I frati rossi

The packaging for the DVD of The Red Monks displays Lucio Fulci's name rather prominently, despite the fact that he only produced the film; it's a rather desperate attempt to fool fans of Euro horror into thinking that the film's director Gianni Martucci may have been influenced by the king of Italian gore and saw fit to throw in some cheap and cheerful splatter. The truth is, however, that The Red Monks is a fairly 'dry' film, with the only carnage being a couple of crap decapitated heads; to make matters worse, it's also extremely boring.

Martucci's dull as ditch-water screenplay sees wealthy bachelor Robert Garlini (Gerardo Amato) meeting a beautiful painter named Ramona Curtis (Lara Wendel). After a brief romance, the pair marry, and Ramona moves into the family home—a sprawling castle complete with dusty passageways and dingy cellars—much to the consternation of housekeeper Priscilla.

On their first night together, Robert is called away for several hours to deal with some urgent business, but on his return, rather than rush to his bride and indulge in unbridled passion, the crazy fool rejects his virginal wife's sexual advances. This strange behaviour continues for several days, and the relationship naturally turns sour. Robert has his reasons, though: firstly, he's been getting his oats from Priscilla, but more importantly, he is ensuring that his wife is pure when the time comes for him to hand her over to the Satanic sect of Templar knights that inhabit the castle cellar.

Despite a few fun elements, including quite a bit of nudity from gorgeous star Wendel, a silly skeleton with glowing eyes, a guest appearance by one of the pipe-cleaner spiders from Fulci's The Beyond, and a 'twist' ending, The Red Monks is a monotonous and stuffy effort that I believe even the most obsessive of Italian horror afficianados will find hard to endure.

3.5 out of 10, rounded up to 4 for IMDb.

At first, I thought this was a TV effort, given the dull, flat, boring look of it all. Everything is off on it. Given that it was probably shot on video, everything is far too bright to bring out any kind of atmosphere. Plot-wise, it's ridiculous. The basis for the marriage between two vacant people hinges on her falling out of a tree because...of a tarantula...that we only see one more time. Honestly - she falls out of the tree and they cut right to the wedding. The movie plods along with cliché after cliché that they can't even be bothered to do properly. Sporadic use of hand held cameras and fish- eye lenses only confuse the issue more. To keep the budget low there are no extras. Period. This could be used to good effect with some back story but back story isn't what this is about. That is, except for a 10-15min sequence towards the end where all the "secrets" are spilled. As noted, the budgeted no money for special effects meaning no flying heads, no wounds, no gore of any kind unless you count the $1.50 they spent of fake blood in one scene. Sub par acting. Some nudity. No suspense.

I'm happy I didn't pay to see this.

The Red Monks (1988)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Robert (Gerardo Amato) marries Ramona (Lara Wendel) after a quick romance and soon they move to his castle out in the middle of nowhere. On their wedding night they're unable to do the special deed because Robert is called away where a group of monks demand that his wife's virgin blood be given to them in four days.

THE RED MONKS was one of the handful of movies that were released in Italy towards the end of their glory days of horror films. These films were released with Lucio Fulci's name attached to them but he served just as a producer. With that said, none of them are all that entertaining and the same is true with THE RED MONKS, which suffers the same low-budget that the other films did.

The low-budget means that there really aren't any of the gory special effects that one would come to expect. A lot of the death scenes here take place off screen, although there is one decent decapitation. The film does serve up a fair amount of nudity but this here just isn't enough to keep the film entertaining. The biggest problem is that there's just way too much boring dialogue that really doesn't go anywhere. The entire time I kept wondering why the husband just didn't take the wife's virginity, which would have solved the problem but oh well.

THE RED MONKS isn't overly awful but there's just no atmosphere to be found. The film for the most part has a very slow pace and in the end there's just not enough entertainment value to be had.

I didn't expect much going into this film, and it's a really good job that I didn't because Red Monks really doesn't deliver! The film offers little that you can't get from several better devils/exploitation flicks. The film has Lucio Fulci's name attached to it since the great director has a producers credit; but I don't know why that attracted me since even the films that Fulci did direct around the late eighties were mostly not up to much. This one is directed by Gianni Martucci, and while the director has something of an eye for aesthetics, he's not great at creating tension and it results in a very boring film. The story revolves around some ancient ritual involving a bunch of people dressed in red monk robes. The wealthy owner of a castle where this takes place meets a pretty young woman and marries her. She goes to live in the castle and soon becomes frustrated by her husband's secretive night time behaviour. People start dying and her husband's secret becomes in danger of being revealed; but maybe his secret is not the most surprising. The film drones on for about eighty minutes and there's very little that's memorable about it. In fact, the only sequence I can remember well is a scene with the most ridiculously fake spider I've ever seen, and considering I only saw it last night - it has to be said that this film is not overly memorable. It all boils down to a supposedly surprising twist that I guessed before the film even started. Overall, it has to be said that Red Monks is a big waste of time and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone!

A much overlooked horror that contains some stylish blood-letting and a high level of erotica. Exactly the kind of film that received virtually no exposure at the time of its release here in the UK (thanks to our overprotective censors) but directors such as Lucio Fulci (the producer of this one), delivered 100's of these to a wanting euro audience, who simply lapped them up! Strange to think but this oddball was almost populist cinema for the italians, back in the 1980's.