Video nasties rewatch part 1- Absurd

The first on the list is a film I didn't remember much about having bought a copy off ebay about 18 years ago, that was watched once, given away and forgotten about. But pleasingly, it's an enjoyable watch. It's terribly acted of course as nasties tend to be and desperately paced but it's blessed with a genuinely unsettling bad guy, some gruelling kills and a very effective ending. Oh and it's a massive Halloween rip off.

Mikos (George Eastman aka Luigi Montefiore) is on the run. He's a terrifying looking bloke, the kind of chap you'd cross a couple of fields to avoid but he's running from a panting priest for some reason. In a bid to escape he climbs a gate and disembowels himself on a gate spike. We're only 5 minutes into the film so of course he can't be dead and he proves this by rocking up to the house, belonging to a family called the Bennett's where he collapses at the front door holding his small intestine in his hand. The Bennett's are predictably traumatised especially their young son Willy. Mikos is whipped off to hospital and operated on by doctors who are amazed by his healing abilities. After mere minutes of rest he's up and has skewered a nurse through the head with a drill he finds just lying around. Then he's off. A hospital cannot contain this beast. The priest who was chasing him is distraught and informs the police that Mikos is the result of church sanctioned experimentation, experimentation that give him miraculous healing powers but which also turned him into a homicidal maniac.

While they get the film's exposition out of the way Mikos is on a kill crazy rampage. A poor butcher gets his head bisected with his own saw and a biker is strangled. After the latter murder Mikos is hit by a car and left to die. A car belonging to Mr Bennett! Now out for revenge Mikos heads back to the house that caused his downfall and there he finds the Bennett children, Katia and Willy and their babysitter Emily. Willy, having witnessed Mikos injured earlier believes him to be the boogeyman and Katia, despite her crippling spinal issues, isn't going out without a fight. Things get disgusting.

Kids. Damn. Kids in a horror movie always up the ante. No one minds seeing adults being skewered but not kids. They give this film a source of tension missing from most of the other nasties. It's one of the reasons why the climax of this one works so well. A near seven foot killer chasing two kids is always going to be scary but when the Katia manages to blind Mikos the film becomes kind of petrifying, with her sneaking around, quietly and in pain while he stumbles about, gore spilling down his face from his ruined eyes, missing her by a hair's breadth on a few occasions. You'll be watching with your breath held.

If you've seen a Joe D'Amato film before you'll probably be expecting to be disappointed but a killer (literally) climax saves the day. It's not hard to see why this film caused such a fuss either. It's pretty effective and it's real world setting makes some of it quite uncomfortable to watch, especially the drawn out sequence involving an unfortunate baby sitter and the high setting of an oven. There's no silly masks or gimmicks here either. Just a huge psychopath in jeans, puma runners and an increasingly bloody shirt.

If you've an interest in the nasties and would like to dip a toe in but want to avoid the more objectionable entries you can't go wrong here. Plus it's available to watch on youtube in HD. Sweet.

I won't link to it of course because that would be immoral...