Maldição em Veneza

A blind kid starts getting horrible visions about the birth of the Antichrist when he and his sister moves in a rundown pension in Venice with their guardian relatives. I liked this Italian horror flick a lot! It's heavily influenced by Rosemary's Baby & The Omen but its got a personality of its own. Pretty slow pace but great surreal atmosphere there's a constant feeling of dread and uncertainty, good photography and an surprisingly clever script. And the Venice setting is always appreciated, that city is almost provocatively beautiful! Not much violence, but the few violent scenes were highly effective. Especially one scene really raised my eyebrow, those of you who have seen it probably know which one i'm thinking about... The bad dubbing is about the only really negative aspect I can think of right now, although I can imagine that some find it slow on action and maybe even a little boring. Not me though, I love slow, atmospheric films!

Other than for the Venice scenarios, this late Rosemary's baby clone is almost dismissable without any comment, with its story of a blind young man trying to battle against the evil spawn of his sister short relation (in fact, she was virgin, as Satan want to mock Jesus life and death for his son)with a dark stranger, probably Satan himself. Bad acting, bad story, bad special effects, gratuitous nudity. A real B-movie, but not as good as it should be

My third Ugo Liberamore film and it seems unlikely I'll get the chance to see any more. These three, The Sex Of Angels, May Morning and this were hard enough to get hold of but all very much worth a search. If this Venice set horror is not quite up to the other two, it isn't far off and I enjoyed it. My print was pretty degraded and the film shot in Venice in the winter but I still reckon this could be the best looking Venice on film. Creepy and unsettling with moments of true horror, this intrigues from the very start with the blind boy being led down the narrow alleyways and across the tiny bridges. The music helps keep things from becoming too ordinary and Playboy 'playmate', Rena Niehaus a welcome distraction from some of the more grisly terrors. I've seen this described as a giallo, which it is not and moreover, I have to say, it doesn't crack along like some wild thriller but with Rosemary's Baby and Don't Look Now merely as undertones this is a very different vision of satanism.

Ugo Liberatore's Italian giallo thriller NERO VENEZIANO (aka: Damned in Venice, 1977) is a very satisfying "Italian Omen" with great and young cast who can act, too. A young blind boy Mark sees some horrible visions involving some satanic goings on, characters and other menacing things that concern him very much. His sister doesn't believe him at all but soon she'll learn they are much more than just nightmares. Naturally the film takes place in Venice and also has some nice and moody photography and settings.

The visions Mark gets are shot in bright color with more effects added in the soundtrack and they work effectively and become as sudden as the terrors themselves. The nightmare images are really gross in the tradition of the dark Shaw Brothers horror films in Hong Kong in the 70's and 80's. They include worms and other nasty creatures coming from places you wouldn't dare to expect, and the less the viewer knows before seeing the gross they feel once they come.

Also a remarkable effect lies in the story about the Satan's son and him being born on Earth from a human mother. The devil baby gets born and also goes through one of the most brutal "attempted murders" committed to a child I've seen in silver screen, but unfortunately the Devil (and the son) isn't too vulnerable once they get born.

The film has some nudity and gore as it was the style in the 70's and it also produced some very extreme efforts, like Lucio Fulci's LO SQUARTATORE DI NEW YORK (1982), which tried to be all the more extreme and graphic than the previous ones, but fortunately that didn't affect the talent and ambition of the noteworthy filmmakers and directors.

The music is by Pino Donaggio who has composed many films like CARRIE (1977) and PIRANHA (1978). NERO VENEZIANO is very great (and sadly pretty obscure) Italian giallo (which means a murder mystery, Italian style!) from the years they were made at high speed. Some of them are bad, some mediocre and some masterpieces and VENEZIANO easily manages near the latter category. 7/10

I have to admit, I LOVE these Italian "rip-offs" of "The Exorcist"/"The Omen"/"Rosemary's Baby" that were big in the 1970's, even the bad ones. But this one is actually pretty good. I'd rank it ahead of Ovidio Assontis' "Beyond the Door", Alberto DeMartino's "The Antichrist" and Pier Carpi's "Ring of Darkness". It's difficult to compare it to "The Eerie Midnight Horror Show" or "Malabimba" because those were more straight-out sex romps. It's about on par with DeMartino's second attempt "Holocaust 2000", but it is more scary and less over-the-top silly. It was probably influenced to some extent by Nicholas Roeg's "Don't Look Now", what with its Venice setting and its young blind protagonist who keeps having apocalyptic visions. The protagonist is pooh-poohed by his sighted older sister (Rena Niehais), but she doesn't seem to find it strange when everyone around them starts dying--first their guardian, then the couple who own the pension they come to stay at (which somehow results in them inheriting the place). Then a sinister man from the boy's visions shows up at the pension and seduces the sister, impregnating her by a not-so-immaculate conception (she only gives him oral sex!). After the baby is born, the blind brother makes several attempts to kill it (the most memorable scenes in the movie), but he may be playing right into Satan's hands. . .

These Italian "rip-offs" are almost all a lot more original than they're given credit for. The low-budget Italian industry simply lacked the money to imitate big-budget Hollywood spectacles like "The Exorcist" or "The Omen" too much(and they lacked the sensibilities to imitate the subtle paranoia of a film like "Rosemary's Baby"), so they were forced to be inventive. This one has some especially effective scenes such as when the boy goes to drink out of a holy well in an effort to cure his blindness only unbeknownst to him, it is apparently full of rats and slimy black snakes!

The cast is also impressive, especially the female cast. German Playboy Playmate Neihaus turns in a surprisingly good performance (and not-so-surprisingly gets naked several times). And speaking of getting naked, the perpetually unclothed Ely Galeani and Angela Covello also show up as part of the sister's strange but very sexy babysitting coven. And Greek actress Olga Karlatos, who would later appear in several Lucio Fulci movies and as Prince's mom (!) in "Purple Rain" also appears as an especially ambiguous and mysterious character. Of course, it greatly helps everyone's performance that the English dubbing is pretty competent for a change . Good movie. Check it out