Trhauma

Andrea (Gaetano Russo) and Lilly (Domitilla Cavazza) invite a group of friends to spend the weekend at their country villa.

Guest Paul (Timothy Wood) escorts Olga (Anna Maria Chiatante) into the woods to take some photographs. Paul tells Olga to 'drop her dress'; she happily obliges to reveal that she is wearing nothing underneath. Trhauma ticks the nudity box early on.

Paul has an argument with Olga and leaves the woman on her own. She is attacked and killed by a drooling, half-blind loony with a gammy leg (Per Holgher) who makes out with her dead body, taking time out to strangle a dog. Trhauma also quickly establishes itself as sleazy and twisted.

The killer then goes to his home where he meets a mysterious figure who pays him for his nefarious work… in plastic building bricks (not even Lego, but some dodgy knock-off rubbish, like you would get down the market): Trhauma takes the weirdness factor up a few notches.

So far, so entertaining.

Unfortunately, the film then turns into a rather routine slasher that clearly takes its cues from John Carpenter's Halloween, but without that film's high-calibre cast or sense of style. Characters wander round the woods and are routinely dispatched by the psycho until only 'final girl' Lilly is left to discover the mutilated bodies littering her property, which might have been fun if there had been some decent gore—but there isn't.

A final 'twist' is extremely easy to predict and the film closes in an incredibly abrupt fashion, leaving me to wonder whether I had a dodgy copy that was somehow missing the real ending.

As anyone with more than a passing interest in this genre will tell you, the Giallo hit it's heyday in the early seventies. The genre started to dry up as the seventies wore on; and by the time the eighties came around, you would really struggle to find a decent example outside of Dario Argento's filmography. Trhauma is not a great Giallo by any stretch of the imagination; but in comparison to other entries released around the same period, it has to be said that this one isn't too bad. The plot is rather simple and focuses on a group of people staying at an old house. It's not long before a woman is murdered and it soon becomes clear that the murderer is being paid by someone. It's also clear that the murderer is of the cheap variety as he gets paid in Lego! The guests later realise that the victim has gone missing and naturally start to worry, and this worry is increased when another guest falls victim. It soon becomes apparent that there's a maniac loose in the house!

The film is very short at only seventy two minutes and while it doesn't exactly outstay its welcome; that does unfortunately mean that the film doesn't have much time to flesh out the characters or plot; and as a result it's left rather lacking. Trhauma does benefit from a claustrophobic atmosphere brought on by the fact that it all takes place in the same enclosed location; but this is not as effective as it could been if the characters were fleshed out and made more interesting. One thing that many Giallo fans look for in these film is a fair helping of gore; and despite the fact that this film was released around the same time as Umberto Lenzi's cannibal movies and Lucio Fulci's zombie movies; it features very little of the red stuff and while there's a few murders; they are basically bloodless, which is a shame. As we get close to the end, it becomes pretty obvious who is behind it all...but even so, while this is not a great Giallo by any stretch of the imagination; it's not too bad and is worth tracking down for collectors.

A couple invites some friends to spend a weekend together in an isolated cabin surrounded by woods and fields. But... there's a killer lurking around.... And... someone is monitoring him.

"Trhauma" is an Italian slasher/giallo film that seemingly took some inspiration from "Friday the 13th", but it has its own story and a completely different mood. The characters are not silly teenagers, but machiavelic young (mostly) adults. "Trhauma" was made on a low budget, but it's audio-visually creative and it takes good advantage of the natural surroundings (the cabin - interiors and grounds, the woods etc.). Most of the scenes (and killings) take place during the night. There are interesting scenes – people walking through the woods in the night carrying torches... illuminating bushes, boughs.... and...... to wrap it all up, a good soundtrack helps to stress the mood.

The film begins with a light touch and when the day turns into night, perplexity turns into apprehension and then fear... and from fear to terror...

"Trhauma" is not a film for gorehounds, but slasher/gialli fans that like non-mainstream films should like it. It's atmospheric and features a fast-paced story.

The Italians are often criticized for "ripping off" American films. There is some justification for this, but there are times also that the influence has gone in the other direction. The American slasher genre initiated by "Black Christmas", "Halloween", and "Friday the 13th", for instance, owes a lot to earlier Italian gialli thrillers, most obviously Mario Bava's "Bay of Blood", but also "Torso", "What Have You Done to Solange?", and even "Schoolgirl Killer", all of which played American drive-ins in the 1970's and no doubt had some influence on the early American slasher films. Nevertheless, just because "Halloween" and other early slasher films may have been somewhat derivative of gialli, it didn't stop later Italian giallo filmmakers from cashing in on the international success of American slasher movies by making their own films that were highly derivative of "Halloween". This is one such film.

In what seems to be a typical slasher-movie flashback prologue, one boy coaxes another boy with a deformed eye into climbing a tree. The boy falls out of the tree, apparently dead. Years later the first boy has grown up and he and a bunch of his friends, some of whom he is in debt to, and his wealthy wife are having a party at his secluded villa when someone starts bumping off the guests. Guess who.

This movie IS highly derivative of "Halloween", but the end does go in a very direction than what you might expect and the revenge-for-a-past-tragedy that is seemingly set up in the prologue is not necessarily what it seems. This movie turns out to be much more of a slasher-giallo hybrid than a simple slasher movie rip-off, owing as much to earlier gialli like "Bay of Blood" as it does to "Halloween". Also, the characters in this movie, unlike with most slasher movies, are adults rather than adolescents. Thus, there's even more nudity and sleazy sex than in your average slasher movie, but the characters also have much more adult motives than simply partying or trying to "lose it". You also get the big fat guy from "Strip Nude for Your Killer" (but thankfully this time he DOESN'T strip nude for his killer). Most of the cast, however, are relative unknowns and they're generally unremarkable as actors. This isn't terrible, but it's not great either.

I always wondered about the spelling of the title of this film. Turns out it is simply 'trauma' misspelled. Not a great start!

Going into this, you would be forgiven for thinking that it is going to be a giallo but to all intents and purposes this is a slasher film, albeit one with some Italian flavour. It was made in the wake of the enormous success of the American film Halloween (1978), which at the time was in the Guinness Book of Records as the most successful independent film ever made. Unsurprisingly this led to a few films that riffed off its basic idea, Trhauma is one of those. As such, unlike its giallo brethren, it has decidedly less plot to it and it replaces the mystery element with extended stalk sequences. It also seems to be a somewhat lower budget film too, with limited sets, obscure actors and a basic score. The latter compromises mainly of a repetitive synth track but kicks things off with an unexpected upbeat disco number to accompany the credits – well it was the glitter ball age I guess.

The plot-line is set in motion by a short prologue and then the main story kicks in, which is essentially about party guests at a remote villa being killed one by one by a disfigured psychopath. It's not overly graphically violent, with much of the killings happening off-screen, although there was one rather creepy scene of necrophilia. It's mostly unremarkable and not terribly interesting stuff though but there are some aspects that are noteworthy, such as the fact that the killer is paid for his murders in Lego! It also, really isn't difficult working out what's going on behind the scenes and you can work out the 'twist' so easily, you actually wonder if it really is a twist at all. What was less predictable was the jarringly sudden ending. While it was unexpected, it was also not very satisfying either! The movie's run-time is pretty short, which is probably to be expected given the lack of material but was nevertheless a good thing overall.