Label: Severin Films
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 84 Minutes 43 Seconds (Italian Version), 94 Minutes 2 Seconds (English Version)
Audio: English or Italian DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: HDR10 2160p Ultra HD Widescreen (1.85:1), 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Joe D'Amato
Cast: George Eastman, Annie Belle, Charles Borromel, Edmund Purdon
Following the success of the gut-chewing splatterfest Anthropophagous (1980) director Joe D'Amato (Emanuelle In America) and writer/star George Eastman (Endgame) re-teamed for this spiritual sequel, again starring Eastman as a hulking, mute maniac on a kill-spree - but this time set in America. At the start of the film we see the maniac escaping from what looks to be an asylum of some sort, pursued by determined Vatican priest (Edmund Purdon, Pieces). It's while fleeing that the maniac manages to disembowel himself on the sharp tips of a wrought iron gate, but he 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, but 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 the demented killer 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, and he is now driven to uncontrollably kill. The patient makes a speedy recovery and when he awakens he takes a surgical drill to the skull of an unfortunate nurse. The hulking killer escapes the hospital and his first stop is at a nearby slaughterhouse, where he attacks the janitor (Goffredo Unger, Devil Fish) and gruesomely saws the guy's skull in half on bandsaw, in what is a very well executed gore gag, that looks to owe a debt to that drill-press scene from City of the Living Dead.
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 Peggy (Cindy Leadbetter, Rats: Night of Terror) and Nurse Emily (Annie Belle, House on the Edge of the Park) while their parents, Carol (Hanja Kochansky) and Ian (Ian Danby, Keoma) attend a Pittsburgh Steelers game watch party at the neighbors house. The kids include a bed-ridden convalescing teen girl Katya (Katya Berger, Little Lips) and her adolescent kid brother Willy (Kasimir Berger), who might just be the most annoying kid in an Italian horror movie since "Bob" from Fulci's The House By The Cemetery (1981).
The movie borrows wholesale elements from John Carpenters Halloween (1978) and Halloween II 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 lurking around the house. As mentioned before, the also borrows from Halloween II, which to be fair arrived in cinemas about the same time, with a bed-ridden teen having to rise to the challenge of defeating an unstoppable evil presence, managing to blind her attacker in the process, so maybe it's just 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.
Having just watched both Anthropophagous and then into Absurd I do think that this is a better made film than it's predecessor with brisk-by-comparison pacing that doesn't slow down the gore-soaked fun. The only real slog here are a couple of sequences of the football party and the attendees chowing down on spaghetti. The kills are gruesome and plenty bloody but they are not as shocking as the iconic highlights of Anthropophagous, but we get some good stuff by way of disemboweling, and other body trauma via pick axe, band saw, and a drill, and of course that scene of the nurse getting broiled alive inside of an oven. We even get an old school battle axe comes into play, not too shabby at all, but nowhere near as stomach churning as Anthropophagous.
The inclusion of euro-cult stalwart Edmund Purdom (Don't Open Till Christmas) as the Dr. Loomis stand-in is fun, but he is also a bit wasted, he doesn't do all that much aside from give us a Loomis analog and pad out the run time to be honest, but I'll take some Purdom anywhere I can get him. George Eastman again doesn't have a whole lot to do here as the mindless, murdering maniac, other than look menacing and kill baby kill, but everything happening around him just seems more interesting to me, and he seems more into playing the character as well, with a tiny bit more expression in his face at the very least, because he is not buried under latex effects.
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 utterly ridiculous - where the fuck are the pizza and wings!?! It's also pretty trope-y just how absurdly ineffectual the cops are here, Sgt. Engleman (Charles Borromel, Four of the Apocalypse) is 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 with fun nods to Halloween.
Audio/Video: For Severin's 20th anniversary they have afforded Absurd (1981) a new 4K restoration on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD, now scanned in 4K from the original camera negative, framed in in 1.85:1 widescreen. Like Anthropophagous this is quite a revelation in 4K, the new scan lifts the veil of the somewhat murky, brown-leaning previous Blu-ray release with improved depth, clarity and color throughout. Film grain is better resolved, detail and texture look amazing, and the HDR WCG color-grade is quite impressive, white are much crisper than the previous release. Additionally, blacks are deeper and more nuanced, skin tones look more natural, and blood is more vibrant and less ox-blood leaning. The accompanying Blu-ray also offers quite an upgrade over the previous release, minus the HDR10 color-benefits, but still looking fantastic.
Audio comes by way of English or Italian for the longer cut, and Italian for the shorter Italian version, both 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.
We get two version of the film included here, we get the 89-min Italian version with the 'Rosso Sangue' title card, and the longer running 94-min English version, with the 'Absurd' title card. To my eyes both cuts looks identical as far as image quality, with the shorter version containing all the gore but removing a scenes of people watching football and scarfing down spaghetti, which would be my preferred version next time i toss this on.
Severin also offers a trio of new extras, and the archival extras from their 2018 Blu-rat. New stuff kick-off with the 10-min As Red As Blood – Interview With Director Joe D'Amato, in which the late director discuses working with George Eastman aka Luigi Montefiore, following Emmanuelle's Revenge, having worked with him previously on Westerns, starting with Anthropophagous, and then the sequel Absurd. He talks about his Cinema 80 partnership with Donatella Donati, giving appreciation to director Michele Soavi who appeared in the film, calling hm one of the most talented up and coming directors in Italy, who had already directed Stage Fright for D'Amato, his idea about what a producer is, working with Edmund Purdon, why he enjoys making horror films. Next is the 11-min My Absurd Film Music – Interview With Composer Carlo Maria Cordio features the composer recalling how he came into the world of soundtracks through a highschool associates, playing for Ortolani, Cipriani, and Morricone, before getting to score a film himself with a synth score for for the film Murder Obsession, before moving onto Absurd, which has a larger music budget, allowing for an orchestra, which lead to more work, but he expresses regret he never got to do a love story as he loves writing romantic music, even saying he forced horror directors to use his love themes from time to time, and recalling D'Amato has a funny guy, so much so that you forgave him for always asking him to work at a discounted rate.
The last of the new extras is the 12-min Building With Images – Interview With Editor Vanio Amici, who offers a lovely appreciation for D'Amato as someone who loved cinema deeply and who helped him along in his own career, his job as editor, eventually working up to Absurd, complementing D'Amato's filming, and trying to being something even more to it with his editing, and what a wonderful rapport they had.
Archival extras start off wit the career-spanning 20-min D'Amato On Video – Interview With Joe D'Amato, featuring the late director sitting behind a desk, impresario style, and speaking about his filmography at length, including the hardcore porn stuff. Next is a 30-min The Return of the Grim Reaper' an interview with actor/writer/co-producer Luigi Montefiore aka George Eastman 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, and how he thinks that hype was hurtful in a way to those directors in some way. The last of the archival extras is the 18-min A Biker (Uncredited) – Interview With Actor/Assistant Director Michele Soavi, in it 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
The 2-disc UHD/Blu-ray arrives in a black keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork featuring the original movie poster artwork for the film. I do wish they had went reversible with this one and at least offered the Pseudo Ludo artwork they commissioned for the 2018 Blu-ray release, or even the alternate bloody medieval axe movie poster artwork. Note, this release does not include the CD Original Motion Picture Soundtrack that accompanied the 2018 Blu-ray release, so you may want to hold off on trading that version in at the secondhand shop.
Special Features:
Disc 1 UHD (Italian Version/English Version + Special Feature):
- Trailer (2:54)
Disc 2: Blu-ray (Italian Version/English Version + Special Features):
- NEW! The Return Of The Grim Reaper – Interview With Actor/Writer/Co-Producer Luigi Montefiori (30:50)
- NEW! My Absurd Film Music – Interview With Composer Carlo Maria Cordio (10:44)
- NEW! Building With Images – Interview With Editor Vanio Amici (12:13)
- As Red As Blood – Interview With Director Joe D'Amato (9:56)
- D'Amato On Video – Interview With Joe D'Amato (19:44)
- A Biker (Uncredited) – Interview With Actor/Assistant Director Michele Soavi (17:48)
- Trailer (2:54)
Absurd (1981) follows a basic slasher 101 formula but it's still pretty bat-shit insane, being Italian and all. Having just re-watched Anthropophagous (1980) I thought the gore this time around was not nearly as stomach churning, tame even by comparison, but c'mon now, it's hard to top eating your own intestines and ripping babies from wombs! The Severin 4K UHD/Blu-ray upgrade looks terrific, and the new extras are solid, so for fans of Italian splatter and 80's slashers this is a well-worth the upgrade.
Screenshots Comparison:
Top: Severin Blu-ray (2018)
Bottom: Severin Blu-ray (2026)
More Screenshots from the Severin Blu-ray (2026)
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