Claudio Simonetti Movies
After beginning the witchy tale of the malevolent "Three Mothers" at a secretive ballet academy in Freiburg, Germany (Suspiria), and later tracking the supernatural goings-on to a doomed tenement building in New York City (Inferno), Italian horror icon Dario Argento draws his long-running trilogy to a close with this third and final installment, set in the Italian capital. Co-scripted by Toolbox Murders screenwriters Adam Gierasch and Jace Anderson, Mother of Tears stars Asia Argento as an American art student who unknowingly unleashes a demonic plague of witches on Rome by breaking the seal of an ancient urn. Udo Kier, Adam James, Philippe Leroy, and Daria Nicolodi also appear in the eagerly anticipated tale of Mater Lachrymarum -- the third and most powerful witch in the terrifying trilogy. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Asia Argento, Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni, (more)
A serial killer with a knack for video poker and a taste for blood taunts a determined policewoman in director Dario Argento's attempt to bring the traditional giallo into the digital age. Detective Anna Mari (Stefania Rocca) is sitting at her desk when a message from an anonymous online gambler bearing the moniker "The Card Player" invites her to join a game of video poker. When the game screen loads, Mari is horrified to learn that the stakes of the game are higher than she ever could have imagined, as an unidentified female in an over-pixilated web-cam window screams for her life. Though the chief initially refuses to take part in the killer's horrifying game, the death of the innocent victim leads Mari to seek more unconventional means of tracking the murderous gambler. As the killer continues to taunt police, British policeman John Brennan (Liam Cunningham) is brought in to help solve the case. When the killer ups the ante by kidnapping the police chief's daughter, it's only a matter of time before the killer and Mari herself are locked in a pulse-pounding, life-or-death game in which anyone could hold the winning hand. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Liam Cunningham
- 1988
- R
After a criminal motorcycle rider is put to death, he comes back from the dead to seek murderous revenge against the residents of a Florida town. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nicolas de Toth, Sarah Buxton, (more)
- 1988
- R
This Italian production is the story of a young model who fears for her life after a series of prank phone calls. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charlotte Lewis, William Berger, (more)
The polar-opposite worlds of opera and horror collide in this gory giallo film from director Dario Argento. Christina Marsillach (Tom Hanks' romantic interest in Every Time We Say Goodbye) stars as Betty, a beautiful understudy who gets an unlikely break to play the female lead in a contemporary opera of Verdi's Macbeth. Her fear of Macbeth's notorious curse proves to have foundation when a psychopath with a strange connection to Betty murders a stage hand in the midst of her debut and later kills several ravens being used in the opera. Characters introduced at this point who could be the killer include: the show's director, Marco (Ian Charleson); Betty's publicist, Mira (Daria Nicolodi); and the police inspector, Alan Santini (Urbano Barberini). The middle third of the film is devoted to the killer's bloody work which serves to torment Betty. The madman binds her and tapes a row of tiny needles beneath her eyes so that she is forced to watch him butcher a young stage manager and a costume designer, among others. With the police investigation going nowhere and the killer zeroing in on Betty's death, Marco decides to enact his own plan to stop the madman; he releases the ravens (apparently, they always remember their enemies) during a performance. The birds circle wildly before attacking the killer and plucking one of his eyeballs out. He absconds with Betty, but dies in a fire after revealing his demented motivation and his connection to the young singer. A final scene set in the Swiss mountains provides a couple of final shocks. ~ Patrick Legare, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Christina Marsillach, Urbano Barberini, (more)
- 1986
In this stultifying mess, director Lamberto Bava and his co-writer, the ubiquitous Dardano Sacchetti, manage to rip off nearly every giallo cliche in history and still deliver a tedious film. Cop Leonardo Treviglio and his wife have a loud fight and she ends up stabbed to death with an ice-pick. His buddy Paolo Marco is put on the case and believes Treviglio did it, but criminal psychologist Valeria d'Obici (who often uses the technical term "maniac") believes he's innocent. She thinks it was a killer named Tribbo, who supposedly died in a fire many years before. Treviglio is shot to death by another cop, but the murders go on. Eventually, the killer follows Marco's daughter (Lara Wendel) and two friends to a secluded hotel for the lengthy final standoff. Viewers who have seen any of Dario Argento's thrillers (The Bird With the Crystal Plumage in particular) will guess who the killer is in about 15 minutes, and the hotel scenes -- borrowed wholesale from Torso -- fail to generate the least bit of suspense. It's hard to believe from a director who made the stylish A Blade in the Dark only a few years before, but even Bava's legendary father had his off-days. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- 1986
- R
In a complex sci-fi tale set at some point in the not-too-distant future, an evil industrialist named Francis Turner (John Saxon) has created Paco Querak (Daniel Greene), a cyborg who is 70% robot and 30% human. Paco has been programmed to murder a blind ecologist whose environmental activism does not sit well with Turner's bottom-line motivation. But once he is set up to do his job, the 30% human component in Paco only permits him to injure the ecologist, not kill him. With the local police (and eventually just about everyone else) after him, Paco detours to Arizona to look for his true identity. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Greene, Janet Agren, (more)
- 1985
This documentary showcases the career of Italian horror-film director Dario Argento. Included are clips from his films and behind-the-scenes footage from all of his films from the 1970s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage to the 1980s Creepers. Argento himself is interviewed several times during the course of the film. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide
In this Italian adventure, the deadly drug manufacturing and export operation of a prominent South- American drug czar is discovered by an investigative TV news correspondent and her cameraman who went to the jungle to look into evidence that a notorious, corrupt colonel is still alive. While in the jungles, they encounter hostile natives and other typical dangers. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lisa Blount, Leonard Mann, (more)
Italian horror auteur Dario Argento produced and co-wrote (with director Lamberto Bava) this gory, nightmarish horror film set almost entirely within the "Metropol," a huge, cathedral-like Berlin cinema showing an invitation-only screening of a rather lame slasher film. The difference, of course, is that the cheap scares on the Metropol's screen are child's play compared to the horrors which soon emerge to lay hold of the unsuspecting filmgoers: when a young woman is scratched by part of a display in the theatre lobby, she begins to mutate into a fanged, slavering creature who then attacks other audience members, spreading the demonic infection until only a handful of survivors are forced to combat rampaging armies of inhuman beasts, making the latter portion of the film resemble Night of the Living Dead. A handful of sequels followed; there's a little "reward" for those who stick around for the end credits. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Natasha Hovey, Urbano Barberini, (more)
Declared "my most personal film" by Italy's premier horror director Dario Argento, this production marked the director's return to the eerie thematic territory he pioneered in 1977 with the horror classic Suspiria. Much like that film, Phenomena conforms to the logic of nightmares. Jennifer Connelly stars as Jennifer Corvino, the daughter of an American film star, who enrolls in a prestigious Swiss boarding school under the tutelage of the prudish Mrs. Bruckner (played by frequent Argento collaborator and former beau Daria Nicolodi). Possessing a unique telepathic gift, Jennifer is capable of communicating with insects on an instinctive level, often while sleepwalking. This trait soon brands her a "freak" among her snooty classmates but makes her a valuable asset to entomologist Dr. MacGregor (Donald Pleasence), who is currently employing the innate forensic skills of insects to aid police in tracking a serial killer targeting the boarders at Jennifer's school. As Jennifer's tiny friends (including the corpse-hunting Sarcophagus Fly) guide her closer to the murderer's lair, everything from MacGregor's revenge-driven pet chimpanzee to Bruckner's monstrously disfigured son figure into the mix, providing not one but three shocking endings. Shot in English and re-dubbed for various European markets, this graphic thriller was released in drastically edited form as Creepers in the U.S. and England; Argento's original cut runs 110 minutes. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jennifer Connelly, Donald Pleasence, (more)
Acclaimed horror director Lucio Fulci infuses the sword-and-sorcery genre with gory decapitations, pus-squirting lesions and flesh-eating zombies in this uneven fantasy. The hero of the piece is young Ilias (Andrea Occhipinti), who, along with his bolo-swinging friend Maxz (Jorge Rivero), battles monsters, mutant tribes, and an evil queen (Sabrina Siani) on his journey to manhood. As the evil Ocron, the topless Siani wears a gold mask and bikini bottoms while writhing around on a fur rug covered with live snakes. Siani rules over a risible tribe of people in dog masks who blow narcotics up each others' noses through a straw, and conjures up wolf-warriors from her dreams to shoot poisonous straws at her enemies. The American version is missing much of the gore, but is still far too explicit for the young audiences at whom it is apparently aimed. Terrible special effects, hazy cinematography and inappropriately modernistic music by Claudio Simonetti do not make the film very enjoyable for adults either. Still, it is well-paced and Occhipinti makes a sympathetic lead, making the film worthwhile, if only for genre completists and Fulci devotees. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jorge Rivero, Andrea Occhipinti, (more)
Dario Argento leaves a distinct and bloody impression with this Italian horror film that took the slasher genre to graphic new limits at the time of its release. Novelist Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa) jets into Rome to promote his new book. Simultaneously, a killer obsessed with Neal begins a brutal series of murders that are followed by cryptic notes to the author. Inspector Germani (Giuliano Gemma) questions Neal, who then begins his own investigation into the bizarre case with the help of his assistant, Anne (Daria Nicolodi), and local youth Gianni (Christian Borromeo). Neal and Gianni follow leads to the home of a TV talk-show host (John Steiner), who is axed to death in front of Gianni while Neal is knocked unconscious. As they close in on the killer, flashbacks show the killer's murderous beginnings and an obsession with red shoes. Meanwhile, Neal's publicist, Bullmer (John Saxon), is revealed to be having an affair with the author's ex-lover, Jane (Veronica Lario), making them both potential suspects. Inspector Germani insists that Neal leave town, but even when he does, the killer strikes again, knifing Bullmer in broad daylight. At the same time, Gianni returns to the home of the dead talk-show host and recalls an important detail about the murder. However, he is strangled before he can tell anyone. At her apartment, Jane is brutally slain just as Inspector Germani arrives to discover the murderer's identity, along with the shocking, twist-filled truth behind the entire case. ~ Patrick Legare, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anthony Franciosa, John Saxon, (more)
In this run-of-the-mill, derivative film about vulgar road warriors in the year 2019 -- after a nuclear holocaust -- the two macho heroes (Giancarlo Prete and Fred Williamson) have to single-handedly save a band of religious nomads plagued by the evil Templars. Between scenes and characters lifted from several preceding successes, flat acting, and a general lack of originality, I Nuovi Barbari has nothing new about it. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fred Williamson, Anna Kanakis, (more)
- 1960
A low-budget, low-standard drama about voodoo and death in Brazil, Macumba Love is directed by Douglas Fowley (Doc Holliday in the Wyatt Earp TV series). A writer travels to the land of the samba in order to investigate its voodoo practitioners and several suspicious-looking murders that could be laid at their doorstep. As his investigations start hitting too close to their target, his own continued existence looks more and more problematical. Songs and some wild dancing, as well as Playboy centerfold June Wilkinson add spice to the otherwise uninspired tale. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Walter Reed, Ziva Rodann, (more)
