|
Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
|
|
|
|
|
Anna (Cinzia Monreale), the wife of rich heir and amateur taxidermist
Frank (Kieran Canter), lies on her deathbed ... and because Frank's maid
Iris (Franca Stoppi) never could stand her but always loved him, she helps
Anna dieing a bit with a voodoo doll ...
Frank though can't come over her death, so one night he digs her coffin
up and drives her (still relatively fresh) corpse home to professionally
embalm her and keep her for all eternity. Unfortunately though, Frank also
picks up a hitch-hiker (Lucia D'Elia), who first passes out in his car but
later catches Frank working on the corpse ... and Frank finds himself
forced to kill her. Iris then finds him leaning over the hitch-hiker's
dead body, but instead of being shocked she helps him getting rid of the
hitch-hiker and dressing up dead Anna and placing her in his double bed
...
A few days later, Frank picks up a girl (Anna Cardini) who hurts her
ankle when jogging, and he offers to help her ... which soon leads to the
two of them having sex, and in Frank's double bed too - which ends fatal
when Frank removes the sheets over Anna's body on purpose, and she, upon
finding a corpse next to her, screams in shock ... which makes him biting
her throat as a reflex, then with the help of Iris throwing her into the
incinerator and burning her alive.
Iris realizes that she now has Frank in her hand, and she makes him
promise to marry her, which he does reluctantly ...
All of Iris' high-flying plans are shattered however when Elena, Anna's
sister and splitting image (who is thus also played by Cinzia Monreale),
stops by for a short visit and Frank seems to forget everything about his
promise to Iris - which causes Iris to make up plans to scare the
heebigeebies out of Elena and eventually kill her ... but before she can,
Frank intervenes, and in a fight, Frank and Iris seem to literally take
each other apart, which unsurprisingly leads to the death of them both ...
Compared to other Joe D'Amato-gore-shockers - Antropophagus
immediately springs to mind -, Buio Omega is very well-written,
even if the similarities to Il Terzo
Occhio, a little-known (and rather disappointing) thriller from 1966 starring Franco Nero are
so striking that it is next to impossible that Buio Omega was not
inspired by that film. Still, in direct comparison, D'Amato's version of
the story turns out to be the better movie, it contains quite a bit of
suspense, the amount of gore a macabre story like this is entitled to, and
for once D'Amato's rather bleak directorial style works for the movie and
its cynical undertones and not against it. Of course, the score by Goblin
is also a notch or two above the music D'Amato usually has at hands and
helps the atmosphere of the film immensely, as do the convincing sets. The
only thing that does actually not work in Buio Omega is lead actor
Kieran Canter, who totally fails to convince as a madman who shares his bed
with his dead wife.
But still, Buio Omega is very possibly Joe D'Amato's best
shocker, and it's rather a shame that it is routinely neglected for the
much blander and more boring Antropophagus
just because George Eastman eats a fetus in that one.
|