Absurd

Absurd (Rosso Sangue) (1981)

Runtime: 94 minutes

Directed by: Joe D'Amato

Starring: George Eastman, Katya Berger, Kasimir Berger, Edmund Purdom, Annie Belle

From: Several Italian companies

I chose the title to refer to this by (as it's known by many different names) as it accurately describes the logic in this film: 

I've known of this film for awhile now; I've never seen Antropophagus (involving the same director and star) but know it is wildly over the top, especially the gross ending. Absurd-this has had many titles over the years, but Absurd is the one I'll go with; I watched the film via last year's Severin Blu-ray and it's under that title-is something I saw a few minutes of awhile back and it was at least memorable so I might as well see the entire thing, right?

This, even more than most at the time, was an obvious Halloween riff. Get this: there were some priests who were into “bio-chemical” matters and for reasons never explained, they took some dead guy and did experiments on him. Things go wrong, so now George Eastman is on the loose and not only can he regenerate dead cells, but his blood coagulates very quickly; in short, the only way he can be killed is like a zombie: killing the brain as that conveniently can't regenerate. To make myself laugh, I'll compare him to Wolverine as why not?

Absurd is an apt title for this movie. Logically, the movie is bad; I mean, there's a priest who might as well be named Dr. Loomis and he only receives help from two cops in this small town because... everyone else is busy watching an (American) football game that is implied to be the Super Bowl?! You can see why this had plenty of unintentional laughs. George ends up at a house which has an annoying young kid and an older sister that is bedridden due to illness. Things happen, and to be frank this was just an excuse to show some gory, sadistic deaths. This is not for all tastes but overall I'll say that this nonsense is fine as at least I was entertained. I mean, you see people watching the big football game and it is actual footage from an NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Los Angeles Rams... you hear an announcer say things that an NFL announcer would never say, but that only added to the hilarity... along with those people being dressed up for the occasion and eating spaghetti! It is tremendous that this is what the Italians thought watching American football was like.

The Blu release not only includes a CD of the groovy soundtrack from Carlo Maria Cordio in stereo (in a bit of trivia, those that have seen the US version of Pieces will recognize it) but the Italian version-Rosso Sangue-is also included. I don't quite know why the only difference is that a few minutes of random material is excised, the deaths are unchanged and everyone is watching American football instead of soccer, but I can only assume there are multiple cuts of this movie out there.