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Three Faces Of Terror (The) AKA I Tre volti del terrore (2004)
R0 - Italy - Pulp Video Review written by and copyright: Jari Kovalainen (1st January 2006). |
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The Film
 Anthology horror movies, where you have separate stories within one film, are usually good fun. I personally miss them now they are not really being made anymore, since they are a bit like watching three or four different episodes from a good TV-series together. It also helped that they were often influenced from the comic books like the ones from “EC”, published by William Gaines mainly in the 1950s, which I really enjoy. Horror anthologies were quite popular in the 1960s-1970s, when British “Amicus” did e.g. “Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965)”, and “Tales from the Crypt (1972)”, and many know Romero´s “Creepshow (1982)” (there is also sequel) from the later period. Among these are a few real classics also, like Mario Bava´s “Black Sabbath AKA I Tre Volti Della Paura (1963)” from Italy, and Masaki Kobayashi´s “Kwaidan AKA Kaidan (1964)” from Japan. One of the more recent Italian films, “I Tre volti del terrore” is openly influenced by some of these movies, an homage, and the man behind it is the director Sergio Stivaletti, who is best known for his special make-up effects work in such Italian horror films like “Demons AKA Demoni (1985)”, “Dellamorte Dellamore AKA Cemetery Man (1994)”, and in some of the movies by Dario Argento. This is also the second film for him as a director (first one was “The Wax Mask AKA M.D.C. - Maschera di cera (1997)”). The basic story structure involves 2 men; Marco (Riccardo Serventi Longhi) and Carlo (Emiliano Reggente), and one woman Sandra (Ambre Even) who all travel in a train (“Dr. Terror's House of Horrors” anyone?). An older professor Peter Price (John Phillip Law) comes to the train compartment. He´s a hypnotist, and with him is a special sphere. Each of the people will look into the sphere, which will then take the viewer to the 3 separate stories. Let´s take a closer look at the stories first, and then about the general views of the film. First of the stories is called “L´Anello Della Luna”, and the main character in that one is Marco. He and his friend find an ancient tomb, which they rob and sell the treasures to a collector (played again by John Phillip Law). Marco makes the mistake of putting one of the rings from the grave on his finger, and when there´s a full moon, Marco turns into a werewolf. For many horror fans, a werewolf is probably towards the top of the list, when people are thinking of their favourite monsters. This first segment is quite short though and doesn´t offer that memorable werewolf-action, but the transformation scene is rather well done and the story delivers a few good moments. The problem with the story basically is the scenes in the middle that happen after the grave and before the actual transformation, which failed to keep the story interesting. Further more, while the actual werewolf is not half bad, it was still a bit amusing to see the girl running around in a bikini trying to escape from it. In this segment there´s also the first cameo in the film, when Claudio Simonetti (composer and ex-member of “The Goblins”) is having fun next to the swimming pool. Second story, “Un Viso Perfetto (Dr. Lifting)” tells about two women (one of them is Sandra from the train), who go to a plastic surgeon, when Sandra´s friend wants to do some “improvements” to her face. The slick doctor (again played by John Phillip Law) welcomes her to his clinic, but soon both women are in serious trouble, when the nice plastic surgeon turns into a “mad doctor”, with twisted experiments. The story starts with a funny cameo, where Lamberto Bava directs a movie, which is called “Demons 7”. This story is actually quite good, with some strong visual images. The last story is called “Il Guardiano Del Lago”, which tells about Carlo and two of his friends, who go to the lake to spend the night in front of the campfire. They´re warned by a strange man (again: John Phillip Law), who tells that there´s something evil in the lake. As the title pretty much hints, there´s a “guardian of the lake”, which doesn´t like visitors very much. This is the story that has also some special effects created with the help of computer, and although those effects look too “low budget”, the story is still in some ways entertaining camp horror. Again there are some scenes in the middle of the story, which slow the pace down. Overall, “I Tre volti del terrore” anthology is a disappointment. All the stories have several elements to make them work, but Stivaletti can´t breath enough life into them (only momentarily), and they mainly succeed in bringing a collection of horror-stories and make up effects that can mildly entertain on a “rainy day”, but nothing more than that really. It has to be said though, that Stivaletti obviously wanted to bring some “old school” horror elements in the play, which often includes some black humour, screaming women characters, and evil in the form of mad doctors, werewolves and monsters, and probably didn´t want people to take this in any way too seriously. That´s the key to watch this without any major complaints: Not to take it seriously, but rather have some popcorn and watch some silly horror. Fortunately some entertaining values are there if you look close enough. One other key element where the film disappoints is its visual style, meaning more of technical aspects than artistic. The film has been shot with Mini-DV -video cameras, and rather than using them to make some more “rough” and “documentary look” images (like in e.g. “28 Days Later... (2002)”) to better justify the use of video, in this one video makes the movie look more “cheap”. Don´t get me wrong, the cinematographer has probably done the best job with the resources he had (and they have used cranes, dollies, and steadycam), but I couldn´t help but get a bit frustrated with the look of Mini-DV in this type of horror film. The use of music is also a mixed pack. Some of the music sounds very nice, but then there are scenes where the film uses some synthesized score straight from the 1980s, which didn´t serve the film always that well. Also the scene where you have a techno track, which includes some moaning of a woman is an instant camp classic, when it comes to musical scores. It sometimes felt that this was a 1980s film made in 1994, and maybe that was its purpose? Anyway, “I Tre volti del terrore” is a film that can be fun when watched with the right attitude and in humour, and it includes some good make-up effects. It´s still a mediocre film, which suffers also from the low production values. Actor John Phillip Law is easily the best actor in the film, but others are more forgettable.
Video
The Italian release is presented in Anamorphic 1.78:1. The transfer is clean, since it´s probably taken straight from the digital source, but there is some edge enhancement and overall softness (where I´m not sure that could it be intentional or not). The film is often dark with plenty of contrast, and video is not exactly the ideal format of capturing these type of images. So to me many darker scenes looked somewhat “murky” even and some scenes looked unnatural (too “digital”). Again, I can´t necessarily blame the transfer, since video format often makes some issues more difficult to judge when it comes to DVD-releases. It´s not a bad transfer, but probably not the best that it could be. Dual-layer disc is R0, the film runs 84:37 minutes (PAL), and it has 12 chapters.
Audio
Now here things get a bit complicated. What we have is 3 audio tracks: Italian Dolby Digital 5.1, Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround, and English Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono. One can assume that the Italian-track is the “original one” (e.g. IMDB doesn´t even list the English language name for the film), but the film seems to have been shot in English, since some of the actors speak “broken English” during the film and there´s a featurette in the extras-section, where actors dub their lines in Italian. Also the English language matches pretty much on the lip movements. Too bad, then, that the English-track on the DVD is faulty. It has rather bad digital errors, like crackles and audio dropouts, which are clearly the result of sloppy encoding. Other than that, the English track is a fairly good monaural track. The Italian 5.1-track is better in many ways, since there are no errors (I didn´t fully listen to the audio track though, since despite the errors I watched the film in English) and there is some nice surround-activity making this track a better choice when it comes to music and sound effects (Italian dialogue is dubbed). Some of the surround sounds from the rear channels were almost a bit too aggressive in certain scenes compared to the dialogue. There are also English and Italian subtitles included. The English subtitles have also some issues, since they include Italian language in certain scenes even when there´s no dialogue (some of the dialogue from the Italian track is not spoken in the English track). English subtitles also follow the English dialogue, and Italian subtitles follow the Italian dialogue if I am not mistaken.
Extras
Italian “Pulp Video” has released a 3-disc set, packaged in a foldout digi-pack, which is placed in a cardboard slipcase. “Disc 3” in the set is a soundtrack CD. There´s no booklet. Disc 1 First disc includes the film, which you can also watch with audio commentary by director/co-writer/executive producer Sergio Stivaletti, and co-writer Antonio Tentori. It´s only in Italian (no subtitles), so I can´t really comment on that. It can also been said at this point, that all the extras are in Italian only, and with no subtitles, so they´re not English friendly. Next there´s an alternate scene (1:16 min) from the second story, where a woman runs into a deformed patient (this patient is not in the actual film). Then there´s a “Il Treno” -featurette (13:09 min), which is the making of about the train sequences. There are some cast & crew interviews, but there is plenty of material with music only, showing the actors and the crew in filming. Actress Ambre Even speaks English in her comments. We also have two theatrical trailers, Italian (1:34 min) and longer US (2:40 min). Finally, there´s 4 photo galleries, slideshows with music: -Behind the scenes (7:52 min – 59 photos) -Stills (4:48 min – 36 photos) -Stills from the film (3:36 min – 27 photos) -Posters (0:30 min – 3 photos) Disc 2 Disc two starts with the section called “Making of”, which includes 6 featurettes: -“Il Guardiano Del Lago” runs 9:01 minutes, and focuses on the third story from the film. -“Il Dottor Lifting” runs 9:27 minutes, and tells about the second story, with the women and the doctor. Actress Ambre Even speaks English. -“L´Anello Della Luna” runs 11:34 minutes, and its focus is in the first segment (the story about the werewolf). -“Special Effects” runs 6:14 minutes, and shows how they did some of the scenes with blue screen and computer. This time there is basically constant talking going on, all in Italian. -“Doppiaggio” runs 5:29 minutes, and shows how the actors are dubbing their lines in Italian. -“Suono” runs 7:57 minutes, and this final featurette focuses on the music of the film, and composer Maurizio Abeni is being interviewed. All the featurettes (except the last three) follow basically the same pattern as the one on “Disc 1”, so there are some cast & crew interviews, but mainly there are behind the scenes footage with music. This makes things a bit easier to follow for the people who don´t speak Italian. Next section is “Bloopers” -featurette (9:12 min) which shows the funny bits from here and there in the film with music. This featurette is a few minutes too long (some of the bits are repeated), and it´s not as funny as makers wanted it to be, but there is some good stuff also. Like “Disc 1”, this one also has photo galleries, this time two: -Behind the scenes - extra extended (5:12 min – 39 photos) -Stills - extra extended (3:12 min – 24 photos) Disc rounds up with 2 teasers from the film, which run 17 seconds and 33 seconds. Disc 3 The package also includes a soundtrack CD, which has 26 tracks from the film, 64:58 minutes of music by composer Maurizio Abeni. Here´s the track list: 1. I Tre Volti Del Terrore (01:55) 2. La Sfera Ipnotica (01:41) 3. Nella Tomba Etrusca (03:39) 4. Risveglio E Inquietudine (03:09) 5. La Casa Del Collezionista (02:18 ) 6. Il Segreto Dell'anello Maledetto (03:58 ) 7. Luna Piena E Omicidio (01:58 ) 8. La Fontana Che Gronda Sangue (02:47) 9. La Piscina (00:39) 10. Trasformazione E Caccia (03:02) 11. Valzer Dei Bisturi (02:18 ) 12. Il Corridoio Oscuro (03:38 ) 13. Chirurgia Devastante (02:25) 14. Una Porta Da Non Aprire (03:54) 15. Beautiful Face (02:45) 16. Il Guardiano Del Lago (03:00) 17. Pic-Nic Sulla Spiaggia (02:13) 18. Effusioni Notturne (02:15) 19. Arrivo Del Tentacolo (02:13) 20. Ritrovamento Dei Resti (02:06) 21. Morte Del Licantropo (00:53) 22. Agguato In Sala Operatoria (00:58 ) 23. Nella Grotta Del Mostro (01:52) 24. Combattimento E Morte (02:44) 25. Qual E' La Nostra Destinazione? (02:41) 26. Put Your Eyes On Me (03:32)
Overall
Mediocre anthology horror film, which still delivers a few enjoyable moments. This Italian 3-disc set has some issues with the English audio track, but Italian 5.1-track is also included, as well as English subtitles. Extras are not English friendly, but many still quite easy to follow. Note, that a single disc “regular release” is also available. This DVD is available at Xploited Cinema.
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