Recently I had a thought to visit again the types of films that "got me here in the first place." Those would be the title of the blog, the Grindhouse, the cult, the offbeat and weird and probably terrible. I have strayed, out of want to write more, and included a lot of things that probably should not be on here, TBH.
With that in mind, on Tubi, I searched out the underground cult legend that is Jesus Franco. Italian master of all things bad that he is, I was thrilled to see something that was in the horror genre, and that the plot description said was a slasher! I was more than thrilled, I was fucking pumped.
Originally titled "The Saw of Death", this film revolves around a scarred young man who is killing people. At first I thought, and was happy that, it seemed he was modeled after both Jason and Michael Myers. Scarred like Jason, first person POV like Michael, mask wearing and non-verbal like both of them. Actually, I thought this came out later in the 80's, in 1981 thy would have likely only seen Friday the 13th part one at this point, where obviously the killer is not Jason...but I digress.
We follow the scarred villain to his first kill, and then there's the first "uh-oh", he's taking his mask off. And not putting it back on. Then the second, he has dialogue. Then the third, this film is incredibly hard to follow. We're following random characters, we don't know who they are, where they are, how they're related to anything else. Then as the "plot builds" we reveal bro is having a incestuous relationship with his sister, and there's two killers (or more, really, I don't think they ever say).
Here's another thing about this. I watched this and INSTANTLY forgot about it. It's mostly because the film is so wandering, so dreamlike and has nothing, need I repeat NOTHING that grabs you and makes you pay attention. You might as well be watering plants. Franco achieves the weird altered dreamy state I fell into with Oasis of the Zombies, another sludgy mess of random people doing random things and occasional death.
Some people apparently enjoy this weird early-morning feel of a film, a feeling of bizarre, cryptic, dreamlike, stream-of-consciousness filmmaking. I have to say, I don't enjoy it. It is too tedious, it's too banal, it's too unintentional. It feels like a trip, but not a good trip, just a trip, and maybe one filled with mildly upsetting circumstances.
It does achieve a feeling, but overall it's too boring and nonsensical to recommend. I'll give it 1.5 for the things it does do well.
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