The Editor

It's the sexy 1970s and a horror movie editor finds himself involved in a string of killings when his coworkers start to die.

It's hard to give this as score for bad acting, editing, goofy plot points and bad dialogue because that was the point of the movie. The entirety of the production is intended to be a parodied version of Giallo films, so everything is intentionally goofy and poorly done. Unfortunately, that's not enough to construct a joke, let alone a movie. One of the most recurring "jokes" is the massive amount of full-frontal nudity (99.99% female and 0.01% male.) So again, that's the entirety of the joke: "Hey guys, look at how much nudity and exploitation of women used to go on in those movies. We did it too. Isn't that hilarious?"

This movie is like later seasons of The Simpsons and Family Guy when the joke is "hey, remember that?" Everything is intended to be referential, and not stand-alone high quality production or effect. It's almost like the filmmakers made this movie specifically for hipster fans of 70s Giallo movies to watch with their friends, so the cool hipster can showcase every aspect of their knowledge of Giallo films.

I sincerely did not enjoy the viewing and I am very likely not to ever seek out seeing it again. However, there were a handful of things that made me chuckle, so this scores higher than a 3. I also slightly enjoyed the lighting and the attention granted to practical horror effects.

If you are a fan of Giallo and you want to show off to all your loser friends how much cooler you are than them, by pointing out all of the elements of Giallo, then watch this movie. If you don't know anything about Giallo and your friends makes you watch: they think they are cooler than you. Ditch that friend, and seek out a better horror comedy.

Rey Ciso (Adam Brooks) was once a top film editor. Then a nasty accident resulted in the loss of some fingers, and he ends up cutting trashy horror pictures. Murders begin to plague the production of his current film, and the inspector on the case (Matthew Kennedy) is sure he's responsible.

There's a fair amount of suspects in this very knowing, dead-on parody of the Italian murder mysteries known as Gialli. The Canadian filmmaking collective Astron-6 (including Brooks, Kennedy, and co-star Conor Sweeney, who plays untalented actor Cal Konitz) obviously took a fair amount of care with this one, and had a bigger budget than usual. They also shot it in 2.35:1 to keep it stylishly connected to Gialli of the past. The story has its share of twists (among them, the ending), and it keeps viewers amused and interested. The gore is delightfully way over the top, and nicely realized. The film is not always terribly funny, but when it hits, it hits HARD. Among the brightest gags are references to both Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci; Fulci's body of work in particular gets a frequent shout-out. The music is great - among the composers credited is Claudio Simonetti, so it's no surprise that the score is Goblin-esque at times.

The acting is much like what one would see in a vintage Giallo. Brooks actually does a passable Italian accent, and is a likeable hero. Kennedy is fun as the bumbling inspector. Paz de la Huerta ("Nurse 3-D") vamps it up something fierce as Rey's wife, a faded former film star. Laurence R. Harvey ("Human Centipede" 2 and 3) is a flustered priest, Tristan Risk ("American Mary") the sexy Veronica, but German legend Udo Kier is rather wasted as the briefly seen head of an asylum. Still, it's always nice to see him in anything.

Overall, a good, respectable effort, worth a look for any fan of the Gialli genre.

Seven out of 10.

This only makes sense if you are a fan of Italian "giallo" movies (Argento, Fulci, Bava etc.) If you have watched a lot of these then you will immediately feel familiar with the visual style, the soundtrack, the acting, the bad dialogue overdubs, the often wooden acting. Production-wise, this is a faithful recreation of the originals, and generally competently executed.

The problem is that it somewhat stops there. It wants to be both a homage and a prohibited-by-IMDb-term-for-urine-take at the same time, but for me failed at both. There are plenty of good scenes, but the number of direct quotes and allusions to old movies means that it is stylistically to uneven to fully enjoy as a homage, and the jokes mostly fell flat for me.

My advice: Give this a try if you're a giallo fan, but have one of the originals ready in case the joke runs out halfway for you. Otherwise: Stay well away - this will be completely incomprehensible to you.

It is pretty clear that much fun was had in making this but perhaps more effort was put into emulating previous affects and scenarios and less on creating a coherent story within which to set them. There are marvellous sequences like the homage to Black Belly of the Tarantula and Hitch-Hike but maybe things go a little far with the inclusion of Videodrome and Poltergeist. Fantastic though much of the gore and re-enactments and jokes are, we simply don't care about the main protagonists here and the flat, almost bored performing (intentional?) at times is off putting. Again references to gays and disabled - referring to the main guy with fingers missing once as a cripple was startling and maybe vaguely amusing but again and again? Similarly the face slapping gets a bit much but I suppose somewhat salutary especially where used prior to sex. Mixed bag but maybe more fun after a few drinks especially if you only have a very rudimentary awareness of gialli.

If you never have seen those old school Italian horrors called Giallo then you will never understand this flick. The way the sound was created (overdubbed?), the score, the editing, the lighting it all referred to the seventies galore of the Italian genre.

The story itself is what it should make funny, sometimes it was sometimes it didn't work at all. But overall this flick delivers on gore. The effects are top-notch. But again, it's the story that tears it a bit down. You can refer to those classics but don't exaggerate. After half an hour you have seen it all on that part. So if you aren't into Giallo's then this isn't going to be your thing, for the geeks they will search to all those references made towards the classics, I did, and get lost of the story somehow and that isn't good news. But it contains what makes a good Giallo, the glove, the POV from the knife, the eye stabbing and of course a lot of gratuitous nudity.

But the story guys....

Gore 1,5/5 Nudity 2,5/5 Effects 4/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0,5/5