SHOCK (1977)

SHOCK (aka Beyond the Door 2/1977). Director: Mario Bava.

Dora Baldini (Daria Nicolodi of Opera), her second husband Bruno (John Steiner of The Devil Within Her) and her little boy Marco (David Colin Jr.) move into the home she previously occupied with her late first husband, a drug addict who presumably committed suicide. Being in the house -- a rather bad idea -- has an effect on Dora, as it seems to have on her son, an adorable seven-year-old child who begins doing upsetting things that he later tearfully denies. Bruno thinks it is all in Dora's head, reminding her of her stay in a mental institution after her husband's suicide. But do Dora and Bruno have other secrets as well ... Shock is Bava's last film, and it's not one of his best, although the story does lead up to some interesting twists and the performances are good. Little Colin is a wonderful scene-stealing child actor who easily walks off with the movie. There are some genuinely creepy moments in this, but the movie is still tedious and silly for much of its length. Steiner was a British actor who did much work in Italy, including Tenebrae, which starred Nicolodi. Shock was released in the U.S. as Beyond the Door 2 after the success of the original, which is related only in that Colin Jr. also had a role at the ripe old age of 3. Shock has been vastly over-rated by Bava fanatics.

Verdict: What this needs is a little more shock. **1/2.

MOTHER OF TEARS

MOTHER OF TEARS (aka La terza madre/2007). Director: Dario Argento.

"The city is 2700 years old, and we are standing on five layers of graves."

There was twenty-seven years between Inferno, the second of Argento's Three Mothers trilogy, and the third and final installment, Mother of Tears -- it wasn't worth the wait. The problem begins when certain artifacts are removed from a chest that is consistently referred to as an "urn" and immediately weird things begin happening. Sarah Mandy (Asia Argento), the daughter of a woman killed by another witch in Suspiria (the first part), discovers that her mother's spirit (Daria Nicolodi) is protecting her when the Mother of Tears reawakens and throws all Rome into chaos -- witches from all over the world are descending upon the city and there are many more murders and suicides. Some of these witches seem like "mean girls" with attitude, while the head mother, supposedly the embodiment of evil, looks like a sleazy hostess in a topless bar. Mother of Tears could have been a great and exciting horror film, but instead it's an often silly and mindless gorefest for the "gore geeks" in the audience. Some of Argento's better movies are less offensive because there's an intriguing storyline and some inventive directorial touches to go along with the graphic mayhem, but that isn't the case with Mother. Some of the gore is so over the top that it becomes almost comically unrealistic. We have the woman strangled with her own intestines, and in a mind-numbingly offensive and sick scene a gay woman has a metal rod thrust into her vagina and out of her mouth. Again, because of the lack of other positive attributes, Argento's sickening violence against women appears positively misogynous [although, to be fair, there are male victims as well]. There are a couple of interesting scenes: people pursuing Sarah can't see her due to her mother's spell; and those too-clean-but-creepy catacombs that are the lair of the bitchy witches. The Omen-like musical score only reminds one that the three Omen movies made up a much slicker and more memorable trilogy. It's as if Argento, desperate to expand a youthful audience, decided to concentrate on grisliness and to hell with the script. The performances of the leads -- Argento's daughter Asia, and Adam James as her boyfriend, Michael -- border on the amateurish, although Ms. Argento has her moments.

Verdict: Sad actually. *1/2.