For the sake of argument, let’s say you’re at the local park on a lovely fall day and you happen to see a gentleman, clad head to toe in a black coat and a black hat, not only buying a young street urchin a large tuft of cotton candy but taking him on a small paddleboat ride across a lake to a desolate clearing. Surely, if you didn’t forcibly stop him, you’d call the authorities, right?

If not, then it’s a good chance you’re the faceless killer of the mostly mundane Italian flick The Wax Mask, a latter-day effort from former masters of horror Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci — who had the good sense to die during production and leave directing duties to special effects maestro Sergio Stivaletti, who, in all fairness, does a pretty capable job.

Inside a randy brothel — one that’s housing some of Italian porn’s finest actors, I’m sure — like many people at the turn of the century were wont to do, a pair of men are placing bets on whether one of them could make it through an entire night at the new wax museum that recently opened down the street. I’m not giving anything away by telling you this white fool gets himself killed.

His corpse, like so many others throughout the course of the film, are used in the wax museum’s life-like (not really) exhibitions, seemingly presided over by a mad scientist — at least I think he’s a scientist — with a de-gloved hand that is seeking revenge on a cheating wife, although I think it’s safe to say he had his revenge by now and is just acting out for attention.

Even though the flick is nowhere near the standards horror fans have come to expect from Argento and Fulci over the years, Stivaletti salvages what he can, relying more on mystery and atmosphere than the usual buckets of grue; but, to be fair, the gore effects are, of course, watchably graphic and suitably grotesque. But, and I ask this rhetorically, is it, as the box copy tells us, the “last great Italian gore film of the 20th century”? —Louis Fowler

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Thirtysomething Canadian filmmaker G. Patrick Condon excels at procrastinating — so much so that he’s squandered the money intended for his latest feature, a slasher film. Fearing investors’ kneecap-breaking action for his fraudulent inaction, the possibly alcoholic director has no choice but to make his movie, pronto.

Because desperate times call for desperate measures, he rents a three-story house in the country and on the cheap; wires closed-circuit cameras in every nook and cranny, Big Brother-style; and requires the cast to live there during the weeklong shoot. That edict is especially curious since Condon considers actors to be “vile human beings.” No wonder he hires himself to play the killer.

The trick of Incredible Violence is Condon isn’t playing at all; he’s snapped under pressure and prepared to slaughter his cast members for the good of the project. Actually, Incredible Violence has another trick waiting: Its director is also G. Patrick Condon. What I didn’t realize until later, however, is that the Condon of the movie within the movie isn’t really Condon; he’s played by Stephen Oates (TV’s Frontier).

Part of me wonders if watching would be any less of a meta-on-meta mindfuck knowing that information in advance, but I have my doubts, because Incredible Violence is pretty crazy as is, thanks to Oates’ performance as the master manipulator in the attic. Pulling the strings on his own Milgram experiment, his Condon pecks new scenes on the fly, sending them to be spit from dot-matrix printers in each room. His unpaid actors do his spurts of his bidding 24/7 and improvise the rest. When his narrative needs advancing, Condon emerges only to murder, adding a crude papier-mâché theater mask to his ensemble of fur coat and increasingly soiled undershirt.

Although it may not look or sound like it, Incredible Violence intends to disturb and delight, with Condon — the real one, mind you — veering into scenes of the darkly comic and transparently savage with little forewarning. Too bad the performers’ conversations in between are drawn-out to the point of being too conversational — the result of a slack pace and, I suspect, actual improv. Love it or hate it, the film is its own thing: mumblegore. —Rod Lott

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Two moderately appealing lovers frolic on the shore, playing guitars and rejecting sexual advances, but something monstrous is waiting for them in the water. To the similar-sounding cues from a very popular theme by John Williams, a swimming woman gets dragged down to the merciful depths of the shallow water; we can only assume that the much-loved shark Jaws has moved into a freshwater lake in the beautiful Italian countryside.

Turns out, however, we’re actually in an unnamed Latin American country and, what the hell, it’s not a shark, it’s a crocodile. A killer crocodile, if you will.

As a group of annoying journalists (led by Richard Crenna’s son, Richard Anthony Crenna, The Great Los Angeles Earthquake) venture down the river in search of fake news to write regarding multiple cans of toxic waste destroying the marshlands, they come across the foam-and-latex killer crocodile, picking them off one by one; the newsmakers plan to get revenge on the murderous reptile with a series of stupider and stupider plans after each well-earned kill.

Meanwhile, the crocodile stays busy, eating small dogs and smaller children as well.

A local adventurer — complete with a seemingly magical floppy hat — helps the survivors to track the killer crocodile down; additionally, they’re in a sad race with the town’s linen-suited judge (played by Hollywood legend Van Johnson, The Scorpion with Two Tails) and his local toxic waste broker, apparently also on the hunt for the crocodile, mainly so they can catch him and blow him up with dynamite. Luckily, the croc eats their boat.

Directed by Fabrizio de Angelis under his Karate Warrior series pseudonym Larry Ludman, even though the crocodile and many of the bloody effects are usually effective, as you can guess, everything else here is bottom of the toxic waste barrel, all done in the likably exploitative style that the Italians became known and vaunted for, at least by lonely dudes at horror conventions.

Killer Crocodile, interestingly enough, was shot back-to-back with its very similar sequel, but didn’t we kind of say everything we really needed to about killer crocs with this one?  —Louis Fowler

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With Mick Garris in charge, the anthology film Nightmare Cinema is more or less Masters of Horror: The Movie, so at least you know what you’re in for. As helmed by Garris, the wraparound segments take place in Pasadena’s abandoned Rialto theater, where the projectionist is played by the Expendable Mickey Rourke, yet looks like Val Kilmer. Into this historic single-screen moviehouse wander five people — separately, but all curiously attracted to seeing their names on the marquee outside. Naturally, their individual stories are shown to them — and also to us, each from a director with horror bona fides.

The filmmaker with the least name recognition, Juan of the Dead’s Alejandro Brugués, comes first, getting things off to a roaring start with “The Thing in the Woods.” Beginning as a send-up of slashers, this well-choreographed piece of splat-stick aims for yuks and yucks before turning the tale on its (split-open) head, subverting everything you’ve just seen. It’s also the strongest of the quintet by far, so things are all downhill from here.

Having played in the anthology sandbox before, both successfully (Twilight Zone: The Movie) and less so (Trapped Ashes), Gremlins’ Joe Dante effortlessly offers “Mirari.” In this pleasingly lightweight bit of medical malpractice, a pretty young woman (Zarah Mahler, Beyond Skyline) agrees to let a cosmetic surgeon (a game Richard Chamberlain, Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold) do a little nip-and-tuck to her facial scar before her wedding. The result is from-the-start predictable, yet fun to see played out.

In the Catholic school-set “Mashit,” Ryûhei Kitamura (The Midnight Meat Train) turns in quite possibly the bloodiest thing you’ll see all year. Its subliminal flashes are a nice, eerie touch; its elongated end battle featuring a sword-slinging priest (Maurice Benard, Mi Vida Loca) is not. 30 Days of Night’s David Slade follows with “This Way to Egress,” a black-and-white tale that finds the ever-reliable Elizabeth Reaser (Ouija: Origin of Evil) traversing an office building structured like an actual nightmare. Containing a heavy dose of David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, the segment may lack cogency, but because that is its point, that also is its greatest strength.

Finally, in directing the last story, Garris generously gifts himself the slot of showstopper. And boy, does he ever stop the show — right in its tracks, unfortunately. “Dead” is an unqualified dud, concerning a piano prodigy (feature-debuting Faly Rakotohavan) nearly killed along with his parents in a carjacking. Well, technically, he is killed, but emergency-room doctors are able to bring him back to life, albeit one in which he can interact with the deceased. It culminates in a twist worthy of a pretzel — the stick kind — and a floating-head speech from his mom (a wasted Annabeth Gish, Before I Wake) so poorly executed, it’s laughable.

Don’t waste your time with Garris’ contribution, which, at half an hour, wastes a lion’s share of the running time. Had Nightmare Cinema ended at four stories instead of five, it would be a dream. —Rod Lott

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