I frati rossi

This movie is kind of a throw-back to the Italian Gothic horror films of the 1960's. A man inherits a family castle. He has a dubbed Italian version of a "meet cute" with a female painter (Lara Wendel), after his dog trees her, and he marries her after a whirlwind romance. However, he has something going on in his cellar with a strange order of monks dressed in red (thus, the title), who warn him that his new bride must remain a virgin, so after their wedding night is reduced to some gratuitous breast-suckling, the husband instead takes up with his severe, but sexy housekeeper. The wife meanwhile discovers that her new husband is up to something in the cellar and discovers a family curse involving an ancestor who killed the head of the order of monks after he was "seduced" by a Gypsy girl (actually it looks more like he just rapes her). The ending will surprise or confuse you--maybe both.

This movie has SOME of the gratuitous material you would expect from an Italian film of this era, mostly the scene where the monk chases and has his way (for several minutes) with a skinny-dipping Gypsy girl, and another memorable scene where a minor character's head ends up in a picnic basket (perhaps she was attacked by Yogi and Boo Boo?). But actually at times this movie is more atmospheric, more like a 60's Italian horror film, even if the plot doesn't really make a lick of sense (actually, not unlike a 60's Italian horror film). The goofy English dubbing doesn't help though, and is pretty suspect at times like when characters talk about a ritual that will occur at the "next opening of Uranus" (They may not have been taking their jobs entirely seriously).

Lara Wendel is a pretty interesting actress. She is known mostly for a small role in Dario Argento's "Tenebrae" and for appearances in more low-rent 80's Italian horror flicks like "Midnight Killer", "Ghost House" and Killer Birds". She also was a pretty decent actress though who had a more high-brow career with a major role as male and female twins in Salvatore Samperi's "Ernesto" and with small roles in "Identification of a Woman" and even an obscure Fellini movie. But ALL of these came out of her questionable early career as a kind of "Euro-Lolita" (along with actresses like Eve Ionesco, Katja Beirnert, Katya Berger, Susan Hemingway, and a young Nastassia Kinski). Suffice it to say, that while this isn't an especially sexy role, it's ironically the only sexy role she did AFTER she turned 18.

This movie is at times confusing and general pretty dumb, but it does have a few things going for it.

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!

This late-era Italian horror film falls somewhere near the bottom of the pile when it comes to entertainment. Ghosthouse it ain't. This shares the same lower tier as Demons 3 The Ogre and Sweet House of Horrors. I really hope I've already reviewed Demons 3...not sure I could sit through that one again.

This one has Lara Wendel being stuck up a tree and then falling into the lap of guy who marries her in his big house that somehow has a bunch of monks living in the basement who demand the blood of a virgin, namely that of Lara Wendel. If you've sat through Ghosthouse, Tenebrae, and other Wendel films and wondered if you'd ever see her naked, then this is the film for you. Also, you're not missing much.

The problem with this film is down to pacing and lack of convincing fake severed heads. Pacing seems to fluctuate from kind of creepy when peeps are trying to figure out what's going on in that house and people having domestic arguments. Fake severed heads are also a problem here as the heads involved are worse than what your six year old kid can come up with using some play-dough.

This isn't the worst 'end of era' Italian horror film (and it's nowhere near the best - check out Maya and the Spider Labyrinth) but it's one you may encounter often. If you have OCD, just get it, put it on, and let you mind drift. It's that kind of film.

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.

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.