Fatal Frames - Fotogrammi mortali

Stefania Stella, a bizarre choice for a female lead, is horrible; she looks unattractive and mannish, has an unattractive speaking voice, and can't act or perform. The male leads are Fabio clones who can't act either. Terrible acting all around! Donald Pleasance's role is so small as to be an unnecessary cameo (I understand he died during production?). He is badly dubbed; his real voice, as good as ever, can be heard in some of the rawer footage included in the "deleted scenes" on the DVD. Terrible directing, scripting, dialogue. Even the cover art for the movie is poor; it looks like a puppet, and guess what - when that scene comes around we discover that it is indeed a dummy, no surprise. Lighting is boring: all cool blues and warm oranges, like in an unimaginative music video. A waste of time; not even a single scene to recommend it.

Fatal Frames hasn't got a very high IMDb rating and reviews are mostly scathing, and that's understandable: it's an utterly inept attempt to recreate the style and visceral horror of prime Argento or Fulci. However, in doing so, music video director Al Festa has given fans of the genre a film so poorly executed and so laden with '90s cheeze that it should prove entertaining for all the prove wrong reasons - when viewed as a parody (which it almost certainly isn't), it can be a lot of fun.

The film opens with a young boy walking in on an old man watching snuff movies. The geriatric sicko grabs the boy and forces him to look at the violent images on the screen, which no doubt does irreparable damage to the lad's psyche.

The action then cuts to a woman being pursued by a typical giallo-style maniac (presumably the boy all growed up): wearing mask and hat and armed with a machete, the killer slices at the woman several times before chopping her neck, her head almost coming off. It's a suitably mean-spirited and gory start to the film (special effects courtesy of Steve Johnson), but things soon go pear shaped...

Festa introduces us to his movie's main character, music video director Alex Ritt (Rick Gianasi), who sports a magnificent Fabio-style mane of hair (as do several of the other men in the film). Ritt is hired to make a new promo video for Italian pop sensation Stefania Stella (Stefania Stella) which will help to make her a star in the States. Good luck with that, faux Fabio: Stefania looks like an ageing drag queen and cannot sing.

Soon after Alex's arrival in Rome for the video shoot, the masked killer begins to hack up women with his machete, filming the mutilated victims with a camcorder. Ritt is witness to the first murder and when the police discover that the director's own wife was killed in a similar fashion a couple of years before, he becomes a suspect.

As things progress, Festa chucks in every hokey giallo cliche he can think of, both audio and visual: strong coloured lighting, smoke machines, a synth soundtrack, a gratuitous sex scene, more gory attacks, some truly awful music videos starring Stefania (Festa's wife in real life) and plenty of red herrings. All of this is done with zero finesse, the result being giallo turned up to eleven. Genre regulars David Warbeck and Donald Pleasence are drafted into lend some class to proceedings, but there's little they can do when starring alongside the likes of Gianasi and Stella. Also look out for Angus 'The Tall Man' Scrimm ('...and kill and kill and kill and KILL!") and scream queen Linnea Quigley (ex-wife of FX man Johnson).

In a plot twist that even current-day Argento would be ashamed to use, it is revealed that all of the murders that have taken place in Rome were faked, a ploy to flush out the psycho who killed Ritt's wife. It's utterly preposterous, made all the worse by Festa's use of some really naff visual effects (including some rudimentary morphing) as the killer breaks down and confesses.

So 'yes', in many ways this film is utter dross, but at the same time, it's a real hoot.

4.5, generously rounded up to 5 for the gory murders, even if they turn out to be staged in the end.

Fatal Frames should have become the next big giallo. But what a trouble this flick had. Shooting started in 1993 but being ripped-off by investors the first trouble came. From their on it really became a flick full of disasters. Donald Pleasence, Rossano Brazzi and Ciccio Ingrassia made their final appearances in this flick. So a lot of rewriting.

Putting in some famous names of the genre like Pleasance, Angus Schrimm and Linnea Quigley didn't made it even worth viewing (small appearances). The lead, the so-called sex symbol being used to make video clips is another failure, Stefanie Stella, aged only had one feature, her exaggerated boobs. Complete miscasting on that era. Even as she go into a sex scene she is still wearing her knickers while having sex, really?

The beginning of the flick is okay but once the killings are done, even that isn't that good on part of shooting, the effects were laughable (machete not going into bodies while hitting them hard) and low on blood, this flick turns into a blah blah flick, sometimes showing the shoot of the clip with Stella.

It do has the giallo atmosphere, the use of blue and red lighting. The black glove is in tact and the whodunit is overall in this flick but nothing is worth seeing. Like the title said, fatal frames indeed for the production team never to arise again in the scene.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0,5/5 Effects 1/5 Story 1,5/5 Comedy 0/5

an insult. It's quite inexplicable how director Al Festa managed to get enough money to shoot this. Not only this movie is worse than anything you've ever seen, but it's also some kind of insult to all the talented b-movie genre players and filmmakers it intends to pay homage to. Thank God, despite some media hyping, it's been a total flop. Sometimes there's justice, out there. Don't even think of throwing away your money catching it on tape. If you want to check out what's left of the great season of Italian B -MovieMaking you should stay in the 80's and search for every Fulci title you've missed. The Art was there. This is simply the kind of boring copycatting trash which led our industry to ashes.

Giallo meets the 80s - in a movie made 1996. If Fatal Frames was made in the 80s, then it would be just a styleless 80's movie, but at least contemporary at the time of release (like Le Foto di Gioia by Lamberto Bava). The movie is looking like a music-video from '83, also the score was 100% outdated.

The plot is quite OK if you manage to watch the whole movie - the end is quite logical (for giallo-standards).

Stefania Stella - the lead - also produced the movie, which might be the reason for Festa to cast her. If you are used to female actresses like Daria Nicolodi you could experience serious damage: The acting is practically not present, and her looks - ehh - okay, just forget about her.

So if you are a giallo-collector get this flick, if you're just starting your exploration of the giallo-genre (which you are probably not, if you're reading this on IMDb) please forget about this or you will never catch the giallo-spirit. Start with Argento, Bava(s), Fulci or even Michele Soavi - and then turn to Festa, smile and shake your head.