The Editor

 

Horror parody films are dime a dozen these days, and unfortunately they’re almost all exclusively garbage. While we have had some classics, like Mel Brook’s spot-on Frankenstein spoof ‘Young Frankenstein’, the last few years have seen opportunists quickly churn out poorly made, low-rent ‘comedies’ that show no effort, care or understanding of the things they’re meant to be parodying. They’re usually lazily patched together low-budget/low-effort messes that, in lieu of talent, effort or actual comedic insight, simply throw in often gross-out spoof version of famous scenes from a variety of contemporary horror movies for barely ninety minutes and then calling it quits. A true horror parody would go further than that.

In comes Astron-6, a Canadian indie filmmaking production group of several friends whose output is made with minimal budgets (their first feature ‘Manborg’ apparently had a four-figure budget), a lot of off-key humour and an intense passion, love and understanding of genre filmmaking. Manborg took the piss out of eighties sci-fi robot/apocalypse stories, while their second film ‘Father’s Day’ was a gloriously gory and insane exploitation film about three oddball characters hunting down a serial killer who rapes, kills and eats fathers. Both movies are fun and ridiculous, full of explosive gore, bizarre humour and startling creativity, especially considering their almost non-existent budgets. They’re also perfectly on-point parodies of the genres they inhabit, to the point of obscurity at times. They don’t recreate scenes or make fun of specific movies, they encapsulate entire genres

The Editor is their third film, and might be their best from a purely filmmaking standpoint, boasting a more assured and consistent style compared to their last two films, and a thorough understanding of its subject matter. The Editor is Astron-6’s take on Italian ‘Giallo’ thrillers, the stylish but schlocky horror films from the seventies known more for their visual flair and abundance of blood and breasts than their simplistic plots and shallow characters. The Editor peerlessly imitates and holds true to the style, techniques and conventions of Giallo movies, for good and bad. It’s a great, funny movie, but really only for those who are familiar with Giallo movies.  It’s full of homages and loving nods to the movies by Lucio Fulci, Dario Argento, Mario Bava and others. If you aren’t familiar with any of those names, then The Editor will likely fall flat in places, so specific are its inspirations and the well it draws its inspiration from. It still works well as a comedy horror movie, though one that fits a specific niche.

 

Rey Ciso is our titular editor. Once a world-class award winning film editor with a magic touch when it came to piecing film together, Rey lost it all in a horrible editing accident. He not only lost the fingers on his right hand (now replaced with finely crafted wooden prosthetics), he also lost his former editing skills, his passion for film, the respect of his peers, the love in his rocky marriage to failed actress Josephine (Paz de la Huerta) and, momentarily, his mind, becoming unable to tell the difference between real-life and film.

After a short stint in an insane asylum, Rey is stuck editing schlocky low-rent horror films for a sleazy producer, unappreciated and disrespected by all apart from his assistant, the enthusiastic Bella. When the stars of the film are brutally murdered, Rey is considered an obvious suspect, especially by lead investigator Inspector Peter Porfiry. As the body count of actors, actresses and crew continues to rise, Rey finds his sanity slipping while Peter’s investigation into Rey’s past takes him from the surviving cast and crew to the director of the insane asylum (a cameo by Udo Kier) and even a mysterious priest whose knowledge suggests a deeper, darker secret behind the killings.

Rey’s character is played pretty much to perfection by co-director Adam Brooks. He captures the sort of distant, confused protagonist stuck in the middle of the killings, unsure if he’s the murdered himself. It’s an oddly restrained performance compared to the outlandishness of most of the other cast members, but it still perfectly captures and parodies that sort of sad sack character type, with the poor, downtrodden Rey constantly lamenting the fact that his wooden fingers make it near impossible for him to light a match. He becomes a little bit detached from the main plot, with his scenes having an eerie feel of their own (especially towards the end).

 

The instant standout character is Peter, played by co-director Matthew Kennedy, the no-nonsense, hard-core Italian detective who brings intensity and stupidity to ordinary situations. He’s a parody of not only detective characters, but the casual aggression and ridiculously exaggerated misogyny of Italian men in films from the seventies. Peter routinely slaps women for no reason whatsoever, adamant that it’s what women need. Besides that, he has a loving wife (suddenly struck with hysterical blindness after witnessing a gory murder scene) who he has some ridiculous sex with, and also gets an oddly homoerotic fixation with Cal, the new star of the doomed film (and a very obvious suspect, though Peter’s growing obsession with him makes him oblivious to things like Cal loading his car with murder weapons, is conspicuous appearance at almost every murder scene and his growing part in the film).

The rest of the cast is pretty great, especially those who seem to understand they’re in a parody. The aforementioned Cal is fun as an obvious red herring, but is a bit odd as the outlier American character – while Rey and Peter are acted with bad Italian accents, Cal just seems to use his normal voice, which sort of breaks the immersion the parody sticks to. He’s played by another Astron-6 member, Conor Sweeney, who co-directed ‘Father’s Day’.  The rest are great, from the sleazy producer, the various actors and actresses who end up dead, Peter’s poor blind wife and even the small cameo roles like Udo Kier’s asylum director. The one oddity is Paz De La Huerta, if only because I can’t tell whether she knows she’s in a parody or not. She does decent as Rey’s distant, disinterested wife, with some bizarre lines (‘Who is going to pay for this $500 Beta machine?’ comes out of nowhere). She also has no problem getting nude though. Actually most of the female cast get nude or have some sort of sex scene.

After a great opening, the movie slows a little and has a pretty lax pace in its middle, moving from one ridiculously bloody murder to the next while Rey slowly loses his mind and Peter’s investigation gets stranger. It’s still a lot of fun, especially as the character’s interactions and absurdity continues to build, and a lot is still happening as characters meets grisly, hilarious ends, but it feels like it’s just doing the same thing over and over again. Which, as a parody of Giallo films, is basically the point; those movies tended to just be a series of grandiose murders strung together with a loose, simple plot, the only issue here being that it begins to wear a bit thin. The final twenty minutes are just about as perfect as they need to be though, masterfully combining both parody and earnest homage for the sort of endings Giallo films had.  If the entire film was made forty years ago but played straight and had a little more polish it’d actually really work as a great Giallo film. And I’d even argue that, earnest and endearing parody or not, it is a pretty great Giallo movie on its own accomplishments.

Visually it’s fantastic, evoking the saturated colours, fluorescent lighting and stylistic conventions of the Giallo movies. Most murders involve seeing through the killer’s perspective, as their gloved hand raises a knife to strike while the victim screams. Some nightmare sequences and more trippy moments are fantastic, mixing colour and lighting to great effect. The music is fantastic, a mix of creepy synth and more upbeat disco funk. It also parodies Giallo films in other ways, with characters that have been overdubbed poorly on purpose. It’s all quite an earnest. The set design is also great, with the various locations, rooms and furnishings feeling ripped straight out of 70s horror movies.   

 

The gore is bloody and ridiculous, involving massive gushing sprays of blood, severed body parts and copious organs. The masked killer wields everything from knifes and straight razors to chainsaws, and the blood is a vivid red, as it slashes onto everything. Some of the more outlandish stuff is goofy in how fake and obvious it is, but that’s all part of the charm. In keeping with Italian Giallo conventions, the film is also full of abundant nudity and sex, almost entirely played for laughs heeere. Some characters are just randomly nude, and breasts have a habit of slipping out of shirts. But the sex scenes are absolutely hilarious and over the top. The best involve Peter and his wife, with the near psychopathic detective turning every lovemaking scene into an intense experience. He’s the sort of man who, after coitus, will grab giant fistfuls of dirt and smear them into his face while letting out a primal yell.

The ending is absolute brilliance, simultaneously parodying and perfectly capturing the essence of those old Italian horror movies. It manages to both make zero sense and perfect sense, with a random twist leading to a nonsensical revelation. In particular it brings to mind some of Lucio Fulci’s films. It’s really the only way the movie could have ended. Speaking of Fulci, I was surprised at how many nods there were to his films. There are visual motifs to a lot of Giallo films and nods to Mario Bava and Dario Argento, but Lucio Fulci seems to be the main source of inspiration, with several scenes and moments being homages to the man’s over the top horror movies.

I had a lot of fun with The Editor. I enjoyed the other two Astron-6 releases, and I really enjoyed this one as well. My appreciation of the film is largely rooted in my love and understanding of Giallo tropes and conventions, but outside of that it’s still a solid, entertaining film. It will sit best with those familiar with Giallo films, already niche in this day and age which might limit the movie’s appeal, but it’s a lot of fun regardless.