Coventry
Joined Nov 2002
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Coventry's rating
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Coventry's rating
Strictly speaking in terms of viewing conditions, this was probably my worst experience ever. The only version of "Taxi Killer" I was able to track down is a lousy VHS-rip, and the original tape was obviously heavily damaged. The screen turns to black quite often, there's wear and tear from start to finish, the sound regularly vanishes, and one of the characters kept talking in Italian without subtitles. If you're reading this, good people at Arrow Video or 88 Films, "Taxi Killer" is a perfect next title to release on a fancy Blu-Ray DVD edition!
Despite the terrible quality, I persevered, because I absolutely wanted to see this feminist vigilante/rape-and-revenge thriller directed by Stelvio Massi. Me loves the hundreds and thousands of "Death Wish" rip-offs; - especially when they're Italian and have a few creative gimmicks (like the vigilantes being female cab drivers, for instance).
On her first night as a yellow cab driver, Jenny Sullivan gets robbed, beaten, and raped by four thugs. The police don't do anything, not even when poor Jenny - and her parents - continue to get harassed by the rapists who have all her data from the stolen purse. When the scum also burns Jenny's father alive, she forms a posse with the only other five female taxi drivers in Chicago to hunt and kill them. Curiously enough, the police do have enough resources to look for the vigilantes...
"Taxi Killer" has a good first half but gets boring rather quickly. Of course, there are only so many ways you can kill someone by using a taxi, and thus the action is quite monotonous. With 105 minutes, the film is far too long for an exploitation B-movie. It's fun and definitely recommended to admirers of Italian trash, but I would wait for a proper DVD-version first.
Despite the terrible quality, I persevered, because I absolutely wanted to see this feminist vigilante/rape-and-revenge thriller directed by Stelvio Massi. Me loves the hundreds and thousands of "Death Wish" rip-offs; - especially when they're Italian and have a few creative gimmicks (like the vigilantes being female cab drivers, for instance).
On her first night as a yellow cab driver, Jenny Sullivan gets robbed, beaten, and raped by four thugs. The police don't do anything, not even when poor Jenny - and her parents - continue to get harassed by the rapists who have all her data from the stolen purse. When the scum also burns Jenny's father alive, she forms a posse with the only other five female taxi drivers in Chicago to hunt and kill them. Curiously enough, the police do have enough resources to look for the vigilantes...
"Taxi Killer" has a good first half but gets boring rather quickly. Of course, there are only so many ways you can kill someone by using a taxi, and thus the action is quite monotonous. With 105 minutes, the film is far too long for an exploitation B-movie. It's fun and definitely recommended to admirers of Italian trash, but I would wait for a proper DVD-version first.
Franco was mostly known and (in)famous for his ultra-sleazy and semi-pornographic exploitation movies, which span over a period of five decades. What fewer people know, or even downright refuse to admit, is that he also made approximately a dozen of truly great, atmospheric, suspenseful, and well-scripted horror movies. That may not be a lot out of more than 200 films directed, but still... "The Awful Dr. Orlof", "The Diabolical Dr. Z", and "Faceless" are fantastic movies. "Faceless", "Night of the Skull", "Bloody Moon", "Sadist Baron Von Klaus", and "The Bloody Judge" are really good movies.
"Un Silencio de Tumba" is NOT a good movie, unfortunately, but at least it's entertaining, and - moreover - an effort that entirely depends on story and atmosphere/suspense rather than on nudity and sex. It's a sleaze-free Franco from the 1970s, and that alone is quite remarkable!
The film can best be labelled as a (Spanish) giallo! There's the isolated setting, a group of obnoxious & extravagant people who deserve to die, guests behaving exaggeratedly suspicious (and clearly are not the killer), and a culprit with melancholic motivations. My biggest complaint is that the kills are sadly bloodless and not nearly as imaginative as in other contemporary Gialli - mostly from Italy - and that the characters are deliberately insufferable. All of them!
And to close off; - a bit of fun! It's always good to learn a few things that you didn't know before via watching a film! Jess Franco's "Un Silencio de Tumba" even taught me three things! #1: apparently the more people get who killed in your surroundings, the less worried you become. It's weird. After the initial kidnapping and first murder, everyone at the house is in a panic, but when there are only two or three people left near the end, they seem to deal quite calmy and relaxed with the discoveries of new bodies. #2: a kidnapped 9-year-old is something you forget easily when there is also a killer at large. The story begins with the abduction of a child, and only later a killer shows up and eliminates the adults one by one. The missing child is hardly even mentioned anymore, until the lead actress suddenly remembers him again after the climax. "Oh, right... Christian!". #3: giving in to lesbian desires gets you killed accidentally. One of the female victims wasn't targeted by the killer, but since she requested to sleep together with another woman in her room, she gets mistakenly killed. What a bad timing to come out of the closet.
"Un Silencio de Tumba" is NOT a good movie, unfortunately, but at least it's entertaining, and - moreover - an effort that entirely depends on story and atmosphere/suspense rather than on nudity and sex. It's a sleaze-free Franco from the 1970s, and that alone is quite remarkable!
The film can best be labelled as a (Spanish) giallo! There's the isolated setting, a group of obnoxious & extravagant people who deserve to die, guests behaving exaggeratedly suspicious (and clearly are not the killer), and a culprit with melancholic motivations. My biggest complaint is that the kills are sadly bloodless and not nearly as imaginative as in other contemporary Gialli - mostly from Italy - and that the characters are deliberately insufferable. All of them!
And to close off; - a bit of fun! It's always good to learn a few things that you didn't know before via watching a film! Jess Franco's "Un Silencio de Tumba" even taught me three things! #1: apparently the more people get who killed in your surroundings, the less worried you become. It's weird. After the initial kidnapping and first murder, everyone at the house is in a panic, but when there are only two or three people left near the end, they seem to deal quite calmy and relaxed with the discoveries of new bodies. #2: a kidnapped 9-year-old is something you forget easily when there is also a killer at large. The story begins with the abduction of a child, and only later a killer shows up and eliminates the adults one by one. The missing child is hardly even mentioned anymore, until the lead actress suddenly remembers him again after the climax. "Oh, right... Christian!". #3: giving in to lesbian desires gets you killed accidentally. One of the female victims wasn't targeted by the killer, but since she requested to sleep together with another woman in her room, she gets mistakenly killed. What a bad timing to come out of the closet.
"Christina's House" is a horror movie typical for its era of release. The genre's output was far from great during the late-90s/early 2000s, but crews and (especially) casts did their stinking best to make the films mysterious and attractive. This effort from the unknown director Gavin Wilding is poor, forgettable, and quite preposterous in terms of script and plot twists, but it's also undeniably compelling thanks to a curiously unsettling atmosphere and plenty of weirdo characters.
Stunningly beautiful Christina Tarling seems to live a carefree, like any 17-year-old girl should, but she has a few concerns on her mind. She lives in a rental house in remote Washington (the state) but must look after her younger brat of a brother because her father combines two jobs. Her mother is in a mental hospital, her intrusive boyfriend only thinks about sleeping with her, her diary keeps disappearing from the drawer, and there are strange noises coming from the attic at night! Unlike the title implies, the problem isn't so much the house... It's all the weirdoes that surround cute Christina. Her father is the worst. He glances at his daughter and grabs her unexpectedly by the waist like no father ever should; regardless of how gorgeous she looks. Apart from the obsessively horny boyfriend and idiot kid brother, there's also a socially incapable handyman and a really uncanny cop. Oh, and did I mention that innocent young girls are being killed off in and around the house?
The film tries to be a mix between grisly slasher and clever whodunit but sadly fails at both. The kills are either off-screen or bloodless, and none of the red herrings or attempts to mislead the viewer regarding the killer's identity have any effect. In the end, the culprit is the person whom you expected from the very first second. And yet, there are fun little details that make "Christina's House" worth watching. The final act (= end battle with the killer) is long but fairly suspenseful, and there's the ingenious gimmick of a trapdoor leading to a cool circle-saw death trap! And, of course, there's Christina herself. Actress Allison Lange is ravishing in a role that would have gone to Kirsten Dunst or Alicia Silverstone if it hadn't been a cheap B-movie. Miss Lange also isn't too shy to show a bit of naked flesh, and even when she's dressed in tank tops the camera is always fixated on her perky nipples.
Stunningly beautiful Christina Tarling seems to live a carefree, like any 17-year-old girl should, but she has a few concerns on her mind. She lives in a rental house in remote Washington (the state) but must look after her younger brat of a brother because her father combines two jobs. Her mother is in a mental hospital, her intrusive boyfriend only thinks about sleeping with her, her diary keeps disappearing from the drawer, and there are strange noises coming from the attic at night! Unlike the title implies, the problem isn't so much the house... It's all the weirdoes that surround cute Christina. Her father is the worst. He glances at his daughter and grabs her unexpectedly by the waist like no father ever should; regardless of how gorgeous she looks. Apart from the obsessively horny boyfriend and idiot kid brother, there's also a socially incapable handyman and a really uncanny cop. Oh, and did I mention that innocent young girls are being killed off in and around the house?
The film tries to be a mix between grisly slasher and clever whodunit but sadly fails at both. The kills are either off-screen or bloodless, and none of the red herrings or attempts to mislead the viewer regarding the killer's identity have any effect. In the end, the culprit is the person whom you expected from the very first second. And yet, there are fun little details that make "Christina's House" worth watching. The final act (= end battle with the killer) is long but fairly suspenseful, and there's the ingenious gimmick of a trapdoor leading to a cool circle-saw death trap! And, of course, there's Christina herself. Actress Allison Lange is ravishing in a role that would have gone to Kirsten Dunst or Alicia Silverstone if it hadn't been a cheap B-movie. Miss Lange also isn't too shy to show a bit of naked flesh, and even when she's dressed in tank tops the camera is always fixated on her perky nipples.