Knife in Ice

Having a character be mute is a clever, albeit annoying way to propel a narrative. In the horror genre, it’s a conceit that’s typically a response to trauma, as in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, or in Umberto Lenzi’s giallo Knife in Ice, whose lead witnessed her parents’ death in a train crash and has since taken an involuntary vow of silence (the exception to the trauma side-effect genesis of muteness as a character trait, is Mike Flanagan’s Hush, in which bacterial meningitis is the cause). On the gothic / Italian side of things, regardless, you just know it’s only a matter of time before a mute character eventually lets out a bloodcurdling scream.

And what better way to lay the foundation for a horror film, than with a quote from Poe, a frequent contributor to one of those “bloodcurdling” gothic horror compilations?

Against a backdrop of a real-life and very gory (no pun intended) bullfight, we get the following: “Fear is a knife of ice wich [sic] penetrates the senses down to the depth of conscience,” a sinister metaphor whose origins, like an 80s masked wrestler, are unknown. Maybe it was lost in translation. Anyway, it’s another entry in a very lengthy laundry list of pop culture Edgar Allan Poe references, from The Dead Zone, The Lost Boys to The Simpsons, not to mention the countless filmic adaptations.

Martha is our mute protagonist living in the Spanish hillside with her aged uncle, who gets a visit from her cousin, Jenny, a professional singer. And the visit, it turns out, is a short one, as Jenny’s belted out her last note, murdered by a mysterious, black-gloved assailant as is customary for a giallo.

A young girl and family friend, comes by for a visit, showing Martha her new kitten, whose fur has splotches of blood. The trail literally leads to Jenny’s body.

Soon, the young girl is no longer with us, nor is Annie, a local woman last seen bicycling around a pine forest, complete with demon symbols etched into the bark of a tree.

What we’ve got is quite a mystery on our hands, especially as the body count ratchets up, with the police looking for a “sex maniac,” with the prime suspect being a forgetful obstetrician and a hulking chauffeur, among others.

Martha in several instances, peers into the murderer’s grey-flecked peepers, including during the funeral service. And Umberto Lenzi distributes other clues deftly enough so that only the most astute of viewers can guess the outcome.

*** (out of 5)

Psycho Cop

By 1989, the golden age of slashers had been exsanguinated. If you consider Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood the genre prototype, and the blueprint for this kind of film, Psycho Cop represents a coda of sorts. Hell, they both contain the meat cleaver between the eyes kill, which by this point had become so overused that even Jason Voorhees had moved on. Also, the film comes shortly on the heels of the audacious Maniac Cop, minus the story, subversion, effects and star power (hello, Richard Roundtree, Bruce Campbell, Tom Atkins).

The best cop-centric movies are the ones which question our relationship with law enforcement, like Robocop, while the worst (and this includes Psycho Cop) barely make use of the conceit to generate thrills.

For instance, the fiberoptic cable-thin plot (serial killer cop goes after college students on a weekend getaway) doesn’t even require a police officer as the antagonist.

After all, the film lays its cards on the table in the first 15 minutes as the partiers notice they’re being tailed by a cop acting strangely. So it’s not like he’s using his position in any way that could be construed as particularly devious or clever, such as going after a lone female motorist on a desolate stretch of road, or using his authority to gain entry into an apartment. And since he mostly lurks in the woods outside the students’ Air B’n’B-styled accommodations, it hardly matters if he flashes a badge.

The most egregious aspect of Psycho Cop, however, apart from the static direction that wouldn’t pass muster as a CPR training video, is the near-constant references to beer as a plot device. Now, I like beer as much as the next guy (unless the guy is Ben Affleck, allegedly) but my god…”we’re out of beer,” “pass me a beer,” “we went through a case of beer?” “Did Zack go to get beer?” gets really old and comprises at least one-fifth of the runtime.

So, what we’re left with is a Ten Little Indians-styled stalk-and-slash with a bunch of very interchangeably ripped frat guys, their hot girlfriends, but strangely, no nudity and one liners, which like the beer…fall flat.

** (out of 5)