ANTHROPOPHAGUS aka THE GRIM REAPER (Italy - 1980; US release 1981) Directed by Joe D'Amato (Aristide Massaccesi). Written by Luigi Montefiori. Cast: Tisa Farrow, Saverio Vallone, Zora Kerova, George Eastman (Luigi Montefiori), Vanessa Steiger (Serena Grandi), Margaret Donnelly (Margaret Mazzantini), Mark Bodin, Bob Larson, Rubina Rey, Simone Baker, Mark Logan. (R, 82 mins/Unrated, 91 mins)
One of the most legendary of all the Italian gore classics of the early '80s, though if you rented this at the video store back in the day, you probably wondered why. A banned "video nasty" in the UK, ANTHROPOPHAGUS was released in the US in the fall of 1981 by Film Ventures as the 82-minute THE GRIM REAPER, shorn of nearly ten minutes from its uncensored version. THE GRIM REAPER was missing almost all of the gore, including the two outrageously foul moments that were responsible for its notoriety. Directed by Italian exploitation journeyman Aristide Massaccesi under his most frequently-used of many pseudonyms ("Joe D'Amato"), ANTHROPOPHAGUS follows Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE as the second Italian gore film in a row for American actress Tisa Farrow (Mia's younger sister) where her character ends up dragging people to a deserted island to their certain death. A group of friends on a Greek vacation end up giving a boat ride to Julie (Farrow, dubbed by Carolyn De Fonseca), who has some friends who live in a villa on a nearby island. Tarot enthusiast Carol (Zora Kerova) gets a bad feeling and of course, she's right. The villa is seemingly abandoned until they find lone survivor Rita (Margaret Mazzantini, who went on to become a renowned writer in Italy), a young blind woman who says a stranger has been prowling the island and reeks of blood. That stranger is Klaus Wortmann (George Eastman, who scripted under his real name Luigi Montefiori), a scarred, monstrous maniac with an insatiable taste for human flesh who starts picking off the travelers one by one.
ANTHROPOPHAGUS scores some points for atmosphere, and the massive villa is a memorable location, but the structure of the story is such that the characters have to spend an inordinate amount of time walking around and talking before the killing can start. The US version also eliminated some of the more repetitious dialogue scenes and helped speed up the pace, but honestly, without those infamous gore scenes, there's not much to ANTHROPOPHAGUS. Saving the most outrageous and offensive gut-muching splattergasms for the finale, Massaccesi and Montefiori have Wortmann--whose backstory includes accidentally killing his wife when he tried to eat their dead son when they were lost at sea--strangle the very pregnant Maggie (Serena Grandi, billed as "Vanessa Steiger") before reaching inside to rip out the fetus and eat it (in the US cut, he simply strangles her and it cuts away after he caresses her belly). In the climax, Julie and Wortmann end up in a well and she barely manages to escape before Carol's brother Andy (Saverio Vallone, the lookalike son of veteran Italian character actor Raf Vallone) reappears out of nowhere to swing a pick-axe into Wortmann's gut. The US cut ends there, but in the uncensored version, Wortmann's intestines spill out and he triumphantly begins to devour himself. Those scenes were enough to guarantee a spot for ANTHROPOPHAGUS on the Video Nasties list and they may have been all Farrow needed to see to decide she had enough: after co-starring with Harvey Keitel in James Toback's critically-lauded FINGERS just two years earlier before doing ZOMBIE in 1979 and Antonio Margheriti's THE LAST HUNTER (1980), she called it a career after ANTHROPOPHAGUS, retiring from acting at the ripe old age of 29.
Directed by Peter Newton (Aristide Massaccesi). Written by John Cart (Luigi Montefiori). Cast: George Eastman (Luigi Montefiori), Edmund Purdom, Annie Belle, Charles Borromel, Katya Berger, Kasimir Berger, Hanja Kochansky, Ian Danby, Ted Rusoff, Cindy Leadbetter, Martin Sorrentino, James Sampson, Michele Soavi, Goffredo Unger. (Unrated, 94 mins) Conceived as a sequel to ANTHROPOPHAGUS, ABSURD ended up being an Italian ripoff of John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN with some elements of HALLOWEEN II thrown in for good measure. It's got the core duo of Massaccesi and Montefiori, with the latter again starring as a killer, though this time he looks like George Eastman rather than the heavily-made up monstrosity of ANTHROPOPHAGUS. Eastman is Mikos Stenopolis, a homicidal maniac being pursued through a suburban American town by a renegade Greek priest (Edmund Purdom) who's running church-sanctioned biochemical experiments for which Stenopolis is the chief guinea pig. He's taken to a local hospital after he accidentally impales himself on a spiked gate, but it's discovered too late that the priest's experiments have turned Stenopolis into an unstoppable killing machine whose body is able to regenerate dead cells. Stenopolis escapes from the hospital and after the initial killing spree, makes his way to the home of Bennett family, killing babysitter Peggy (Cindy Leadbetter) and leaving visiting nurse Emily (Annie Belle) to protect the children: irritating young brat Willy (Kasimir Berger) and incapacitated Katya (Katya Berger), who's recovering from a spine operation. All the while, the priest and rumpled detective Engelman (Charles Borromel) scour the town trying to find the escaped Stenopolis.
Unlike the Greek exteriors of ANTHROPOPHAGUS exploiting the exotic island location, Massaccesi goes all-out to make ABSURD look like it's taking place in an American town despite being shot in Rome. That would like explain why such an unusual number of American and British dubbing regulars have onscreen roles here, from actors like Borromel and black British actors Martin Sorrentino and James Sampson, who were frequently seen in Eurocult films of the period, to people typically confined to the dubbing studio, like Ted Rusoff as a surgeon and Ian Danby as the Bennett kids' father, who runs over Stenopolis at one point and is wracked with guilt over the hit-and-run, unaware that the same guy is trying to murder his family. The ruse doesn't always work, as neither Massaccesi nor Montefiori have any idea how Americans behave while watching the Super Bowl: he has the Bennett parents attending a party for "The Game," shown on TV via stock footage from Super Bowl XIV between the Los Angeles Rams and the Pittsburgh Steelers that was almost certainly not authorized by the NFL and has Rusoff handling play-by-play, plus all of the guests are wearing their Sunday best suits and dresses and eating big bowls of spaghetti. But he does get American genre cliches down, as evidenced when the irate Engelman sees who he's got to take on Stenopolis and grumbles "So this is the team, then? A priest, a detective near retirement, and a moron rookie of a cop? That's terrific." He stops just short of declaring himself "too old for this shit," and promising they'll kill Stenopolis "if we don't kill each other first!" The structure is essentially HALLOWEEN all over again, with unkillable Stenopolis a stand-in for Michael Myers, Purdom's priest this film's Dr. Loomis, with Belle and Leadbetter jointly filling the Laurie Strode babysitter-in-peril role. Massaccesi generates some serious suspense throughout, with his relentless overuse of the same library cues that would be heard throughout the legendary PIECES, and by setting Stenopolis' rampage in a disorientingly large house that's every bit as effective as the Greek villa in ANTHROPOPHAGUS, with lots of corners and hallways that allow Stenopolis to jump out from anywhere.
Titled ROSSO SANGUE ("blood red") in Italy, ABSURD is superior in every way to its semi-predecessor, with a more evenly consistent approach to its extreme gore scenes instead of just cramming all of them into the last 15 minutes. Unfortunately, it didn't get a theatrical release in America, instead belatedly turning up in video stores in 1986 in a Wizard Video big box as MONSTER HUNTER, complete with inaccurate artwork and a synopsis that proved no one watched it before summarizing it. It would turn up on budget sell-thru VHS years later as ZOMBIE 6: MONSTER HUNTER and Mya would release a flawed DVD in 2009 under the title HORRIBLE. It's one of the unsung greats of the Video Nasty gorefest days, with Eastman a memorable killer, some admirably brutal kills with everything from a drill to a head in the oven, and a delirious final shot that would've been a real crowd-pleaser had anyone picked this up for the grindhouse and drive-in circuit. ABSURD was just released in a region-free Blu-ray edition by the UK-based 88 Films, a definitive presentation that has the film looking better than it ever did during its VHS and bootleg days of old.
The recent Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Language Film is equal parts majestic and ponderous, profound and obvious. It's often stunningly beautiful, and purposefully reminiscent of the legendary likes of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti. Like its characters, THE GREAT BEAUTY overstays its welcome and probably would've been more effective had there been maybe 20-30 minutes less of it, but the things in it that work, work extremely well. Directed and co-written by acclaimed Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino (IL DIVO), coming off his little-seen, Weinstein-buried English-language debut THIS MUST BE THE PLACE, which featured Sean Penn in probably the strangest role of his career, THE GREAT BEAUTY could almost be seen as the later years of Marcello Mastroianni's LA DOLCE VITA character. Sorrentino's favorite actor, the chameleon-like Toni Servillo (think of him as Italy's Daniel Day-Lewis), stars as Jep Gambardella, a 65-year-old journalist who's always seen where it's important for society's elite to be seen, where people are famous for being famous. Jep wrote a legendary novel 40 years ago and never wrote another, instead choosing to pen puff pieces and live the celebrity life ("I wrote one book 40 years ago and no bookstore carries it!"). He's no longer able to mask his contempt for his assignments, openly mocking interview subjects like pretentious performance artist Talia Concept (Anita Kravos), whose entire schtick is stripping nude and head-butting a concrete wall. He's grown increasingly misanthropic with age and can always be counted on to deliver a scorched-earth screed if he's prodded enough (his dressing down of a friend who chastises his "novellette" over drinks at a party provides some unforgettable cringe). When he's informed by the devastated husband (Massimo De Francovich) of his teenage first love that she's recently passed and her diary reveals she carried a torch for him for nearly 50 years, it forces Jep to re-evaluate his life and what's he's done with it. He feels emotion where a sardonic crack once sufficed. He considers writing that second novel and trying to find the promise that once was, saying "I'm at the age where I can't waste any more time doing the things I don't want to do."
As a basic point-A to point-B plot, THE GREAT BEAUTY is hardly innovative. Where Sorrentino succeeds is with the incredibly poetic way that the film plays out. Showcasing marvelous tracking shots, sweeping crane shots, and Kubrickian framing, it's LA DOLCE VITA with the hypnotic look of Alain Resnais' LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD and the sense of melancholy for the gone forever past of Visconti's THE LEOPARD. It's a film that mourns the past, lost youth, lost time, missed opportunities, and fading memories, as Jep, from his spacious penthouse apartment overlooking the Coliseum, surrounds himself with the frustrating vapidity of a modern Rome that doesn't understand the beauty it once was. When we first meet Jep, it's at his birthday party, a garish rave populated by the vulgar, the cretinous, and the insufferable: Eurocult icon Serena Grandi appears as a bloated, haggard, coke-snorting ex-reality TV star, now reduced to jumping out of Jep's cake, and one pompous woman huffs "I wouldn't know her...I've never owned a TV," to which her sighing friend replies "You remind me of that at least once a day." Sorrentino gives the film a freeform structure that sometimes causes it to drag, especially in the second half, but the cinematography is gorgeous and the great Servillo is outstanding as always. (Unrated, 141 mins) THE PAST (France/Italy - 2013)
Iranian auteur Asghar Farhadi ventures to Europe for this searing drama that functions as somewhat of a French-language companion piece to his 2011 Best Foreign Film Oscar-winner A SEPARATION. Like that film, THE PAST has lives intersecting in unforeseen ways with consequences the players never see coming. Farhadi has demonstrated his ability at building strong, believable, and very human characters in situations where all of the details are distributed in a deliberate but never hokey fashion. There are surprises and shocking revelations in THE PAST, but it's very organic in its construction and Farhadi avoids the easy pitfall of hackneyed melodrama. THE PAST is an excellent film but, through no fault of its own, it can't help but feel like a bit of a retread after A SEPARATION, even though its characters aren't in exactly the same scenario. Ali Mosaffa stars as Ahmad, an Iranian man who, in the midst of a severe depression, left Paris, his French wife Marie (Berenice Bejo of THE ARTIST) and her two daughters from a previous relationship, Lucie (Pauline Burlet) and Lea (Jeanne Jestin). Four years later, he returns from Iran at Marie's request to finalize their divorce. She's now involved with Samir (Tahar Rahim), who's moved in with his five-year-old son Fouad (Elyes Aguis). Ahmad doesn't expect to walk into a quietly dysfunctional powderkeg of tension, resentment, and other unresolved issues as he's drawn into the various conflicts existing in the household. Lucie is now a rebellious teenager who regards Ahmad like a father and objects to Samir being in their lives as another of her mother's men who will "just go away after a few years." Samir's wife has been in a coma for eight months for reasons that may or may not involve Samir and Marie having an affair. Fouad has a playmate in young Lea but is angry that he isn't living at his own house and that he has to share a bunk bed with Ahmad.
As with A SEPARATION, Farhadi slowly reveals layers of the story, methodically filling in the audience on the history of the characters and refusing to paint things in mere black and white. Almost everyone--Ahmad, Marie, Samir, and Lucie--provoke shifting alliances with the viewer. Is Marie a homewrecker? Does Ahmad relish the turmoil in which he finds himself? Though you may question the decisions they make, no one is completely right and no one is completely wrong, but they're unmistakably human and deeply flawed. It's hard to not compare THE PAST to the masterpiece that was A SEPARATION, but it's filled with powerful moments, committed performances (as he did with little Kimia Hosseini in A SEPARATION, Farhadi gets a movie-stealing performance out of a child actor, in this case the amazing young Aguis) , and Farhadi isn't afraid to let takes linger to the point where you're as uncomfortable as the characters. Witness the scene where Ahmad and Samir find themselves left alone at the kitchen table and just sit there, not with animosity--they aren't by any means chummy but they seem to realize they have no reason to dislike one another--but with the shrugging realization that they don't really have anything to say. (PG-13, 130 mins) THE GRANDMASTER (US/Hong Kong/China/France/Netherlands - 2013)
Legendary Wing Chun martial-artist and Bruce Lee mentor Ip Man (1893-1972) has been the subject of numerous films and a TV series in the last several years, virtually saturating the Asian market to become their version of Italian DJANGO westerns and French films about Coco Chanel. Donnie Yen starred in two hugely popular but highly fictionalized accounts, IP MAN (2008) and IP MAN 2 (2010) before declaring he was done because the Ip Mania was getting out of hand (he seems to have had a change of heart since he recently signed on for a third IP MAN, due out in 2015). There were also the competing IP MAN films THE LEGEND IS BORN: IP MAN (2010) with Dennis To, and IP MAN: THE FINAL FIGHT (2013) with Anthony Wong (because of its title, this is often mistaken as a sequel to the two Yen films), as well as the Chinese TV series IP MAN, which premiered in 2013 and starred Kevin Cheng in the title role. 2013 also saw the release of the most ambitious IP MAN project: Wong Kar Wai's THE GRANDMASTER, a more arthouse take on the legendary figure that was nonetheless controversially recut by US distributor Harvey Weinstein and sold as an action-centered kung-fu epic. Wong (CHUNGKING EXPRESS, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE) had already released two versions, running 130 minutes and 123 minutes. Weinstein--allegedly with Wong's involvement--overhauled the film to 108 minutes for the US, adding some English captions to give a sense of perspective and exposition to American audiences not necessarily familiar with the Sino-Japanese conflicts that impacted Ip Man's life in the 1930s, and while that's helpful, the US release also makes further edits and rearranges some sequences. Wong wrote that it was a chance to "re-shape it" for a different audience while at the same time admitting that his 130-minute cut is his preferred version prepared with "precision and perfect balance."
Precision and perfect balance are not among the feelings you get watching the American cut of THE GRANDMASTER. It's a dazzling, sweeping epic (Philippe Le Sourd's cinematography got a well-deserved Oscar nomination), but its storytelling is muddled and confusing, even with the addition of English expository text and additional voiceover from Tony Leung's Ip Man. The purpose of Weinstein ordering the re-edit was to make Wong's film more linear, but the timeframe still jumps all over the place and there's still enough flashbacks and side stories that you're frequently unaware what year certain parts of the story are taking place. Covering Ip Man's life from 1936 to the early 1950s, Ip Man establishes himself as a great martial arts philosopher and practitioner and Grandmaster and is forced to leave Foshan after the Japanese invasion in 1938. The unwieldy plot also involves disputes between northern and southern China, traitorous Chinese martial artists selling out to the Japanese invaders, Ip Man's competitive rivalry/unrequited love with Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang), the daughter of Master Gong Yutian (Wang Quigxiang), and how the Gong legacy is defamed and usurped by the treacherous Ma San (Zhang Jin) before Ip Man is forced to relocate to Hong Kong in 1950, where the film even tangentially involves Pu Yi, the subject of Bernardo Bertolucci's Oscar-winning THE LAST EMPEROR (1987). What's odd--at least in the US cut--is how the last third of the film has Ip Man essentially step aside as a peripheral character in his own story. Zhang's Gong Er becomes the center of the plot in an extended flashback that details her reclaiming of the Gong dynasty in a brilliantly-shot fight sequence with Ma San, as Wong even works in an opium den sequence that's a straight-up homage to Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (1984), right down to the use of Ennio Morricone's famed "Deborah's Theme." Even in this truncated form, THE GRANDMASTER looks incredible--Wong really loves shooting epic fights in wind, rain, and snow--and the performances of Leung and Zhang are excellent, but there was enough of a cineaste backlash over this recut version that a domestic special edition Blu-ray release of Wong's 130-minute version is inevitable, so why not wait for that? (PG-13, 108 mins, also available on Netflix Instant)
