Occhi senza volto

Ok italian Giallo with a story more interesting than usual. The budget shortcomings are evident in the setting and the poorly made FX, but the twist ending Is surprisingly effective.

Madness (1994)

** (out of 4)

Bizarre giallo from Bruno Mattei about a psychopath stalking the streets and not only killing people but also removing their eyeballs. The story centers around a writer (Monica Seller) who's books include a character who removes the eyes of their victim and the police think that maybe the killer is working his way up to her. Director Mattei was known for ripping off various movies in his career and this one here goes after Dario Argento's TENEBRE and really doesn't do it too much justice. If you're looking for a serious giallo then this here certainly isn't it. If you're just looking for a gory film with some laughs then you might enjoy MADNESS. There are all sorts of problems with this film but there's no doubt that not too much thought was put into the picture. If you've seen the Argento film then you're not going to be shocked by anything here other than the writer ripping off lines of dialogue and the entire story structure. What sets this film apart from others in the genre is that there are a few gruesome death scenes where we see the eyes ripped out of people. Sadly this doesn't happen enough or else the film might have been somewhat better. Even stranger is some of the dialogue including a scene where the police are trying to come up with possible suspects and one brings a guy up who slaughtered countless hookers. The only cop tells him that the guy has an alibi, which tells you that this murderer is out walking the streets and I'm guessing spent no time in jail. Another funny moment comes from the main character and her constant screams of terror. Performances are okay for the most part but with the English dubbing it's really hard to fully judge them. The brief nudity and sex comes towards the end of the film so one shouldn't expect too much of that. This film really isn't going to appeal to too many and I think most people who check it out will be Argento fans wanting to see what Mattei did to that story.

One thing that I find very irritating in movies: when a character is supposed to be a professional artist (in this case a comic book artist), but their drawings look like they've been done by a child (and a not very talented one at that). I mean, how difficult is it to find someone who can draw decent comic illustrations and who is desperate for a bit of exposure?

That little niggle aside, Bruno Mattei's Madness (AKA Eyes Without a Face) is a fairly effective little giallo - one might be forgiven for not realising that this was by the same director as Rats: Nights of Terror (1984) and Night Killer (1990). The film sees a masked murderer at work, their modus operandi identical to that of Dr. Dark, the serial killer character created by artist (and I use that word loosely) Giovanna Dei (Monica Carpanese): victims are killed with a double-bladed stiletto knife, and have their eyeballs removed, the bloody organs left as a gift for Giovanna.

Eyeball trauma is a staple of Italian horror, and Madness doesn't add much new to the giallo genre, but the film is fun, pacy, and reasonably engrossing throughout; the identity of the killer isn't impossible to work out, but there's always the possibility that you might have guessed wrong. Gore is limited to a few gruesome empty eye sockets and the extracted orbs, and Carpanese supplies the requisite nudity during a brief but enthusiastic sex scene.

Madness is neither Mattei's finest hour (I have a soft spot for Zombie Creeping Flesh and The Jail: The Women's Hell), nor is it his worst (The Other Hell has my vote), but it is definitely amongst the director's better work. I say ignore the director's iffy reputation and give it a go.

'Madness' aka 'Eyes Without a Face' is a baffling and poorly executed Italian giallo slasher flick directed by Bruno Mattei that lacks any style, originality or even ambition. The production design is bland and cheap, the visuals are uninspired, the acting ranges from awful to hysterically over the top and the movie's pacing was a slog to get through and lacks any sort of entertainment value whatsoever. There's a reason why the giallo genre was pretty much dead by this point with painfully trashy efforts like this.

The Plot centres around a comic book artist named Giovanna Dei (Monica Carpanese) where a masked killer is copying the look and killing style of her character Doctor Dark by murdering young women, and then starts targeting Giovanna herself.

It took me quite a few attempts to actually sit down and watch this as it was almost unwatchable due to its poor picture quality and dreadful English dubbing. Despite having a surprisingly interesting opening scene, it quickly goes down hill from there on out. The plot could have been interesting, but the lazy direction and incoherent structure lets everything down and even the twists and turns couldn't save it as the movie was simply too boring and sloppily made to keep me engaged.

The acting performances were sub-par all around with Monica Carpanese giving one of the most baffling and unconvincing performances I've ever seen, and the rest of the cast didn't fair any better either as there wasn't a single memorable character in this entire film.

Overall 'Madness' fails on just about every level imaginable and not entertainingly bad enough to be a trashy guilty pleasure cheese. This is definitely one of the worst giallo flicks I've seen so far.

Bruno Mattei's grisly, Gorgonzola-garlanded, gloriously goofy Giallo 'Madness' aka 'Occhi Senza Volto' remains a hysterically hinkey, luridly eye-ball harvesting, frequently hilarious, 90s B-Slasher disasterpiece! Larded with mesmerisingly awful acting, deliciously asinine dialogue, 'Madness' is a must-see romp, unless you happen to be one of Doctor Death's brutally brain-spiked, orb-less victims,natch! Misguided B-Movie maverick, Mattei's absurdly entertaining thriller is a ceaselessly delightful trip into bad movie nirvana! The gruesomely ripe performances are either catatonic or, Bette Davis's worst nightmare! Endearingly inept, compellingly cheesy, this gleefully gormless Giallo delivers an abnormally high quotient of trashy entertainment. The infamous, yet enormously beloved Italian schlock supremo, Bruno Mattei has a truly enviable C. V of magnificently mad, crudely plagiarised, generously blood-basted, cheaply made chunk blowers, and, happily, 'Madness' is right up there with the very worst of 'em! What a sunnier world it would be if ALL splatter films were this much fun to watch!