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The cinema auditorium as baroque cathedral and crypt, predicted by Nostradamus and supervised by Dario Argento. On the subway between graying biddies and teenage punkettes, chased by the steel-masked stalker who turns out to be a pitchman for a preview screening, the postmodern heroine (Natasha Hovey). From the outside the Metropol theater looks like a forbidding fortress, its lobby is neon-lit with mingled mementos like the medieval suit of armor that wields a samurai sword astride a motorcycle. Showtime: "A horror movie. I knew it!" The feature presentation is an Evil Dead pastiche that spills over, the two sides of the screen are blurred as an audience member rips through it, oozing and possessed. (The genteel concurrency of The Purple Rose of Cairo is part of the joke.) Gore plus heavy metal, a lacerating doomsday satire for the middle of the Eighties. Goya's "sleep of reason" is quoted, the marvelously gooey effects produce plenty of fanged goblins to go with it, gleefully clawing at the buffs in the aisles. The usherette is the evil little sprite of Twitch of the Death Nerve and Flesh for Frankenstein all grown-up (Nicoletta Elmi), Tony the Pimp (Bobby Rhodes) cuts a bit of Romero swath before tumbling off the balcony. Lamberto Bava films all of this opulently, honoring the producer as well as his father—glowing crimson lights in darkened corridors, diseased yellow filters, the unholy blue shaft emanating from the projection room. The charge of the cavalry turns out to be a carload of joyriding cokeheads listening to the soundtrack. "This shit'll wake up the dead!" The coda evokes The Fearless Vampire Killers, then promptly blasts a hole in it. With Paola Cozzo, Urbano Barberini, Karl Zinny, Fiore Argento, Geretta Giancarlo, and Michele Soavi.
--- Fernando F. Croce |