I put my money
on Italian director Joe D'Amato as being the sleaziest filmmaker
in history. My exhibits would include his Eaten Alive by the Cannibals,
Cannibal Ferox (AKA Make Them Die Slowly), Trap Them and Kill
Them (AKA Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals), Grim Reaper and this
little gem Buried Alive (of course D'Amato has directed about
40 other abominations). D'Amato insists on mixing gore and nudity
in such a manner that the viewer gets zero enjoyment out of either!
There is no defending
D'Amato's Buried Alive (1979) - it is a nasty little flick that
will frankly make you feel like shit when the end credits roll.
Add one part necrophilia, one part incest, lots of gore, a grainy
film stock and a skin crawling score by Goblin and you have one
of the sicker outputs of the second golden age of Italian horror.
Buried
Alive (also known as Blue Holocaust, Beyond the Darkness, Blue Omega?
and probably a couple more titles) concerns a young man named Frank
who has just lost the love of his life. His parents are dead so he lives
in his large estate with his relative (?) Iris who acts as his surrogate
mother. When Frank is broken up over the news of his girlfriends death,
good old Iris is there to tenderly offer Frank her bosom for suckling.
Frank
can't live without his girlfriend so he steals her body from the morgue
and takes her to his basement. Frank, by the way, is also a taxidermist
and uses these skills to conduct a graphic, repulsive autopsy on his
deceased love. While he is popping in her new glass eyes, a sleeping
hitchhiker awakens from his car and attacks Frank while at work! She
claws his neck and pays for it severely when Frank yanks her fingernails
out with pliers!
Joe D'Amato obviously
wanted to raise Buried Alive above mere exploitation by including
the touching scene of Iris whacking off Frank while he stares
at his pasty-white, dead girlfriend in bed.
When
Frank starts knocking off broads left and right, Iris is there to lend
a hand. A particularly disquieting scene has Frank filling the bathtub
with acid while Iris hacks apart a naked girl with a meat cleaver. Her
face covered in squirting blood, Iris chops away before simply plopping
the head, arms and legs into the gory acid stew.
Buried Alive includes
numerous D'Amato moments - characters who pop in and out doing
shit that doesn't make any sense - lots of nudity but none of
it the least bit erotic - scenes of intestines being pulled out
of stomach cavities - and above all THE TWIST ENDING!
Now
listen, I dig Joe D'Amato's films. Cannibal Ferox is always entertaining,
Trap Them and Kill Them, pretty cool. Hell I even like Grim Reaper!
But I have to admit to you, my dear reader, that when I picked up Buried
Alive to re-watch before doing this article I wasn't a happy camper.
This is easily one of the most twisted flicks ever made, and possibly
the least fun you'll have at the movies this year! Good Luck!
I put my money
on Italian director Joe D'Amato as being the sleaziest filmmaker
in history. My exhibits would include his Eaten Alive by the Cannibals,
Cannibal Ferox (AKA Make Them Die Slowly), Trap Them and Kill
Them (AKA Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals), Grim Reaper and this
little gem Buried Alive (of course D'Amato has directed about
40 other abominations). D'Amato insists on mixing gore and nudity
in such a manner that the viewer gets zero enjoyment out of either!
