Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop  MADHOUSE – A woman is stalked by her twisted sister in this atmospheric slasher from the early eighties. 'Madhouse' might not automatically satisfy those hoping to score at the blood'n'guts end of the spectrum, but there's something hypnotic about it. It may aspire to the same sub-genre as 'The Burning' et cetera, but is closer to Italian neo-goths such as 'The Beyond' in terms of look, texture and feel. Crazed throat ripping hound aside, maybe it's about the cinematography, with its shadowy compositions which all have an air of unease about them, as if something's going to happen... that 'something' might involve a climax which overlaps a bit too much with the end of 'Happy Birthday to Me', but is at least slightly maniacal in its OTT nonsense. So, 'Madhouse' – disjointed, dreamy, a bit like a slasher but not really – you wouldn't expect anything massively straightforward from the maker of 'The Visitor', and this isn't.
ALL THE COLOURS OF THE DARK – Something weird's happening in early seventies London. Edwige Fenech is having nightmares, and someone's following her. Her buddy has the great idea of getting her into a satanic cult, and prods her further down the winding road to certain madness etc. 'All The Colours Of The Dark' takes aspects from 'Rosemary's Baby' and 'Repulsion' and swaddles them in the look of the giallo. We get some great, unhinged dream sequences and various other outbursts of gratuitous overstylisation, all played out against the kind of interior design you last saw when you were on mescaline. All of which I'm in favour of, because I'm not such a big fan of gialli and to be honest they only ever really interest me if the pop-psychedelic bits manage to overcome the massive police procedural yawn induction that always seems part of the package. None of those tiresome shenanigans here though, it's mostly all Edwige and her inner / outer demons and various people looking intense and haunted at the relevant moments. Sergio Martino keeps some degree of tension flickering in the background, and at its best ATCOTD aspires to Hitchcock through a fractured lens. For me though, the datedness and the lack of pace mire it in a kind of clumsiness, and as a result it never quite clicks. But again, I tend to have that issue with most gialli. Even though, let's get this straight, 'All The Colours Of The Dark' is not a giallo. Not really, anyway. Erm, what was I talking about again? |