From: giallovera@ULTRAMEGAgmail.com

Revisited this painfully close to excellent late-era giallo last night,
and whilst i would definitely recommend it to anyone, it serves as yet
another reminder of how near to greatness Bava Jr constantly danced in
his career.

So obviously being the son of a legend is a double edged sword, it no
doubt got Lamberto directing features quicker than if his name was
Smith, but it held impossible expectations too. As if that wasn't enough
for a 'standing in the shadows' scenario, the man's two irrefutable
classics DEMONI and DEMONI 2 are more often referenced as being
cowritten and produced by Dario Argento (even released as part of an
'Argento Collection' on dvd in the day) than by who helmed them.

Leaving the DEMONI films aside, and the other established classic SHOCK (co-directed with his father, and again only referred to as a Mario Bava
film in most places), Lamberto went out on his own for about a half
dozen features in the 80s and they are almost without exception 'decent'
films. MACABRE, BLADE IN THE DARK, BLASTFIGHTER, all good fun but
definitely flawed pieces, but i believe it's with LE FOTO DI GIOIA in
1987 that he came closest to standing alone as a great filmmaker.

He is dealt a good hand; a plot that revolves around Serena Grandi
getting her magnificent co-stars out, Daria Nicolodi doing what she does
best, and a plot baffling enough to rival most golden-era gialli logic.
What it also has is two magificently surreal setpieces involving pretty
mental prosthetics, creating some intense nightmare visuals without the
plot ever really explaining why they are there. Sadly everything other
than those two scenes kinda falls short of anything really special. It
feels like nobody was certain whether this was a soft-porn romp or a
murder mystery, and none of the quirky side characters are original
enough to last in your memory (predatory older lesbian, pervy kid in wheelchair, etc), and surprisingly none of the over the top violence you
would expect from an 80s outing. The direction and cinematography are entrancing, particularly in the two surreal scenes, but it's not enough
to make this anything more than a 'good' film.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)