UBALDO TERZANI HORROR SHOW (2010)

Available to buy or rent on Amazon Prime!
Directed/Written by Gabriele Albanesi
Starring Giuseppe Soleri, Paolo Sassanelli, Laura Gigante, Antonino Iuorio, Ripli Zsuzsanna, Francesco Mastrorilli, Stefano Fregni, Vera Dragone, Massimo Triggiani

This interesting Italian surprise takes pages from Hitchcock, Bava, Argento, and even Stephen King by placing a novel writer at odds with a filmmaker with disastrous results. It’s highbrow versus lowbrow here as Giuseppe Soleri plays Alessio Rinaldi, a young up and coming Italian horror moviemaker whose agent tells him to seek out a novelist to give him new ideas for story. Though Alessio is against this at first, he reads the work of horror novelist Ubaldo Terzani (Paolo Sassanelli) and concludes that he may learn something from the horror scribe.

UBALDO TERZANI HORROR SHOW serves as a great allegory of the differences and struggles between prose and film. Alessio is cast as a doltish newb, sheepish and gullible and fully susceptible to the manipulations of the older, more sophisticated, and more diabolical Ubaldo. Though Alessio goes to Ubaldo for a partnership in making a new horror film, he quickly falls into the role of student as the twisted Ubaldo manipulates him emotionally, physically, and psychologically. Things reach a boiling point and it’s quite clear that only one of the two men are going to walk away from this.

The film is well acted and the script is nicely written (at least the translation of it was since this is an Italian film I saw with English subtitles). The gore is low budget is surprisingly effective and the twists and turns the plot takes is refreshing and unpredictable. Though there are many films out there about making a film, this one does a great job of telling that story in a dark and diabolical manner. UBALDO TERZANI HORROR SHOW owes a lot of its mood to the classics in Italian giallo horror. This is a pitch black loss of innocence story with teeth and if you’re into foreign horror, this is one gory thriller worth checking out.

Check out the trailer here!!