Saturday, June 21, 2008

Movie review: Mother of Tears

Pandora's Box: Italianate version.

By John P. Meyer

Mother of Tears: The Third Mother (La Terza madre)

An ancient urn chained to a coffin is unearted by chance by some men at work along the road bordering the Viterbo's cemetery. The urn contains an age-old tunic and some objects belonging to Mater Lacrimarum, the Third Mother. The only survivor of the Three Mothers - three powerful witches who had been shedding blood and terror for aeons - Mater Lacrimarum has been hiding in Rome for centuries and her awakening triggers a chain of mysterious and terrible events: the Evil is back to cast its dark shadow over the city. Sarah Mandy, a young student of restoration, co-worker and love interest of Michael Pierce, the curator of the Museum of Ancient Art of Rome, is involved in the escalating and increasingly frantic episodes of violence. Sarah tries to run away but she cannot: the Third Mother is looking for her and Sarah is not aware of the fact that her mother Elisa Mandy was a powerful white witch brutally killed by Mater Suspiriorum, the witch from Fryeburg. Helped by the spirit of her mother, by an eminent esoterism academic, Guglielmo De Witt, and by the Chief Constable Marchi, Sarah realizes that she has no way out and that she must face the impending threat…

Source: Cinema Source

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Mother of Tears - the supposed third and final work in Dario Argento's "Three Mothers trilogy" - is such an over-the-top, gorehound-friendly, gut-ripping splatterfest that many of the director's mordant stylistic touches will undoubtedly go overlooked - because some will decide to leave the theater after the third or fourth disembowelment, and others will simply turn away in disgust.

But - c'mon, folks - this is Dario Argento, the guy who put the guts into giallo. (Or, perhaps more accurately, ripped them out.) If you wandered into the theater thinking this was going to be Fellini, then you've got the wrong Italian director.

The bit about the third of a trilogy seems a stretch, though, given that the first two films cited (1977's groundbreaking Suspiria and 1980's Inferno) ran their course nigh onto 28 years ago and no one seemed to think any parts were missing. (Aside from the ones sliced off, I mean.) Oh, sure, there's mention of three evil witches in Inferno, but just because there's three of something doesn't mean you need a movie for each one. Right?

Whatever. It provides an excuse for Sr. Argento to trot out the blood buckets and layers of fake skin, the better to slice-and-dice with.

Our story this time involves a long-buried casket which is accidentally located in a remote corner of a Roman cemetery, and rather foolishly (it turns out) removed for examination by the attending priest.

The chained-up box - too small to hold a corpse - is covered in arcane symbols that mean nothing to anyone, but do provide justification for sending the container off to the art museum for examination by its curator. Since that learned fellow happens to be out, his research assistant (Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni, as Giselle) and one of his students (Asia Argento, the director's daughter, as Sarah Mandy) take it upon themselves to break the priest's carefully-affixed wax seals to see what's inside.

(Remember that whole Pandora thing?)

"Maria.... I just stabbed a girl named Mari-a!" (Dario Argento clowns around on set.)

Rule #1 about opening ancient crates decorated with occult runes: don't cut your finger in the process and proceed to spill blood on them.

Inside are a trio (there's that number three again) of primitive earth-mother-looking clay deities and an old dagger. The old dagger soon gets put to contemporary use by the deities after they magically come to life, and soon we have our first disembowelment of the evening. Though it will be far from the last.

Sarah Mandy (being the heroine of the piece) avoids this fate and hoofs it out of the museum with the witches' familiar - an evil looking little capuchin monkey (but then, aren't they all?) - hot on her trail.

What ensues is a kind of zombification of the Roman citizenry, though it's explained in terms of demonic possession. During this rule of insanity (referred to by various pundits as "the second fall of Rome"), a young mother is seen to pause in her progress across a river bridge, extract her bambino from the pram and unceremoniously drop the child off to the side, where it thuds into an abutment before spinning away into the water below. Oh, the movie prop infant humanity! But trust me, this is far from the worst of the violent mayhem depicted over the course of the picture's 98 minute run-time.

I hope they got this done in one take

We're talkin' heads smushed in sliding doors, flesh-eating orgies, meat cleaver skull-quartering (and throat slashing), dull blade dismemberment, eyes punched out with collapsible purpose-built devices... even (brace yourself) bowel tendon munching straight from the anus. (Well, I warned you.)

The supposed ligature holding this horrid spectacle together involves Sarah Mandy's parentage: her Mom, Elisa (Daria Nicolodi), was a powerful white witch who ended up defeating Mater Lachrymarum (the seductive Moran Atias) during her last earthly incarnation - though nothing of that story arc is mentioned in either of the prior "trilogy" entries. And - of course - Sarah has inherited her progenitor's powers.

The reincarnation of the Mother of Tears draws witches of the black variety from around the globe like flies to ordure, and soon the byways of Rome ring with their cackles. "ACK Ack ack ack!" (No, wait, that's Popeye.) These witches know how to party, terrorizing old lady beggars on the street and then proceeding to the main event in the basement of an old villa with an evil reputation, where they celebrate witches' sabbat by eating people. Naked. (I mean them, not the people being eaten. Though they, too, are naked, of course...)

For succor and temporary refuge (because she knows it's up to her to stop Terza Madre before that bloodthirsty harpy can uncoil the guts from the underbelly of western civilization), Sarah retreats to the arms of her boss and erstwhile lover, museum curator Michael Pierce (Adam James). She meets up with Mike on the street in front of his house, where he appears to be experiencing severe breathing problems. (Uh oh.) After he escorts her inside, and before you can say "what's that blood doing on the front of your shirt?", Michael's revealed to be an animated corpse whose throat has been left gaping by one of those nasty meat cleaver attacks; in fact, one good shove from Sarah and his head's lolligagging around like a bobbletoy on the dash of an F-150.

To further discourage his advances, Sarah douses him with a handy bottle of flammable spirits and fires him up with a book of gimme matches. FLAME ON! But, like a political candidate's ill-chosen words that live on forever in soundbyte form, Fiery Mike just keeps on a comin', chasing the crazed young woman from room to room until she ends up barricaded in the basement. Her extraction from this predicament requires a phasma ex machina of the most contrived sort.

Just when we think things can't get any more outrageously gruesome, the final confrontation between Mater Lachrymarum and Sarah ushers in a classic Fall of the House of Usher conflagration, preceded by a massive phallus-like pillar pinning the witch to a basement wall (take THAT, woman-who-would-have-power!) and followed by an escape sequence in which Sarah exits the witch house through the sewers, while gallons of raw crap pour over her and her policeperson companion. (Hey, where'd that guy suddenly come from, anyway?)

In terms of leap-from-your-seat-and-scream-like-a-schoolgirl shocks, there's one really effective one (thank God for underalls) involving a random demon who pops up like a howling jack-in-the-box when Sarah least expects it. And there's another more creative scare tactic employed involving a sonic attack via telephone.

Asia Argento, chest deep in - ugh - I don't wanna think about it.

In the lead role, Ms. Argento seems to be aiming for petulant little self-centered bitch territory - and if so, she's hit the mark. Her conversion from "Help me, Mommy!" to "Take this, you rotten spawn of Satan!" comes about as if by (white) magic and totally without method acting support. As for the other players, they constitute one of the most attractive ensembles ever to appear on screen bearing gaping wounds and dripping stage blood.

(Did I mention that most of the female players flash their boobs at one point or another in the heat of this apocalyptic spiritual battle? Or that one of the primary support characters - Valeria Cavalli, as Marta - is exterminated while making love to her girlfriend? I thought not.)

If there is more perfect fare for the first-ever R-rated riffing done by the MST3K (CT) folks, it hasn't been produced yet.

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