Obsessão Assassina

Michael, a successful actor with a secret in his past, returns to his family estate after a long absence.He arrives with his girlfriend in tow and he greeted by his mother who seems a bit too attentive to her son and distancing to the girlfriend. It isn't long before some more friends arrive for both business and pleasure. However ghosts of the past are reawakened and it isn't long before strange things begin happening and people begin dying.

This is Italian horror at its most silly. The film starts off interesting enough with Michael going home to a house full of eerie people and occurrences. There is a nice tension to the proceedings, however things begin to sputter a bit when the girlfriend has one of the funniest "scary" dreams ever put on film after 1965. It comes complete with fake spider web and rubber spider and is impossible to take seriously. From there things begin to move unevenly as bodies begin to pile up and the number of suspects begin to diminish. The film completely falls apart as it tries to explain and re-explain whats really going on and who these people are. Its a mess and I found myself giggling through the final 20 minutes or so.

I was disappointed. The early scenes created a nice tension that was lost when things started to become silly and illogical (I know one should not always look for reason and logic in Italian horror). It gets points for keeping me watching to the end, but that was because I kept hoping it would shift gears into reverse and go back to being the decent little thriller at the start.

4 out of 10. Disappointing thriller is probably worth watching if you stumble across it late at night and find there is nothing better on. Those who like Italian horror and giallo films can probably add a couple of points.

Members of the cast and crew of a horror movie take a well-earned break at the family home of actor Michael, whose mother (who has obviously been keeping to a tight exfoliation/moisturising regime, since she looks no older than 40) lives a reclusive life with her creepy manservant Oliver. Whilst relaxing at the house, the group are attacked one-by-one by a leather-gloved killer, and Michael begins to fear that a horrific event from his past—one which he has kept suppressed in his mind for years—has finally returned to haunt him.

Murder Obsession opens in fine style with a gleefully trashy scene in which exploitation babe Laura Gemser has her clothes torn from her body by a mysterious assailant who then proceeds to try and strangle her. However, fans of sleazy giallo movies shouldn't get too excited, for director Ricardo Freda soon disappoints by having the camera pull back to reveal that the woman, Beryl, and her attacker, Michael Stanford (Stefano Patrizi), are actors performing their final scene in a horror flick.

Yes, it's the tired old 'movie within a movie' trick! The rest of this wearisome film is just as clichéd and deceptive in style, with numerous silly red herrings during the dull-as-ditch-water first half (nearly every character seems to own a pair of leather gloves!), mucho nudity throughout, cheesy gore towards the end, and a convoluted, logic-free script that is harder to swallow than a broken glass sandwich. Even a genre great like Argento, whose own work is rarely that cohesive, would struggle to make this inept garbage work, so what chance does Freda have?

Supposedly atmospheric dream sequences are rendered laughable by giant rubber spiders; bats flap on clearly visible wires; Michael's girlfriend (Silvia Dionisio) runs through a foggy forest with her tits out; inept gore effects (an axe in the head and a chainsaw in the throat) look as though they were created by a five year old with modelling clay and papier-maché; dreadful dialogue turns emotional scenes into unintentional moments of comedy; and a desperate attempt at shoehorning black magic and psychic powers into the muddled plot severely backfires.

Take a look if a) you dig bad Italian cinema b) you're a rabid Gemser fan, or c) if you absolutely must see every giallo in existence—but be warned.... it ain't great.

A group of filmmakers travel to the family home of the lead actor to scout locations. They are greeted by his disturbed mother and her sinister servant.

Maestro Freda's last feature is a baroque masterwork which indeed forms a kind of review of the entire Italian horror tradition from BLACK SUNDAY on. BLACK SUNDAY lead actor John Richardson appears as the servant in a possible nod to former Freda collaborator Mario Bava.

The story contains many elements from other horror films: PSYCHO, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, DEEP RED, but Freda tells the tale in an ornate style referencing classical art and music in his imagery and on the soundtrack. The acting is mediocre, but the carefully composed imagery makes up for it. Such hallucinatory visions as a clutch of bleeding skulls, a giant spider and black mass which resembles both a Dali painting and a Michaelangelo sculpture are indelible. Highly recommended for Italian horror and Freda fans. A very underrated film which shows the director still at the apex of his creative powers.

My review was written in June 1986 after watching the movie on Wizard video cassette.

Riccardo Freda, doyen of Italian horror film directors, attempts to moderate his approach (with mixed results) in "Fear". Reviewed here for the record, feature was made in 1980 with various alternate titles including "Unconscious" and "Murder Syndrome"; it is now available domestically on video cassette.

Stefano Patrizi portrays a film actor who is haunted by nightmares and daydreams relating to having witnessed in childhood the murder of his dad. When he and a film crew visit his mother's home in the country as part of a location-hunting trip a series of grisly murders occurs.

Freda includes hints of various fantasy elements here, ranging from black magic to an invisible kirlian-effect killer, but essentially this is a gothic murder mystery dressed up with modern sex & violence. Key plot element emphasizes the too-close relationship of Patrizi and his mother, played by former sex symbol Anita Strindberg. More recent sex stars Laura Gemser and Silvia Dionisio are on hand in various stages of undress as Patrizi's leading lady and girlfriend, respectively.

Tech credits other than the subpar dubbing are fine and Franco Mannino provides a pleasant musical score emphasizing classical themes. Even for the horror genre, Freda's gloomy ending is a bit much.

Riccardo Freda is considered one of the maestros of Italian horror based on the strength of three films in the late 50's and early 60's--"I, Vampiri" (which we now know was mostly directed by Mario Bava), "The Horrible Dr. Hitchcock", and the sequel to the latter, "The Ghost". Unfortunately, everything he did after that pretty much ranges from awful to disappointing. This one falls more into the latter category.

An actor nearly strangles his female co-star during the filming of the scene. Everyone seems strange unperturbed about this including the actress herself, who later has sex with him(of course, it helps that this character is played by Laura "Emanuelle" Gemser who pretty much has sex with everybody in her movies). They all repair to the troubled actor's eerie, decrepit estate complete with a creepy butler named Oliver and a mother who is "not well". Actually, she looks pretty good for someone who is supposedly the mother of a grown man and, not surprisingly, she has a close, Oedipal relationship with her son who looks EXACTLY like his musical conductor father, "the Maestro", who was mysteriously murdered years earlier (and you can pretty much bet it was by one of two people). The actor's girlfriend is also along for the ride and she suspects something is up between the two of them when the son introduces her to his a mother as his secretary and insists that they sleep in separate rooms. Meanwhile, someone is dispatching the various guests with the usual over-elaborate giallo methods--a bathtub drowning, a chainsaw, etc.

Freda brings an interesting Gothic sensibility to the giallo genre here, even though his main focus is obviously on the gory murders. At least he is somewhat in his element, unlike with the abysmal "Iguana with a Tongue of Fire" he did earlier. The acting is awful and the special effects during the murder scene are laughable, but fans of Freda and Laura Gemser could do a lot worse I guess.