
A Blade in the Dark – 1983, Italy 108m. Director: Lamberto Bava.
Food of the Gods Part 2 – 1989, Canada, 91m. Director: Damien Lee.
Murder Rock: Dancing Death – 1984, Italy, 93m. Director: Lucio Fulci.

A BLADE IN THE DARK (1983) (AKA: House of the Dark Staircase) A novice composer, Bruno (Andrea Occhipinti), writing the score to a new horror movie is thrust into a real life nightmare when a woman is killed by a slasher outside his villa. The body vanishes but like David Hemmings in Blow-Up, Bruno becomes obsessed with the mystery and believes clues to the identity of the killer can be found in the last reel of the horror film he’s working on. A second woman is murdered by the maniac in the bathroom—the bathtub is painted red when her throat is sliced open with a carving knife—and the body again disappears. This Italian, Hitchcock-influenced chiller is accentuated by its Argento-like style but often feels padded in the story department, most likely the result of the movie’s conception as a television miniseries before it was denied by the censors and released theatrically. As it is, A Blade in the Dark is a watchable if routine thriller that should please giallo aficionados and gore fans alike. B–

FOOD OF THE GODS PART 2 (1989) (AKA: Gnaw: Food of the Gods 2) An experimental growth hormone grows out of whack and turns its test subjects (the common rat) into oversized beasts. The mutated rodents escape from a university lab and terrorize the campus by turning the population into rat chow. Scientist Paul Coufos’s warnings of danger are ignored by the campus dean, who’s more concerned with the grand opening of the school’s Olympic-sized swimming pool than by the student body being devoured by giant vermin. This subplot leads into the movie’s most memorable scene, where a group of synchronized swimmers are attacked Jaws-style. The film’s gore level is fairly high as body parts are severed and faces are graphically chewed off—one guy gets bitten on the ass while taking a leak in some bushes. The filmmakers try to offset the splatter by having the annoying girlfriend of Coufos continually lecturing him on the immorality of animal testing. Coufos eventually uses “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” to lure the rats to their demise in a sequence that reaches new heights in stupidity. Real rats are placed in miniature sets and are mostly convincing but the effects aren’t really any better than the same method used in the first Food of the Gods (1976), which has nothing to do with this dubious, in-name only sequel. D

MURDER ROCK: DANCING DEATH (1984) Competition at a New York dance academy is murder when the student body dwindles from the activities of a killer. The school’s star pupil is stabbed to death in the shower room, after which her moping boyfriend causes a scene during rehearsal by becoming the film’s red herring. The next student (who, like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance, moonlights as an adult entertainer) is strangled in her apartment—the maniac even kills the victim’s parakeet by sticking a pin in it. The massacred students doesn’t concern the school’s director (Olga Karlatos), who’s too busy lusting after a washed up B-model (Ray Lovelock) with an obvious link to her traumatizing past involving a hit-and-run. The lead detective spends more time chewing the scenery than solving the crimes, and prolongs this dramatically inept murder mystery to the point of exhaustion. By the time the killer is revealed viewers are more likely to have fallen asleep than be on the edge of their seats. A movie in need of a brain, and working light bulbs. One of Lucio Fulci’s worst. D+




































