Reviews

• 

  ★★★★½ review by Tony the Terror😼 on Letterboxd

  I spent all day in root canal recovery and then finally got a chance to watch this with Chris and yeah, it’s just as great as he promised it would be!

  This was bananas in the best way, just full of frankly brilliant wtf moments that I am always here for. I loved all the references and homages to specific giallos. Paz de la Huerta can get it huh?

  The version we watched on Tubi May have been edited so I’m going to check out the version on my library streaming service to see if I missed anything.

  Bananameter: 🍌 seriously pick a scene 🍌

• 

  ★★★★★ review by Jim Drew on Letterboxd

  "The Editor, a 70s Italian giallo-inspired comedy in which a one time (and one-handed) master film editor becomes the prime suspect in a series of brutal murders."

  The above synopsis sounds like my perfect film to be honest. I'm very keen on the Italian sub-genre of leather glove clad murderers, incredible soundtracks, 'interesting' plotting and much more besides. That this film is made by no-budget masters Astron-6 probably made this one of the most-anticipated movies for me in recent memory.

  It lives up to internal fevered hype.

  Adam Brooks plays sadsack editor Rey Ciso, a film-cutting maestro reduced to working on genre pictures after an unfortunate editing accident. Rey's psyche spirals downwards just as bodies start to pile up. Suspicion naturally falls on him as Matthew Kennedy's detective Peter Porfiry investigates. Impossibly masculine, Porfiry serves as a further depressing figure for our poor protagonist. 3rd Astron member Conor Sweeney appears as 'actor' Cal Konitz, again displaying high levels of manhood (in more ways than one) that cannot help Ciso's fragile mindset.

  While this is an extremely devoted stab at mimicking these films with many a reference to different Argento or Fulci films, The Editor is still infused with the broad and sometimes hyper-weird comedy beats we expect from these guys. One of the most repeated style of gags is the gentle mocking of both the macho posturing and the troubling misogyny often flaunted by the Italians in this era. It is very very funny and you question yourself for liking these films. But when they so brilliantly ape the lush cinematography, the tense scary music (Claudio Simonetti joins the gang!) and the bloodletting, you're reminded why you do.

  This modern habit of making films appear retro with their looks or their sound has broken into the mainstream the last few years and shows no sign of slowing down. But nobody quite does it like Astron-6. The craft is finely tuned and you don't even need to squint to kid yourself that it could be the real thing.

• 

  ★★★★½ review by Daniel Rodriguez on Letterboxd

  Astron 6 <3 <3 <3 How can I not love the hell out of those guys?

  The Editor is a horror comedy that makes fun of Giallo and Italian Splatter movies. The references are pretty easy to discern and this lack of subtlety keeps those references from being too obscure; I am not an expert on giallo, so it was actually great that I could get the jokes and recognize which movies and directors they are making fun of. In addition to their spot on sense of black comedy, there are great characters, the synthwave soundtrack is perfect and the whole visual style is awesome, even better than Father's Day. I might even raise my rating in a second view with subtitles on!

• 

  ★★★½ review by MasterLundegaard on Letterboxd

  At its peak, The Editor is a thriving ode to the old slasher classics of Argento and Bava: characters are badly dubbed by themselves, plot developments arrive within seconds of each other, and the violence is an excellent call-back to the squishy, gooey, highly saturated look of olden horror. But when it falls back from its high, it does indeed fall hard. It finds itself too concerned with the placement of its priorities, oftentimes veering left and right between clever reference and mediocre originality. At its best, a sexual, hilarious, and stupidly gorey commemoration to lovably bad slashers. At its worst, a film with a major identity crisis that can't decide whether it is content with its gimmick or interested in further expansion. B

• 

  ★★★★½ review by Jeremy Milks on Letterboxd

  Hard to describe how much I loved this. When you can seamlessly incorporate scene recreations of both New York Ripper and Hitch-Hike into your plot and then top it with a climax that's a direct homage to Argento's Inferno, you have my full attention. A lot of people don't like self-aware throwbacks (in this case a parody), but this is how you do it right. It's made even more obscure by being totally devoted to referencing Italian horror and exploitation, meaning this had no chance to make any money or find a wide audience. The old cliche about a "labor of love" applies here. The directing team of Adam Brooks and Matthew Kennedy made 2011's nasty Father's Day, which I really liked but this is on another level. Other direct references I could make out: House By The Cemetery, Tenebre, Videodrome, The Beyond, Murder Rock, Zombie, Suspiria, Black Belly Of The Tarantula and probably dozens more. A horror nerd's buffet.

• See all reviews