Best movie of this year hands down!

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

As is the case with many low-budget horror films released numerous times with different cuts and ratings in various different continents, Joe D'Amato's Absurd is known under a wealth of alternative titles. Also known as Horrible, Rosso Sangue and Monster Hunter, the film was labelled as too gruesome for British audiences in the 1980's and found itself on the dreaded Video Nasty List. The most bizarre title to make its way onto its VHS cover is Anthropophagus 2, although the film has little in common with D/Amato's Anthropopogus: The Grim Reaper apart from the lead casting of George Eastman as yet another impossibly strong man-mountain with a fondness for gruesome murder.The film begins with Mikos (Eastman), a beast of a man with an unnaturally fast healing factor, fleeing a priest. As he tries to escape by scaling a fence, Mikos is impaled on the railing spikes which disembowel him. It is while at the hospital that the doctors discover his amazing ability to heal, but he is soon on the loose after murdering a nurse. The madman is eventually hit by a car driven by Mr. Bennett (Ian Danby), who flees the scene and returns to his wife, son, and bed-ridden daughter Katia (Katya Berger). The family soon finds themselves under attack from Mikos, while police officer Sgt. Engleman (Charles Borromel) and the priest (Edmund Purdom) attempt to hunt down the rampaging savage.Apart from a couple of entertainingly gory murders (a buzzsaw to the temple and a head in the oven are particular 'highlights'), Absurd suffers from some serious pacing issues. As the story bobbles around between the various characters having inane conversations, the film becomes incredibly boring and short of action. It's debatable as to whether Anthropophagus (1980) or Absurd takes the prize for the most tedious 90 minutes, but I feel that Absurd just edges it. Although Eastman does little more than stumble around with a crazy look in his eyes, he certainly has a presence, but here he is given a disappointingly short amount of screen time. By the time the climax finally arrives, it plods on and on as Katia is forced to learn to walk again to escape the bogeyman, which does not make for exciting viewing. Absurd, indeed.

'Absurd' is Joe D'Amato's follow-up to the notorious 'Antropophagus' and it often referred to as its sequel. However, apart from the same director and having the looming George Eastman once again wandering around killing people, there is very little similarity save the fact they are both poor films…with 'Absurd' definitely trumping its predecessor in the low quality stakes. Gone is the setting on a remote and eerily empty Greek island which characterised 'Antropohagus ', instead supplanting the (so-called) action to a small American town. In doing this, 'Absurd' is clearly going for a 'Halloween' nightmare-in-suburbia vibe…but in lacking any of the character development, script, or technical craft of Carpenter's flick, 'Absurd' flails about limply with a lame premise, zero suspense, and only manages to glimpse redemption (albeit unattained) with the make-up effects on the kills…which is no doubt why is got on the DPP's list of Video Nasties.The plot (as some would have it) is that Eastman has undergone a scientific procedure which has enabled his body to regenerate itself quickly (a la Wolverine) and consequently can only be killed with a shot to the head. Oh, and he's insane. As such, a killing spree ensues and the Priest-cum-scientist who "created" him hooks up with the town Sheriff to hunt him down. The showdown takes place in a house with a girl (for some reason) recovering from a spinal operation, her nurse, and a really annoying kid. I've always found a house to be a great setting for a suspenseful horror movie (e.g. 'Last House on the Left' (1972), 'Black Christmas' (1974), 'Halloween' (1978)) but the pacing of 'Absurd' is so slow and the acting so bad on all counts that none of the suspense and tension which is so abundantly present in these other movies even threatens to show its head…let alone eviscerate you.Okay, putting on my positive cap: some of the kills are pretty cool e.g. the buzzsaw-in-the-head scene as well as the oven scene, and the soundtrack has its moments…but even in a 90 minute film with competent acting and a decent story this wouldn't cut it, let alone a movie as deplorable as this. The film is quite hard to come by as it hasn't been reissued in the UK, which maybe adds a mystique to it but, as far as video nasties go, it's clear that boredom more than moral outrage is the reason why.

D'Amato's 1981 Rosse Sangue is a retread/rehash/remake-come-sequel to his previous year's cannibal classic Anthropophagus, again with George Eastman starring as a great, lumbering, murdering maniac, this time terrorising a small American town. The beast's penchant for munching on human flesh seems to have abated, replaced by a mechanical desire to kill everyone he comes into contact with. As usual with D'Amato, the magpie instinct leads him to not only rip-off his own work but also liberally steal from the work of others – with its seemingly supernatural beast-man haunting smalltown America, stalking babysitters and pursued by an "expert" who knows what he is and what he's capable of, Rosso Sangue aka Horrible aka Absurd aka Anthropophagus 2 is a dead ringer for the first two Halloween films. The festival of All Hallows Night is replaced here by that most American of ritual traditions, the televised event football game.The beast here bears some affinities with a zombie – he is dead, and the only way to kill him is to attack his cerebral cortex – go for the brain. He is pursued by a priest (played by that lovely old ham Edmund Purdom) who fulfils the same dramatic function as Pleasance's Dr Sam Loomis in the Halloween films. We first see the beast being pursued through a park by the padre, and our creature only manages to escape his clutches by leaping over a gate guarding the house of a wealthy family, ripping his beastly stomach open in the process. Imagine the family's surprise when Eastman comes ringing on their doorbell with his intestines hanging from his gut! Various twists and turns ensue, with the beast taken to hospital and then escaping to rampage, all ending up in the predictable stalking of the same house whilst the parents are out and the babysitter looks after the kids (in this case a Hair Bear-haired boy and a paraplegic young woman).The family and their house is worth commenting on. The house is slap bang in the middle of America, yet it is filled with the accoutrements of old Europe – antique furniture, a decorative suit of armour, a grand piano, figurative art. This brings to mind Franz Fanon's mid-twentieth century comment that "Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions." The family who live in the house would seem to bear this out – the parents have a loveless marriage, the father is a callous businessman who drives away from a hit and run, the son is a strange little brute given to throwing tantrums when not allowed to get his own way; his father appropriately greets him with "hello, monster!" As with Anthropophagus, it appears that D'Amato is encouraging us to see the rampaging beast as the truth about his victims. But he also doesn't let us off the hook – we get a long, cold shot of the son sat writhing on his sofa as he watches a Joe D'Amato film! The final contrasts the parents sitting, guilt-ridden and anxious, watching the football game with neighbours as the monster turns their children's and employees' lives into a Darwinian struggle for survival. The pampered, cared-for paraplegic daughter is forced to get up from her bed and not merely walk but fight for her life; the final shot shows us that, in order to survive, the decadent bourgeoisie of American will find the same solutions as old Testament-inspired old Europe, as having beheaded the monster in medieval fashion, the daughter holds his severed head, standing as mad, proud and strident as Judith with the head of Holofernes.The padre has confessed that the monster is the product of an unlikely alliance between modern genetic science and old time religion. This monster is America itself. Despite the film's longueurs and incessant cinematic theft, D'Amato does manage to come up with another provocative, in-yer-face insult to the self-image of so-called civilised contemporary mankind.

Well, story-wise this is just a very weak. Funny enough it got written by George Eastman, the man who plays the killer in this movie and it's predecessor "Antropophagus".Yes, despite the many titles this movie is known under, this movie is still really being a sequel to the 1980 movie "Antropophagus", which also got directed by Joe D'Amato. "Antropophagus" was truly one of the nastiest movies I've ever seen because of two very memorable gory moments. While this movie is also being gory and got banned at many countries at the time of its release, it's lacking really in the atmosphere and memorable moments of the original movie.This is not really an horror, it's merely a movie with some gory sequences in it. The movie never gets tense and it will never scare you in any way. Still for the fans of video nasties this remains a good watch, especially if you want to see more after watching "Antropophagus". The movie does really feature some gory moments and original nasty killings in it.The movie mostly remains watchable because it features the same maniacal killer as the original did. He's just one of those great genre characters that can really make a movie work out, even when everything else about the movie is done quite poorly.Just some good simple old fashioned Italian nasty fun.6/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/