It would seem that slashers are the simplest subcategory of horror, in which there is always a simple script, usually not requiring outstanding acting. What are the problems with getting a good slasher? As it turns out, absolutely the same as with a film of absolutely any other genre, if the director gave up on everything. “Doomed to Death” is so poorly filmed that the irresponsibility of the actors, the director and especially the cameraman is felt in every frame. Which you still need to consider...
Apparently, the creators of the series "House of the Dragon" were guided by this film, since I have never seen anything literally darker. The picture in Doomed to Death is so dark that even daytime scenes are perceived as twilight. And since all the main events take place in the forest at night, often about what is happening on the screen, the viewer is forced to guess from the sounds. It can be assumed that the blackout was used for a kind of censorship of erotic scenes, of which there are many, but the fact is that they are removed from the right angles and do not look too provocative. It’s not about censorship, it’s about something else. Maybe in a shaking camera, or — corny — in the fact that the camera itself filmed so badly at night. We will not know the truth, and we should not be upset about this, because the events of the film are also pain for the brain.
In "Friday the 13th" was, as you remember, Jason Voorhees, in "Halloween" Michael Myers, and in "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" Leatherface. What do these characters have in common? That's right, they wear masks. Who wears masks in the real world? Clowns, of course. They used to wear gladiators. They were helmets, not masks, but they also concealed their faces. Yes, yes, this is a slasher in which gladiators are maniacs. And believe me, it looks as ridiculous as it sounds in words. Killers appear after the main characters begin to have fun in the woods. The plot is not complete without magic, but all this will be forgotten even before the finale, since the implementation of all ideas breaks through the lowest bottom. The actors’ emotions are fake, the costumes consist of a minimum of clothes (obviously, for the sake of economy), and the operator, as mentioned above, darkens the picture, since he does not seem to want to see the filmed hack. Murder, torture, violence – all this seems to exist, but all this is not visible. Was it worth it to make such an “invisible” and weak film at all?
As expected, we have an unexpected turn in the final. However, his surprise is commensurate with the level of skill of staging, or rather his complete absence. Surprise, shock, chaos – all these words and nothing more, because in the events of the film none of these things is felt. In general, if you break your hands after some remake of "Nightmare on Elm Street" (2010), then know: there are slashers and worse. In all aspects.
The Italian branch of horror, as it is called, has long withered, resting in the darkness of the eternal night with the names of Mario Bava, Riccardo Fred, Lucio Fulci, Antonio Margheriti or in the noble pension of Umberto Lenzi. Occasionally made itself felt Lamberto Bava, too, obviously, now retired, and Michele Soavi in the 1990s retired from horror. But sometimes italian horror movie is released, forcing the nostalgic tears of numerous fans of this direction.
A certain Raphael Piccio in 2011 debuted one of these horrors. He apparently got inspiration from the Italian school of horror, so he uses footage from Massimo Pupillo’s Bloody Executioner. Even the plot of his film is somewhat in touch with the long-standing story of a resurrected medieval executioner. And Piccio was inspired by the real murders of 1975, committed in one of the Italian communes, and therefore tried to reproduce on the screen the anguish and suffering of two foreign girls, who are brutally raped by three scumbags in the forest. Let us not forget the stories of gladiators, especially familiar in Hollywood 1950-1960. They were slaves, not figuratively doomed to death.
The director, being a child of his era and remembering the precepts of the late grandfather Hershell, could not help but include gore elements, as well as the entourage of the slasher. The prologue, imitating home video, set up not just an uncompromising massacre, but a horror with Freudian motives, where the stated topic of pedophilia will be somehow revealed. The painted credits gave even more charm, as they allowed to hope for a certain social element of history, where gladiators take revenge on the descendants of ancient Roman onlookers, for the fun of which gladiatorial fights were arranged. All people are doomed to death, but most have a stay of sentence. The gladiators did not have it, and almost all of them died in the Colosseum arena to the happy whistling of the crowd.
Picchio wanted to sit on two chairs - to shoot something more than a primitive slasher, and at the same time create an uncompromising massacre, where the would-be killers and their two victims were in the possession of the ghosts of gladiators who do not care who to kill. The director, figuratively speaking, arranges gladiatorial fights for the viewer, who, in his opinion, requires only bread and circuses. That’s why there are a lot of erotic scenes and violence, but everything is presented by the director absolutely without imagination, so you will inevitably yearn for gore films by the gifted limitless Brian Paulin. In order to shoot gore, you need to be a little infant terrible, and Picchio is just an infant dollar, who wants to make good money on modern fashion on fright flick and drink wine in a villa in Sardinia. Therefore, the director does not care about the atmosphere and it is banal that the viewer sees at least something in the film, where the main action takes place at night. There is a lack of artificial lighting, and Picchio has not learned how to use moonlight. Pauline, of course, does not always shoot well, but how to forget the gap between two halves of a naked butt terrible girl, with fountains of blood and inhuman cries from his "Blood Pigs". Gladiators, however, are good, look convincing, but their appearance will have to wait almost until the final.
In general, from which side do not approach the debut of Picchio, and from any he is not good, so that at that time the director himself would be crucified on the cross for such entertainment for the people. However, against the background of the very gray “Blind King”, the director’s debut boasts at least an unconventional plot move about rebel gladiators, as if specially resurrected to incite the pain of potential rapists and their failed victims.
5 out of 10
It got dark. Three incredibly stupid cherubs, who were struck by spermotoxicosis in the head, killing there successfully a few upper gyruses and bringing the lower ones into combat readiness, decided to have fun, so that later they themselves were not ashamed to remember the languid evening. Having removed for the future the snowstorm of two ascetics of wide Roman routes, no less stupid than themselves, the guys went to a thick fishing line late in the moonlit night to relieve natural needs and expecting the same reciprocity from the naive ladies who honestly believed that they were being taken only to the smell of dandelions. But everything, of course, went according to a completely different scenario, for sometimes it is not necessary to arrange stormy fucks on the graves of harsh Roman gladiators. Crazy-s.
The debut picture of the Italian director Raffaele Piccio “Doomed to death”, in 2011, managed to cause a smooth boiling seams among particularly impressionable anons with moralphage of the brain and a cancerous latent craving for everything unforgivably hardcore, in fact just unlucky with the year of the premiere. While the Italian Themis with special zeal decided to cover up the vanilla harem of the sexiest billionaire and TV mogul of the world Silvio Berlusconi, spinning to the state of pedohysteria the “Ruby case” – a spherical silicone nasha and clearly not a virgin, Signor Piccio at one of the local genre festivals presented his film, full of all kinds of incorrectness, primarily concerning the female sex, on which three furry akhaltekins work out very satisfyingly numerous techniques, of course, even more detailed procedures, which are completed. In addition, the director without a blink of conscience was inspired by real events that took place back in 1975 in the commune of San Felice Circeo, in which three heroes of their own inferiority complex for two days severely punished two girls, until the first died in agony, and the second escaped from this hell and still survived. And everything would be fine and wonderful if, taking advantage of this regrettable story, Piccio sewed into his serenely cruel film at least some author's idea, but finite in its philosophical completeness, except that it is unacceptable to show "love for native ashes, love for fatherly coffins" in the literal sense of making love on them, especially without mutual consent. Even by the rather conservative standards of exploitative cinema, in which the wild cruelty and deviant redundancy by custom hides preventive morality in a vacuum, "Doomed to death" at the fortieth minute begin to disintegrate into fragments of extremely perverted episodes, in which pornography pain and pure pornography merge in a single dance, however, with disturbed harmony, chaotic sex and extremely incomprehensible to die at the aesthetic level, not to mention the notorious film-language of the heroes distributed (in which only one episode of the flesh and the artist disappears in the first place), since it is not so much from the workmanship of the past, but also in the past, but also in the past, but also in the past of the past, in the past, in the past, in the past. The existence of not even caterpillars, but amoebas, with which the director acts according to their social insignificance, characteristic in general of a whole legion of author's contemporaries. However, in their hearts will come other legionnaires, from another era.
Meanwhile, "Doomed to Death" is quite easy to impute exceptional plotlessness. If the exposition of the tape, presented in the form of a vignette of a home video, only with sophisticated violence and unillusionary hints of interrelated pedophilia, is in no small way intriguing, then in the future its plot will remain somewhere on the periphery, and the child of any logic and common sense will be splashed out on the film along with the water, but there will be a lot of fervent promiscuity: from a rodent in a cap to a multiple crucifix. Without any weighty rational explanation, the hyperrealistic guignole will turn into a pseudomystical gore, and in the same position of the rightsless victims will be both the anal punishers of two maidens and the red maidens themselves, who will face a second circle of pain and sadism, but now from the zombie gladiators who have finally been cut off from reality, who have not much delighted with oral performances near their crypt. Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant - but, alas, the days of emperors have passed, and the once glorious arenas of gladiatorial battles have become overgrown with ivy or fused with the flesh of the new great cities; and in a fit of former rage, as well as outright dullness on the ruins of an amphitheater buried in the green mist of the forests, these kissed gladiators, who went to death and death, make hell on earth for five idiots who disturbed their dead sleep; the end will be a little predictable, given the known power advantage of the living dead over the inhabitants. Instead of a more or less clear history of revenge with a feminist bias, Piccio issued a frankly unpleasant and expressive misanthropic horror on sour cheeks, which remains filled with inconsistencies and alogisms, however, there is in this smoky bloody unpretentiousness and unconditional triumph of copyright freedom, which by default does not require either explanation or even justification.
Caesar to Caesar.
It got dark. Three incredibly stupid cherubs, who were struck by spermotoxicosis in the head, killing there successfully a few upper gyruses and bringing the lower ones into combat readiness, decided to have fun, so that later they themselves were not ashamed to remember the languid evening. Having removed for the future the snowstorm of two ascetics of wide Roman routes, no less stupid than themselves, the guys went to a thick fishing line late in the moonlit night to relieve natural needs and expecting the same reciprocity from the naive ladies who honestly believed that they were being taken only to the smell of dandelions. But everything, of course, went according to a completely different scenario, for sometimes it is not necessary to arrange stormy fucks on the graves of harsh Roman gladiators. Crazy-s.
The debut picture of the Italian director Raffaele Piccio “Doomed to death” in 2011, managed to cause a great boiling seams among particularly impressive anons with moralphasia of the brain and cancer latent craving for everything unforgivably hardcore, in fact, just unlucky with the year of the premiere. While the Italian Themis with special zeal decided to cover up the vanilla harem of the sexiest billionaire and TV mogul of the world Silvio Berlusconi, spinning to the state of pedohysteria the "case of Ruby" - a spherical silicone nasha and clearly not a virgin, Signor Piccio at one of the local genre festivals presented his film, full of all kinds of incorrectness, primarily concerning the female, on which three furry ahaltekins work out very satisfyingly numerous techniques, of course, even more detailed procedures. In addition, the director without a blink of conscience was inspired by real events that took place back in 1975 in the commune of San Felice Circeo, in which three heroes of their own inferiority complex for two days severely punished two girls, until the first died in agony, and the second escaped from this hell and still survived. And all would be well and wonderful if, taking advantage of this regrettable story, Piccio sewed into his serenely cruel film at least some author's idea, but finite in its philosophical completeness, except that it is unacceptable to show "love for native ashes, love for fatherly coffins" in the literal sense of making love on them, especially without mutual consent. Even by the rather conservative standards of exploitative cinematography, in which the wild cruelty and deviant redundancy by custom lurks preventive morality in a vacuum, "Doomed to death" at the fortieth minute begin to disintegrate into fragments of extremely perverse episodes, in which pornography pain and pure pornography merge in a single dance, however, with disturbed harmony, chaotic sex and extremely incomprehensible pas, but do not merge at the aesthetic level, not to mention the notorious film-language of the heroes (therely distributed episode in the flesh and in the first place only disappears from the workmanship, but also from the first one of the sketches in the picture), since it is so much that it disappears in the first place in the past, and in the past. The existence of not even caterpillars, but amoebas, with which the director acts according to their social insignificance, characteristic in general of a whole legion of author's contemporaries. However, in their hearts will come other legionnaires, from another era.
Meanwhile, "Doomed to die" is quite easy to impute exceptional plotlessness. If the exposition of the tape, presented in the form of a vignette of a home video, only with sophisticated violence and unillusionary hints of interrelated pedophilia, is in no small way intriguing, then in the future its plot will remain somewhere on the periphery, and the child of any logic and common sense will be splashed out on the film along with the water, but there will be a lot of fervent promiscuity: from a rodent in a cap to a multiple crucifix. Without any weighty rational explanation, the hyperrealistic guignole will turn into a pseudomystical gore, and in the same position of the rightsless victims will be both the anal punishers of two maidens and the red maidens themselves, who will face a second circle of pain and sadism, but now from the zombie gladiators who have finally been cut off from reality, who have not much delighted with oral performances near their crypt. Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant - but, alas, the days of the emperors have passed, and the once glorious arenas of gladiatorial battles have become overgrown with ivy or fused with the flesh of the new great cities; and in a fit of former rage, as well as outright dullness on the ruins of an amphitheater buried in the green mist of the forests, these kissed gladiators, who went to death and death, make hell on earth for the five idiots who disturbed their dead sleep; the end will be a little predictable, given the power advantage of the living dead over the inhabitants. Instead of a more or less clear history of revenge with a feminist bias, Piccio issued a frankly unpleasant and expressive misanthropic horror on sour cheeks, which remains filled with inconsistencies and alogisms, however, there is in this smoky bloody unpretentiousness and unconditional triumph of copyright freedom, which by default does not require either explanation or even justification.
Caesar to Caesar.
A group of pervert scumbags deceivingly lure prostitutes into the forest to satisfy their needs, but they did not know that the resurrected gladiators do not welcome strangers on their land.
No matter how regrettable it may sound, but the famous and terrifying Italian horror has long died: the masters in the person of Ruggero Deodato, Dario Argento, Joe D’Amaro, Lamberto Bava, Lucio Fulci, Lamberto Unzi and other figures of the genre have long since not released suitable tapes, some even retired, and only sometimes the list of Italian horror films was replenished with pictures like the films of the Necrostorm Studio (Adam Chaplin, Hotel Inferno, City of the Bad), Fairy 2012, Insurance, 3D.
And so, in 2011, debutant Raffaele Pichio released his film Morituris (" Going to Death), which was successfully held at many foreign film festivals, and was banned in his pasta homeland due to extreme graphic content.
The plot of the film was based on a real story about the Tsirtseev massacre in the forest more often, and now the directors decided this God event in order to make it a mystical splatter-jallo. The move is quite good, and the idea about the resurrected fighters of Spartacus is fresh and original in the cinema, since from watching the film you want to get the desired horror, high-quality and atmospheric horror, but here the authors will disappoint us a little.
The plot of the tape is already painfully predictable and stretches according to the scheme of a straightforward and tedious slasher, and the writers themselves seemed not to try to saturate the film with unexpected turns and disclosure of the origin of the mysterious dead, literally dooming their picture to death and collapse. The beginning is painfully long, and the action itself from the description begins as early as 40-50 minutes, and after 20 minutes of bloody massacre there is an ending impregnated with such absurd black humor, which against the background of other raw content looks quite fervent and bright.
About "extreme graphic content" is worth putting in a word: the tape is full of various kinds of insults and humiliations of the human person in the most perverse forms, which of course many will not like, and the component of torture porn, made in the original ancient manner, will please quite bloody, spectacular and naturalistic brutality.
The concept of gladiators also deserves respect: made at minimal cost, they look quite formidable and infernal messengers of Hell, and many gamers, in God of War, Clive Barker: Jericho, etc., will cause a sense of nostalgia.
The game and skills of performers are reduced to a minimum, and of the entire “actor” composition, only Francesco Malcolm, a well-known porn actor, who recently starred in the horror category B.
Militant accompaniment, selected by the composer, although it sounds beautiful, but due dynamism is not added to the action, and only one-time insertions of compositions in the style of hardcore / metalcore can please a certain type of connoisseur.
Operator work is significantly lame: not only does the shooting quality fluctuate in the region of 360p, but the creators have managed to be greedy in terms of a variety of angles and proper lighting.
Bottom line: Morituris is another tape with a rather attractive and original synopsis, but the implementation leaves much to be desired, so I can recommend this tape only to fans of fierce thrash and real fans of Italian horror, who do not miss a single novelty in this field.
4.5 out of 10
A disgusting picture. Disgusting in everything. In cruelty, in meaninglessness, in the sadistic pleasure with which the director and the cameraman revel in the torments of their heroes. It is even more strange that the film could have been made. In fact, considering that this is the first, debut work of the director, it actually turned out. It feels that there is still work to be done on the technique, but in general, Raffael Picio clearly coped with the work, since despite the disgust that some scenes caused in general, watching the tape did not cause yawning or boredom.
It’s not a bad idea for the debut...
The most important disadvantage of the film is the obvious lack of budget, which was expressed in the lack of clear coverage, which is why half of the film is almost completely dark screen. At one time, this sinned Soviet cinema, when scenes in the rooms turned into pitch darkness, where the viewer could hardly make out not only the expression of faces, but generally at least something.
As for me, and despite the fact that the film is quite realistic to see to the end, questions and claims to it quite a lot.
Watch, as it seems to me, is not worth it, except that connoisseurs of senseless and merciless violence made in the spirit of zombie movies and the usual horror movies of the 70-80s.
4 out of 10.
Typical two-act horror play. It all begins with the fact that a group of young guys and girls talk nicely while driving out of town. In fact, the first act of our play turns out to be "about nothing." Empty and non-binding dialogue.
Suddenly, we turn to intermission: an illogical and brutal act of violence. Whether it will go unpunished we will learn from the second act, because the infernal forces of the place where the tragedy occurred were disturbed. Ahead of the Italian version of Ragnarok - the battle of the spirits of gladiators in the arena with notorious scoundrels and villains.
This is a microbudget film, a kind of cinematic startup. The creators of the picture try to make up for the lack of plot delights - the cruelty and naturalism of the tragedy.
Perhaps, and most likely, if you look at the tape purely in the professional aspect - as a startup horror, then a number of solutions can be considered very interesting and optimization (in terms of budget). Minimizing the cost of decoration is respectful – most of the tape takes place in the car and at the edge of the forest. And, if you look at the whole, the plot is very original, and the ending is clearly successful. Another thing is that if you go into details, then of course the film needs to be significantly worked out and strengthened. It will be interesting to follow the development of this franchise - there is every reason for this.