MACABRE
(1980)Director: Lamberto Bava
Anchor Bay Entertainment
MACABRE
(1980)In New Orleans, Jane (CITY OF WOMEN's Bernice Stegers) is cheating on her husband with a younger guy across town. One day, she leaves her two kids alone (after promising to take them to the movies) and meets up with her lover in a rented room. Her weird daughter (Veronica Zinny) is completely aware of her mother's adultery, and in a wicked fit of revenge, drowns her younger brother in the bathtub. After having found out the bad news, Jane and her lover race home, get in an auto wreck, and the lover is decapitated by a guard rail.
One year later, Jane is released from an asylum. Now separated from her husband, she takes up residence in her old love nest. The landlord is a quiet and shy blind man (Stanko Molnar) and he is attracted to Jane. Even though he can't see, his other senses are heightened, so he begins to become suspicious as to why he never hears anyone coming or going, even though Jane appears to have a lover. What he discovers is that she has a dark secret and it's hidden away, locked up in a freezer. The daughter makes periodic visits to her mother's abode, doing the nasty things that a malicious child would do under the unusual circumstances.
MACABRE (also known as MACABRO and FROZEN TERROR) is Lamberto Bava's first feature film, and it's often considered his best. As Mario Bava was probably the greatest horror director of all time, Lamberto is not nearly as talented, but his initial foray into the genre is still an impressive accomplishment. Lamberto wrote the screenplay with three other writers--including director Pupi Avati (ZEDER)--and managed to churn out one of the few horror tales where all the central female characters are wicked and murderous, while all the central male characters are sympathetic.
Although the English dubbing is pathetic (Louisiana accents that come and go), the acting is pretty good, with Molnar especially convincing as the blind hero. This is exactly the kind of radical project Mario would have done had he lived and continued to work. Like his father before him, here Lamberto was able to approach a rather trashy subject matter with suspenseful class and manages to deliver shocks without resorting to an overdose of graphic gross-out tactics. The final shot is admittedly silly and unnecessary, but it did indeed cause me to jump.
Anchor Bay's DVD of MACABRE is very impressive, with really vivid colors and nice contrast. The film is letterboxed at 1.85:1 and 16x9 enhanced. There are light scratches in the source material, but this is mostly relegated to film's first few minutes. Aside from the awful dubbing that can't be helped, the mono sound is excellent.
As an added bonus, there's a European trailer (don't watch this before the feature, as it reveals EVERYTHING), and an 8-minute subtitled interview with director Bava entitled, "A Head For Horror: Lamberto Bava on MACABRE." Among other things, Lamberto reveals that upon seeing the film in a theater, his father proclaimed, "Now I can die in peace." The elder Bava died shortly after that, luckily being spared from seeing his son's shameful remake of his immortal MASK OF THE DEMON (aka BLACK SUNDAY), and a handful of other abominations! Also included on this disc is a bio/filmography of the director and a collector's booklet. (George R. Reis)