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“Don't worry, we'll catch the killer that killed her.”
Canadian film-making collective Astron-6 (Father's Day) return
with their own curious take on the Italian genre films of the 1970s and 1980s,
particularly the giallo film, with The Editor. Harnessing the bold
colour splashes of Mario Bava, the shock gore geysers of Lucio Fulci, and the
twisted narrative mystery of gialli icons Dario Argento and Ernesto Gastaldi,
Astron-6 have donned black leather gloves and some impressively luxuriant
moustaches for their own eroticised killer thriller...
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screenshots…
“I'll be keeping my eye on all of you, everyone's a
suspect so I don't advise any of you to trust one another until I've found the
guilty party.” Rey Ciso (Adam Brooks) is a film editor, a great
one, but after losing the fingers from one of his hands in a grisly accident (now
replaced by wooden digits) he's found himself chopping together cheap,
pulpy trash for sleazy studio boss Francesco Mancini (Kevin Anderson). A
wounded, tortured genius, Rey is forced to endure the pity and mockery of his
peers such as that of actors Claudio (Brett Donahue) and Veronica (Tristan
Risk) who flaunt their love affair in front of him. Even at home, Rey is
humiliated by his wife Josephine (Paz de la Huerta, Boardwalk Empire)
whose lustful gaze wanders from one of Mancini's hunky actors to the next.
“I've heard these old studios have ghosts, and I'll be
damned if I let myself see one.” Then the killing starts – of course it
does – as a sex scene becomes a crime scene. Gratuitous nudity gives way to
eruptions of arterial spray as a razor-wielding maniac kicks off their marathon
of murder and mayhem. Indeed, so grisly are the crimes that fellow actor
Margarit (Sheila E. Campbell) is blinded by the horror of it all,
spurring her husband, Inspector Peter Porfiry (Matthew Kennedy), into
action – but he's an unhinged rogue with strange sexual perversions of his own
and an obsession with Rey Ciso as his number one suspect.
“You're like Van Gogh with his wooden ear.”
But with suspects everywhere we turn, like Conor Sweeney's Cal Konitz – a
sexually confused knife enthusiast with a carnivorous career plan – and the
victims found with their fingers cut off, will Rey be caught as a killer or
suffer as a victim? Featuring game support from Udo Kier (Mark of the
Devil) as Dr Casini – from Rey's former mental asylum – and Laurence R.
Harvey (Human Centipede II) as Father Clarke – a true believer in
Rey's innocence and a netherworld that only film editors can access – The
Editor, like all the best gialli, throws plenty of possibilities at the
wall.
“A woman's eyes weren't meant to see such things,
understand?” Dario Argento has spoken of preferring to kill women over
men in his movies because it's simultaneously more horrifying and more
beautiful, and yet at a time when society beyond the silver screen was almost
exclusively a man's world, gialli put women front and centre as protagonists,
victims, and killers alike. Yet the Italian thrillers of the 1960s through
1980s have at times been accused of misogyny (although “sexism” or
“chauvinism” would be more accurate descriptors in such instances), so
Astron-6 use this as a running gag. Inspector Porfiry's sordid encounters with
women recall memorable scenes from The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (Sergio
Martino, 1971), but lampoon them with sploshing and the off-putting gaze of
Margarit's seeing-eye dog. Meanwhile, his penchant for slapping anyone vaguely
female shows up the preposterousness of male arrogance, as the film's knowing
obsession with frequent nudity is a hilarious case of having your cake and
eating it too.
“Damn, that's right, I forgot I don't have fingers on
this hand any more.” When it comes to blood and guts, The Editor
lives up to Astron-6's reputation for gleefully splashing about buckets of low
budget – yet decidedly effective – gore. Highlights include a chainsaw murder
that references the infamous bedroom double-kill in A Bay of Blood (Mario
Bava, 1971), and a barmy 'face ripping' sequence for the film-within-a-film
that Rey is reluctantly cutting together.
What's more, film fans will enjoy the sheer volume of nods
and winks to the Italian genre masterpieces of the time period. Lucio Fulci's The
Beyond and The House by the Cemetery (both 1981) are heavily
referenced in connection to Margarit's character, while Blood and Black Lace
(Mario Bava, 1964), The Black Belly of the Tarantula (Paolo
Cavara 1971), Torso (Sergio Martino, 1973), Death Walks On High Heels (Luciano Ercoli 1971), What Have They Done To Your Daughters (Massimo Dallamano, 1974) Videodrome (David
Cronenberg, 1983), Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg,
1981), and From Beyond (Stuart Gordon, 1986) – among others –
are all explicitly given a nod.
“I don't want to hear your Wizard speak!” The
biggest victories that The Editor experiences are in its presentation. The
film looks and sounds fantastic with the Astron-6 team taking full advantage of
the opportunity to illuminate widescreen scenes in bold and brash primary
colours, re-dub their own dialogue, smoke up a storm, and score their creation
with a synthwave soundtrack. Their main weakness, on the other hand, is
narrative focus and consistent pacing – the second act becomes flabby around
the edges, while Astron-6's very specific brand of humour can stumble as often
as it soars. That said, many gialli weren't exactly the height of storytelling
clarity or vision – but for a 'neo-giallo' (see also Yellow, Amer,
and The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears) a little more focus in
the script wouldn't have gone amiss.
“A man slapping a man – imagine that … have a
wonderful evening.” The odd wobble aside, The Editor (Directed by Adam Brooks and Matthew Kennedy) proves to
be Astron-6's best film yet. Established fans of their work will know what to
expect and are likely to leave satisfied. Random viewers – especially if they
have no knowledge of the gialli movement – will perhaps struggle to enjoy all
the different layers that the film has to it. However, if you liked this, you
might want to check out Evil Ed – not that it's particularly similar to The
Editor, but it does share some common ground (and is a jolly good horror
comedy to boot). Genre fans will appreciate the copious amount of sex and
slaughter that's on offer, and get a kick out of pinpointing the vast array of
cinematic influences the film boasts. If you enjoyed Father's Day and
wanted to know what they could do with a bigger budget, here's what you get –
even if, as revealed in the making-of documentary, the bulk of production was
done under similar circumstances – a blood-soaked, boob-filled, loving
homage/spoof to an entire era of filmmaking that's very much worth your time.
Check it out.
“Honey, I'm in our home.” You wait and you
wait for a UK release, no word of one crosses the film's Facebook page, and
then you look to see – by random chance – if it's at least up for pre-order
only to find it was released, to no fanfare whatsoever, months prior! At long
last, Astron-6's latest cinematic cocktail of quirky humour and genre delights
comes to Blighty via Monster Pictures (who have also distributed the likes
of The ABCs of Death 1 & 2) – but only on DVD! So British
fans of Blu-Ray will have to mutter to themselves or import the American
release. Still, the audio/visual presentation is good, bolstering the already
strong palette of primary colour hues splashed throughout the film. Thankfully,
the extra features haven't been forgotten about – there's an audio commentary
with Astron-6, a selection of deleted scenes and typically oddball interviews,
a festival intro video, reversible cover art, and (best of all) a
51-minute making of documentary that is informative, revealing, and
entertaining.
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