Director: Domiziano Cristopharo, Alessandro Basso, Alessandro Redaelli, Andrea Aste, Yumiko Itou,
Year: 2015
Country: Italy
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Anthology; Exploitation
Plot:
Bored at the end of the night, a woman decides to read a series of erotic short stories based on the work of author Edgar Allan Hoe, letting the depravity found in the stories eventually overwhelm her.
Review:
This was a rather bizarre and chaotic offering. The fact that the general idea here involving a series of avant-garde retellings of famous short stories given a touch of depravity, eroticism, and generally unconventional approaches to the material both in visual style and storyline change-ups creates a fun time here. Knowing the general setup in some of the stories, involving sexual dominance and submission, the dead haunting the living, and other such tales. With most ending on a dark twist of irony or fateful encounter, this works rather nicely overall here.
Likewise, the generally erotic and brutal tone established in the majority of the stories is fine enough. With efforts ranging from a man being tormented by the spirit of a cat he thought he'd murdered, another stuck in prison with a deranged inmate on the other side of the wall and a demon tempted to make love to a forbidden and cursed woman, carry a generally profound and focused sense of eroticism and bizarre imagery that's at the hallmark of the genre. With the wrap-around furthering this with the readers' voracious sexual pleasure and the numerous distinct visual styles at play here, these create a somewhat endearing touch for the most part.
However, there's still the overriding drawback with this one in that most of the shorts aren't that interesting. Beyond the eroticism or the avant-garde nature here moving from off-kilter animation to bizarre drawings and live-action features, very little of this one makes an impression. Those features are what drive this one, especially once you know where it's going and how they're going to end which makes a lot of the segments feel like a drag to get through. As they tend to go for deranged arthouse visuals and setups as well rather than overt genre hang-ups, that makes the material even less impressive with little about it to recommend to genre fans.
Overview: **/5
A visually striking anthology undone by a rather decided focus on outside norms than what most genre fans would enjoy even when it does delve into those aspects, this is a decidedly hit-or-miss extreme anthology. Those who are interested in the subject matter or appreciate the creative crew will be the most decided ones for this while most others will be turned off by the style and should therefore heed caution.
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