Working under dozens of aliases, Joe DAmato directed at least 200 films before his death in 1999, and the fact that two of his productions were prosecuted for obscenity comes as something of a surprise none of his pictures are even remotely watchable. With Absurd, he hoped to build upon the success of his previous film, Anthropophagous: The Beast, where a cannibal killer stalked some characters that admired the scenery for 87 of the movies 90 minutes. He also rips off John Carpenters Halloween, pitting a babysitter and some imperilled children against an indestructible killer, but with more outrageous gore sequences. A nurse is killed by a screwdriver to the brain, an orderly has his head torn open by an industrial saw and a woman has her head rammed into a lit oven, all of which were enough to land the movie in the dock in 1984. More than 30 years later, the movie still has not been resubmitted to the BBFC.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
