Quote:
Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs  House of Flesh Mannequins (2009)
It does the film a disservice to call it a horror film because once watched and taken in, it so painfully obviously isn't. It's a story about relationships and developing love in a pair of unconventional lives. Starring the unknown to me, Domiziano Arcangeli and Irena A. Hoffman and Italian genre stalwart Giovanni Lombardo Radice. (Better known as John Morghen to some). Director Domiziano Cristopharo's film is an original vision of weird, disturbing and sometimes shocking invention.
It's use of cinematography is wonderful, doing for the moving picture what Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio did for sound. The film has a mesmerizing quality to it. I often felt hypnotized as if i was on an ethereal journey of sound and vision. The music whilst never distracting from the onscreen elegance was carefully selected and often only a single piano or jazz trumpet motif enhancing the film's captivational qualities.
The film does feature several strong scenes of sex, torture and death, but these are not shown to exploit nor titilate but to explain the true depths of the characters. It does give the film a proper sense of uncomfortable unease at times, allowing the stories originality to shine through so you could never second guess what was coming next.
The real beauty of House of Flesh Mannequins is that someone else may see things from an entirely different point of view thus making it a film of maybe endless rewatch value.
Highly recommended. |
I've had this for ages, but haven't seen it really... I put it on once and got so pissed I couldn't take it in (although who knows whether I reviewed it through that particular haze, I certainly haven't a clue). I remember MTDS didn't seem to like it too much, but I'll have to give it another go.