Director: Domiziano Cristopharo
Year: 2020
Country: Italy
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Exploitation
Plot:
After bringing home a new victim, a deranged psychopath prepares him to follow in the footsteps of several past victims in a ceremony for an Egyptian God, but his necrophilic urges and uncontrollable fantasies complicate the process forcing a series of drastic actions to prevent it.
Review:
This was an exceptionally enjoyable exploitation offering. From the very beginning, we're given an extremely intimate look at this individual who carries the film through the extreme elements and the normalcy of his everyday life. The extremity is covered rather quickly, seeing him standing at a bathroom sink while completely nude pleasuring himself, and after climaxing an extremely clever gag reveal is shown about the situation. The immediacy we then move over to a wholly desiccated and decayed corpse in his bedroom that he starts snuggling up with gives us a look at the depths this will go. It's just the start of the gruesomeness here as later scenes show the intimate nature of his relationship with other festering corpses in the house or the outright disturbing sexual acts committed here which is enhanced by the clinical, unflinching nature they're captured.
Outside of this gruesome material, the openness this carries other extreme factors throughout brings some enjoyable aspects. There's plenty of graphic gore and bloodletting on display here, focusing on several scenes with drawn-out dismembering and carving up a body that's incredibly well-done due to their realism. Even the other kills here have their own sense of brutality and graphic carnage as the use of a hammer to strike and stun them before being shown to carve out pieces of their body and dismember it which also carries itself along rather nicely to the sexual nature of what's happening to the bodies. As well, there's the constant, near-continuous male nudity to contend with as it goes hand-in-hand with the majority of the necrophilia or body-dismembering as he spends nearly the entire film nude or pleasuring himself to his nude captors which creatures the uncomfortable nature.
As much as those elements work for the film, though, this one stumbles just as bad when it comes to the storyline and some of the writing. The near-total lack of dialog here gives no context to anything that's going on which is a major mistake here. For what is supposedly a look into the mind of a deranged individual who derives pleasure from necrophilia and sadistic torture, this doesn't offer anything to account for what turned him into a necrophile or how he's gone through life with the condition. It needs to explore this area in order to make sense of everything here, not only this factor but the connection to Egyptian mythology which is an important part of the guys' methodology but completely goes unexplained. As well, this does feel rather plodding here with the improvised feel of him going through the motion of his daily life when it's not focused on the exploitative aspects which hold this down.
Overview: ***.5/5
As a piece of modern exploitation cinema, this is one of the stronger entries in the style with some absolutely uncomfortable sequences throughout which make for one of the hardest watches around. Give this one a look if you're comfortable with the openness of the subject matter, intrigued by the concept or a fan of the creative crew while anyone else out there should heed extreme caution.
TETROMANIAC: eROTik from TetroVideo on Vimeo.
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