The Editor
Directed by Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy
Cast: Paz de la Huerta, Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy, Udo Kier
September 8, 2015
Reviewed by Brian M. Sammons
Easily the best thing Astron-6 has ever done, and an absurdly goofy love letter to the Italian giallo flicks. Now if that doesn’t sell you on this movie…well then maybe you don’t know who Astron-6 are or what giallo movies are. So okay, let me explain. Astron-6 is a very indie Canadian film production company that first came to my notice with the wonderfully weird Manborg of 2011. If you are a fan of over the top sci-fi action flicks from the 80s, you really need to see that movie.
Well this time around the gang have turned their attention to the very bloody, and very sexy, murder mystery horror movies made in Italy from around the mid-1960s, to their heyday in the 1970s, and then the 1980s when they started to wane. If you know what they are, then you either love or hate them, as there is usually no in between. Me, I love them to pieces. If you’ve never seen any, here are some must watches for you to check out: Blood and Black Lace, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, The Cat o’ Nine Tails, Bay of Blood, Tenebrae, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (if just for the awesome title alone), Don’t Torture a Duckling, Hatchet For The Honeymoon, Deep Red, and really, on and on I could go, but that is a good list to start with. But if you already love giallos like I love giallos, then you will get a huge kick out of this movie. Chock full of blood, nudity, smoking, black gloves, sex, perversions, awkward face slaps, accents, and murder, The Editor is far more of a spoof than a typical horror comedy, and that’s fine with me.
As for this story, it’s about a film editor who lost his fingers in a tragic…accident? Now he’s working on a new film and the bodies are staring to pile up. There is sex, blood, betrayal, and an unknown madman (or madwoman) on the loose and all fingers are pointing to the mentally unstable editor as the culprit. And really, that’s about it. Sure, there’s more to it than that, but it’s basically a checklist of tropes used in giallo movies, and as a spoof, I would expect nothing less. So there’s really nothing scary here, but there is a whole lot of funny and thankfully the jokes hit more than miss. The acting is appropriately over the top, and the visuals and direction are right out of a 70s Italian movie. Now, if anything the movie is a tad long, as some of the funny parts get repeated a bit too often, but we’re only talking about a handful of scenes and a handful of minutes that could have been cut. Other than that, this movie was on point time and time again.
Moving on to the extras on this Blu-ray/DVD two pack from Scream Factory, things kick off with a really entertaining audio commentary with writer/directors Adam Brooks, Matt Kennedy and writer Connor Sweeney. There is a behind the scenes featurette called “Making Movies Use to be Fun” that runs 51 minutes. There is an interview with the “Hook Lab” that’s 7 minutes long and is more than a little tongue-in-cheek. There is a five minute short on comic book artist who did some art for the movie and a film festival introduction that’s just about two minutes long. Lastly, four deleted scenes are here to bring the special features to a close.
The Editor is for giallo fans. If you are not one of those, then you might like parts of this film (and there’s always the lots of nudity and bloodshed to keep people happy) but by and large most of the jokes will fly right over your head. However, if you are a fan of the super-stylized murder mysteries, then you will absolutely love this movie. I sure did. So consider this a high, but conditional, recommendation.
