a 500 page (!) script written by Argento, which was then whittled down to around 320 pages with help from Bernardino Zapponi. After shooting was complete, the full running time clocked in at 126 minutes, which isn't hard to believe knowing Argento very well could have spent 30 pages describing a single elaborate camera shot. 126 minutes was deemed too long by many distributors, so it was cut considerably in certain markets. Many feel the 105 minute version actually flows best, as it removes most of the dialogue that has no real bearing on the plot (notably excessive playful banter between Hemmings and Nicolodi) yet retains the gorier moments provided by makeup artists Germano Natali and Carlo Rambaldi.

Having previously seen only the hacked up U.S. version, what I ended up watching this time was the 126 minute version and several scenes really do feel unnecessary and / or go on for too a bit long. While I liked some of the Hemmings / Nicolodi scenes, I certainly wouldn't miss any of the scenes with the dumb police superintendent (Eros Pagni).

After Argento's follow-up Suspiria (1977) hit it big, Deep Red saw a re-release in numerous countries and was even re-titled Suspiria 2 in several places, like Japan. Argento himself oversaw the R-rated reduced cut that was released theatrically here in America and elsewhere. Because over 20 minutes of footage was removed prior to the film being dubbed into English, later DVD / BR releases from distributors like Anchor Bay and Blue Underground present an “uncut version” that's mostly been dubbed in English but with bits of dialogue here and there in Italian.

★★★1/2

Kuutamosonaatti (1988)

... aka: Moonlight Sonata, The

Directed by:
Olli Soinio

I want to start this out by talking about classic Finnish horror cinema. OK, so now that that's done let's move on to... Hey, I'm only kidding. Sort of. There's honestly not a whole lot to talk about here. A wiki page dedicated to Finnish horror has an index containing 6 titles, only two of which were made before 1990. IMDb does a little better job, turning up six pre-1990 feature films and two TV movies. Poking around I was able to find a few more for a grand total of around 10 films. We first have to go all the way back to 1927 with the silent Noidan kirot (“Curses of the Witch”) from director Teuvo Puroo, which is widely considered the first Finnish horror film, though a previous 1923 fantasy film, Rautakylän vanha parooni (“The Old Iron Baron of the Village”), is sometimes considered. While either of those may have been the first, they were also the only genre offering(s) out of them until the ghost film Linnaisten vihreä kamari ("The Green Chamber of Linnais") two decades later. Moving on to 1952 we have a pair; the excellent THE WHITE REINDEER (a cross-over success that won the Best Foreign Language Film Golden Globe and a major award at Cannes) and the OK but less successful THE WITCH. I'm forever grateful that pair exists because 1952 is pretty slim on horror titles otherwise. Two years after those came a ghost comedy (Kummitus kievari / “Ghost Tavern”). And then there was long silence...

The 80s finally rolled around and the Finnish commercial TV network Mainostelevisio offered up the ghost tale Yöjuttu: Merkitty (1984) and the four-part miniseries Painajainen / “Nightmare” (1988), which involves an amnesiac uncovering horrifying secrets about his life. The same year as the latter came this theatrical release from Soinio, who'd previously made the 23-minute monster movie parody Transvestijan tarinoita (“Tales of Transvestia”) back in 1975. There were also a few 90s releases and, in recent years, a couple of fairly well-received genre offerings like Sauna (2008) and Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010). And there you have it folks, a brief overview of Finnish horror to this day. As nice as it is to be able to sum up the horror output of an entire country in just two brief paragraphs, I'm glad all other countries aren't Finland. Otherwise I would have closed up shop here about five years ago.

International fashion model Anni Stark (Tiina Björkman) flies back home to Finland and is hounded by the press as soon as she steps off the plane. See, Anni is not a nice or sweet or even halfway decent young woman. In fact, she's hot headed, foul-mouthed, has a bad temper and is about to get canned by her agency. That's why she's in Finland in the wintertime; to avoid bad press over one of her latest explosions and lay low for a few days. In four days' time she's off to Milan to fulfill another contract. Her agent Carli (Ville-Veikko Salminen) has arranged the trip and has even found an out-of-the-way hotel where no one can find her. When they show up, they find the hotel is remodeling, so the owner sends them off an an even further out-of-the-way skiing cabin located down a long and winding road. Carli then leaves her there and promises he will back in a few days time to personally drive her to the airport for her job in Italy.

Left all alone in the cabin except for her dog (who gets about twice as many adoring close-ups as the human actors), Anni is kept up late her first night by strange, loud noises coming from outside. Little does she realize, but someone's been watching her the entire time. As for her missing panties, the same peeper crept inside while she was in the bathtub and snatched those, too. Thankfully, Anni's kid brother Johannes is supposed to come in and stay with her in another day. She walks to the bus stop the following morning hoping he's there and instead has a strange encounter with a stern old woman (Soli Labbart) and her creepy, pervy adult son Arvo (Kari Sorvali), who also happens to be the panty thief. Arvo warns her to be careful because “the roads are slippery... slippery like a wet pussy,” before pushing his ailing old mum away in her ski-chair. Anni then walks down the road looking for a phone and instead stumbles onto the unkempt farmhouse Arvo shares with his mum and another family member we'll get to here in a bit. Arvo's been following the newspapers and knows exactly who Anni is and about all of the controversies in her life. He tries to take her picture and then grabs her tits and she runs off. He makes a return visit to her cabin later on and she's forced to defend herself with a knife.

Johannes (Kim Gunell), an electronics wiz (which factors into a few later scenes), finally shows up and he and Anni face one horror after another dealing with Arvo and his disturbed family, which not only includes the mother (who likes to beat on her kids) but also a hulking, whack job of a brother with a half-burnt face. He - Sulo (Mikko Kivinen) – speaks in a comically slowed-down ultra-deep voice, fancies himself a wolf and is typically kept locked up in a shack but frequently escapes. Sulo steals Anni's dog and takes him to a snowy cliff where the two of them howl at the moon together. He also chops a TV license inspector on the head with a scythe. Not only are the family bad news, but it seems the entire rest of the town is related to them and refuse to help, including the bus driver who passes through once a day.

Unlike the earlier Finnish horror films I'd seen, which are steeped in the countries folklore and old traditions, this is straightforward, very commercial and completely modern. After starting out on a completely serious note and going on that way for nearly the entire first half, this sadly deteriorates into another blatant retread of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The entire warped family dynamic; disturbed authority figure (a woman this time) with one son who's a talkative weirdo and the other a big, groaning brute, is copied, as well as other scenes like our heroine stumbling into a general store where the owner is roasting some bloody meat and is in cahoots with the family to the mini junkyard of cars (from previous victims) at the whack family's farmhouse. Unwisely carried over is the camp attitude of the second TCM, including 80s-style cornball one-liners like the killer shouting “Time to burn some rubber!” before trying to run our heroes down with a tractor.

Lack of originality and the tonal shifts seriously harm what is otherwise a fairly well-made and nicely shot movie with a few fun ideas, nice scenery and some visual style. The most amusing bit is that Anni's dog takes to the wolf-brother, views him as being the leader of the pack and starts following him around everywhere. However, little is done with that concept aside from it making for one good sight gag. There's much less violence, blood and gore here than in most other films of this type and the cast is pretty mediocre aside from the underused Labbart and Sorvali, who makes really great evil faces. Either way, aside from the location, there's not much to differentiate this from dozens of other backwoods / hillbilly horrors flick out there.

This was successful enough in its homeland to be followed by a sequel from the same director and featuring the same crazy family: Kadunlakaisijat / Kuutamosonaatti 2 (1991), which has been given the English language title Army of Zombies. In Germany, these films were released as Muttertag 2 - Die Söhne sind zurück (“Mother 2: The Sons Are Back”) and Muttertag 3 to be sequels to Troma's Mother's Day (1980), which was released as Muttertag 1 and is yet another movie this has a lot in common with.

★★