Duration: 94 Minutes
Region Code: All regions
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Audio: English DTS-HD 2.0 Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Director: Joe D'Amato
Cast: George Eastman, Annie Belle, Charles Borromel, Edmund Purdon
Region Code: All regions
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Audio: English DTS-HD 2.0 Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Director: Joe D'Amato
Cast: George Eastman, Annie Belle, Charles Borromel, Edmund Purdon
Following the success of Anthropophagous (1980) director Joe D'Amato and writer/star George Eastman re-teamed for this semi-sequel, a spiritual sequel in so much that it again stars Eastman as a hulking, mute maniac on a kill-spree, also named Nikos - but this time set in America. At the start of the film we see Nikos escaping from what looks to be an asylum of some sort, pursued by Vatican priest (Edmund Purdon, Pieces), while fleeing the maniac manages to disembowel himself on the sharp tips of a wrought iron gate he climbing over, but still manages to find his way to a nearby home of before collapsing on their doorstep with his guts hanging out, sort of beginning this film the same way Anthropophagous ended. He's taken to a local hospital where doctor's stitch him up in surgery, they're unaware of what a monster he is, and are a bit surprised how quickly he heals during the surgery.
The priest eventually shows up and explains to the surgeons and the cops that Nikos was the subject of a bizarre church-sanctioned experiment that gave him increased healing abilities, sort of like Wolverine, but the experiments drove the man murderously insane, now driven to kill. The patient makes a speedy recovery and takes a surgical drill to the skull of an unfortunate nurse, the first of two kills look to owe a big debt to the drill-press scene from Lucio Fulci's City of The Living Dead (1990). He escapes the hospital and his first stop is at a nearby slaughterhouse, where he band saws some poor janitor's skull in half - it's a very well executed gore gag!
Eventually the unstoppable psycho makes his way back to the home where he spilled his guts at earlier, inside two children have been left alone with a babysitter and a nurse while their parents are off watching a Pittsburgh Steelers game at the neighbors house. The kids include a bed-ridden convalescing teen and her adolescent kid brother, who might be the most annoying kid in a horror movie since "Bob" from Fulci's The House By The Cemetery (1981).
The movie borrows wholesale elements from John Carpenters Halloween (1978) with the mute Eastman standing in for Michael Myers, while Purdom's obsessed priest is clearly the Loomis of the story. Additionally you have a babysitter and her ward threatened by the looming danger of an escaped patient, with the kid worrying about a bogeyman he's seen around the house. Also touching on elements of Halloween II, which to be fair arrived in cinemas about the same time, we have a bed-ridden teen who must rise to the challenge of defeating an unstoppable evil presence, who also manages to blind her attacker in the process, it's a strange coincidence.
This time around Eastman's maniac doesn't have the same receding hairline and poor skin condition as his counterpart from Anthropophagous, he's looking rather handsomely rugged here with a fine looking beard, and a bloodstained buttoned-up shirt tucked into his blue jeans, sporting white tennis shoes. It seemed like a strange wardrobe choice for an unstoppable killing machine, but okay, I'll go with it.
In my opinion Absurd is a better made film than it's predecessor with brisk-by-comparison pacing that doesn't slow down the gore-soaked fun. The kills are bloody but are not as shocking as the highlights of Anthropophagous, but we get some good stuff by way of disemboweling, pick axe, band saw, drill, someone roasted in an oven, and even an old school battle axe comes into play, not too shabby at all.
The inclusion of Edmund Purdom as the Loomis-like character is fun but also a bit wasted, he doesn't do all that much except pad out the run time, but I'll take some Purdom where I can get him. George Eastman again doesn't have a whole lot to do here as the mindless, murdering maniac, other than kill, but everything happening around him just seems more interesting to me, and he seems more into the character here as well, with a tiny bit more expression in his face at least.
Other fun stuff to watch for is how this is supposed to be set in America, so there's a lot of football on TV, and at the party the parents attend they're all scarfing down plates of pasta, it's rediculous, also trope-y is how absurd-ly ineffectual the cops are here, completely useless. Absurd is a fun enough 80's slasher, it's not up there with the American slasher classics from the same era but D'Amato at least gives us a decent Italian entry.
In my opinion Absurd is a better made film than it's predecessor with brisk-by-comparison pacing that doesn't slow down the gore-soaked fun. The kills are bloody but are not as shocking as the highlights of Anthropophagous, but we get some good stuff by way of disemboweling, pick axe, band saw, drill, someone roasted in an oven, and even an old school battle axe comes into play, not too shabby at all.
The inclusion of Edmund Purdom as the Loomis-like character is fun but also a bit wasted, he doesn't do all that much except pad out the run time, but I'll take some Purdom where I can get him. George Eastman again doesn't have a whole lot to do here as the mindless, murdering maniac, other than kill, but everything happening around him just seems more interesting to me, and he seems more into the character here as well, with a tiny bit more expression in his face at least.
Other fun stuff to watch for is how this is supposed to be set in America, so there's a lot of football on TV, and at the party the parents attend they're all scarfing down plates of pasta, it's rediculous, also trope-y is how absurd-ly ineffectual the cops are here, completely useless. Absurd is a fun enough 80's slasher, it's not up there with the American slasher classics from the same era but D'Amato at least gives us a decent Italian entry.
Audio/Video: Absurd (1981) arrives on Blu-ray from Severin Films with a brand new 2K scan from the original camera negative, presented in 1080p HD and framed in 1.85:1 widescreen. The source looks good, print damage is kept to a minimum, colors are solid and nicely saturated, and the blacks are decently deep. There are two version of the film included here, we get the 89-min Italian version and the longer running 94-min English version, both cuts looks identical as far as image quality to my eyes, with the shorter version containing all the gore but removing a bunch of scenes of people watching football and scarfing down spaghetti.
Audio comes by way of English (for the longer version) and Italian (for the shorter Italian version) via DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono, both are clean and well preserved, dialogue is never difficult to make out, and the score from Carlo Maria Cordio (Witchery) is pretty fantastic, if you're a fan of it you will pleased that Severin have included a soundtrack CD with this release!
Extras kick-off with the half-hour 'The Return of the Grim Reaper' an interview with actor/writer/co-producer Luigi Montefiore a.k.a George Eastemn again speaking about his work with D'Amato, talking of how they met on the set of a western, how impressed he was at the lengths to which D'Amato would go as a cameraman to get a shot, even dangerously strapping himself to a horse carriage, and eventually writing scripts for and acting for him when he turned to directing films. He discusses working with Edmund Purdon and Annie Belle, shooting certain scenes and how some of the effects were achieved, and how he hated getting head-casts done. He also goes into how Michele Soavi (Cemetery Man) got involved in the production, noting that he became quite a good director himself, with Eastman even writing the script for Soavi's Stage Fright (1987). Interestingly he also goes a little bit into Quentin Tarantino speaking highly of D'Amato and Sergio Martino, how he thinks that hype was hurtful in a way to those directors in some way.
Director Michele Soavi who appeared as an uncredited biker in the film shows up for an appreciation of D'Amato, describing him as genius, and speaking of how he produced Stage Fright, this looks to be ported over from the 88 Films Blu-ray from few years ago. The last of the interview extras is a vintage interview with the late director, sitting behind a desk impresario style and speaking about his filmography, including the hardcore porn stuff. there's a trailer for the film.
The 2-disc Blu-ray/CD release comes housed in a black Blu-ray keepcase with a 2-sided sleeve of artwork, the A-side looks to be a new illustration with the reverse being an original movie Spanish or Italian poster for the film. The Blu-ray disc sports the new illustration, the artwork for the CD disc is an illustration I'm not familiar with, the image looking more like something from City of The Living Dead than Absurd.
Special Features:
- Rosso Sangue - Alternate Italian cut (with optional English subtitles)(88 min)
- The Return of the Grim Reaper- Interview with Actor / Writer / Co-Producer Luigi Montefiore (31 min)
- D'Amato on Video- Archive Interview with Director Aristide Massaccesi (17 min)
- A Biker (Uncredited)- Interview with Filmmaker/Extra Michele Soavi (17 min)
- Trailer (3 min)
Audio comes by way of English (for the longer version) and Italian (for the shorter Italian version) via DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono, both are clean and well preserved, dialogue is never difficult to make out, and the score from Carlo Maria Cordio (Witchery) is pretty fantastic, if you're a fan of it you will pleased that Severin have included a soundtrack CD with this release!
Extras kick-off with the half-hour 'The Return of the Grim Reaper' an interview with actor/writer/co-producer Luigi Montefiore a.k.a George Eastemn again speaking about his work with D'Amato, talking of how they met on the set of a western, how impressed he was at the lengths to which D'Amato would go as a cameraman to get a shot, even dangerously strapping himself to a horse carriage, and eventually writing scripts for and acting for him when he turned to directing films. He discusses working with Edmund Purdon and Annie Belle, shooting certain scenes and how some of the effects were achieved, and how he hated getting head-casts done. He also goes into how Michele Soavi (Cemetery Man) got involved in the production, noting that he became quite a good director himself, with Eastman even writing the script for Soavi's Stage Fright (1987). Interestingly he also goes a little bit into Quentin Tarantino speaking highly of D'Amato and Sergio Martino, how he thinks that hype was hurtful in a way to those directors in some way.
Director Michele Soavi who appeared as an uncredited biker in the film shows up for an appreciation of D'Amato, describing him as genius, and speaking of how he produced Stage Fright, this looks to be ported over from the 88 Films Blu-ray from few years ago. The last of the interview extras is a vintage interview with the late director, sitting behind a desk impresario style and speaking about his filmography, including the hardcore porn stuff. there's a trailer for the film.
The 2-disc Blu-ray/CD release comes housed in a black Blu-ray keepcase with a 2-sided sleeve of artwork, the A-side looks to be a new illustration with the reverse being an original movie Spanish or Italian poster for the film. The Blu-ray disc sports the new illustration, the artwork for the CD disc is an illustration I'm not familiar with, the image looking more like something from City of The Living Dead than Absurd.
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| MAIN MENU SCREEN |
Special Features:
- Rosso Sangue - Alternate Italian cut (with optional English subtitles)(88 min)
- The Return of the Grim Reaper- Interview with Actor / Writer / Co-Producer Luigi Montefiore (31 min)
- D'Amato on Video- Archive Interview with Director Aristide Massaccesi (17 min)
- A Biker (Uncredited)- Interview with Filmmaker/Extra Michele Soavi (17 min)
- Trailer (3 min)
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