"Buio Omega" Soundtrack Cd (Cinevox, 2008)
 Probably Goblin's best movie score next to their contribution for "Profondo Rosso" & "Suspiria". This particular scoring job doesn't include Claudio Simonetti as a band member, yet the quality doesn't suffer, Goblin still delivers one of their darkest, most sinister and spine-tingling work, and it's still as keyboard heavy as ever.
The Main Theme is like pulsing synth chord which builds into a decisive almost disco beat (somewhat of a pre-cursor to the Tenebre soundtrack). It crops up a few times and is usually very well utilized within the film (i.e. the graverobbing scene, as mentionned in my review of the movie)
Alot of these tracks (like the piano piece named "Quiet Drops" on the 1997 soundtrack) have a really perniciously depressing quality to them, sometimes bordering on the nightmarish with that awesome and creepy synth sound... My favorite track is probably the one named "Strive After Dark" that plays during movie climax, with its obsessive repetitious riff and a chilling, mournful chorus creeping in the background...
The whole soundtrack is quite varied, it also has a few groovy upbeat numbers like "Bikini Island", a couple of these tracks were later re-used on Luigi Cozzi's "Contamination" (and unofficially on Bruno Mattei's "Virus"/"Hell of a Living Dead")
Some of this stuff was also designed as actual stings and creepy "shock and surprise" sound effects type cues for this particular movie, this is something fairly atypical for Goblin which usually only composes whole songs.
Anyway, it's interesting to hear Goblin score a horror movie outside of the Dario Argento world, I wish they did more of this type of movies!
Cinevox re-issued the soundtrack on a pretty neat looking digipack in 2008, but it's more of a repackaging than a real improvement over the 1997 soundtrack. The booklet included is pretty disappointing in that all the illustrations seem to be dvd screenshots! Also the electrocardiogram design on the cover is going the wrong way, it's supposed to go dead!!! It's got a few interesting liner notes, only written in italian. The track titles are all reduced to their catalogue numbers and put back in their original recording/archival order (The 1997 soundtrack cd had more distinctive track titles). But there isn't much additional material, all the music cues are simply now separated into different tracks (and without any repeated track like in the old soudtrack cd). The final track does include a new surprise screaming shocker just like at the end of the movie!
Goblin's "Buio Omega" line-up: Maurizio Guarini - keyboards
Fabio Pignatelli - bass, guitars acustica
Agostino Marangolo - drums, percussions
Carlo Pennisi - guitars
2008 Soundtrack Cd Track list: 1)Buio Omega (Titoli) (02:55) 2)Buio Omega (M 1) (00:57) 3)Buio Omega (M 2) (00:52) 4)Buio Omega (M 4) (01:42) 5)Buio Omega (Memoria) (01:00) 6)Buio Omega (M 6) (02:30) 7)Buio Omega (M 7) (01:48) 8)Buio Omega (M 8) (02:57) 9)Buio Omega (M 10) (00:36) 10)Buio Omega (M 12) (04:13) 11)Buio Omega (M 13) (00:10) 12)Buio Omega (M 16) (00:30) 13)Buio Omega (M 16 bis) (00:07) 14)Buio Omega (M 18) (04:28) 15)Buio Omega (M 21) (00:36) 16)Buio Omega (M 23) (00:05) 17)Buio Omega (M 25) (04:02) 18)Buio Omega (M 26) (03:48) 19)Buio Omega (M 28) (00:09) 20)Buio Omega (M 29) (00:05) 21)Buio Omega (M 30) (03:08) 22)Buio Omega (M 31) (02:15) 23)Buio Omega (M 32) (02:06) 24)Buio Omega (M 33 Finale) (02:04)
Running time: 43:51
1997 Soundtrack Cd Track list: 
1)Buio Omega (Main Titles) (2:54)
2)Quiet Drops (4:34)
3)Strive After Dark (2:31)
4)Pillage (2:20)
5)Rush (4:14)
6)Keen (4:05)
7)Ghost Vest (2:59)
8)Bikini Island (3:50)
9)Buio Omega (Suite 1) (2:27)
10)Quiet Drops (Film Version) (2:17)
11)Strive After Dark (Suite) (3:20)
12)Buio Omega (Alternate Version) (1:49)
13)Strive After Dark (Alternate Version) (3:10)
14)Buio Omega (Synth Effect - Alternate Takes Suite) (3:09)
15)Buio Omega Theme (Reprise) (3:57)
Running time: 47:36
The Original Italian Posters are my favorites... Especially the 2 sheet poster with the reflection of the neckwound victim on a cleaver (altough technically she just gets burned to death in the movie and doesn't get any cleaver action)!
The 1987 italian re-release poster "In Quella Casa... Buio Omega" has a very Psycho-esque design with the creepy house. "Evil Dead" was known as "La Casa" in Italy, so the re-titling is probably an attempt to cash-in on the name.
 
 
The french "Blue Holocaust" poster borrows the italian cleaver design but the neckwound gory bit is censored/covered up! Too bad, it's difficult to get a decent picture of the italian 2 sheets because of the fold marks...
Us Poster and Ad Campaign under the title "Buried Alive".
Awesome tag line and entertaining text bubbles commenting on still photographs in a roman-photo (photo-story) style.
Exploitation at its finest!
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 "Death has no power to separate us" are Francesco's last words to his girlfriend, Anna as she dies in his embrace (under mysterious voodoo ritual-related circumstances!). He keeps his promise and decides to dig up her corpse. Fortunately he is a taxidermist and has no problem preserving her dead body pretty, nice and fresh; first with formaldehyde injections, then with the full taxidermied make-over.
Obviously things quickly take a turn for the worse when he won't hesitate to kill anyone who bears witness to his necrophilic tendencies. Discovering himself as something of a sadist, he starts taking pleasure in killing people (well, mostly young girls!).
Iris, his older house keeper, helps him hide his dark secret, under promises of marriage. They slice up body parts and throw them into an acid bath or sometimes just incinerate people alive. Francesco grows progressively crazier until Anna, her twin sister re-appears looking a tad fresher than her dead sibling!
 
Italian director Joe d'Amato dabbled a few times in the horror genre with films such as "Death Smiles at Murder" and later "Anthropophagus" or "Absurd", but "Buio Omega" is the crown jewel in his very disreputable career.
Maybe it's Goblin's music score that puts it over the top for me but it seems like Joe felt right at home directing this demented story of obsessive love and necrophilia, he keeps the right tone through the film. The real strength of the movie is that Joe d'Amato doesn't skimp on the gore, he doesn't shy away from the sadistic or scabrous elements and actually thrives on them.
The necrophilia part is merely a catalyst for this man who rapidly degenerates into serial killing and some impulsive cannibalism. The story is told without too much mystery about it, more in the line of slasher flicks where the viewer is simply along for the ride (i.e. "Maniac" or "Don't Go in the House", etc...)
But this is one of these truly sick films, along with "Cannibal Holocaust" or "Last House on the Left", that felt really wrong the first time you watched them.
Visually "Buio Omega" is looking nice, maybe a bit drab, but it's tightly-shot and nicely lit for the most part, obviously not as stylish as any Argento or Bava movie though. Joe d'Amato is also doing the cinematography himself here, under his real name Aristide Massacessi. At times it almost has a 70's softcore porn kind of feel (I mean the era where porn still had a film-like quality)... which actually adds to the film's uneasy, scuzzy vibe. Joe d'Amato makes a sporadic use of most italian film-makers beloved zoom effect, but it usually fits within the film finely and makes sense as a subjective point of view shot from a character discovering a gory or shocking event!
 The most effectively shot sequences are the ones taking place at night. They usually ooze with the most atmosphere, particularly the graverobbing scene which beautifully builds up to a crescendo of Goblin's pounding music score, as Francesco pries the coffin open and carries his dead fiancée in his arms.
Another really gloomy scene, is the taxidermy/autopsy procedure taking place in a dark and dank garage/laboratory and shown in excruciating minutiae (from disembowelment to brain-sucking through the nasal passage), all shot in a creepy half-light... and peaking with Francesco devouring his dead lover's heart in an ultimate romantic gesture!
Joe d'Amato injects a decent amount of an almost hitchcockian suspense to the proceedings, usually following the main character around performing mischief, like digging up a corpse, carrying it around or carving it up... anticipating that he might get caught or that bloody violence could erupt anytime.
No real effort is put in making the characters appear likable at all though. Francesco is clearly a sadist and a weirdo. An early indication is when Francesco starts suckling on his middle aged maid's tit like an infant, in front of his dead mother's portrait. This is somewhat of a sleazier exploration of Norman Bates' issues in "Psycho", but without the whole transvestite angle.
Francesco's motives for killing stay obscure but it almost seems like this character is waiting for these girls he attracts to his house to discover his necrophilic secret in order to be compelled to murder them later. He usually dispatches them in extremely evil ways too, like plying off their fingernails while still alive or chewing on a girl's neck while making out (next to the corpse of his girlfriend!)
 The body count in the film isn't exactly high, just a couple of girls... But being witness to the whole disposal process of a corpse, hacking it up to pieces, dissolving parts in acid or incinerating a young female jogger while she's still alive gives the movie extra bloodshed and sadism points. The whole climax of the movie is also suitably violent and offers a pretty entertaining, albeit completely gratuitous final twist.
The human taxidermy scene is of course some of the best cinematic gore ever! For a long time it was rumored that real corpses were used for the disembowelment sequences which wasn't true... However Joe d'Amato simply used real animal parts (pig skin I think for the close-up of the incisions), and the fresh guts and offal still lend some disturbing veracity to it all.
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Kieran Canter |
Franca Stoppi
(" The Other Hell") |
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Anna Cardini |
Sam Modesto |
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Cinzia Monreale
("The Beyond")
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Lucia D'Elia |
Simonetta Allodi |
-Main actor Kieran Canter is quite expressionless for the most part, but his role almost demands it, and he plays a very credible blank-faced psycho.
-His co-star Franca Stoppi really shines in the role of Iris though, her character's maliciousness is a delight to watch... The actress seemed to have alot of fun with the role and coming up with darkly humorous bits; for instance I love the way she smirks & facetiously searches for the best body parts to hack off during the dismemberment scene. Another juicy moment is when she tries to nauseate Francesco by obscenely chewing on her meat stew (right after the sickening acid bath destruction of a chubby english hitch-hiker's body)
Their bizarre relationship based on lust and disgust is quite interesting to watch... Their "violent emotions" and mutual hatred continually grows until the flesh-ripping, explosive finale!
-Cinzia Montreale does a great job as a stiff for most of the movie. I love the scenes where her corpse is made up and dressed up like a doll. She makes a very attractive dead body. Also the scene where the power goes out and she's left all alone in the dark is the real climax of the movie.
Lucio Fulci certainly must have seen this before he hired her to play the blind girl in "The Beyond".
-The character of the funeral home guy, suspicious of Francesco for necrophilic foul play, and snooping around the house during the whole movie looks to be merely a simple plot device leading up to the final twist. His funeral home company's logo is a "Omega" symbol and probably pertains to the "Buio Omega" movie title in some way?
 
 The movie's ending is slightly ambiguous. There's a voodoo thread that runs throughout the movie (and we cross paths again with the old witch near the end of the movie) that makes you wonder, is it really Anna's twin sister in the coffin or really Anna waking up from her voodoo curse? Maybe this theory is too ridiculous and out there, but who knows with Joe d'Amato (producer of Troll 2!)?! Otherwise maybe Franscesco just took the time to switch their clothes for some obscure reason...
Anyhow, "Buio Omega" emanates some of the sickest and most nihilistic vibes ever. In terms of necrophilia, the film actually stays pretty clean, his dead girlfriend never looks really putrefied, it's nothing like the "Nekromantik" series for example, (the further it goes is kissing the dead or the suggestion of a handjob in front of a corpse), but it's much more stylish and suspensely crafted plot-wise, clearly my favorite movie about necrophilia anyway.
 
"Buio Omega" is pretty unique to Joe d'Amato's filmography and doesn't really fit in any movie cash-in trend from the time of its release (which Joe usually tried to follow). I often wondered what prompted such a peculiar and terminally sick to be made.
In fact, "Buio Omega" is a gored up remake of another italian movie from 1966 called "The Third Eye" ("Il Terzo Occhio") starring a clean-shaven Franco Nero (Django himself!).
It's a much more old school, slow-paced, noiresque type movie. It's very stylish with a really exquisite black and white cinematography. The direction and very classical music score remind me of Mario Bava's early work at times. It's also much more character-driven, dialogue-heavy and dramatic... Some of the characters are very caricatured and heavily inspired by "Psycho", with the taxidermist mama's boy and his domineering mother (she's still alive in this case) who snaps when both his girlfriend and mother crock at the same time.
 While some elements of "Buio Omega" can still be found, obviously "The Third Eye" is much less gruesome... The fact that Franco Nero hangs on to his girlfriend's corpse is actually kept a mystery for a long time, actually making the reveal much more shocking and effective! (but on the other hand I also really like the angle of following Francesco to the graveyard as he unburies his girl in "Buio Omega")
The character of the creepy house maid is already there, she clings to the main character by sharing his serial killing guilt in a similar way. In this movie her character is much more fleshed out and the actress does a very nice job, and this character again really steals the movie for me. The scene where goes crazy with jealousy and tracks down her rival with a knife is the movie's high point. (and remade as the movie climax in "Buio Omega")
In "The Third Eye" she also provokes Franco Nero's girlfriend death by cutting her car's brakes instead of resorting to voodoo, the movie keeps a much more pragmatic giallo-style approach.
Otherwise the character still brings really hot dancers and prostitutes home to kill them and gets rid of the bodies using acid (although these scenes are not shown at all!).
And his girlfriend's twin sister also turns in at the end of the movie in the same way!
 In closing, this is actually one of the first and best "Psycho" rip-offs out there. It slightly expands on the necrophilia theme and is a pretty stylish and engrossing movie with a truly macabre vibe. It's interesting to see Franco Nero outside of a spaghetti western role, although he's hysterically overacting at times during some of the scenes where he's going mad. But Joe d'Amato also did a great job of updating the story in "Buio Omega" too, the added bucket loads of blood and guts were certainly a nice touch.
In truth,
"Psycho", "The Third Eye", "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" , "Deranged", "Buio Omega" and all the Psycho-Slashers that followed owe a great deal to good old Ed Gein for being their original inspiration, thanks Ed!
The method of disposal of the cadavers reminds me of a french movie called "Le Trio Infernal" (1974) which was based on true events/serial killings and was also somewhat of a depraved movie.
Regarding the crazy alternate french title, "Blue Holocaust" (which came in 1982)... I have a theory that the distributors tried to mix the titles from two of the most notoriously sick movies of the time, "Blue Movie" (1978) & "Cannibal Holocaust" (1980). |
HOLOCAUST!
I'll still be hanging on to the french DVD for the italian audio, french subtitles & the nice Franca Stoppi interview too which contains some nice anecdotes like the fact about the meat stew she chewed on for the film which was actually specially prepared soy or sometimes like that, because the actress was actually a vegetarian!
