8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A blade in the dark/Macabre., April 25, 2006
This review is from: A Blade in the Dark/Macabre (DVD)
This double bill from Anchor Bay is excellent both films are from director Lamberto Bava son of director Mario Bava one of the earliest directors who did gialo films and has influinced other directors like Dario Argento and his son Lamberto. A blade in the dark tells the story of a young composer living in a secluded villa to finish work on composing a score for a horror film that his friend has made but soon finds himself caught up in a nightmare of murder and mystery. Lamberto Bava definently shows his talent behind the camera especialy when he sets up the intense scenes like the one where the killer is in the bathroom or the swimming pool scene which is stylishly made and the death scenes were very gory and bloody. If you liked the films of Dario Argento like Tenebrea or Deep red then you should deffinently check out A blade in the dark. Macabre is a different film from Lamberto and is more like a weird and twisted psychological thriller it is also his debut film, a married woman loses her lover who shes been having an affair with in a car crash that happened to decapatate him she is then traumatised by this incident and gets locked up in a mental institute, when she gets released she soon moves out to an appartment in New Orleans. This film has a shock ending but it doesn't quite work because you probably know whats going to happen unless you haven't read the back of the cover but still it was very wierd and entertaining I highly recomend this drive-in double feature from Anchor Bay it was fantastic.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
AWESOME DOUBLE BILL - 2 GREAT SEXY LAMBERTO BAVA THRILLERS, February 12, 2006
This review is from: A Blade in the Dark/Macabre (DVD)
Horror fans have never had it better. As pointed out by another reviewer here, obscure and undiscovered gems are popping up on cool collections like this one, thanks to sharp companies like Anchor Bay.
MACABRO is a twisted little erotic thriller based on an allegedly true story. Bava's first feature as director, it shows off his pedigree as a third generation filmmaker, a worthy heir to the legacy of his wonderfully talented and efficient father, Mario.
Set in New Orleans, the film is handsomely produced and beautifully directed. Bernice Stegers is scintillating as a mourning lover with a hideously perverse secret, spending a good deal of screen time in luscious lingerie. Stanko Molnar is endearing as her gentle, blind landlord, a role almost the opposite of the one he plays in our next film.
A BLADE IN THE DARK is something else altogether. As Lamberto Bava has stated in interviews, he's not really big on slasher movies. That said, this movie should be studied by anyone attempting the genre, because Bava nails it, almost to a T.
Whereas American slashers rely on the "imaginative" variety of ways a victim can be killed, this movie is less imaginative in that area, but much more intense for two reasons. The victims are well-developed and unique characters, done up with the greatest care in regards to their make-up and costuming.
A simple shot of Fabiola Toledo bending over a bathroom sink with her pantie-clad bottom exposed is charged with more eroticism than every t'n'a scene from the Friday 13th series strung together. This might seem a crude point, but sex is part of the survival drive, and its psychological effect is an important ingredient in all of the thriller genres. And while costumers of American slashers all seem to shop at Target or Walmarts to fit their lowly budgets, Italian costumers working on even skimpier budgets manage to procure items which look expensive as well as sensational.
In fact every set, costume, camera move and lighting set-up in a Bava film is first class. Like most Italian movies, the style and intelligence displayed from top to bottom blow away comparable Hollywood films, where the bloated budgets go to overvalued stars and an overwrought, hit-or-miss development process.
The only negative to either of these movies is an abrupt and somewhat predictable ending. But the ride along the way is extremely satisfying, with plenty of eye candy, perfectly executed efx, great music and several spill-your-popcorn scares.
The extras on this DVD are also very well-produced, including one which gives much-deserved credit to SCREENWRITER DARDANO SACCHETTI. Sacchetti had a hand in some of the best Italian horror films of the past three decades, including Fulci's ZOMBIE, DEMONS 1 & 2, CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE, HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, and dozens more.
Fans of Argento, Fulci and the Bavas need to check out Sacchetti's screen credits to see how important he was to the films they love. Kudos to Anchor Bay for including this tribute to the routinely overlooked screenwriter.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Any movie that has a director being killed by their own film has something going for it..., February 17, 2008
This review is from: A Blade in the Dark/Macabre (DVD)
It's all to easy to understand why Lamberto Bava's solo directorial debut Macabre failed to find much of an audience back in 1980: it feels more like a pitch than a fully fleshed out story, and one that's overly reliant on a shock ending that's pretty obvious. At times it feels like two separate underdeveloped films almost in competition with each other. Unfortunately the most interesting, a bad seed plot with the anti-heroine's homicidal daughter taking revenge on her for her infidelity by killing her young brother and trying to drive mommy back into the asylum, gets the least screen time in favor of mom not letting a little thing like decapitation stand between her and her dead lover. Much of it feels padded out and repetitive and unfortunately leading lady Bernice Stegers, admittedly hampered by a presumably dubbed deep fried Sowthan aksunt, simply cannot carry the film. Too well made to be unintentionally funny (at least until the absurd final shot), too boring to hold the attention and too predictable to offer any suspense, it's not difficult to see why this was such a flop that Bava didn't direct another film for three years.
Lamberto Bava's second film, A Blade in the Dark, is a slightly above average late giallo despite some incredibly some heavy-handed clues (a female director who dresses in men's suits, an actress appearing in a play about Vita Sackville-West, a flamboyantly gay assistant and an opening scene where two children taunt another for being a female - gee, do you think they're trying to tell us something about the killer?). Somewhat surprisingly originally intended for television but turned down for excessive violence, it mostly makes a virtue of its low budget though isn't able to make much of its key location, a large but rather characterless and unmenacing villa that conveniently belonged to the film's producer. Still, any film that has a director being killed by her own film has something going for it.
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