OMG Horror

Italy is said to be beautiful this time of year, so we decided to stick around for another edition of Foreign Fear Friday.  Last time we looked at the celebrated work of Ruggero Deodato, and this time out we’re more than proud to show a little love to the underrated giallo bon vivant Umberto Lenzi.  Born August 6, 1931 in Massa Marittima, Italy – Lenzi’s early zeal for cinema led him to spearhead numerous film clubs and fan groups while he continued to study law.  After deciding to curb the law route, Lenzi soon took up the technical side of filmmaking before settling as a writer and film critic in the late 50s and early 60s.  From there, a smooth transition would be made to assistant director until he made his feature debut about swashbuckling pirates in 1961 (Queen of the Seas).      

After a spate of pirate pictures, a war film and a pair of Spaghetti Westerns, Lenzi found his niche as a top flight giallo director.  Among his initial efforts in the genre, a film internationally known as Seven Blood Stained Orchids garnered some widespread acclaim.  That same year, Lenzi lent his talent to a raw trailblazing cannibal picture called Sacrifice! (in America) – a film that thematically would not only become a semi-staple of the Umberto’s oeuvre, but would more or less set in motion the cannibal subgenre as a European horror hallmark.  Two years later Lenzi would co-write and helm an offbeat giallo flick called Spasmo (1974) that added to his international cache as a high ranking genre filmmaker.

But if the aforementioned works skyrocketed Lenzi’s artistic stock, a plateau may have been reached with his follow up film Eyeball in 1975.  If for no other reason than Lenzi took top billing for story and script (whereas he collaborated mostly in the past) – Eyeball bears Lenzi’s indubitable stamp as a viscerally enthralling piece of pulp about a psycho-killer in a red hood and cape gouging the eyeballs out of tourists on a metropolitan tour bus.  It’s no doubt a brutal film, one of the best of its kind.  It’s at this point Lenzi could be hailed as a contemporary to his Italian counterparts Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento.  Perhaps he wasn’t recognized as such however, since Lenzi’s follow up to such a gruesome jaw-dropper would be a string of crime/thrillers, which to be fair, did retain some of the mysterious giallo tenets as well as plenty of bloodshed.   

After toiling across genre the next few years, Lenzi would return to the cannibal subgenre in 1980 with the release of Doomed to Die (aka Eaten Alive by the Cannibals).  Since it was released the same year as Deodato’s cult classic Cannibal Holocaust, Lenzi’s film may have gotten lost in the shuffle.  It proved no matter though, in part because that same year, Lenzi partook in the zombie realm when he directed City of the Walking Dead (aka Nightmare City) – a film that despite not being released in the U.S. until 1983, still grabbed the attention of many a viewer.  And if it didn’t, Lenzi made damn sure he did with his follow up, a film he’s probably known most for – the unremittingly vicious Cannibal Ferox (1981).  With sole story and script credit, Lenzi had complete control over this wildly anarchic film that to this day, remains one of the most graphically sadistic and carnage-soaked pieces of celluloid to ever come about.  If you haven’t seen the film, do yourself as well as us here at OMGHorror a favor – find it, rent it, Netflix it, DVR it, whatever – just make sure you see the damn thing ASAP.  For real!