Absurd 1981

Directed by: Joe D’amato

Starring: George Eastman, Annie Belle, Ed Purdom

Review by Luisito Joaquín González

About fifteen-years ago, whilst looking round the second-hand video shops in Soho, London, I stumbled upon a gleaming copy of Absurd for only £4.00 ($8.00). Seeing how the movie had been banned in Great Britain since the Video Nasty days, I knew that the guy behind the counter wasn’t aware of the true price of what he was losing out on. Finding Joe D’amato’s splatter extravaganza completely unedited and at an extreme budget price was indeed good fortune on my part and so I picked it up and rushed home for a gore-soaked evening’s viewing.

This is not a direct sequel to Anthropophagus, although George Eastman returns as the demented bogeyman. The secluded Island has been abandoned as a location and instead he roams a small (supposedly) American town and hospital, which was obviously inspired by Michael Myers’ exploits in John Carpenter’s Halloween and Halloween II. Eagle eyed viewers will spot British-born actor and slasher regular, Edmund Purdom, who was certainly slumming it after already ‘starring’ in Pieces and following this with Don’t open ’til Christmas. His choices of roles over those years deserved an award of some kind. A B-movie Razzie? Well, not many performers at any level have endured trash to such an extent.

In the beginning, a priest (Purdom) is seen chasing Mikos Stenopolis through a forest. The pursuit continues until the visually deranged giant reaches a huge gate. As he begins to climb over, the clergyman grabs him and pulls him on to the sharp spikes, effectively disemboweling him. Mikos crawls up to the house that was behind the fence and staggers in to the kitchen where he falls to the floor clutching his entrails. A quaint family owns the mansion that he stumbles in to, and as you can well imagine, they’re pretty shocked when they see the bearded beast collapse in their doorway with his guts in his hands. (Literally!) He is taken to a nearby hospital where surgeons are bewildered by his impressive recovery skills and before long he’s up on his feet, drilling through the head of an unsuspecting nurse as he goes. For some bizarre reason, he seems to have taken a liking to the house that he chanced upon earlier, so he heads back there, taking the time to kill off any bystanders that he runs into on the way. A teenage girl that’s recovering from a spinal operation, a young (extremely obnoxious) boy and their babysitter inhabit the home and before long, our unstoppable maniac is skulking in the shadows with an axe. Meanwhile, perhaps the family’s only salvation is the priest from earlier who has joined forces with the local constabulary in a bid to stop the maniacal killer. We soon learn that his indestructibility was the result of a military science experiment and the only way that he can be killed is by completely destroying his brain. That sounds like the perfect cue for a gore-tastic showdown.

Whereas Anthropophagus made good use of its effectively foreboding locations to create an overall feeling of uneasiness that sat heavily on your shoulders throughout the movie, Absurd rarely touches on that level of fear or apprehensiveness. Instead the movie’s real impact is displayed visually, in the bundles of goo and vicious murders. Perhaps the most disturbing of the bunch is when an unfortunate guy is caught off guard whilst sweeping a warehouse and gets his head chopped in half with a band saw, which is, of course, filmed in graphic close-up. D’ amato tries to add as much suspense as he can to the stalking scenes, but more often than not his results are inconclusive. On occasion, he pulls off the odd effective shock, like when the assailant springs on the unsuspecting Emily as she attempts to cross the spacious kitchen to reach the child that she’s protecting. He then continues the savage brutality by trying to cook her head in an oven, whilst she’s alive and screaming for mercy. Slasher films are notorious for setting a tone that borders on black comedy and therefore avoid displaying the suffering of their dumb and poorly acted victims. Absurd on the other hand is incredibly sadistic and unforgiving in what it conveys on screen when Stenopolis strikes.

The roots of inspiration are grounded in the genre pieces from America and D’amato avoids the Giallo approach that is far more prevalent amongst his native counterparts. The director relinquishes the black hat and gloves of a mysterious killer in favour of a Michael Myers-alike hulking boogeyman that stays on screen from the outset. Setting a temporarily disabled teenage target as the film’s heroine was an effort to maximise Carpenter’s methodology of making his protagonist a polar opposite in terms of strength and defensive ability. It’s obvious that the director wanted the chance of survival for his characters to be as inconceivable as possible in order to make things all the more terrifying. Perhaps the only influence taken from his countrymen is the excessive use of gore that would become a trademark for names like Lucio Fulci, whom perhaps D’ Amato’s work can be most closely compared with. He lacks the panache of an Argento or Bava, and instead opts for shock tactics and bloody excess.

Seeing too much of Eastman’s growling insanity breaks the ‘less is more’ guideline that proved most effective in deft slasher outings. The fact that we know from the start that Mikos is indestructible removes the surprise element that we got from Michael Myers when he arose after those six shots in Halloween. There’s no denying the fact that the barrage of gore is attractive to horror hounds, but the film struggles to sustain a credible momentum during the in-between parts. The performances are extremely poor and Purdom’s attempt at a Greek accent is hilarious, even though he was arguably the best performer of an awful bunch. Let me state that again, Edmund Purdom was the best actor on show here… Yes, the movie does have that many problems. When we are away from the ferocity of Mikos and his machete, the pace slows right down to an almost standstill and sleepy heads might find their eyes beginning to link together for a snooze.

D’amato gets labelled as a hack more regularly than most, but the recent peak in slashers that include bags of goo have justified his work to be better than the criticism that he has received for the best part of thirty-years. It’s not hard to fill the screen with corn syrup, but creating a tone of dread is a skill that we don’t come across regularly enough. Even if it may be true that this lacks the chills that his previous slasher conveyed so credibly, it still provides enough to create an underlying atmosphere of gloom.

Slasher Trappings:

Killer Guise:

Gore:√√√√√

Final Girl: √

RATING: