Late Night Double Post: PAURA NELLA CITTÀ DEI MORTI VIVENTI (1980) and POOR PRETTY EDDIE (1975)

Posted by Daniel Metz

Paura nella città dei morti viventi – Dir. Lucio Fulci
Alamo Drafthouse Ritz, 1/5/10, 9:45pm

This Italian splatter film was pretty all over the place. The story is about a gate of hell that has been opened by the suicide of a priest. The only way to close it, and to stop the dead from walking around all willy nilly, is for a weirdo/beauty psychic broad and a smooth talking reporter to travel to rural Massachusetts (a town that claims to be inhabited by the descendants of “Salem Witch Burners,” whatever the hell that means). Alright, I’ll buy it.

Most of the film I was very confused. I knew I was following one story line, but I had the feeling that a lot more was happening than I knew. There was a saving grace, however, with these marvelous cutaways of deaths. One involves a woman throwing up her organs for a very long time. That was the best organ throwing up I ever saw. Another was a man who gets a drill through his head.

I think this is the guts throwing up scene, but I can't really be sure...

The ending is in a cavernous tomb. The flashlights on the walls and the aimless searching reminded me of some of the last episodes of Twin Peaks, when the police force is in the cave looking for the secret entrance to the black lodge. Have any of you seen Twin Peaks? Now that is a good show. I wished I was watching Twin Peaks when I watched this movie. There was also a very distracting drum beat during the climax of the film, so I don’t really know what happened. Probably they stopped the zombies or whatever.

Poor Pretty Eddie – Dir. Chris Robinson and David Worth
Alamo Drafthouse Ritz, 1/6/10, 11:59pm

The first Weird Wednesday of 2010 was the hillbilly jamboree titled Poor Pretty Eddie. The film is about the titular character, a handsome good-time-charlie who spends his time taking advantage of dames. His current lass, played by the overweight Shelley Winters, has put him up in her hotel; all of this is disrupted, however, when a beautiful singer comes into town with a flat tire.

Eddie rapes her and trouble starts up, and then there is a gun fight at the end. Sometimes I find it so tedious to shorten plots for movies that don’t really move me. This film is really stupid.

The print we saw was actually titled Black Vengence

I thought last week’s film, Polk County Pot Plane, was badly organized…This film is much much worse. There are scenes and characters that simply don’t make sense, and I sat through this movie almost completely unaware of what was going on.

The saving grace of this film, however, was the editor Frank Mazzola. Lars described the situation by saying that if the film was like a competent wedding band who decided to enlist GG Allin as the lead singer. I really liked that analogy, as the editing for this film is pretty bizarre at times. The slow motion sequences are stunning and show stopping, a nice contrast to the otherwise haphazard film.

Shelley Winters does a fine performance as the desperate woman scorned, but that really didn’t save this otherwise medium cool picture. The film’s best chance for salvation, as a matter of fact, was Slim Pickens, who as the sheriff delivered the unforgettable line, “Did he bite yer titties?” Actually, I guess I kinda liked this movie.