Horror
1 hour and 33 minutes
Rated: Not Rated
Written by: Ruggero Deodato, Jacopo Mazzuoli, and Angelo Orlando
Directed by: Ruggero Deodato
Produced by: Massimo Esposti
Cast:
Roger Garth
Ernesto Mahieux
Carlotta Morelli
Gabriele Rossi
Noemi Smorra
It had been twenty-three years since Italian horror maestro Ruggero Deodato last helmed a horror movie for his fans - that was of course the 1993 giallo The Washing Machine. Deodato has become most famous for his groundbreaking 1980 cannibal/exploitation film, Cannibal Holocaust, whose found-footage format went on to inspire a plethora of notable horror films to date including: The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, and Cloverfield. Much more recently, however, the cannibal film subgenre was meant to be resurrected by horror filmmaker, and Deodato fanboy, Eli Roth with his movie The Green Inferno. Still, Deodato's masterpiece looks like Citizen Kane next to Roth's cheap imitation (it always looks like Citizen Kane next to any of its imitations ... sorry, Umberto Lenzi fans). Nevertheless, it seems rather odd that somebody who made such a mark in the horror world had vanished from it entirely for twenty-three years. It was a long and troubled road for Deodato to get to Ballad in Blood, and it is one worth exploring, especially if one is to understand the film's overall cohesion ... or lack there of.
At some point after Roth had begun vocally championing the films of Deodato and other Italian cannibal film pioneers such as Lenzi, Deodato began considering a return to the world of horror. Unfortunately, unless you're Dario Argento, the film industry in Italy and really in Europe in general hardly seems fit these days to back anyone interested in making a horror film, even despite their past works, for many reasons but mostly because a) the money is not there, or it is hard to obtain, and/or b) no one is willing to take the gamble. At some point after Deodato made a cameo in Roth's Hostel: Part II he was offered to direct a segment in the anthology film The Profane Exhibit (which despite the movie never seeing a finished product, Deodato did apparently shoot his segment). The Profane Exhibit led to Deodato reteaming with actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice to make House on the Edge of the Park: Part II, a follow-up to one of Deodato's most beloved and disturbing movies. Unfortunately, as Lombardo Radice told me himself, that movie fell apart due to conflicts with producers and financial backers. It did, however, cause Deodato's interest to shift onto another based-on-a-true-event idea he had for a film and out of that Ballad in Blood was born.
If this sounds convoluted and confusing, it's because it is. And this long and disheartening process to get one feature length film out of an Italian horror visionary who has been silent in the genre for so long surely affected the overall quality of the film. Ballad in Blood is unquestionably Ruggero Deodato's worst movie since the late 1980s when he delivered such laughable films as The Lone Runner or Dial: Help. The difference being, with those two previous films, one can see the dedication Deodato had in himself thrown into them. There's something charming and redeeming about that. With Ballad in Blood, however, it feels as if the maestro's losing whatever conviction he had for himself. Losing ... not lost.
For starters, the dialogue is painfully bad. It seems as if Deodato and screenwriters Jacopo Mazzuoli and Angelo Orlando had no idea how English speaking individuals actually talk to each other nowadays, and utilized the filmography of Eli Roth as to some sort of indication on the matter. Every other word out of the characters' mouths is just one angry explosion of vulgarity and profanity after another. And while yes, given the situation surrounding these characters, that could be forgiven and certainly even believable to a degree, but here it is bloated and overdone. Deodato, Mazzuoli, and Orlando clearly spent too much time delving into the films from the torture-porn craze of the early 2000s before they wrote this film in order to get a sense of how horror movie characters act. This is extremely disheartening especially given Deodato's past dedication to realism. A student of Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, Deodato believed film should reflect reality. The characters in Ballad in Blood feel fake and like poorly constructed horror movie caricatures. On top of this, there's a lot of scenes and characters present within the movie that definitely needed to be cut out of the finished film in order to give it an overall streamlined effect - something more akin to Deodato's House on the Edge of the Park which was clearly the film he was trying to parallel with Ballad in Blood.
The performances are likewise terrible, but one is willing to forgive this notion due to the fact that in horror films - especially foreign or Italian horror movies - the performances aren't usually what's important. But here, they needed to be believable. This is as much a mystery film as it is a horror film, and in order for us as an audience to want to solve the proposed mystery with the film's characters we have to have at least some sort of care for them. With Ballad in Blood it's incredibly difficult to care for any of the characters in the slightest sense, even the ones who are quite obviously meant to be sympathized with.
The pacing is off too. This may in a way be an editing fault as much as it is a directorial issue. Editor Daniel de Rossi pieces together flashback sequences with the present in a jarring and unannounced fashion that it only becomes apparent what is happening fifteen to twenty minutes into the film. These sort of heavy handed jump cuts don't work effectively enough to engage the viewer, in fact they just lose said viewer entirely.
Despite all this mangled mess, there are still sparks of brilliance hiding within the trash heaps of Ballad in Blood. Remember, I stated Deodato feels like a director who is losing his conviction in himself - his belief in himself as a talented and capable filmmaker - but he hasn't completely lost it yet. There are specific sequences in Ballad in Blood that genuinely feel like old school Deodato and any fan of his work will surely be reassured by this. His re-teaming with Italian horror composer Claudio Simonetti is terrific, and Simonetti's score for the movie reflects his unquestionable talent. The film's final moment, utilizing a direct piece of Riz Ortolani's soundtrack from House on the Edge of the Park, showcases Deodato's profound respect for his past works and for the genre overall. While he may have failed in creating a film as powerful as the earlier film was, this direct linkage between the two shows that Deodato is still interested in the ideas that he explored in his groundbreaking and brilliant earlier films. This ought to prove promising for anyone who is a fan of his. Similarly, the moment in the film's third act depicting the fatal crime that sparked the film's mystery is jarringly horrible to watch unfold, but the fact that it can elicit this kind of reaction out of a viewer is powerful. It mirrors the reactions of shock and terror and rage and anger that Deodato so expertly pulled from audience members who first saw Cannibal Holocaust or House on the Edge of the Park so many years ago. The maestro is still there. The man deeply interested in the dark and nasty side of human interaction and nature lurks somewhere beneath the corrupted and self-doubting surface that's been instilled in him from years of silence and camaraderie with lesser filmmakers who lack the vision and talent of Deodato.
There is hope Deodato could one day churn out something brilliant in the realm of horror again (from what Lombardo Radice told me, it sounded like House on the Edge of the Park: Part II would have been the film to do just that). Unfortunately, with the maestro's older age, and with how long it took just to produce a film as subpar as Ballad in Blood, I worry horror fans may never see it.
3/10
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