Non aver paura della zia Marta

This movie was one hard to find little treasure. If anyone has seen Fulci's "Cat in a Brain" then you most likely have seen some of the death scenes from this flick. A family of four are heading over to stay at Aunt Martha's house for a few days. Apparently, Aunt Martha has been in a psych ward for a good portion of her life and just got out a month earlier. So, she feels compelled to invite her nephew and his family over to celebrate. The problem starts when they arrive. Aunt Martha is not there. Only the caretaker of the estate explains that Aunt Martha got caught up in out of town business and will arrive next morning. Will the family make it through the night? This is not a bad flick. The movie gets a bad wrap because the first hour of the movie is just a lot of atmosphere and character development. The movie does have a pretty good musical score carrying through most of the film. And yes, there is a very obnoxious little brat in the movie (who does get his). Once you get past the first hour the film picks up to several decent gore scenes and a very unusual ending. All in all, not a bad movie and I give it a 7/10.

The Murder Secret was apparently 'overseen' by the great Lucio Fulci. I have no idea what that means, but the great director does have a producer's credit so maybe adding his name to it wasn't just a shameless attempt to sell the film (or maybe it was). Anyway, the film is actually directed by Mario Bianchi who you may (but hopefully not!) remember from the likes of A Girl for Satan and Emanuelle in the Country. The film takes on a mystery/Giallo tone and I get the impression that it could have been rather good with better handling, actors and atmosphere. Anyway, the plot focuses on a family that are making the drive see the father's Aunt Martha. They arrive at the rather large house to find that Martha is not there, but will arrive the next morning. Unbeknown to everyone but the father, Martha has until recently been a guest in a mental hospital. The family is invited in by the caretaker to stay the night while they wait for the Aunt to arrive, but soon after they begin being murdered.

The film is rather slow for the first hour and not a great deal happens. I actually have no problem with this in theory as a good build up can only be an asset to a mystery film; but unfortunately this build up can't really be considered good as nothing really happens. Lucio Fulci's "influence" kicks in at about the hour mark when the murders finally start happening, and they're fairly bloody - a decapitation with a chainsaw is a particular highlight. The plot itself isn't bad really, but the characters let it down as not a single one of them is interesting and we really just end up waiting for them to be picked off. The film has no style to speak of and the look of the film is extremely bland - a shame considering that atmosphere tends to be one of the best things about good Italian horror. The dubbing is atrocious also, and the soundtrack is one of the worst I've ever heard in an Italian horror film. It all boils down to a terrible ending, which is a shame because it was starting to look like it might finish well. Still, I don't want to totally condemn to the film; it does have its moments and to be honest I'm a sucker for this sort of stuff. Italian horror fans may find something to like...but I wouldn't recommend going out of your way to find it.

Your enjoyment of this film 80's Italian horror flick will probably depend somewhat on your expectations. If you're expecting a superior Lucio Fulci film (Fulci produced this), you'll probably be somewhat disappointed (but to be fair it's really no worse than a lot of the stuff the gore-master himself was directing at the end of his career). On the other hand though, if you've seen any of the previous work of Mario Bianchi, the actual director of this (for instance, his deadly dull "Satan's Baby Doll") you'll no doubt find this one comparatively entertaining.

A family, consisting of a father (Gabriele "Mr. Laura Gemser" Tinti), his second wife (Adriana Russo), and his three children--a young son, a voluptuous "teenage" daughter (Jessica Moore), and his adult son who shows up later--all drive out to a secluded family estate to meet the father's "Aunt Martha" who has just been released after spending thirty years in a mental institution for the criminally insane. Naturally this sounds like bad idea, but if dumb characters didn't do dumb stuff like this, we'd have a lot less gory horror movies. The place is managed by a creepy caretaker and "Aunt Martha's" arrival is mysteriously delayed. Meanwhile, all kinds of strange things begin to occur. . .

This movie is not very well paced as almost all the murders take place in a ten minute period near the end. They're suitably gory at least--one thing I like about the Italians is that they have no compunctions about doing things like decapitating annoying child actors with chainsaws. Tinti is always enjoyable, even in roles like this where he's not making "the beast with two backs" with his more famous wife. Russo and Moore both have memorable nude scenes. I think the former might be the sister of the voluptuous Carmen Russo (they look a lot alike anyway) while the latter appeared in several Joe D'Amato movies like "11 Days, 11 Nights" and "Convent of Sinners". (Here she takes a very long and very hot shower that all by itself might be worth the price of admission). Unlike most latter-day Fulci films or Bianchi's earlier "Satan's Baby Doll", this is not yet available on legitimate DVD. But it really ought to be.

'The Murder Secret' aka 'Don't Be Afraid of Aunt Martha' is a strange low budget Giallo slasher flick from the late 1980's. This movie has a cool off-kilter atmosphere and an eerie unsettling tone to it, along with some cool gory death scenes. But its not without its flaws such as the awful dubbing, questionable acting/dialogue, bad pacing and predictable plot twists that really bogs things down to sub-par levels.

The plot = Richard Hamilton (Gabriele Tinti) takes his family for a long drive to his Aunt Martha's (Sacha Darwin) house after she has just been released from the asylum after 30 years. Only when they get there, she isn't there just the caretaker Thomas (Maurice Poli) and his message that she will arrive the next day, but can they survive the night with a killer roaming the area.

The direction by Mario Bianchi is competent enough considering the obvious small budget and the cottage location is used effectively enough, but as I already mentioned the pacing is very boring with almost nothing happening for the first hour, I wouldn't mind if the director used this time to flesh out the family or to build some tension. But we don't get any of that unfortunately instead we get a rather mundane set up of pointless interactions with nothing happening. Even with this wafer-thin plot there was potential to add more depth to this movie, but nope instead you're just waiting around until the last act which is where all the excitement happens. Now the death scenes towards the end are rewarding as you do get some shocking violent scenes, but it requires a lot of patience to get there and even then the climax ends on a rather sour and confusing note.

The acting was god-awful the only performance of note worthy was the main lead Gabriele Tinti who was okay but felt way too passive and uninspired to really root for. Overall 'The Murder Secret' is a confusing mess of a Giallo that takes way too long to get off the ground.

The Murder Secret (1989)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Richard Hamilton (Gabriele Tinti) takes his wife (Adriana Russo) and their two kids to visit his Aunt Martha. Even though Richard hasn't seen her in years when they arrive to her house she's no where to be found. The family is told to just wait around but soon murders begin to happen.

THE MURDER SECRET, aka THE BROKEN MIRROR and many other titles, is one of the handful of films that were released as "Lucio Fulci Presents" and, as you can probably tell, he had very little to nothing to do with the actual film, although clips would eventually show up in his A CAT IN THE BRAIN (as well as clips from other movies). If you're looking for a great Italian horror film then you certainly won't find it here, although there are a few interesting moments.

People often talk about how the Italian horror market was in its dying days during the late 80s but people also seem to forget that the genre was pretty much dying everything. This film here has a few interesting ideas that I'm sure could have been better exploited back in the early part of the decade when film's were allowed a bigger budget. There are a couple twists in the story, which is actually pretty good but the biggest problem is the fact that there's way too much talking and not enough action. Not to mention, the film really drags, contains no atmosphere and certainly no scares.

Outside the nice plot twists, the film also offers up a couple memorable death scenes. The decapitations are all done without too much of a budget so they aren't very convincing but at least there's some blood here. There's also an obvious wink to the shower scene in PSYCHO, which is certainly the highlight of the picture.