Trauma

Directed by: Dario Argento

I frequently stop by the better known horror message boards and have seen that some people say your not a true horror fan unless you've seen Italian Horror movies, or "gialli". Actually If I read correctly, gialli is a sub-genre, named after a series of paperback crime novels.These books were usally very violent, and sometimes almost crossed into the "Horror" category.

I know I've seen this movie in the past on "Skinemax" or "Ho-time", but back then I had no clue who Dario Argento was, and probally didn't care. I also remember this movie as being gorier than the virtually gorless version I rented from Blockbuster.

I also wanna know why everyone goes crazy over Italian movies... I mean the gore and stuff is good.. But often the plot is too muffled, and usually has enough holes in it to run a MAC truck through..


As it seems most Italian movies start out.. This one starts off in NewYork. A man driving to work sees a girl (played by Argento's own Daughter "Asia") on a bridge getting ready to jump.. he pulls over to see whats going on, and to help her. He offers her some food and reluctantly she goes with him. While at the restraunt she won't a single thing, And when she DOES finally take a bite of the diner classic "grilled cheese sandwich" she imediatly runs to the bathroom and throws it up.. This leads to us finding out that she is an escaped patient at a clinic that is supposed to help her with her anorexia. For reasons which we NEVER find out, she is terrified to go back to the clinic.

Police catch up with her outside the diner and take her back home. We then meet her Parents, The gypsey money swindlers. They stage fake s�ances and cheat rich people out of their hard earned, dirty money. Well for some reason , (which I'm oblivious to) The mother runs outside and is decapitated.. The father follows her, and suprise.. he's decapitated too. The daughter comes running out, and she sees the killer holding the heads of her parents, she screams, thus starting a fun string of murders.

We find out that the killer only kills on rainy days. The killer also uses this really cool device that has a metal wire that he uses to strangulate and later decapitate his victims. I saw an R-rated version of this movie, so like I said, there is little to no visuals in this movie. I suspect there is UNCUT versions floating around, but I'm no expert on the genre, so I'm not gonna wade through Dario Argento fan pages to find them.


If I gave away any more I'd be revealing too much, and you would easily be able to guess the killer. It wasn't hard to guess though, I had it narrowed down to two people halfway through, and when the first good clue came.. I guessed it easily.


All in all the movie is Ok.. A decent rental if you have rented pretty much everything else.  I'd probally have given it a better review if I saw some FX.. But the R-rated version seems to be missing  everything. I suspect this is a severely hacked version of this movie..

Also.. Asia Argento is just plain annoying.. during the whole movie she is either crying, screaming, or being naked. That in turn is odd, because the character she plays is supposed to be 16...

                                                            Lupin-III

Lupin's Death Count

5 Decapitations
1 Dead lizard
1 Dead butterfly
1 Fake death
1 Talking decapitated head



Funny Things I Noticed

Asia Argento plays a 16 year old anorexic girl.. yet we see her boobs quite a few times.. Don't you think they should have cut THAT out, and not the blood?..

Also upon closer examination of the device the killer uses..
It seems to me, that they would cut themselves using it.. hmm..