|
Ignacio Iquino's version of ROSEMARY'S BABY by way of Lucio Fulci takes
no hostages. It's as brutally violent and gory as its English language
title suggests and seems the antithesis of Polanski's subtle,
incremental approach to very similar material. Nonetheless, this remains
a very powerful horror-thriller which may prove demonically difficult to
track down outside of gray market dealers.
Iquino and Juan Bosch (both Spaghetti Western veterans) co-scripted
under pen-names along with Jackie Kelly and what the scenario lacks in
originality it makes up for by daring to go to places which subvert our
illusions of safety. A man relaxing after sexual intercourse suddenly
gets his eyes gouged out by an insane woman. Later, a couple leaving an
abortion clinic are slashed to death with a fearsome looking straight
razor, while back at the office the abortionist is repeatedly rammed by
a satanically animated gynecological examination table until she vomits
a bloody mess directly into the camera lens! So much for subtlety. Yet
it's almost impossible to stop watching as one transgression follows the
next, deepening a sense of physical and emotional violation.
The film takes a graphic, ultraliteral approach which results in a sense
of events spinning out of control within a delirious, surrealistic
context. It begins with car headlights piercing through the dark as an
electrical storm rages overhead. A woman arrives at her lover's isolated
villa for a night of love which will turn into a gradually unfolding
nightmare. The eerie, atonal music by Henry Soteh (Enrique Escobar)
disturbs any sense of propriety, suggesting a piano synched through raw
nerves. After the aforementioned eye gouging our frazzled young couple
visit an artificial insemination center in hope that having a child will
mend the past trauma. Don't bet on it. A local satanic cult already has
a henchman on staff who slips the devil-authored sperm into a vaginal
gun which is then inserted into the unknowing host. This is all
presented in the minute detail of a medical documentary, making the
sense of violation all the more disturbing.
Then there's Margaret, Lucifer's midwife who shows
up clad in jet black attire while her own personal windstorm rages
around her. You see, these Satanists seem to exist in a parallel
dimension with its own constantly inclement weather and hellish, crimson
light. Margaret's eyes are drowning pools of obsession and malice as
terrifying as Manson's. Her ever-present smile and nonstop twitching
would make her the perfect mate for Norman Bates. But this woman in no
mere human monster and will in the final reel become a ferociously
efficient killing machine capable of anything and everything in the
service of her Lord and Master.
Equally imposing is the murderous giant, Iranzo (John Zanni), the cult's
enforcer who chuckles in delight as he slashes, crushes and hacks to
death anyone attempting to interfere with the Plan. Every signifier of
domestic comfort and joy is systemically defiled as the birth
approaches. A pet bird succumbs to a hurricane in the living room, the
refrigerator becomes a bloody pit of horror, the eye gouging madwoman
strips nude, hanging herself in the room where toys and Halloween masks
are stored.
The final scenes sternly deny any safe haven and even gravitational,
magnetic, climatic orientation as the house and surrounding hills are
engulfed in spontaneous windstorms, lightning and fires. Imagine what
occurs in that bedroom in THE EXORCIST expanding on a grand scale so
that there is nowhere to run, the only hope is to stay and fight the
evil on its own terms. Ironically, it takes a blindman and a terrorized
child to undo the cult as Margaret is skewered in high style while the
newborn is incinerated upon exposure to a simple twist of fate.
Undercurrents of sexual perversity swirl throughout, but Iquino seems
eager to rain blood on flesh and torture sensuality into Sadean
tableaux. This is Spanish Horror at its most intemperate: raging,
excessive, unapologetic, pulling up the roots and tearing down the
walls. Look out, you either have to see it or avoid it at all costs.
-- Reviewed by Robert Monell, 2002
|
