★ 6 / 10
I still can't decide if it was intentional
R T
I still can't decide if it was intentional to make a stereotypical Italian Giallo from the 80's or if they thought they were really making a good movie but…
I still can't decide if it was intentional to make a stereotypical Italian Giallo from the 80's or if they thought they were really making a good movie but either way I liked it. Fairly violent, lots of red herrings, bad dialogue and a nice twist make it feel like a lost film of Argento's or Fulci's. It also features the last appearance of Donald Pleasence who died during production and the makers do a great job of writing his character out of the film using a reference to that other famous movie he was in.
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★ 5 / 10
Fatal Frames in an excellent exercise in how
R T
Fatal Frames in an excellent exercise in how to take an original idea and turn it into shit. We see a child sneak into his poppa's snuff films and then years…
Fatal Frames in an excellent exercise in how to take an original idea and turn it into shit. We see a child sneak into his poppa's snuff films and then years later, several women are butchered in NYC by a serial killer who chops them up with a machete and films them. Now for the actual plot; a hip director (Rick Gianasi a.k.a. Sgt. Kabukiman) is flown to Italy to direct a music video for singing sensation Stefania Stella (played by....um...Stefania Stella). As luck would have it, women start to get chopped up and filmed in Italy. Hmmm. For the pros, this film features some great genre actors popping up here and there, including Donald Pleasence (in his final role unfortunately as a detective flown in from America), Angus Scrimm (as a ghost-artist-prophet whatever), and Linnea Quigley (who at this point, still looked very hot, but doesn't show any titties). As luck would have it though, the very busty Stefania Stell DOES show her ginormous titties in a dry humping scene (at least I hope it was a dry humping scene because you cannot pass off a sex scene when both people are clearly wearing underwear). Now for the cons. This film is WAY too long. 125 minutes is just too much for an Italian giallo-wannabe slasher. Cutting out all of the "music video" shootings probably would have knocked out at least 20 minutes alone. The film offered a really unique story that was original and even managed to sport a decent twist (sorta) at the end, but seriously, the same could have been achieved at about 95 minutes total. Secondly, the Italian people in this are either terribly dubbed or are having a hell of a time trying to speak their English lines. It was excruciating. Other than that, so-so slasher. The gore was great, and Stella's brief big titties shot was nice, but there are better slasher films out there. Much better.
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★ 5 / 10
Giallo with zero finesse.
BA_Harrison
Fatal Frames hasn't got a very high IMDb rating and reviews are mostly scathing, and that's understandable: it's an utterly inept attempt to recreate the style…
Fatal Frames hasn't got a very high IMDb rating and reviews are mostly scathing, and that's understandable: it's an utterly inept attempt to recreate the style and visceral horror of prime Argento or Fulci. However, in doing so, music video director Al Festa has given fans of the genre a film so poorly executed and so laden with '90s cheeze that it should prove entertaining for all the prove wrong reasons - when viewed as a parody (which it almost certainly isn't), it can be a lot of fun.The film opens with a young boy walking in on an old man watching snuff movies. The geriatric sicko grabs the boy and forces him to look at the violent images on the screen, which no doubt does irreparable damage to the lad's psyche.The action then cuts to a woman being pursued by a typical giallo-style maniac (presumably the boy all growed up): wearing mask and hat and armed with a machete, the killer slices at the woman several times before chopping her neck, her head almost coming off. It's a suitably mean-spirited and gory start to the film (special effects courtesy of Steve Johnson), but things soon go pear shaped...Festa introduces us to his movie's main character, music video director Alex Ritt (Rick Gianasi), who sports a magnificent Fabio-style mane of hair (as do several of the other men in the film). Ritt is hired to make a new promo video for Italian pop sensation Stefania Stella (Stefania Stella) which will help to make her a star in the States. Good luck with that, faux Fabio: Stefania looks like an ageing drag queen and cannot sing.Soon after Alex's arrival in Rome for the video shoot, the masked killer begins to hack up women with his machete, filming the mutilated victims with a camcorder. Ritt is witness to the first murder and when the police discover that the director's own wife was killed in a similar fashion a couple of years before, he becomes a suspect.As things progress, Festa chucks in every hokey giallo cliche he can think of, both audio and visual: strong coloured lighting, smoke machines, a synth soundtrack, a gratuitous sex scene, more gory attacks, some truly awful music videos starring Stefania (Festa's wife in real life) and plenty of red herrings. All of this is done with zero finesse, the result being giallo turned up to eleven. Genre regulars David Warbeck and Donald Pleasence are drafted into lend some class to proceedings, but there's little they can do when starring alongside the likes of Gianasi and Stella. Also look out for Angus 'The Tall Man' Scrimm ('...and kill and kill and kill and KILL!") and scream queen Linnea Quigley (ex-wife of FX man Johnson).In a plot twist that even current-day Argento would be ashamed to use, it is revealed that all of the murders that have taken place in Rome were faked, a ploy to flush out the psycho who killed Ritt's wife. It's utterly preposterous, made all the worse by Festa's use of some really naff visual effects (including some rudimentary morphing) as the killer breaks down and confesses.So 'yes', in many ways this film is utter dross, but at the same time, it's a real hoot.4.5, generously rounded up to 5 for the gory murders, even if they turn out to be staged in the end.
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