Translated from Latin, the word “morituris” means “dying.” While watching Morituris: Legions of the Dead, I could feel my interest doing just that, with the passing of each loathsome second.
At a cursory glance, the Italian-born Morituris appears to hold promise, what with creatures looking like the guys from GWAR got a hose-down and a steampunky wardrobe upgrade. And since these armored villains are mute and former gladiators from ancient Roman history, influence of Amando de Ossorio’s Blind Dead series is not out of the question. Such things should be in Morituris’ favor.
Nope. Instead, the debut film from director Raffaele Picchio is terribly, woefully rote, and with no imagination of its own. It’s all about cribbing clichés and regurgitating them into an even less appealing state. How many horror films have we seen built upon a road-tripping car full of attractive young people? Regardless of the number, here is yet another.
We are introduced to the vehicle’s five occupants — three Italian guys who have picked up two Romanian girls — with approximately 20 minutes of dialogue between them. By the end of that, no character names have stuck (if they were shared at all); about all we know is that they are headed to an illegal, late-night rave in the middle of the woods. Once there, the guys turn on the girls and rape them. This somehow wakes the damned, who dispatch the 20-somethings in predictably porno-gore fashion.
There’s so little to Morituris’ bones that Picchio and his screenwriters are forced to pad, doing even more harm to their film. First, the prologue: Presented as some family’s old Super 8 home movies, it baffles because of an illogical POV — just who is shooting this? Second, the B story: One of the rapists has a brother, whom we cut to from time to time as he entertains a prostitute at his house, eventually leading to a scene in which the john borrows a page from Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho and shoves a Habitrail and rodent up his by-the-hour harlot’s vagina, all while 1965’s Bloody Pit of Horror is projected on the wall behind them. What’s the point? I don’t know, because that string ends there. It occurred to me that I’d much rather have been watching Mickey Hargitay — not just as the Crimson Executioner, but in anything — than another minute of Morituris. —Rod Lott