Taeter City


Dir: Giulio De Santi
Star: Giulio De Santi, Monica Munoz, Wilmar Zimosa. Riccardo Valentini, Santiago Ortaez

This Italian low-budget production is set in a post-industrial future where the Authority has taken over. Crime is non-existent, because anyone with criminal tendencies is targeted by the Zeed system, which uses radio waves to turn them suicidal, in spectacularly gory ways. Any who don't quite finish the job themselves are taken out by the Authority's Biker division, such as Razor (Munoz) and Wank (Zimosa), with the corpses being hauled off and used as meat to feed the population. However, a problem arises, in the form of Trevor Covalsky (De Santi), who is not only immune to the Zeed system, it has made him stronger and he has absorbed its power. After initially being captured, he breaks out of the Authority facility, and is tracked to a hotel: the full resources of the Bike division are sent to reign in this extremely loose cannon.

This perhaps reminded of Max Headroom, with a fast and loose mix of TV spots and drama, set in a grimy world where the haves have, and the have-nots most definitely don't. The major focus here is outrageous gore, mostly of a practical nature, running the gamut in effectiveness from "a couple of friends mucking about with a store mannequin" to "Holy shit, how the hell did they do that?" Unfortunately, the impact is severely diluted by a visual style deliberately intended, I can only assume, to make much of the film look as if it were shot on an intermittently-flaky camcorder, the picture perpetually jerking and glitching. It doesn't work, unless the aim was to detract severely from proceedings, and induce motion-sickness in sensitive viewers. If De Santi can rein in this pointless nonsense (and perhaps put equal effort into story and characters, as has clearly gone into the joyous special effects), future works might end up being more than a show-reel of splatter, albeit an admittedly impressive one.

C-
[April 2015]


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