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Current Availability
The only DVD release to date is the now OOP German DVD from Astro Filmworks. Unfortunately this release is both in German language only (without subtitles) and is apparently struck from an incomplete print. Anyone wishing to see Absurd fully uncut and in English can always track down the very rare and highly valued UK "Video Nasty" pre cert VHS on the Medusa label, or alternatively cast their moral scruples to the wind and go down the dodgy DVD-R bootleg route...
Recommended?
If you're hankering after a gory, undemanding body count flick then Absurd is just the ticket. The irrepressible D'Amato serves up a spirited catalogue of brutal mutilation interspersed by disarming moments of genuine subtlety, tension and fright. Kindly excuse the cheesy, pseudo-American trappings and Absurd is great sadistic fun and well worth a look. Whoever said D'Amato was just a hack?
Review (Contains Spoilers)
While some may call his ability into question, there’s little disputing that in his heyday the infamous and now sadly departed Aristide Massaccesi (better known to trash movie buffs as Joe D’Amato) was one of the busiest men in cinema, directing a dizzying array of low budget efforts across the sex and horror spectrum in a directorial career that spanned over three decades. In the entire annals of exploitation perhaps only D’Amato’s equally famed Spanish counterpart was anywhere near as prolific.
One of D’Amato’s biggest hits would undoubtedly have to be his semi-revered and internationally successful 1980 horror effort Anthropophagous The Beast starring imposing continental exploitation veteran George Eastman (aka – Luigi Montefiori) as a cannibalistic madman killing and devouring visitors to a remote, lonely Grecian island. While largely uninspired outside of its pulse racing final quarter of an hour, Anthropophagous would become a favourite amongst fans of Italian splatter cinema and would achieve a sizeable measure of lasting infamy in the United Kingdom where its early pre certification video release would be banned outright following the British tabloid panic and subsequent legal fallout over so called “Video Nasties”. Anthropophagous The Beast would become one of the most infamous of all the 72 films fingered as “Video Nasties” and clips of the notorious scene in which Eastman’s mad cannibal devours a human fetus (actually a skinned rabbit) would even be excerpted on British national news broadcasts as an example of the sort of “filth” which was invading the nations screens!
Eager to emulate the success of Anthropophagous, D’Amato and Eastman wasted little time in putting their heads together in order to formulate an even more shocking and outrageous sequel. The result would be 1981’s Rosso Sangue – released on video in the UK under its better known alternate title Absurd and promoted in certain other countries as Anthropophagous 2. With D’Amato once again in the directors chair and Eastman both writing the script and once again figuring prominently as an insane, brutal marauding killer Absurd sharply upped the ante on its already grisly predecessor in terms of graphic and plentiful mayhem. The result would be another D’Amato favourite and yet another censorship hot potato here in the UK, where the films gleefully gory content saw its pre certification video release swiftly join Anthropophagous The Beast on the Video Nasty list.
Absurd begins in a nameless small American town where a bearded, bedraggled stranger (Eastman) flees desperately with a priest (Purdom) in hot pursuit. In order to escape his clerical pursuer the stranger attempts to scale a high, spiked fence and in doing so accidentally mutilates himself horribly, staggering onto the doorstep of the appalled Bennett family with his intestines spilling out.
The stranger is admitted to the local hospital in critical condition where the doctors are amazed by his rapid and seemingly superhuman recuperative powers. The priest who had pursued the wounded man later turns up at the hospital and is apprehended by investigating police detective Sgt Engleman (Borromel). The priest warns Engleman that the wounded man is a Greek national named Mikos Stenopolis and he is a highly dangerous homicidal lunatic who has become almost physically indestructible due to covert biochemical experimentation in which he himself had a hand. Not long after Mikos miraculously revives on the operating table and after brutally killing an unfortunate young nurse he flees the hospital and begins stalking the city streets.
While Engleman and the priest spearhead a desperate manhunt, Mikos sets off across town committing a series of brutal murders en route until he eventually winds up back at the Bennett residence. At the Bennett property mom and dad have conveniently gone out for the evening leaving their badly behaved young son Willy and his severely ill, bedridden older sister Katia (played by real life siblings Kasimir and Katya Berger) in the care of their prim babysitter Emily (Bell). When the homicidal Mikos forces his way into the family home the two terrified children are thrust headfirst into a desperate battle for survival.
Pound for pound Absurd, in the estimation of this reviewer, is the most accomplished, easily accessible and purely enjoyable film that D’Amato would ever make within the spectrum of the horror genre. Whilst conceived, promoted and generally looked upon as a direct follow-up to D’Amato’s earlier (and perhaps more infamous) Anthropophagous The Beast, in truth the two films bear little resemblance and are only really linked together by a shared emphasis on graphic bloodletting and perhaps a little more significantly the fact that both feature the imposing Eastman as a hulking, homicidal madman.
In all truth Absurd resembles D’Amato’s attempt to emulate the cycle of American slasher movies, which were at the time in vogue thanks to the runaway international success of both John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday The 13th (1980) which in turn inspired a boatload of imitations. Stripped down to its core Absurd is a clear emulation of the American slasher style, with its thin narrative serving as a tenuous link for scenes of a roaming psychopath killing off a veritable score of disposable (predominantly youthful) supporting cast members. As such Absurd is rife with all the usual pitfalls that befall Italian exploitation productions that attempt to facetiously pass themselves off as American. In the case of Absurd the illusion doesn’t survive far beyond the opening credits as a blatantly European cast mouth inane, clearly dubbed English dialogue while British actor Edmund Purdom (a regular in films of this ilk) hams it up unconvincingly as a Greek priest who has arrived in America in pursuit of Mikos. Additionally much unintentional amusement arises from D’Amato’s clumsy and clichéd attempts to have his foreign cast emulate typical “American” behaviour – neighbours congregate to watch gridiron games on television, chain smoking police detectives pursue the villain and a roaming teenage biker gang speed around making general nuisances of themselves. However, Absurd is marked out from its American counterparts ands ultimately redeemed from its shortcomings by its far more exploitative and distinctly Italian emphasis on graphic, lingering acts of gratuitous violence and sadism.
Only an habitual liar could ever describe Absurd as boring. D’Amato shows his grisly order of priorities from the outset, wasting little time in getting to the “good stuff” as Mikos (quite literally) spills his guts on the Bennett’s doorstep within the first five minutes before rising from the operating table to go on the gory rampage. From that point Absurd boasts nary a dull moment as Mikos decimates the supporting cast in quick succession with a lip-biting emphasis on gruesome trauma to the head. Amongst the myriad delights a pretty young nurse has a buzzing surgical drill rammed right through her cranium and a hapless male cleaner is fed headfirst into the path of an industrial band saw with predictably messy results. The true epitome of the films nastiness however, comes when the Bennett children’s brave babysitter Emily (played by exploitation sexpot Annie Bell) gets forced headfirst into a burning gas oven. The camera lingers for what feels like an agonising age as Bell slowly and lovingly gets her face roasted off. If this were not enough Mikos then brutally stabs her in the neck with a pair of scissors. Perhaps he was just pricking her to ensue she was cooked right the way through?
While the obvious latex effects work utilised throughout the film is never especially realistic, this fact is more than made up for by the unapologetic revelry and sadistic emphasis D’Amato places on the mutilation and blood spillage. D’Amato seems to be taking immense delight in protracting each act of gratuitous slaughter for as long as is humanely possible without rendering the spectacle a farce. Meanwhile each successive shock is amplified by Carlo Maria Cordio’s suitably thunderous if rather generic score swelling up to bombastic proportions on the soundtrack. The sense of brutality is accentuated by the presence of George Eastman who despite having no dialog whatsoever makes for an imposing and genuinely menacing killer. With the combination of his hulking frame, pallid complexion and malignant, dead eyed gaze Eastman is easily amongst the last people you would wish to bump into on a dark night. It is a testament to the memorable physicality of Eastman’s mute performance that Mikos’ unsettling presence is felt even when he is off-screen – the true sign of quality for any halfway effective horror film killer.
While the level of sheer mayhem on display automatically makes Absurd worth a look for gore hounds there was never any disputing to begin with that D’Amato was capable of executing outrageous gore scenes in a competent yet blunt way. What really distinguishes Absurd as arguably the prolific Italian’s best work in the horror field is way in which D’Amato builds an effective and dare I say it expertly crafted sense of trepidation and agonising build up around each outrageous set-piece death. Perhaps even more impressive are a number of highly accomplished shock moments and visual coups that involve nary a drop of the old red stuff being spilt. An early moment (with more than a touch of Frankenstein about it) where Mikos springs to life on the operating table makes for a real jolt. The look of pure evil hatred in Eastman’s eyes when the madman’s gaze fixes upon Purdom’s priest genuinely chills. However Absurd truly peaks in its extremely tense concluding moments. Having been savagely stabbed in the eyes with mathematical compasses by the Bennett’s bedridden daughter Katia, an enraged but blinded Mikos blunders through the house in sightless pursuit of the ostensibly crippled girl. Timed to near perfection and expertly composed this hair-raising scene is possibly the finest scene that D’Amato would ever commit to celluloid.
Absurd is by no stretch of the imagination a classic of the Italian horror genre. D’Amato’s clumsy attempts to emulate American slasher cinema trappings within the confines of a cheap Italian exploitation budget with Italian exploitation personnel sadly preclude it from that. Yet approached purely as a grisly continental body count shocker, Absurd shines thanks to Eastman’s memorable killer, an overdose of brutal gore and – perhaps moist surprisingly – moments of subtlety, atmosphere and unnervingly tense fright sequences administered with an expert hand that belies the general assumption that D’Amato was a talentless hack. In the current climate of 2007 where our beloved horror genre is dominated by diluted teen popcorn fodder and endless remakes, the grisly, guttersnipe brutality of Absurd feels more welcome than ever. It’s enough to send any self-respecting gorehound or trash cinema aficionado into a state of teary-eyed nostalgia.
Also Try… Anthropophagous The Beast / Beyond The Darkness / Patrick Still Lives / Halloween / Halloween II.
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