BLACK DAHLIA

A young policeman and his alcoholic colleague are investigating the case of some young women found cut to pieces in the alleys of Hollywood. The case seems to be somehow linked to the murder of Betty Short, the actress known as Black Dahlia who in 1947 was cut to pieces at an audition she intended to use to break into the world of Hollywood. If you associate the title "Black Dahlia" with the faces of Josh Hartnett, Scarlet Johansson, and Hilary Swank, know that I am not about to review the beautiful film by Brian De Palma, but the latest abominable abortion of the one who is seriously beginning the ascent to the Olympus of the worst directors ever appeared on the face of the earth: Ulli Lommel. Polish by birth, Lommel boasts a career as a director, screenwriter, actor, producer, cinematographer, composer, and who knows what else, failing miserably in every role he improvises to take on. With an average rating of 1.5 stars on IMDb, his films make ugliness a real convention, just citing some of his titles to realize: "Mirror - Who lives in that mirror?" (and sequels), "Green River Killer", "Zombie Nation". People like Lommel should be kept away from a camera, but since digital cameras were invented, production costs have been significantly reduced and thus "professionals" of filth like our Lommel can afford to self-produce 2 to 4 films a year. A real threat! In recent years, our man seems to have specialized in making horrors based on real facts and thus from "Green River Killer" to "Zodiac Killer" we arrive at this "Black Dahlia", more than a film a real endurance test for the viewer. Indeed, watching this film is a bit like being involved in one of the many tortures of the Enigmista: do you love horror cinema without caring about what surrounds you? Well, for the penalty of contrapasso you are forced to watch a horror film that could make you hate the genre and push you to flee from home and run happily in the meadows chasing butterflies. "Black Dahlia" has this power, perhaps it is the devil himself who inspired it, it is deeply ugly, so ugly that it is harmful to the intelligence of the spectator. For 1 hour and 20 minutes, you are forced to watch a couple of scenes repeated at least ten times; in fact, the film is repetitive to the extreme, becoming irreparably boring after just ten minutes from the beginning. In practice, the film is built like this: a girl goes to an audition in an abandoned warehouse to play Black Dahlia, here she meets a woman in her thirties dressed as a schoolgirl (with tufts of hair... she only lacks the lollipop) who behaves like a possessed one with Tourette's syndrome, assisted by two idiots (one with a rugby helmet, the other with a sadomaso mask...). The aspiring actress is made to lie down on a table dirty with blood and tied without suspecting anything and then is cut to pieces. The three idiot killers jump around and carry pieces of corpses around the city with nonchalance, which they then place in the alley behind the warehouse (?). Time cut. A CSI-style team, but composed of a chattering fat woman, a young policeman, a drunk who is always sprawled on the ground with a bottle in his hand, and two others there to make up the numbers, finds themselves at the crime scene and investigate, discussing the more and the less. Time cut. The young policeman is obsessed with the case and has nightmares about Black Dahlia of the '47 (why ???). Time cut. A girl goes to the warehouse for the audition and the story repeats itself identically, with frequent reuse of the same footage. And so for 80 minutes. In short, a really exhausting experience. Then the film is made in such a pedestrian way that even some filth distributed by Pinocci is missed. The direction does not exist, everything is shot thus haphazardly with a discount digital camera; the editing, puffed up with "special" effects such as slow motions, rewinds, sudden flashes, and black and white inserts, is really annoying in its desire to be "cool" but in the end only "pathetic". The soundtrack is as repetitive as the film; the special effects are limited to simple splashes of blood that want to make the film appear violent (but in reality, it is an innocuous film like Disney's "Cinderella"). Not to mention the actors, so ridiculous as to provoke uncontrollable fits of laughter at first sight. My favorites are Elissa Dowling, who plays the killer dressed as a schoolgirl, a little actress who in just 2 years has already acted in thirteen films (and despite the number, they are not porn, but all super low-budget horror films, some always directed by Lommel), and Ross Atwer, that is, the young policeman. Naturally, the film is strongly discouraged, but it should be seen to realize that there is no limit to the "ugly". Poor, but it deserves less.