Tulpa - Dämonen der Begierde

Claudia Gerini plays Lisa Boeri,a successful business woman who is also a member of an exclusive club in which people are having sex with multiple partners in order to reach a higher level of consciousness.But people with whom Lisa had sexual encounters begin to die viciously murdered by a killer dressed in black.It's up for Lisa to track the killer down.Federico Zampaglione's "Tulpa - Perdizioni Mortali" is a pretty vicious and bloody Italian neo-giallo scripted by Dardano Sacchetti.The film has some obvious references to Dario Argento's "Tenebre" or "Inferno" and Sergio Martino's early 70's gialli.The killings are stylish and brutal and there is plenty of sex and nudity.Unfortunately there are some dull scenes and the dialogue is horrible at times.7 hungry rats out of 10.

I saw it at Sitges this year and i was impressed by the quality of this crazy and bloody Italian flick. Zampaglione clearly knows his stuff and with this new film he shows all his love for the genre. . Tulpa visually looks fantastic,and it's a well performed addition to Italian cinema, most importantly it does what it intends to do, it remains faithful to the Giallo mentality, and breathes life back into a dead area of the horror/thriller genres.

Zampaglione even goes as far to bring back the traditional Giallo killer, a dark shadowy figure, with face covered, black hat, and those leather gloves . There are also some incredible and elaborated murders you will never forget. Giallo fans will love this one.

If I were to judge the movie and rate it for quality, then one "star"/point out of ten would have been too much. Dialog, acting (if you can call it that), script in general, almost nothing seems to work. If you see it as a horror movie that is. So in keeping in tradition with the latest "Giallo" (not only the movie, but also) by Argento, it stays true to the master by being as ridiculous as possible.

Don't get me wrong there are good actors in this and it was produced by the wonderful Marcia Grazia Cuccinota, but those ingredients do not work. Which made me feel a bit bad for the filmmakers and the producers at the Frightfest screening were I watched this. Because most people were laughing and obviously the producers were stunned in a negative way about that development. Something that was one of the things people talked about after the screening.

So sit back, relax and prepare yourself for one of the most hilarious comedies you've seen in 2012. Even I had to surrender to the sheer weight of nonsense and couldn't resist laughing. Better than crying, I tell ya

It might be a strange to criticise this modern day giallo film for looking a little cheap; in their heyday in the early 70s, such genre films were never hugely budgeted.

This does have the look of an Indie film though, which is absolutely no problem in itself, but it robs the production of the stylish values usually attributed to the gialli.

The acting is fine, although Italian actors speaking English when it is not their first language damages it a bit. It also makes it difficult to care about the characters, which is unfortunate as many of them spend quite a few scenes in jeopardy.

I don't mean to be too damning here though. Any half-respectable reinvention of the gialli style is a good thing as far as I'm concerned, and there are some nicely filmed set pieces and some weird and fascinating red herrings - and a fair bit of sex too. My score is 6 out of 10.

I finally got time to watch this movie. I ordered a German special edition blu-ray a way back but was too busy to see it until now. A negative feedback that this movie got from various sources seemed to affect my mood for watching it a little bit too much which really was a shame.

The movie itself was a little bit of a mixed bag. First 1/3 was actually quite good in terms of story and killings. In fact the actual murders were quite innovative throughout the movie. I got flashbacks from various Argento and Fulci movies throughout the film with both the style and methodology aspects included.

After a one third to first half of the film the direction and the script seemed to fall apart a little bit. The naive Argento inspired escape from the club was fascinating and boring at the same time and the plot seemed to degenerate after the movie went along. However: The latter part of the movie got me flashbacks from Argentos Tenebrae so it basically went from tribute to tribute within the movie in decades (I loved Tenebrae btw).

I really appreciate the directors effort to tribute some earlier giallo directors and movies. In my opinion some reviewers have focused too much bashing the protagonist skill of English using it to take the movie down (It really didn't mind me very much).

If you like horror and giallo in general this is a movie worth watching. IMDb users seem to be harsh with horror in particular so don't let the overall score fool you.

BTW: The "blue/red pill joke" at the end made me grin :)