Dipping into some vintage horror now, this one is a Joe D’Amato classic from 1979, when Italian horror was at its high point. Soundtrack by “The Goblins,” known also as “Goblin” on the soundtracks of multiple Dario Argento horror movies of the era. If you come across any on their records while picking through the bins at your favorite snooty vinyl shop you should grab one.
It’s a typical 70’s exploitation horror, filmed in just two weeks with the express purpose, in the words of the director, “We’re making a movie to make people throw up. We must make ’em vomit!” There were few restrictions on filmmaking back then, and D’Amato aimed for something hyper gory using butcher’s scraps obtained from a slaughterhouse. Hearts and entrails and eyeballs and skin and fat from sheep, cows and pigs. How great THAT set must have smelled, right?
Total garbage movie, of course, don’t go in expecting quality. It’s all about blood and guts, this movie.
A taxidermist somehow affords himself a palatial mansion and a maid, because I guess Italians are really nutty about their taxidermy and literally throw their Lira at skin stuffers? I dunno, wish I knew this before I went to college. This maid, however, wants the house for herself, so she kills the taxidermist’s girlfriend with Haitian voodoo magic. I mean look at this place, can you blame her? Check the woodwork, total craftsman home, I’d likely kill a couple people with voodoo myself had I the opportunity. Price of homes as they are? You bet!
The maid wants to marry him and be lady of the house, so she voodoos the girlfriend. The guy, Frank is his name, goes to the hospital, his gf wants to bang him before she dies, but she dies too soon. Frank goes home, and his maid Iris consoles him by breastfeeding him… aaand now he’s a crazyman. Voodoo boob milk I suppose. He abducts the corpse after they bury it, and brings it home with him. Along the way he picks up a hitchhiker, because why not? She blasts through a bunch of weed and falls right to sleep… in the truck of a strange man she just met, with a dug-up corpse in the back. Whatever happens to this hitchhiker, she really should have exercised a smidge more caution. It was the 70’s, for fuxxake, people were getting picked up and murdered all the time!
True to form, crazy Frank let’s the hitchhiker sleep and he brings her home with him, then goes to work on pulling out his dead girlfriend’s guts. Why? I dunno, man! Probably making her into some kinda freaky taxidermy sex doll! Whatever his plan, D’Amato bought buckets full of guts and he needs to start slopping them about sometime! He pulls out lotsa guts, starts French kissing the heart, pushes hoses up her nose and shlurps out a jar of pink frothy gooze, and that’s when the hitchhiker wakes up. Ut Oh!!
“Eek! Scary dead body! Eek! Pail full of guts!” (runrunrun) “Ouch he’s choking me and I’m dead now! This sucks!”
Now Frank has TWO dead bodies. One is hot and Italian, the other is… well so he puts the English one in his truck, then he and Iris dress up the other dead lady in an evening gown and put her into bed.
The funeral director senses some bullshit going on, and sneaks into Frank’s home to snoop around a little. Leans over the dead Englishwoman in the truck to grab the girlfriend’s locket, lying there next to the corpse. “Now THIS is suspicious!” He takes the jewelry and trots off to solve the case.
Meanwhile, Frank fills a bathtub with acid poured from a giant Chianti bottle (because “Italy”), while Iris parts out the hitchhiker and melts the pieces in the tub. Then they go back to the bedroom and Iris gives him a handie while he looks at the stuffed girlfriend.
You think his wetnurse handie would satisfy Frank for a couple of days, but NO! He goes out jogging, finds a lady jogger who hurt her ankle, and he brings her home to administer the healing treatment of slowly smearing gobs of Jergins all over it while she rubs his hair and he gets all horn-dog woozy-faced. Then they go right to the corpse room to have sex. I’ll just go ahead and suggest that ladies in this town don’t exercise and ounce of caution around strange men. I know he’s got a really sweet mansion but seriously, there’s some red flags you’re missing (like the corpse in the bed?). He kills her, of course, because he’s a corpse-crazed goon! He and Iris then incinerate the not-quite-dead-yet body in the cremation furnace they just happen to have in the kitchen. Again, red flags. Kinda obvious.
In the background, there’s that nosy funeral director. Ever since the funeral he’s been obsessed. The whole “I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t even know if an actual crime has been committed, but there’s something suspicious about this guy and so I’m going to make him my mission!” angle. Okay, Karen, don’t you have actual work to do? Mind ya business!
Iris works Frank for awhile and he agrees to marry her. She invites her weird mustachey family over to celebrate, but Frank would rather be with his corpse. I’m having misgivings about their upcoming nuptials, Frank seems like he’s working through issues, maybe not the best time. He’s got cadaver fever, and he’s got it bad!
You know somewhere there’s a Reddit stream for necro fetishists, with its own chapter on their opinions of the hottest scenes in the movie, with fan fiction and exotic fan art (drawn in the style of anime, no doubt) included.
Fun things to point out, the corpse, played by Cinzia Monreale, gets second billing in the credits, even though she dies in the first scenes and spends 90% of the movie just laying in bed with her eyes open. Iris’s actress, Franca Stoppi, takes third billing in the credits, after the corpse. She plays an old crone character, even though the actress is only 32. She just has kind of a weird face, and as such is cast in mostly horror movies, with a couple of “women in prison” flicks sprinkled on top. The movie made crap returns at the box office, so they re released it internationally under several other names over the years, including attempting to pass it off as part of the “Evil Dead” franchise in the U.S., and part of the “House” franchise in Spain.
It’s cheap and trashy but still pretty fun.