Cover Art

Credits

Director: Lamberto Bava Starring: Malco, Virginia Bryant, Sabrina Ferilli, Stefania Montorsi, Patrizio Vinci, Alice Di Giuseppe, David Flosi, Alex Serra Screenplay: Lamberto Bava and Dardano Sacchetti Country: Italy AKA: La Casa dell'orco; The Ogre

Anyway, back when I'd first read about this movie, the only film I'd seen from Lamberto Bava was Demons, which I absolutely love. As I saw more of his work, I stopped being willing to shell out $20 for a bootleg, and The Ogre never made its way to me.

The Ogre begins with a young girl waking from a nightmare and walking around a gothic castle. She ends up in a cellar area and finds something that looks like a giant spider egg sack on the ceiling. When a monstrous figure emerges, she runs away, only to wake and find it was all a dream…or was it?

Now all grown up, the girl and her family go to a villa where she can work on her next horror novel. However, the castle they stay in immediately re-triggers her old nightmares, and after a scene of her wandering around the castle for a VERY long time, she eventually ends up in the cellar. A cellar identical to the one from her dreams. Her husband insists that it can't be, because she grew up in Oregon. He pronounces it 'Oar-a-gone' just to prove that he's never been near that state. Anyway, viewers who've seen more than three movies will be able to guess what's coming next.

While The Ogre sports a few imaginatively staged shots, it is very clear with this film that the Lamberto apple fell quite a ways from the Bava family tree. The film is brimming with bad acting, but a lot of that blame lies with the dub. The movie has the second rate humour and silly plot points one would expect from an 80s spaghetti horror, like when our heroine goes swimming in completely green water. Forget ogres and anything else that might be lurking, that seems like a sure-fire way to get a nasty infection.

Aside from a funny moment involving a cow, one thing that I'm sure I'll remember is that while Shrek may have taught us all that ogres are like onions, this movie clears up that their favourite flower is orchids. The ogre makeup isn't awful, it just would've benefited from underexposure, a directing choice that also would've better fit the psychological/gothic nature of the film as well. Seeing the ogre run actually makes him laughable, and that's never a good thing in a serious horror movie.

The Ogre was rechristened Demons 3 by Trans-Global Pictures in the UK, which is really unfair. The Ogre may not be as plodding as Lamberto's Until Death, but it lacks the energy of its 'prequel.' This isn't a splatter flick with an ogre tearing people apart at all. What little gore there is, like a cheesy clawed face, is reminiscent of the aftermath of the attacks in The Isle of Fishmen (prior to the gore-boosting for its US release as Screamers).