Romano Scavolini's Nightmare

Romano Scavolini's Nightmare (aka 'Nightmares in a Damaged Brain'), now out on DVD via Code Red, has been an enduring favorite of mine. Over the decades, I've consulted it whenever I needed a shot of bleak, and it's always provided the charge I was craving.

The more I watch it, the more it reminds me of another favorite, the superior Clean Shaven ('93), Lodge Kerrigan's amazing odyssey of a schizophrenic man searching for his daughter. Both films are set in muted coastal regions (Nightmares in Florida, Clean Shaven in Long Island, NY), and take full advantage of their regional isolation, and sense of industrial decay. Downbeat and introspective, they'd make quite a double feature, something to slash your wrists by.

Grouped a little too lazily into the 'Slasher' category, Nightmare is a film about a man hunting humans, but it's also a film about his pain and the failure of the establishment to contain him.  As you do, he focuses his murderous desires on a family, and forms a strange type of relationship with a young boy, the family prankster. As this is a horror film, family members end up dead and dismembered, and director Scavolini (working with Tom Savini and Ed French) delivers the gore without restraint.

It's not a perfect film. It's slow in parts (particularly the middle) and the killer's decisions are not clear. Why does he pick this particular family to stalk? Did he once live in their house? Perhaps. Baird Stafford, who plays the killer, does a good job embodying the man with a damaged brain, a brain damaged further harmed by experimental, psychotic drugs. Although the marketing point of this film is graphic violence, it lifts itself out of the slasher ghetto inhabited by swill such as Final Exam, Savage Weekend, Chopping Mall and Prom Night by creating a truly disturbing aura around the killer and providing a sleazy, uneasy atmosphere of hopelessness. And, as noted, the violence is very graphic and features some underage mayhem.

The Code Red DVD features three versions of the movie. The version on the second disk in the best. An unbelievable misstep on the part of the distributor is the inclusion of a 95 minute Italian language interview with the director that is not subtitled (!) Yes, they didn't bother to get subtitles done. A rumor circulating is that somebody who was supposed to do the subs didn't come through with the goods. Come on, how hard would it have been to find someone who spoke Italian? Jesus! With street dates approaching and no subtitles done, wouldn't it have been wise to find someone else to do the job? Or am I too logical?

Gripes aside, it's great to see Nightmare out and about at last.

Way Back When

I have zero interest (perhaps less) in the recent DVD releases of slasher flicks like Final Exam and Sweet Sixteen.

I saw both of those movies in Detroit theatres in the early 80's (at the Showcase Sterling Heights and Northgate, respectively) and they were beyond execrable. Unbelievably boring pieces of shit that deserved eternal oblivion.

Romano Scavolini's '81 Nightmare (aka Nightmares in a Damaged Brain, '81), not yet released on DVD, is another matter entirely. It is one of the bleakest, bloodiest, most interesting slasher flicks ever made, sharing similarities with Clean,Shaven, Angst, Maniac, Henry - Portrait of a Serial Killer, and even Agnes Varda's Vagabond.

It is NOT a masterpiece, but it has a filthy atmosphere of menace and psychosis that counts for something.

Clearly, the film has rights clearance issues. If it didn't, it would be out on DVD.

Released unrated in most US theatrical markets, it is the film that Tom Savini denied ever working on. Stills of Savini on the set of the film are rife. Thanks for being an up-front guy, Tom.

When this double opened, I ditched the horror-loathing ex- for the night and headed to the Northgate for a night of grim horror.

I'd read Russo's Midnight ('82) and liked it...

... and I was bonkers for William Fruet, Funeral Home's director, after being blown away by his The House By The Lake (aka Death Weekend).

Unfortunately, Funeral Home ('80) had minor impact as a horror pic.

Midnight, though wildly uneven, had a strange, sleazy, Pittsburgh vibe that really turned me on. Lawrence Tierney was creepy as a stepdaughter-abusing cop who redeems himself, and it was great to see John Amplas (Martin) on screen again. There is a terrific on-screen decapitation, courtesy of Savini (who didn't deny doing this one), and the film's prologue, in which a young girl is beaten by a mother and her kids, is delightfully moody.

For some outrageous reason, I went and bought the horrible soundtrack, thinking that it would contain some of the film's moody synth score. I was so wrong. It's actually a collection of putrid folk songs including the title song with the lyrics:

"You're own your own, You're all alone, and Midnight's at your door!"

Fuck me!

Complete retitling of Paul Morrissey's Flesh for Frankenstein ('73).

I attended this screening at the Gratiot drive-in. Liked the film a lot. Udo Kier is amazing. Got sore eyes watching the 3-D. That's pretty standard. The format doesn't agree with me.

I spent an hour driving from Franklin to downtown Detroit to attend the Plaza, an old-style grindhouse.

Although it was cut, it was still horror heaven.

Joe D'Amato's The Grim Reaper (aka Anthropophagus, '80) is not a technically polished or well acted movie, but it is a sincere piece of grisly exploitation that spits in the face of "common decency". It has bloody murders, cannibalism, and a vile villain played by George Eastman.

It's like having someone smearing feces on your eyes for a couple of hours.

Can that be a bad thing?

Ask Veronica Moser.

Pulp as a way of life was being redefined once again at the Northgate, my premier pit for sleaze.

Doctor Butcher MD (Medical Deviate), was also known as Zombie Holocaust and Queen of the Cannibals in order to cash in on Cannibal Holocaust.

I enjoyed it immensely.

It's not non-stop gore and dismemberment, but it features a bunch of showstoppers including a face pulverized by a spinning boat propeller. Lots of flesh chomping, too, and other forms of behavior deemed unacceptable by polite society.

Billed with the Doc was Umberto Lenzi's '76 Assault With A Deadly Weapon, a great police actioner that surpassed the Doc for sheer, polished filmmaking.

Still, Doctor Butcher MD ('80) lit my life up for a couple of hours way back when almost thirty years ago.