Cover Art

Credits

Director: Joe D'Amato Starring: Kieran Canter, Cinzia Monreale, Franca Stoppi Screenplay: Ottavia Fabbri Music: Goblin Country: Italy AKA: Buio Omega; Blue Holocaust; Buried Alive; The Final Darkness; In quella casa... buio omega

Another slice of Italian sleaze 'n' horror from the sure hand of Joe D'Amato - and you know with dear old Joe at the helm that you are going to have a grand old time.

The story is very simple and tells of a young man, Francesco (Kieran Canter), whose lover (Cinzia Monreale - familiar to viewers of Fulci's The Beyond) dies. We are led to believe that this is due to dodgy voodoo practised by the housekeeper, played to weird perfection by Franca Stoppi. Determined to forever be united with her, he exhumes the body (of course he does - doesn't everyone?) and embalms her so that she may remain with him without going all yucky and gooey on him. It's also handy that he just so happens to be a taxidermist (Good job he wasn't a carpenter, eh? He might have turned her into a cupboard.), so that helps matters somewhat. However, unbeknownst to Francesco, he has attracted the suspicions of the local mortician, which will ultimately be his downfall. Aside from going completely mad, that is, which doesn't really help either. Anyway, the film continues as Francesco starts bringing girl's home with him and then dispatching them in gruesome fashion when they displease him, usually by discovering his morbid secret. The first girl - an English girl - he strangles and then he and his housekeeper (who by now is complicit in his madness) dismember her corpse and dispose of her remains in an acid bath. Nasty stuff indeed. Things continue in this vein until in a bizarre twist his lover's twin sister (again played by Cinzia Monreale) turns up having heard the news of her sister's death. This sends Francesco completely over the edge and so we reach the suitably messy climax with dead bodies strewn about, eyes ripped out and all manner of bloodiness abounds.

This is a fine effort from D'Amato (one of the many pseudonyms adopted by Aristide Massaccesi) and is certainly one of the better examples of Italian horror cinema. Throughout it's running time it takes in disembowelment; dismemberment; eye-gouging; necrophilia; acid baths; people being incinerated alive; a pounding Goblin score; and an abundance of full-frontal nudity - albeit mostly from the cadavers. This is a really sick movie if you analyse its components, but taken as a whole this is a truly sleazy (if horrible) delight. Some may find the pacing a bit slow, but this is deliberate and creates a great moody atmosphere.