BEYOND THE DOOR (Italy - 1974; US release 1975) Directed by Oliver Hellman (Ovidio G. Assonitis) and R. Barrett (Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli). Written by Oliver Hellman (Ovidio G. Assonitis), Antonio Troisio, R. Barrett (Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli), Giorgio Marini, Aldo Crudo, Alex Rebar and Christopher Cruise. Cast: Juliet Mills, Richard Johnson, Gabriele Lavia, Nino Segurini, Elizabeth Turner, Barbara Fiorini, David Colin Jr., Luigi Marturano. (R, 98 mins/108 mins) When THE EXORCIST became a worldwide phenomenon in late 1973 and into 1974, it didn't take long for countless imitations, mostly from Italy, to spew forth. The most famous of these Italian ripoffs was BEYOND THE DOOR, which managed to fuse together elements of both THE EXORCIST and ROSEMARY'S BABY and, with the help of a memorably terrifying TV spot, became a surprise hit when it opened in the US over the spring and summer of 1975. It also infamously caught the attention of Warner Bros., who sued the producers and US distributor Film Ventures for copyright infringement. The case was eventually settled and BEYOND THE DOOR was never pulled from distribution, unlike ABBY, a 1974 blaxploitation EXORCIST knockoff that was withdrawn from circulation and hasn't been legitimately seen in decades, though poor-quality presentations of it aren't hard to find on YouTube and torrent sites. None of the other Italian EXORCIST ripoffs--among them 1974's THE ANTICHRIST (released in the US as THE TEMPTER in 1978), 1974's THE TORMENTED (released in the US in 1978 and rechristened for cable and home video in 1981 as THE EERIE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW), 1975's THE NIGHT CHILD, 1975's THE RETURN OF THE EXORCIST, aka CRIES AND SHADOWS (released in the US in 1977 as THE POSSESSOR), 1975's THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM (the retooled version of Mario Bava's 1973 film LISA AND THE DEVIL, featuring added possession scenes with Elke Sommer being exorcised by priest Robert Alda)--or the 1975 Spanish knockoff EXORCISM with Paul Naschy and the 1974 German copycat MAGDALENA, POSSESSED BY THE DEVIL (released in the US in 1976 as BEYOND THE DARKNESS), faced any legal action from Warner Bros. And though some of the them took a long time to get to the US, the fad pretty much died out in Europe by 1977, with only a few sexploitative stragglers like 1978's softcore OBSCENE DESIRE and 1979's MALABIMBA, the latter a product of Italy's short-lived determination to make horror/porno crossovers a thing.
But it's BEYOND THE DOOR that remains the signature Italian EXORCIST ripoff, and it's just been released in a comprehensive, limited-edition Blu-ray box set from Arrow, because physical media is dead. It's been out on DVD and Blu before from Code Red, and some of those extras are carried over here, but Arrow has done a magnificent job with its 2K restoration of the 108-minute European version, titled THE DEVIL WITHIN HER, and the 98-minute US cut (you also get a poster and a 56-page booklet with essays). Juliet Mills stars as Jessica Barrett, a wife and mother of two who finds she's unexpectedly pregnant with a third, something that wasn't really in the plans of her record producer husband Robert (Gabriele Lavia). Soon, the fetus is growing at an alarming rate, and she begins vomiting blood and suffering from erratic mood swings. Her young son Ken (David Colin, Jr) witnesses her levitating in the middle of the night, while daughter Gail (Barbara Fiorini) goes to check on her only to be greeted with a grin as Jessica's head turns completely around, amidst other disturbing, inexplicable activity. At the same time, Robert notices he's being followed by a serious-looking mystery man named Dimitri (Richard Johnson), who says he knows what's happening to Jessica and insists he's the only one who can help her.
BEYOND THE DOOR opening in Toledo, OH on 8/15/1975
BEYOND THE DOOR might shamelessly crib from THE EXORCIST's highlight reel, but it's got plenty of its own wacky ideas. It seems Dimitri and Jessica were once lovers long before she met Robert. And in what turned out to be a real relationship-killer, she left him when he took her to a black mass where she was supposed to be the sacrifice. Yes, Dimitri is a Satanist who promised Jessica to the Devil, and the Devil--who frequently taunts Dimitri in voiceover--is pissed-off at Dimitri's incompetence and wants restitution in the form of Jessica's baby. And he's given Dimitri only a few days to procure it or he's going to die. As Jessica's possession and pregnancy grow more intense--complete with the mandatory demonic voice, green puke, and various obscenities ("Get out of here, you piece of shit!," Lick the vile whore's vomit!" etc, etc), along with a craving for discarded banana peels--Dimitri manages to convince Robert to let him tend to Jessica, though it's only a desperate effort to get the child. It's an interesting approach in that the "exorcist" figure is there not out of the sense of spiritual altruism to save the possessed but rather, just to save his own sorry ass, and to their credit, Mills (who had recently co-starred with Jack Lemmon in Billy Wilder's AVANTI) and Johnson (THE HAUNTING) both appear to be taking this thing seriously and aren't coasting through for a quick paycheck.
Johnson imbues his rather silly dialogue ("The child...must be born!") with a generous amount of Royal Shakespeare Company gravitas, and Mills, the daughter of Oscar-winning actor John Mills and the older sister of early '60s Disney star Hayley Mills, really brings her A-game to a decidedly lowbrow production that was perhaps a tad beneath the family name ("Oh, I doubt Daddy ever saw this," she jokes on one of the ported-over commentaries). The possession histrionics aren't quite as intense as THE EXORCIST (there's no crucifix bit here, though there is a weird moment when Jessica kisses her young son for a uncomfortably long time), but their effectiveness is given a significant boost by an unnervingly bass-heavy sound design and by Mills' total commitment. The scene where she sits in a chair asking doctor and family friend George (Nino Segurini) "Who are you?" in a deep, guttural voice while Jessica seems to be internally fighting off the demon, quickly going back and forth in rapid-fire fashion from possessed to normal ("Help me, I'm so scared"), with Mills employing just slight changes in her facial expressions that you manage to see her through the contact lenses, the horrific makeup, and the chunky green vomit caking on her chin, is some legitimately terrific acting on her part.
BEYOND THE DOOR in Toledo, OH on 8/15/1975
Mills and Johnson class up the joint, but at the end of the day, BEYOND THE DOOR is still tacky as hell, particularly the finale where Dimitri is pounding on her very pregnant belly as the devil instructs him to "reach inside her and pull it out!" Shot in San Francisco with interiors done back in Rome, the film was the brainchild of Egyptian-born Italian exploitation producer Ovidio G. Assonitis (THE VISITOR, PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING), who co-wrote and co-directed under the pseudonym "Oliver Hellman," which he would employ a few more times, most notably on the 1977 Italian JAWS ripoff TENTACLES. Up to this time, Assonitis had a few producer credits (1972's MAN FROM DEEP RIVER, 1974's SUPER STOOGES VS. THE WONDER WOMEN), but BEYOND THE DOOR marked his first directing effort, and he shared duties with cinematographer Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli, who hid under the alias "R. Barrett." Both were among seven (!) credited screenwriters, which included Alex Rebar, who would secure his place in B-movie history with the title role in 1977's THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN. Assonitis and D'Ettorre Piazzoli manage to create some scattered images that get under your skin throughout, whether it's the freakish grin on Mills' face during the head spin, or the unexpected use of Sam Peckinpah-style freeze-frames during a demonic fit, or an optical effect where one eye stares straight ahead while the other looks in every direction. With a budget of only $400,000, a good chunk of which likely went to Mills and Johnson, the effects--supervised by Wally Gentleman, who worked on Douglas Trumbull's crew on 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and has the most fake Italian pseudonym-sounding name that somehow isn't--are crude but they get the job done.
But there's a lot of quirky touches that don't always work, especially the antics of Jessica's two foul-mouthed kids (their nickname for their dad is "Asshole"), like Gail's obsession with owning over a dozen copies of Erich Segal's Love Story or Ken constantly drinking cans of Campbell's pea soup through a straw, an obvious nod to the colorful prop used for possessed Regan's puking scenes in THE EXORCIST. The film also opens with an offscreen Satan welcoming the audience and introducing the film like an avuncular TV host. When Film Ventures cut ten minutes out of the film for its US release, one of the first things to go had to be a bizarre, nonsensical scene late in the film where Robert is out walking around and is followed by an intimidating guy playing a flute with his nose. This seemingly goes on forever and only seems to be there so Assonitis can show off more San Francisco exteriors, stopping the uncut European version dead in its tracks at a pivotal time. Film Ventures also tossed a scene of Jessica getting groceries at a local Safeway, which was part of the original opening credits sequence showing Robert in the recording studio chewing out a funk band for not getting it right. The band is playing a Franco Micalizzi-written tune called "Bargain with the Devil," and it's an absolute jam that's unfortunately nowhere to be heard in the US version.
BEYOND THE DOOR was such an unexpected sleeper hit stateside that it led to two unrelated "sequels." Mario Bava's 1977 swan song SHOCK was picked up by Film Ventures and released in the US in 1979 as BEYOND THE DOOR II. It involved a little boy being possessed by the spirit of his dead father, and passing it off as a sequel was probably made a lot easier with the happy coincidence of David Colin Jr. playing the little boy. Assonitis had nothing to do with SHOCK or its rechristening as BEYOND THE DOOR II, but he did produce AMOK TRAIN, which had college students stuck on a possessed train while in Yugoslavia for a Balkan Studies research project. Shot in 1989, AMOK TRAIN was eventually released straight-to-video in the US in 1991 as--you guessed it--BEYOND THE DOOR III. The decision was probably inspired by Assonitis producing the minor 1987 horror hit THE CURSE, and then turning his 1989 "guy bitten by radioactive snake" epic THE BITE into the in-name-only CURSE II: THE BITE, an insane film that really should be better-known, and one so gross that the sight of a post-coital Jamie Farr doesn't even make the top five ghastliest things in it.
SLEEPLESS (Italy - 2001) Directed by Dario Argento. Written by Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini and Carlo Lucarelli. Cast: Max von Sydow, Stefano Dionisi, Chiara Caselli, Gabriele Lavia, Rossella Falk, Paolo Maria Scalondro, Roberto Zibetti, Roberto Accornero, Barbara Lerici, Barbara Mautino, Conchita Puglisi, Massimo Sarchielli, Elena Marchesini, Guido Morbello, Aldo Massasso, Diego Casale, Alessandra Comerio, Daniela Fazzolari. (Unrated, 117 mins) Those Dario Argento fans who lament his decline after his trailblazing run from 1970's THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE to 1987's OPERA often speak of those later films as if he just suddenly started making terrible movies out of the blue. The shift was gradual, though it's easy to let an outright fiasco like 1998's THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA cloud your judgment and taint everything surrounding it in his filmography. While things started to get precipitously bad around 2007's MOTHER OF TEARS, Argento's early 21st century output following PHANTOM--SLEEPLESS, THE CARD PLAYER, DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK?--has its merits and those films aren't as bad as their reputations suggest, even if they're unquestionably second-tier Argento. Such is the case with 2001's SLEEPLESS, a minor giallo in the Argento canon in retrospect but an important one at the time, as it was such an unabashed "give the fans what they want" movie that SHAMELESS might've been a better title. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA was met with such hostility and was so flatly rejected by everyone, that SLEEPLESS served as an olive branch, made with the promise of being the old Argento you know and love, and he even got disbanded DEEP RED and SUSPIRIA composers Goblin to reunite for the soundtrack.
If Argento wasn't such a gifted stylist, the greatest-hits pandering he engages in throughout SLEEPLESS would almost be embarrassing. He's like a legendary classic rocker coming off an ambitious, badly-received concept album and a costly tour that flopped and is now determined to win back the fans by promising to play nothing but the old hits. There's endless, constant callbacks to his earlier classics in scene after scene after scene--a teeth-bashing murder and a set-up similar to the "walking dummy" bit from DEEP RED; a riff on the way someone suddenly appears in the frame like the climax of TENEBRAE; murder sequences in the rain like TENEBRAE, and another bit with a woman outside a train station that recalls Jessica Harper waiting for a taxi in a torrential downpour outside the airport in SUSPIRIA, or Eleonora Giorgi outside the library in INFERNO; a parent trying to cover for a their murderer child in PHENOMENA; an aging protagonist with a disability like Karl Malden's blind earwitness to murder in THE CAT O'NINE TAILS; a locked, abandoned villa that holds a secret, much like DEEP RED; a long tracking shot across the carpeted floor of a theater leading to a brutal murder that's strongly reminiscent of the famous Louma crane shot in TENEBRAE; and most important to all of Argento's gialli, the notion of the amateur sleuth who's hung up on a barely-remembered and seemingly insignificant detail that's ultimately the key to the mystery.
SLEEPLESS opens with a brief scene in Turin in 1983, as detective Ulisse Moretti (Max von Sydow) comforts a little boy who was hiding and listening as his mother was brutally murdered via an English horn being repeatedly, violently crammed into her mouth and throat. She's the latest victim of a "killer dwarf" in what's been dubbed by the press as "The Dwarf Murders." Cut to 2000 and the bizarre murders start once again, and though the murderer claims to be the Killer Dwarf, it's immediately deemed the work of a copycat, since the primary suspect in the Dwarf Murders drowned in what was ruled a suicide 17 years earlier, though his body washed away and was never found. The current detective on the case, Manni (Paolo Maria Scalandro) has no leads and reaches out to pick the brain of the retired Moretti, now an elderly widower with a heart condition and a spotty memory and seemingly in the earliest stages of Alzheimer's. Though he's foggy on some of the details, Moretti is still brought in as a consultant and ends up reconnecting with Giacomo (Stefano Dionisi), the now-grown little boy from 1983 who's coincidentally been summoned from Rome to Turin by his childhood friend Lorenzo (Roberto Zibetti) when the Dwarf Murders become front-page news once again.
Much like Karl Malden and James Franciscus in THE CAT O'NINE TAILS, David Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi in DEEP RED, Anthony Franciosa and Christian Borromeo in TENEBRAE, and Jennifer Connelly and Donald Pleasence in PHENOMENA, von Sydow's Moretti and Dionisi's Giacomo become yet another in a long line of Argento's unlikely sleuth teams resorting to their own investigation when the police either dismiss their concerns or have reached a dead-end. As you might guess, as they get closer to the truth, their lives are in danger (someone attempts to poison Giacomo's beer in a crowded bar at one point, but Lorenzo ends up drinking it and almost dies), and numerous red herrings abound, among them Lorenzo, his Giacomo-hating, asshole father (DEEP RED and INFERNO co-star Gabriele Lavia), and the killer dwarf's still-grieving, embittered mother (a semi-retired Rossella Falk, veteran of numerous vintage non-Argento gialli like Luigi Bazzoni's THE FIFTH CORD, Paolo Cavara's BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA, and Umberto Lenzi's SEVEN BLOOD-STAINED ORCHIDS). And, as usual, the key to the mystery involves some obscure detail, in this case a little-known nursery rhyme for which Moretti can't remember the words, and a strange hissing sound heard amidst his mother's blood-gurgled screams that has stuck with Giacomo all these years and he still can't identify. There's absolutely nothing new here, but it's fun to see all of these Argento tropes being served up like giallo comfort food, not to mention the immeasurable boost it gets from the regal screen presence of the great von Sydow.
For these reasons, and in looking at Argento's subsequent decline through the benefit of hindsight, SLEEPLESS has aged better than expected. Much of that is due to the terrific transfer on Scorpion's new Blu-ray (because physical media is dead), which represents the first proper presentation the film has had in America. Artisan Entertainment picked it up for the US and released it straight-to-video in the fall of 2001, but the DVD was a subpar transfer, and to add insult to injury, was only offered in 1.33:1 pan & scan. Of course, this was prior to the days of widescreen HDTV being the standard, but even then, most DVDs offered both widescreen and 1.33:1 "fullscreen" versions--either as two-sided discs or two different packages--the fullscreen option there for those holdouts who still couldn't grasp the concept of letterboxing. Now, at last, SLEEPLESS looks and sounds like it should, but it still has its faults that keep it firmly entrenched as second-rate Argento. The initially-welcome familiarity becomes a slight liability after a while, as one gets over the joy of Argento being Argento again and realizes that, no matter how much better this is than PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, it kinda just becomes Dario Argento's homage to Dario Argento. The killer, once revealed, starts using a weird vocal affect that sounds less like a sinister serial killer and more like a lost Festrunk brother; and at just under two hours, it's entirely too long, which makes the film's final minutes even more bizarre in the way Argento has the closing credits roll over the final scene as shit is still happening. It probably sounded like an outside-the-box idea on paper as a way of messing with the audience, but in execution, it's jarring and distracting, like the film is already 20 minutes too long but now he's in a mad rush to wrap it up. He would do the same thing over a final scene with Stefania Rocca in THE CARD PLAYER, but it was in a much less obtrusive fashion. SLEEPLESS is a far from perfect film, and it doesn't even crack the top ten of any "Best of Argento" lists, but at the same time, it also doesn't belong anywhere near the bottom, and at least now, with a quality Blu-ray presentation, it can be assessed on its own admittedly flawed terms by devout Argentophiles.
ZEDER aka REVENGE OF THE DEAD (Italy - 1983; US release 1984) Directed by Pupi Avati. Written by Pupi Avati, Maurizio Costanzo and Antonio Avati. Cast: Gabriele Lavia, Anne Canovas, Paola Tanziani, Cesare Barbetti, Bob Tonelli, Ferdinando Orlando, Enea Ferrario, John Stacy, Alessandro Partexano, Marcello Tusco, Aldo Sassi, Veronica Moriconi, Enrico Ardizzone, Maria Teresa Toffano, Andrea Montuschi. (Unrated, 99 mins) Mid '80s gorehounds had to be pretty pissed off when they saw REVENGE OF THE DEAD in a theater or a drive-in back in the summer of 1984 and into early 1985. With an ominous TV spot that hyped much but showed nothing, and poster art depicting zombies bursting out of the sewer through a sidewalk, accompanied by a prominently displayed and always-promising "This film contains scenes which may be considered shocking..." box in place of an MPAA rating, REVENGE OF THE DEAD looked to be the latest in a long-line of gore galore extravaganzas like George A. Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD, the Lucio Fulci essentials ZOMBIE, THE GATES OF HELL, and HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, Bruno Mattei/"Vincent Dawn"'s NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES, and Juan Piquer Simon's Spanish-made chainsawgasm PIECES, among others. But the ad campaign and the promise of "shocking" gore scenes were all a misleading ruse that would've made any huckstering B-movie wheeler-and-dealer proud. Distributed in the US by the exploitation outfit Motion Picture Marketing, co-owned by mobster-turned-Christian motivational speaker Michael Franzese, REVENGE OF THE DEAD was a retitling of ZEDER, a thoughtful, intelligent study of the paranormal by Italian director Pupi Avati (THE HOUSE WITH LAUGHING WINDOWS) that had very little gore and even less in the way of onscreen zombies. Quickly dismissed by fans for its slow pace and lack of splatter--I rented it in the late '80s as an impatient teenager and shut it off halfway through out of boredom--REVENGE OF THE DEAD found some defenders as time went on. In the late '90s, it got a DVD release from Image Entertainment under its original ZEDER title and it finally began to be judged on its own terms by American genre enthusiasts, rather than for not being the zombie gut-muncher that MPM's US ads promised. ZEDER is back once more, significantly upgraded on Code Red's new Blu-ray, with reversible artwork for the nostalgic among us who still want to call it REVENGE OF THE DEAD, and its latest release makes a strong case for Avati's film being one of the unheralded classics of its era.
In 1956, a young girl named Gabriella (Veronica Moriconi) has psychic powers and is used by a team of researchers to help find the source of inexplicable supernatural occurrences in a house that have resulted in at least one murder. She's drawn to the basement, where the skeleton of one Paolo Zeder is found buried under the concrete floor. Someone exclaims "It's a K-Zone!" Cut to 1982, as struggling, blocked writer Stefano (Gabriele Lavia of DEEP RED and BEYOND THE DOOR) is given a secondhand typewriter for inspiration by his wife Alessandra (Anne Canovas). The ribbon quickly fades and breaks and while unspooling it, Stefano is fascinated by the bizarre writings he sees typed along the used ribbon. It mentions the work of Zeder, a renowned metaphysicist, and his belief in K-Zones. Consulting an old teacher, Prof. Chesi (John Stacy), Stefano learns that K-Zones are a term given to places throughout history, often with geological similarities, that defy the natural laws of life and death, existing in a place of "zero time" where life and death are interchangeable, and though it's never been proven, an area that could theoretically allow a return from the dead
Through some old-fashioned detective work from his cop friend Guido (Alessandro Partexano), Stefano discovers the typewriter was previously owned by a priest named Don Luigi Costa, but a visit to Costa proves pointless as the rude cleric is hostile and uncooperative, refusing to discuss the writings on the typewriter ribbon. A return visit to ask one more question leads to the first instance of Stefano realizing something is up: he's informed by young priest Don Mario (Aldo Sassi) that Costa left the parish over a decade earlier and the man he spoke with was an impostor. The impostor is Giovine (Ferdinando Orlando), who's part of a French-funded research team that includes an adult Gabriella (Paola Tanziani) and Dr. Meyer (Cesare Barbetti), who led the 1956 investigation that uncovered Zeder's skeleton. With the backing of a sinister, high-ranking government official (Edward G. Robinson lookalike Bob Tonelli), Meyer and his team are attempting to prove the existence of K-Zones. Stefano grows more obsessed with Zeder's ideas and what Costa was writing, eventually finding out that Costa recently died, followed by a visit to the cemetery where Costa is interred only to find his tomb empty. Despite Alessandra's objections, his investigation leads him to the Milano Marittima area of the seaside town of Cervia, where Meyer's team has set up a top-secret lab in an abandoned building.
Stefano's dogged pursuit of the truth has echoes of any number of protagonists in earlier Dario Argento films, and while their styles are different, Avati's film often feels like a '70s giallo with a decidedly paranormal bent. Avati lacks the style and flash of Argento, but he makes up for it by establishing a deeply unsettling tone throughout, one that grows positively suffocating the more Stefano gets in over his head and has no idea of the power of the conspiratorial forces he's up against (and the whole bit with the secret discovered on an old typewriter ribbon is the best idea an in-his-prime Argento never thought of--almost like something the alchemist Varelli would've done in INFERNO). ZEDER/REVENGE OF THE DEAD is about a quarter century ahead of its time in terms of the ominous "slow burn" Avati lets simmer to a boil throughout. Perhaps one reason the film plays so much better today than in the zombie flesh-eater days of the 1984 grindhouse is that it's finally caught up to the slow-burn ethos that's so prevalent in the horror genre today. Budding genre filmmakers of today would be wise to study ZEDER if they want to see how slow burn is done right (based on one early scene in IT FOLLOWS, I'm willing to bet that film's director David Robert Mitchell is a ZEDER fan), and when Avati finally gets the scares going, the attentive viewer is so paralyzed by dread and a palpable sense of doom that the effect is terrifying. Riz Ortolani's bombastic and incredibly loud score--which sounds like Goblin produced a mash-up with some unused PSYCHO cues from Bernard Herrmann--helps as well, even though it seems at odds with the film's generally low-key mood. There's one good jump scare early on, but the other memorable moments throughout are the kind that creep up on you and stick with you for long after the movie's over: Avati's use of shadows; the scene in the gym swimming pool that's a blatant shout-out to Val Lewton and the 1942 CAT PEOPLE; what Stefano sees when he looks through a telescope into the abandoned building; and the devastating finale that's caused many to wonder if Stephen King stole a major element of this for his novel Pet Sematary or if Avati ripped it off from him--King's novel was published in November 1983, and ZEDER was released in Italy in August 1983, so the similarities are likely pure coincidence.
In recent years, there's been a surge of interest in urban exploration of abandoned structures (often termed "ruin porn"), especially "dead malls" that sit vacant and make for eerily fascinating photographs and YouTube videos (check out the work of photographer/videographer Seph Lawless for a great primer on the subject). To that end, ZEDER has one of the all-time great horror movie locations in the abandoned Colonia Varese, once a resort for the Fascist Youth Program in the 1930s. It became a hospital for German soldiers and a place to detain Allied POWs in WWII before being dynamited by the Nazis in 1945. Abandoned and left to the elements since the end of WWII, the Colonia Varese is an unforgettably striking location and delivers probably the most memorable performance in the film just by being there. Home to squatters in recent years, the building has been deemed a nuisance and talk of its demolition has been going on for some time. It still stands as of now, but if nothing else, let ZEDER serve as the definitive celluloid document of this fascinating example of fascist architecture-turned-ruin porn, with Avati turning a troubling monument to a dark part of Italy's past into one of the scariest places you'll ever see in a horror movie, a real-life house of horrors that should be as iconic a location as the fictional PSYCHO house and THE SHINING's Overlook Hotel or actual places like DAWN OF THE DEAD's Monroeville Mall and the EXORCIST steps in Georgetown. Dismissed 30-plus years ago for not being something it never should've been sold as in the first place, ZEDER/REVENGE OF THE DEAD has very quietly built a small but devoted cult following over the years. It's a unique and ambitious film that gets better and reveals deeper layers with each viewing, and with it looking better than it ever has on Code Red's Blu-ray (it also features new interviews with Avati and Lavia), the time has come for ZEDER to take its rightful place among the masterpieces of Italian horror.
REVENGE OF THE DEAD opening
in Toledo, OH on June 22, 1984
