aka THE APARTMENT ON THE 13TH FLOOR, aka WEEK OF THE KILLER
Overall Rating:
Nastiness Rating:
Directed by: Eloy de la Iglesia
Written by: Eloy de la Iglesia/Antonio Fos/Dick Randall (US dialogue, billed as Robert Oliver)
A couple accidentally kills a cab driver who didn’t want them re-enacting Paradise By The Dashboard Light in his cab. When the older man makes up his mind that he and his younger girl aren’t going to the cops, he won’t let anything get in his way…including her. Now, what does he do with the body? Well, he goes to his brother for help. That help, though leads to a third body on his conscience.
The bodies pile up and are soon in much smaller pieces than they once were. And those pieces end up mixed in with the beef at the slaughterhouse that the man works at.
Meat pie, anybody? God, that’s good!
One thing you never count on when you’re collecting body parts is the smell. Poor guy has to go through about 100 cans of air freshener just to keep the dogs away.
Then there’s his creepy relationship with the next door neighbor. Are they friends? Lovers? Creepy peep lookers? I dunno, but they seem to have a good time showering together in the waterfall by the pool. Maybe they’re just kindred spirits.
When the waitress who is in love with him comes by to take care of him, things get even messier. Nothing says “Trust me” like a bloody axe, a room you don’t want anyone to go into, a mysterious bag and an inexplicable smell!
Actually, let’s get into all of the reasons why we shouldn’t trust this guy.
1) He listens to cheesy porn music while watching young, shirtless boys playing outside.
2) He works at a slaughterhouse.
3) He has girly pictures on his living room wall. (If he had married his girl, would she have let him keep them up? Italians are weird.)
3) His girlfriend is supposed to be very young, but she’s not. “You know how my father feels!” That you’re way too old to be living at home?
4) When she asks if there was anything in the paper about the murder they committed, he says, “No. Nothing. Oh, there was one thing: The man died.” Well, that’s fucking something, isn’t it!
Yes. So many reasons to trust this asshole.
Eventually, the neighbor tells him that he knows and then the melodrama really begins…just as it ends. And really that’s what this movie is: a melodrama. It just happens to have a little bit of gore in it. Not a whole lot, actually. Just enough to be a bit Nasty. It certainly doesn’t add up to a very good movie. Kinda boring, actually. Not the worst of the Nasties, but just not good, either. Maybe if it was more of a horror film and less of a morality play it would have been…
Aw, who am I kidding? It’s an Italian horror movie from the early 70s. It’s pretty fuckin’ bad. And the guy isn’t even a cannibal!
LOW POINT: The fact that he keeps the bodies in his bedroom. All of them. And he uses it to lure people to their deaths. I never knew that a bedroom could be so dangerous! …unless, of course, it contains The Bed That Eats.