Escape from Death (1989) (Italy)

aka Blood Moon

⭐️⭐️

The unstable Ann (she’s spent some time in the old loony bin) claims to find her author husband Larry brutally murdered in the stables on their estate but the lack of a corpse has Ann’s psychiatrist thinking she may be having another mental fit and Larry’s secretary Mary thinking the woman may have killed her employer. Although, it would seem Dr. Marc wants her back in his care just as soon as possible and that Mary thinks Ann is a real bitch. To go along with the lack of a body, Mary and Dr. Marc discover a note from the supposed dead man claiming that he’s leaving, possibly forever because he can’t take the hellish life he’s been enduring with Ann. They decide it’s best to not get the police involved and just wait for the answers to come naturally. Italians, man. Larry returns a fucking year later but Ann is convinced that the Larry who is now in her home is not the man she married, even if it is most definitely the man in all the photographs around the house. We can’t say for sure because we’re introduced to the actual Larry getting his face blown to bits with a gun but the movie doesn’t really even try to hide the fact that something fishy is going on. Her shrink and Larry’s secretary attempt to assuage her doubts but Ann remains adamant in her belief of the man being an imposter. She’s receiving phone calls from someone claiming to be her real husband contacting her from the other side of the veil while also suffering from some horrific hallucinations. As if there ain’t enough shit going on to fill a few seasons of a lazy soap opera, someone with black gloves begins leisurely thinning out the cast. It’s an Italian genre flick from the late eighties so you can expect maggots, people acting like idiots, people acting like perverts, people acting like it’s their first time dealing with human emotions, needlessly complicated scheming that probably should have been better thought out and a good amount of the viewer just saying “Ok. But what?” A penis gets shot off (the sign of a true marksman!), a head gets chopped off, there’s a nice level of scuzz bubbling under everything and the movie thankfully doesn’t think you’re an idiot… like some of the best from The Boot, it’s just an idiot itself so it doesn’t know any better. A whole lotta chatter drags this one down but some fun can be had if you’re more forgiving of your Italian horror produced during the genre’s death throes.