Italians have always been great when it comes to inexpensive horror films, fiction or eroticism, exploiting popular paintings. They simply wanted to sneeze on all sorts of copyrights, concocting various films with a thrash touch, releasing their own unofficial sequels or outright fakes with a unique naive charm. Naturally, Claudio Fragasso did not stay away from such creative adventures. This time he issued his next “American” horror film, hiding under a pseudonym in the Western manner. You can even miss the cunning title that deceives the public about the third “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, because the film tells about a certain maniac who has a rubber mask, clearly clutched from the face of Freddy Krueger, and a clawed glove. But these undisguised allusions to the trademark in a striped sweater are very quickly forgotten, because the screen world is incredibly full of all sorts of blunders and stupidities that cause a constant smile.
The director clearly wrote the script phenomenally quickly, and shot even faster, so the new scene can easily and simply contradict the previous one, for example, telling from the mouth of reporters that a mysterious maniac repeatedly (!) rapes victims before murder, but previously we met only the murder of the villain over the girls. By the way, talking about all these murders, then there is a comical paradox - a madman pierces through the chest with his hand, but he is an ordinary person covered with a mask. Why such a phenomenal force? Why is a glove with soft claws made of rubber so dangerous? Everyone has their flaws! Fragasso tried to imitate successful creeps about Kruger, and from the middle somehow distracted, abandoned, got up on the wrong foot, immersed in a serious thriller with psychology and police investigation. Or rather, it seemed so to the creator, because it is difficult to take events seriously. Yes, there is a desire to go to the Jallo with a mysterious murderer, attacking only the fairer sex, whose physical data are strictly subordinated to model appearance, but there is no necessary elegance of the direction.
The confused detective is missing, reduced to primitiveness with the final stripping of the mask revealing the very first spectator's guess, and the victims will be faceless, appearing out of nowhere and going nowhere. Their genre uniformity is elevated to the absolute, when the differences are in a pair of the smallest touches: the first blonde beauty is a dancer because she came to the rehearsal; the second blonde beauty will be a scientist, because she wears glasses and a white robe; the next blonde beauty is just a blonde beauty, because the director’s imagination is also boundless, jokingly speaking. The nude is no less ridiculous from its directness, when the heroine for no reason lowers the top of her clothes, standing at the mirror, talking on the phone or wandering around the house - Fragasso did not intend to waste timekeeping, combining the "obligatory" genre piquancy with quite ordinary scenes. Having killed two birds with one stone in such a ridiculous way, he writes a central pair of characters in a similar vein, whose acquaintance consists of a hero drinking alcohol while driving, harassing his heart lady in the women's toilet, who, in turn, points a revolver at him, forcing him to undress and flush his clothes down the toilet. Further details of their relationship should not be described - this should be seen, barely restraining laughter from mind-blowing delirium, because the romantic line here, like nudity, is meaningless and merciless to the audience logic. Of course, the all-out gaggy acting game with ridiculous bulging of the eyes goes in the kit to our delight.
In general, another American hack Claudio Fragasso turned out in his signature spirit, where you should not expect something high-quality or unique in the genre. The only difference is that here the liberties, flaws and blunders characteristic of the director’s work have gained a dominant position, reducing the film to the category of talentless and funny pictures, where everything is so bad that even good, because the overall result resembles an unintentional comedy. The audience wanted to be afraid, but laughed - also the result.
4 out of 10