Coroner’s Corner
Remember When I Hit My Nuts?!!
by John Bikowski
My video suggestion this month is to check out a film called Cemetery Man. Directed by one of Italy’s hottest new talents, this flick somehow made it past American censors without any cuts. Judging by the style and the flair for the grotesque evidenced in Michele Soavi’s past works, I can recommend this film without having seen it. All I can tell you about the story is that it concerns some sort of supernatural guard who must keep the dead from re-crossing the barrier of life. Huh?!! Don’t worry… I’m sure Cemetery Man will deliver the goods. For some strange reason, American film companies usually retitle exotic sounding foreign films with corny new names. For example, Cemetery Man was originally the much cooler sounding Dellamorte Dellamore. The consumer bureaucrats think we’re too stupid to rent anything without a stereotypical horror title.
Soavi’s film debut was 1988’s Stage Fright which involves a group of dancers working all night on a performance where a rape victim seduces her attacker. The dancers are locked in with a homicidal (the best kind) maniac. It seems that the woman who had the key lost it after being lung-punctured by a large blade. This may sound like a standard plot but the intense style is what sets Stage Fright above the usual horror dreck. Highlights include a bisected woman, a guy power-drilled through a door, eerie music, tons of suspense, and some surprising twists.
Also, check out The Sect (retitled for us, The Devil’s Daughter) which stars Kelly Curtis (Jamie Lee’s cuter sister). Kelly is singled out to give birth to the Anti-Christ after she hammers some old dude with her car. You know a film will be good when it begins with colorful water reflections amidst America’s “A Horse With No Name.” Then we are introduced to the Manson-esque leader of the sect as he rattles off satanic Stones lyrics prior to massacring an innocent group of hippies. We then cut to Curtis and the strange tortures she endures. Highlights include a large bug crawling to her brain via the nasal highway, a rape by a giant pelican that turns into a maggot-filled throat ripping, and a face being pulled off by hooks in a wild ritual. The film proceeds like a dream in that not everything makes sense.
Soavi’s final film is The Church, which is a Gothic treatment of people trapped by demonically possessed killers. During the Crusades, a village is slaughtered because it housed the devil’s stigmata. Upon the site, the titular church is built to contain the evil. Modern day renovations unearth the dormant demons and we’re off and bleedin’. While some may find the film hard to follow, it’s ambitiously done by someone with a genuine love for the genre. All of the films mentioned are now available for rent.
In case you’re wondering what the hell is with the title of this article, it refers to the latest laser disc trend that may soon affect home video. The new gimmick is called running audio commentary, wherein the soundtrack is replaced with the comments of actors and/or the director as they view the film. It’s kind of like Mystery Science Theater 3000 done by people who know what really went on. For example, in Re-Animator, you can hear the cast joking and laughing through each scene while remembering who tripped who and what their parents thought of their nude sex scenes, etc. This innovation is great fun for film fans.
