Absurd
Absurd (1981) Rewatch: ✅
Another of those films I’d be wary of recommending folk watch because gosh, it drags at times with a complete inability to stay on target but, for me, the good bits are worth the bad bits. And by good bits, I mean the gore and the ending.
There’s an incredibly preposterous plot buried in the film somewhere about a serial killer created by the church which just seems largely an excuse to have a priest plodding about the place being mysterious for a bit whilst chasing after the murderous dude with an uncanny ability for regenerating themselves after an injury. It’s given a sort of passing mention but forgotten about pretty quickly, not that I’m sure there’s a great deal you could really make from that set up whilst making a slasher film too.
There’s a sort of echo of Halloween/The Shape to proceedings but kinda less coherent (The Priest is filling in the Donald Pleasance role here as the dude who knows how nasty the murdering man is for realsies). Ok, you got me, it’s not even vaguely coherent. However! Let’s just say it’s a film about a dude who does some horrible murders every ten minutes or so and move along. It’s not like I’m watching it for the story anyway, yeah?
And fair enough, the murders are nicely horrible. There’s drilling and slicing and stabbings and a really long sequence where someone gets their head cooked in an oven and it’s all suitably nasty, helped along by a tremendous prog horror score that turns up the organs to eleven and freaks out well in advance of any actual murdering going on. It’s just sort of unfortunate that the bits in between the murdering are strangely tedious. I’d struggle to say why exactly, I’ve certainly sat through worse, but all the inbetweeny stuff drags for me.
Like I say though, the murdering is really good murdering and nicely bloody and that they often drag out just a little bit longer than most films would find entirely necessary or reasonable goes very much in its favour. If you ever need to oven cook someone’s noggin for a Sunday roast, the film teaches you that it’s going to take a bit of time so prepare accordingly. Please do not cook someone’s noggin though, eh. Not even for “an Egyptian feast”.
And talking of noggins, the ending is accidental comedy gold. I have never managed to work out if you’re supposed to take it seriously but there’s expressions straight out of a sitcom in those final minutes and I can’t, just can’t. Too busy sniggering every time.
Absurd then. It lives up to its name, not necessarily for the right reasons. Amazing soundtrack, plenty of blood and stuff, also a bit guff. That’s a tatwatch special right there.