Horrible is the semi-sequel to Joe D’Amato’s notorious gore flick Anthropophagous (AKA The Grim Reaper) from 1980.  The ubiquitous George Eastman (AKA Luigi Montefiore), reprises his monstrous role, this time escaping from Greece all the way to mainland Europe to wreak havoc.

Eastman plays a man exposed to nuclear radiation who has developed the power to regenerate cells, thus making him immortal.  Unfortunately, the radiation has also short-circuited his brain, turning him into a murderous lunatic who kills indiscriminately.  The monster is being chased by a Greek priest, played by Edmund Purdom.  As he approaches an isolated country estate, he impales himself on an iron fence.  Taken to the hospital, he is operated on, but not given much chance to live.  The presence of the priest causes Eastman’s monster to become excited, bringing the police into the matter.  While the police are interviewing the priest, the monster has healed himself enough to attack the attending nurse.

In the first of several gory scenes, the monster jabs a small drill through the nurse’s head.  We see the drill enter and exit the head in extreme close up and with plenty of blood.  The monster escapes, continuing his bloody killing spree everywhere he goes—including an especially blood bandsaw-to-the-head scene.  Eventually the monster ends up at the country estate where the parents have left their two children with a babysitter to attend a party.  The oldest child, around 13 or 14 is in spinal traction due to an illness and spends her time reading or drawing using an old-fashioned compass to draw perfect circles while the younger boy, perhaps eight or nine, is a spoiled brat. 

Of course, the monster attacks the estate, killing the babysitter with an axe to the head as well as a second babysitter that arrives a bit later by cooking her head in an oven then stabbing her with scissors.  The crippled daughter manages to escape her traction set-up, and using the compass, she stabs the monster in his eyes, blinding him and enabling her to escape.  The monster eventually catches up with the girl, but the priest rushes in and attacks the monster.  While the monster is busy strangling the priest, the girl locates an axe (from a nearby suit of armor) and decapitates the monster.

The ending scene has the police and the parents converging on the estate as the young boy, who was hiding outside, tells them the bogeyman is in the house.  They open the door only to see the girl, covered in blood and holding an axe.  She tells her brother, “Don’t worry, I killed the bogeyman,” as she raises her other hand to reveal the decapitated head of the monster.

This is great Eurosleaze.  Filmed on the cheap (aren’t all of D’Amato’s films cheap?!), D’Amato nevertheless is able to wring out a bit of gritty suspense from his very spooky mansion.  While the acting and writing aren’t great, the film is entertaining enough, with plenty of blood and a fairly effective score as well.  The film is slow and talky when the monster isn’t stalking his next victim, but moves at a nice pace whenever the monster is around.  Overall, while I’ve seen better Eurotrash, this film is a decent effort and worth catching in its uncut form on DVD (finally!).

MYA, the DVD distributor, had to use VHS elements to present a totally uncut film, and the VHS elements are significantly inferior to the rest of the remastered disc; however, the good news is that aside from a surgical scene, all the gore is intact and high quality.  The missing scenes are all short bits of dialogue or other extraneous scenes originally removed to tighten up the film, so even though they aren’t high quality, the viewer isn’t missing much.  I am, however, mystified as to why MYA chose to use “Horrible” as the DVD title for the film.  Originally titled Rosso Sangue, the film is much better known as either Anthropophagous 2 or Absurd.  Maybe the only title element they could obtain was “Horrible.”

As another interesting aside, there is a scene of the little boy fighting with the babysitter over what channel to watch.  The babysitter turns the channel, the boy turns it back and throws a fit, so the babysitter lets him watch what he wants—none other than D’Amato’s own Porno Holocaust!!  I’m not sure what surprises me more, that the boy is allowed to watch the show or that it is being shown on TV!