Glad I finally saw this one, a 1977 Italian horror classic in Technicolor, but I can't say I was blown away. The theme was haunting, mesmerizing, beautiful, and perfect. Some of the scenes were very pretty, often in a nightmarish and dazzling hellscape. And that's where my admiration ends, because nothing else really worked, at all. Piss-poor sound editing is an expectation of mine whenever I see a movie from before, say, 1985, but even for a foreign '70s film this thing's a dubbed up mess. Nothing like watching an outdoor scene with wind and everything and hearing nothing but flat, indoor voices. No wind, no street noise - just poorly synchronized dialogue. Also - the performances are pretty much ass even if you squint your eyes and give the shaky dubbing the benefit of the doubt. And the less said about just how fake the blood and gore all looked, the better.
But, still. It's a classic for a reason and I'm probably better off for having seen it. Trev once said something to the effect of, "if you haven't seen a Dario Argento horror movie, your opinions on horror movies can't be fully trusted." Well, you can trust me now, Trev, when I say that this movie was a big ol' bucket of "eeeeeeeeeh." (I kid. Mostly.)
Oh, they're remaking this! It could be good. Given that the original version's biggest shortcomings were all budget and technology-based, it's not hard to claim that a 2017 remake could improve substantially on this. But we all know it won't. Lame!
No comments:
Post a Comment