Macabre…ish Horror Review: Absurd
Absurd, 1981/ 1 hr 36 min
Mikos Tanoupoulos (George Eastman) has gone insane. After being a part of an experiment, sanctioned by the church and performed, in a lab. Mikos escapes the grounds and ends up in a nearby neighborhood where he is nearly disemboweled after jumping over a family’s fence. So he goes into surgery, immediately, to repair it. The doctors notice he was recovering before they started stitching him up.
In recovery, Mikos sees a priest (Edmund Purdum) that is searching for him and he becomes aggressive, the staff have to hold him down. Police, Sgt. Engelman (Charles Borromel), starts to connect some of the dots between the patient and priest because they are both Greek and were found in the same area. The priest is questioned at the hospital.
The patient, Mikos, over powers a nurse and drills a hole through her head. Then he escapes.
Afterward, the priest tells Engelman about the procedure and tells him to talk to Dr. Kramer (Ted Russoff). They explain that Mikos’ body can repair dead cells and that he may be immortal. When asked why he’s gone crazy, the priest surmises it’s because the cells do not regenerate correctly and the outcome was insanity. Every organ in his body except his brain regenerates and so his only weakness is his brain.
Mikos enters a meat packing plant and kills the man who’s cleaning up for the evening, the worker shoots Mikos twice but it doesn’t even slow him down. Mikos grabs him and bisects the man’s head with a bone saw. Mikos is then hit by a car while walking down the road and kills the guy on a motorcycle (Michele Soavi), who tries to help him.
The priest and Sgt. go back out to look for Mikos.
He then returns to the original house where he originally disemboweled himself. Inside is a family with a bedridden girl, Katya (Katya Berger), who’s recovering from a brain injury, a little boy, Willy (Kasimir Berger), and their dog, Blitz. They are cared for by a nanny, Peggy (Cindy Leadbetter), and nurse, Emily (Annie Belle). The parents, Ian (Ian Danby) and Carol (Hanja Kochansky) are out at a party for the evening.
When Blitz takes off, after Peggy opens the front door, Mikos buries a pick axe in her skull. Emily arrives later and the front door is open, Peggy is nowhere to be found. Then Dr. Kramer calls and informs Emily of everyone Mikos has killed and tells her to spend the night there.
And inside the house is Mikos, he almost gets Willy when he was searching for Blitz but he runs away and alerts Emily. The lights and phone go out and they can’t find Mikos, but Emily finds Peggy’s remains in the laundry room. She’s so startled that she sends Willy to find his parents and barricades Katya’s room because she can’t move. It’s not long before Mikos is trying to break in.
Willy, who is terrified of being outside in the dark, finds his way back into the house and in danger. Which causes Emily to leave the safety of Katya’s room to protect Willy. She is immediately accosted by Mikos, who puts her head in the oven and tries to cook her to death. Willy runs for Katya’s room but he can’t get in. So Katya has to risk getting up to save him.
Willy eventually gives up beating on the door, he sees Mikos baking Emily and runs for the window. Mikos grabs him but Emily finds strength from somewhere and stabs him. Meanwhile, Katya, has been hard at work trying to get out of her bed. She’s attacked as soon as she’s at the door. After blinding him with her compass, she tricks him so she can get out of her room.
Mikos wanders around the house blind. Willy meets the priest on the street as he runs for help. The priest returns to the house with Willy, and even with a gun, he’s helpless. So Katya picks up the axe from the suit of armor and beheads Mikos. When the police and the parents arrive at the house, Katya is standing in the doorway, covered in blood, holding Mikos’ head.
This is an Italian horror film directed by Joe D’Amato. It is a very graphic slasher that kind of has that 70s feel. The physical FX are good and the kills are sometimes painful to watch. It’s paced pretty well and the kills are pretty well spread out. The audio is in Italian.