Eroina

Massimo Pirri isn't one of Italy's best-known directors, and it's probably because of his really slipshod style of directing movies. In most of his films, the lighting and editing work okay, but there looks to be little or no camera or directorial technique. To give the guy credit, he was probably the youngest of Italy's directors at the time.

Anyway, compared to his other films, Pirri probably thought of his creation THE TUNNEL (aka HEROIN) as high art. The movie tries really hard to seem like a art-house, high-class, or poignant film showing the dumbing effects of heroin addiction following our two loser heroes Helmut Berger and Corrine Clery. Helmut Berger probably wasn't even acting at the time, they probably just followed him around with a camera.

However, the film itself is numbing, with non-stop music from The Pretenders (how the heck did Pirri manage that?), which is often quite good but gets droning as the film plods along. The downbeat atmosphere really takes its toll as well, sort of like MIRACLE IN MILAN, except without any Miracle. It's fun to see Karl Zinny in an early role as a young heroin addict, though he does an awful job playing dead (blinking his eyes when Berger shakes him). Zinny did a much better job in DEMONS and FINAL EXECUTIONER a few years later. The girl from CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is given a small scene as an angry drug-pusher. The film has a few other rewards, such as frequent Corrine Clery nudity (she was in MOONRAKER the year prior) and a few minor action scenes, but mostly it's just constant drug abuse.

This no-budget film was actually shot in early 1980, but sat unreleased for several years and was only given a couple quiet theatrical and video releases in Europe. For anyone hard-core enough to track it down, you've been warned.