Bruno Mattei

  • Blade Violent—I violenti [Women’s Prison Massacre] (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2021) Even by the exploitative standards set by “women in prison” movies of the 1970s–1980s, Women’s Prison Massacre seeks the bottom of the barrel and stays there. Naked women, brutish men, grimy setting, lesbian sex and generous gore — those are the ingredients and notorious exploitation director Bruno Mattei (who worked both in porn and horror, giving you an idea of the pedigree brought here) doesn’t hold back. The good news is that the breathtaking Laura Gemser stars as a character named Emanuelle (alluding to her work in the Black Emanuelle series, even though most films in that series were nowhere near as violent as this one); the bad news is that her character gets subjected to terrible things, undercutting almost all of the enjoyable aspects of her presence. Pushing the women-in-prison genre in gory horror is not an endearing move: whatever enjoyment you can get from the nudity is nullified — and then some — by the brutish violence and horrific blood-letting. It doesn’t make Women’s Prison Massacre worth remembering, except as a warning not to watch again.

  • Mondo cannibale [Cannibal World] (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2021) As much as I truly loathe to find anything nice to say about the infamous (and reprehensible) horror film Cannibal Holocaust, the universe has a perverse sense of humour, and today’s offering (via a scheduling mistake at the not-always-competent French-Canadian horror Cable TV channel) is Mondo cannibale, a 2004 film from shlockmaster Bruno Mattei determined to ape 1981’s Cannibal Holocaust but with even less wit. The plot is the same, as journalists head into the upper Amazonian to film cannibal tribes, and realize that they can’t just watch without being in mortal danger. The troubling “aren’t viewers the real monsters?” subplot of the original is here hammered so often that it becomes stale and then almost comic. As for the stomach-churning gore, well, there’s plenty of it—although it doesn’t seem to be filming the killing of real animals, so that’s at least one way in which the film is infinitely preferable to the original. Still, this is a terrible, useless film. Aping the cannibal movies of the early 1980s is in no way an achievement worth celebrating—skipping Mondo cannibale entirely is a wiser course of action. And don’t mistake this assessment for any kind of endorsement for the original.

  • Rats—Notte di terrore [Rats: Night of Terror] (1984)

    Rats—Notte di terrore [Rats: Night of Terror] (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2021) Often mentioned as one of those so-bad-it’s-good cult favourites, Rats: Night of Terror is actually more fun than expected, albeit for narrow definitions of “fun.”  The film’s opening half-minute slams you in the face with paragraphs of narrated exposition boiling down to: this is a post-apocalyptic film. The following ten minutes are dedicated to introducing (in a fuzzy sense) the rather unlikable characters of the ensemble film: stylishly-dressed bikers stumbling into a bar that has some food and basement hydroponics, and then fighting off an unusually large number of flesh-eating rats. Like: bucketful of rats thrown at the actors, many of them (the actors) screaming senselessly. None of this makes sense, from the redundant exposition to the actress getting eaten to death by a single rat in a sleeping bag. It’s certainly not good, but it can be entertaining in wacky ways: watch the ineptness of writer-director Bruno Mattei, laugh at the absurd death scenes, leer at the pretty actresses (no, I can’t pick between Geretta Geretta or Moune Duvivier either), scream at the lousy seen-it-from-a-mile ending, gasp at the awfulness of the special effects or shrug at the endless pacing issues of a film that barely makes it to 97 minutes. Here’s the thing: it may not be good, but it is rather fun, and that’s not always obvious when discussing bad movies — too bad and no one’s having fun. Rats: Night of Terror has just enough to it (oh boy, that “computer” scene) to be entertaining.

  • Robowar—Robot da guerra (1988)

    Robowar—Robot da guerra (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2021) I did not suspect that there was such a thing as a low-budget Predator rip-off. But there is. To be specific, Robowar could easily be retitled “That scene in Predator where they machine-gun the entire jungle—The Movie,” considering how often our characters unload their entire arsenal at innocent flora. The pretext for their landscaping has something to do with a soldier robot out of control (bringing in the mix either Robocop or The Terminator) but you know the routine no matter the justification: A bunch of good guys against one bad guy, this time in the jungle. It’s about as good as you’d expect, which is to say — not very. Behind the scenes, the film is a mixture of Italian filmmaking, Philippines production values (at a time when the Marcos regime was only too willing to help movies shoot in the country) and American actors. Not that it matters when bad filmmaking transcends international borders: Robowar is just terrible. Bad actors, bad script, bad directing from Bruno Mattei, and bad production values — you’ve certainly spotted the common denominator here. It does have a rough sense of fun in terms of bad-movie watching, but the bad pacing kills off any of the energy that such a production could have had. If you want to sit through Robowar just to claim that you’ve finally seen an Italian Predator rip-off, well, I’m not going to stop you. But there are better things to do.

  • Virus [Hell of the Living Dead aka Night of the Zombies] (1980)

    Virus [Hell of the Living Dead aka Night of the Zombies] (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, September 2020) The bad news is that Hell of the Living Dead (or whatever you want to call it) is a Bruno Mattei 1980 zombie film. The good news is that… well, there is no good news. This is all you get: Splatter gore sequences loosely strung along an incomprehensible plot about medical experimentation in the Third World, cardboard characters being killed one after another, an ill-fitting Goblin soundtrack, substandard acting, astonishing low-budget filmmaking shortcuts, scenes that feel recycled and a nihilistic ending. Don’t tell me that, for better or for worse, this isn’t what you were expecting. To be fair, Hell of the Living Dead didn’t strike me as being as heave-inducing as some of the truly atrocious Italian horror movies of the era, but that’s a low, almost nonexistent bar. See it if you want—it’s your time. As for myself, I’m steering clear of that era of filmmaking as soon as I’m done checking them off my list.

  • Casa privata per le SS [Private House of the SS aka SS Girls] (1977)

    Casa privata per le SS [Private House of the SS aka SS Girls] (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2020) While you ponder the mysteries of the universe, I’ll be sitting here wondering all sorts of questions about Private House of the SS. Like: What is this film doing playing on a French-Canadian Cable TV channel dedicated to horror films when it’s not particularly violent? Sure, it’s pure nazisploitation stuff—after all, it’s a Bruno Mattei joint filled with Nazis training naked women to be spies by seducing important men. That’s it for plot—other than a sadistic ending, much of the film is one softcore pornography sequence after another, except so badly and bluntly executed that it’s impossible to get aroused by any of it. I’m thankful that the usual gore and violence of the usual nazisploitation films aren’t here, but it’s not as if what remains is any better. While marginally less vile than films like Isla, She-Wolf of the SS, this Private House of the SS is pointless with a bare-bones “plot” that resolves on a whim. Add a few questions to the enigma of this film: Why does it exist? Who was it made for? Is anyone even watching Private House of the SS these days? And more importantly, why should they?