At once a tribute to Italian horror of the 1980s — “the times of Lamberto Bava, when monsters and dolls squirted blood” — and a modern-day attempt to reinvent it, Ubaldo Terzani Horror Show is more successful at the first point than the second. Regardless, it’s both comforting and disturbing that wardrobes of fright-film geeks in both hemispheres consist almost entirely of black horror tees.
Likely an onscreen substitute for sophomore Italian writer/director Gabriele Albanesi, the 25-year-old Alessio (Giuseppe Soleri) is a horror-flick nut and a wannabe filmmaker who’s too tied up in the splatter on which he’s been suckled for so long. His producer insists he try something more psychological, and sends him to Turin to collaborate on a script with the famous horror novelist Terzani Ubaldo (Paolo Sassanelli).
The author’s books prove mighty intense to Alessio, so much that they provoke explicit nightmares. Ubaldo delights in the madness that pours from his pen; in working with this young man, the mentor hides the degree of his nefarious intentions as he gradually becomes a corrupting influence — especially when Alessio’s girlfriend (Laura Gigante) comes to spend the weekend at the host’s insistence.
By and large, this little Horror Show is a twisted love triangle that delights in digging in to the gut-strewn genre that inspired it. Those sequences of pain and death are undeniably grotesque, in the unflinching manner of Lucio Fulci. Those who knows that man’s wet works are most likely to appreciate this flawed but admirably fucked-up valentine. That its final shot fades to a blur is no accident, as Albanesi smudges the line between fantasy and reality throughout. —Rod Lott