THE EDITOR (2014)

Studio:       Astron-6
Director:    Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy
Writer:       Matthew Kennedy, Adam Brooks, Conor Sweeney
Producer:  Matthew Kennedy, Adam Brooks
Stars:     Paz de la Huerta, Adam Brooks, Samantha Hill, Matthew Kennedy, Conor Sweeney, Laurence R. Harvey, Udo Kier

Review Score:

---

Summary:

A giallo film editor with a wooden hand becomes the top suspect in an occult-related mystery as those associated with his latest movie are murdered and their fingers severed.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Film editor Rey Ciso works on cutting filmmaker Francesco Mancini’s latest giallo movie “Tarantola” with his attractive assistant Bella. Once a master craftsman, Rey lost his fingers and is now handicapped by a wooden hand. After an encounter at the studio with the film’s lead actor Claudio Calvetti, Rey goes home to his wife Josephine Jardin, a formerly prominent actress who berates her husband while fantasizing about Claudio.

An unknown killer murders Claudio while he has a private screening of the “Tarantola” workprint with his girlfriend Veronica. Actress Margarit Porfiry goes blind from hysteria after finding the body. Her police inspector husband Peter Porfiry interviews studio employees with the help of an officer named Giancarlo. Actor Cal Konitz’s hopes of having an increased role in the movie are dashed when Francesco introduces Cesare, a lookalike stand-in for Claudio.

Police Chief O’Connor pressures Porfiry into closing the case because Margarit is his daughter. Porfiry begins suspecting that Rey is the killer, since Claudio’s fingers were severed in the same manner as Rey’s right hand. Porfiry goes to Francesco’s estate for an interview and learns that Rey was once in an asylum. After Porfiry leaves, Rey’s wife Josephine descends Francesco’s staircase in a negligee. At church, Rey receives confession from Father Clarke.

Back at the studio, Cesare is murdered in the shower and his fingers are severed. With Cesare dead, Francesco instructs Rey to re-cut the film to make Cal the new star. Porfiry asks Rey about his time in the asylum. Rey recalls how he earned his start in the business, leading to an award for editing “The Mirror and the Guillotine,” which was also where he met Josephine. When his wife was fired by Francesco on the next picture, the pressures of editing the world’s longest film mounted and Rey cut off his own fingers in a fit of madness.

Cal introducers Porfiry to his girlfriend Jasmine Rain. Porfiry reveals that he and Jasmine were once lovers. Porfiry is oblivious to the bladed instruments Cal places in the trunk of his car.

Rey returns to work in the editing suite with Bella. She confesses to being in love with Rey, but Rey resists the attraction between them because he is married.

Rey goes out to dinner with Josephine and they have an argument. Porfiry interrupts. Later that night, Rey has a vision of someone stalking him from the shadows in his bedroom.

Porfiry infiltrates the Pilgrim Psychiatric Asylum to search for patient records on Rey Ciso. After an encounter with an inmate who tries seducing him, Porfiry meets Dr. Casini, who previously treated Rey. Casini tells Porfiry about his first meeting with Rey, when he was an up and coming editor who almost killed his assistant Giuseppe. Casini tells Porfiry the parable of Plato’s cave and shows him that Giuseppe is now an inmate whose head is mysteriously wrapped in bandages.

Porfiry returns home to find that Margarit now has a seeing-eye German Shepherd named Ralphie. The killer breaks into their home and tricks Porfiry into putting an ax blade into Margarit’s head. Porfiry cuts off Margarit’s fingers and feeds them to Ralphie to make it look as though Rey Ciso killed her. Giancarlo arrives and Porfiry confuses him into supporting false facts about the murder.

O’Connor berates Porfiry over Margarit’s death. The killer calls Porfiry at the station and taunts him. Porfiry convinces O’Connor into supporting a plan where Giancarlo goes undercover as the new editor at Francesco’s studio.

Francesco fires Rey and replaces him with Giancarlo. Rey goes home to find Josephine watching Cal’s demo reel. Rey begins having strange, otherworldly visions involving Bella. Meanwhile, Bella is killed in the editing room. While trying to finish “Tarantola,” Giancarlo is beset by tarantulas and also dies. Francesco asks Rey to complete the film and Rey reveals that he already did so before he was fired. Francesco is ecstatic that his film is saved.

Father Clarke tries convincing Porfiry that Rey is not the killer. The priest mentions his belief that Porfiry is misguided by the superstition that in Roman times, editors were believed to be bridges to the netherworld.

When Cal learns that Rey edited him out of the movie, he threatens to kill Rey. Rey points out that Cal blinks whenever he tries acting, which is how he knows Cal is bluffing about killing him. Cal still vows to have his revenge.

Cal takes his suspicions about Rey to Porfiry. Porfiry mentions his belief that Rey may have ties to the occult and tells Cal that the best way to get to Rey would be through his wife.

Rey returns home to a ransacked living room. Cal then kidnaps Rey. Although Rey promises to put Cal back into “Tarantola,” Cal forces Rey to watch as he has sex with Josephine. Josephine later reveals that she plans to leave Rey for Cal.

While researching the occult at the library, Porfiry is beset by tarantulas. Porfiry brings his findings to Father Clarke, who tells Porfiry about how Rey also patched the masonry in the church’s bell tower. Meanwhile, the killer uses a chainsaw to murder Cal and Jasmine while they have sex.

After Ralphie discovers a severed hand while playing catch, Porfiry breaks into Rey’s home and finds the occult book “Three Mothers” by Lilith Samael. Not knowing that the book is actually Josephine’s, Porfiry takes it as confirmation of Rey’s ties to the netherworld and goes in search of the man.

A chase between Porfiry and Rey ends with both of their cars going off a cliff. Rey flees the crash site and makes his way to Francesco’s mansion, where Josephine is in the midst of sacrificing Francesco as part of an occult ritual. Porfiry chases Rey and shoots him. Josephine reveals herself to be an incarnation of Death. Porfiry attempts to shoot her, but blows off his own hand. Ultimately, Rey and Porfiry are able to kill Josephine. Porfiry reveals that Cal told him he was the person who killed Cesare, to get a better part in the film, although Josephine committed all of the other murders.

Porfiry returns to the police station and O’Connor tells him to see staff doctor Casini. Porfiry also learns that Josephine and Rey were never married and that Giancarlo is the chief inspector. Porfiry claims that Giancarlo should be dead. Confused, Porfiry runs to the church and learns from Father Clarke that Rey Ciso never patched the belfry and that the bell has not rung in over 100 years. Porfiry climbs the bell tower, digs through bricks, and discovers a skull on top of a pile of film cans. Porfiry screams as he realizes that he is now in a different reality.

---

Review:

Forget “The Equestrian Vortex.”  “Tarantola” is where it’s at.  That’s the latest giallo film under the editorial stewardship of Rey Ciso.  Once considered the top craftsman in his profession when he was cutting such splatter crime masterpieces as “The Cat with the Velvet Blade” and “Color Me Sin,” Ciso is now derided as a laughable cripple since severing his own fingers during a fit of temporary madness.  Hobbled by a wooden hand, Ciso’s life is made more miserable by an insufferable starlet wife oblivious to her increasingly fading has-been status.

True trouble for Ciso comes when actors, assistants, and associates at the studio begin turning up as corpses with missing fingers, an injury suspiciously reminiscent of the editor’s peculiar malady.  The chief inspector, whose wife is stricken with sudden blindness from the hysteria of discovering one such bloody body, concludes that Ciso must be guilty.  Before the investigator can solve the crime however, he’ll have to contend with crawling legions of Brazilian hissing spiders, arrogant actors, insane asylum sexual seductions, and an occult exploration into the ancient Roman belief about film editors being bridges to the netherworld.

From the mad minds of the fiendish filmmaking team collectively known as Astron-6, “The Editor” is a wittily funny parody born of an affectionate appreciation for the giallo genre.  This isn’t a lowbrow jab at easy targets.  This is a smart Friar’s Club roast of an entire cinema subsection.  Every gag, joke, howl, and insult is underscored with a reverence that makes the film as much of a loving tribute as a satirical send-up.

Between its severed head and severed limbs, “The Editor” overflows with enough whispered voices, turtleneck sweaters, razorblade slices, and colored gelatin lights to fill the filmography of any Italian horror auteur whose name begins with Dario, Lucio, Lamberto, or Mario.  “The Editor” makes plenty sure that all jokes are in plain view for the taking; it’s impossible to miss something like the bevy of butt cheeks offering off-to-the-side sight gags.  Yet no matter how outrageous the goof, nothing is so supremely over-the-top as to become a pastiche itself.

It would be easy to echo Bill Murray as Hercules to put across the absurdity of shockingly shoddy dialogue dubbing.  Here, such typical trends of seventies sub-cinema are no more exaggerated than when they were en vogue.  “The Editor” taps directly into the inherent lunacy of giallo filmmaking staples themselves without teetering too far overboard into snickering slapstick.

Credit the stability in its style to a wall-to-wall roster of perfectly pitched performances.  Writers/directors and co-stars Matthew Kennedy and Adam Brooks, the latter of whom resembles Lance Henriksen with Sam Elliott’s mustache, set the range with one role more straightly subdued and one more prone to bug-eyed expressions.  Everyone else is free to run the playground in between as each scene sees fit.

As much as some like lobbing complaints in Paz de la Huerta’s direction for varied reasons, her mix of Melanie Griffith meets Jennifer Tilly is on the money for an actress of questionable talent ignorant to her own irrelevance.  Some additions like Udo Kier and Laurence R. Harvey are unnecessary, or rather their characters are, certainly not the actors.  Although in satirizing a genre partially defined by non-sequiters, there may not be such a thing as an unnecessary inclusion of anything.

Laughs start arriving less frequently as “The Editor” winds into its final third.  The gags don’t become any less funny, but “too much of a good thing” comes into play as the steam begins hissing into a controlled wheeze.  Even those who “get” the humor can only guffaw at commonplace misogyny and niche “New York Ripper” in-jokes for so long.

The plot also feels the burn around the same point.  Even with heavy swaths of comedy, “The Editor” doubles as a satisfying giallo in its own right until a mostly sensible structure drops entirely out the window.  It might be part of the point to amp up the madness so much that the storyline loses coherency.  Though the looseness in the resolution creates an impression of the last 30 pages of script not trying as hard as the first 70.

But “The Editor” is an experience so fun that its sincerity and its high entertainment value smooth out the bumps with a hammer of good humor.  Spend a weekend with “Deep Red,” “The Beyond,” or any combination of preferred Argento, Fulci, et al. films.  Let them inflate for a moment.  Then give “The Editor” a go with an open mind to pinprick that balloon.  Add in an absolutely killer soundtrack whose closing theme you are guaranteed to beatbox randomly for hours after the fact, and you have one of the most enjoyable movies of the year.

NOTE: There is a brief scene after the end credits.

Review Score:  85

---