Certified Video Nasty: Absurd

I'll refer to the movie as Absurd.

George Eastman is being chased by a priest...and ends up impaled on a gate.

At the hospital, surgeons discover he can heal super quickly.  This intrigues the surgeons, but George kills a nurse and escapes before they can investigate.  He then heads to a house in the woods.  Inside are a babysitter, a bratty kid, and a girl who seems to be paralyzed from the neck down...whose nurse is gonna be there soon.  Will the priest be able to stop him before the night takes a tragic turn?

Sometimes Absurd is referred to as a sequel to Anthropophagus.  I wouldn't know how closely they go together, because I haven't seen Anthropophagus.  It's out on DVD, but I'm holding off on it for now.

Anyhow, the plot is rather thin.  It does riff on the first two Halloween films, but reverses the order.  Things start in the hospital, and end in the isolated house.  Everything else is the same: Psycho monster goes on the loose, Dr. Loomis type is trying to stop him, kids/babysitter/nurse in peril.

Instead of boring things like characterization and subtext, Absurd focuses on gore.  While it's not the goriest thing I've ever seen, I do understand why it made it onto the Video Nasty list.  The murder of the nurse in the hospital is quite gruesome, though not in the realm of Fulci.  Another gory-highlight is the head-in-the-oven bit near the end of the film.

The most interesting aspect of the film has to be the use of the paraplegic girl confined to her bed for most of the film.  Her actions change everything at the end of the film, and also manage to provide some emotion to the film.  To tell you would be to spoil it for you.  And I know you don't want that.

All in all, a passable Italian slasher flick.  With some plot retooling, this could make a decent remake.  The ultra-healing monster could lend itself to either a supernatural spin or a sci-fi spin, depending on how you want to take it.  Maybe if I ever do make it in the movie biz...but then again, I'd have to do it after that movie about Ed Kemper I promised my mom...yes, my entire family is weird.

Later.
-Justin