The Editor (2014)

Picking up this film in late summer of 2016 was one of the biggest flukes in my movie-loving life, as I knew absolutely nothing about it and merely thought the Blu-Ray cover artwork looked cool, as I did the title and the possible premise it alluded to (the same thing happened the year before, when I blindly bought The Babadook at a Best Buy, but that's a story for another day). In fact, I actually bought it by accident, as I got it confused with a movie called Evil Ed, which I first heard of when James Rolfe talked about it one year on CineMassacre's Monster Madness and I knew was about a film editor who goes insane and starts murdering people. It wasn't until I got home that I realized it wasn't the movie I thought it was, but it still sounded intriguing, especially when I read that it was meant to be a send-up of giallo and Italian horror films in general, many of which I have seen and am a fan of. But, when I watched it, it became clear very quickly that this wasn't for me. While I appreciated the many homages and references to Italian horror, and after doing some research on the production, I can truly respect the filmmakers after the trials and tribulations they went through, the parody part was where the movie suffered for me. I was okay with how they imitated the visuals and time period of those movies, as well as made fun of the bad dubbing and less than Oscar-worthy performances that come with it, but everything else, from how they intentionally had the movie make no sense, to the caricatured nature of the characters and the very tone they were going for, fell flat. So, like Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, we have another Canadian-produced horror-comedy that's become a cult favorite but doesn't completely do it for me (in fact, I can easily say I like Jack Brooks far more than this).

Rey Ciso is a film editor working on a giallo/crime movie for sleazy director Francesco Mancini, with the assistance of his protege, the lovely Bella. Despite Bella's admiration for him, Ciso's life is anything but enviable, as he's missing the fingers on his right hand, is underpaid by the mean-spirited and tactless Mancini for a job he doesn't care for at all, and his wife, Josephine Jardin, is a former actor who does nothing but berate him while also pining for her former leading man, Claudio Berti, the star of the very film Ciso is cutting. That night, at the studio, Claudio and his girlfriend, Veronica, are brutally murdered while viewing a workprint of the movie; afterward, Inspector Peter Porfiry, whose wife, Margarit, is an actor and happens to have been the one who discovered the bodies, leading to her suffering from hysterical blindness as a result, is assigned to the case. Since the fingers' on the victims right hands were severed in the same manner as Ciso's, the editor quickly becomes the prime suspect, which is compounded when Porfiry learns he was once committed to an asylum. More murders plague the movie, with Claudio's replacement getting killed in the shower and the killer causing Porfiry to accidentally kill Margarit after breaking into their home. Meanwhile, as his marriage falls apart, Ciso begins having bizarre, terrifying visions, suffers from blackouts, and finds evidence that points to him possibly being the killer, as Porfiry begins learning there might be some form of occultism and black magic involved in the crimes. As the body count increases, the two of them, firmly on opposite sides, rush to find the truth before it's too late.

Like Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, The Editor was the result of some friends up in Canada who got together to form a production company; in this case, it was Astron-6, formed in 2007 by Matthew Kennedy, Adam Brooks, Conor Sweeney, Jeremy Gillespie, and Steven Kostanski. Specifically, the film was co-directed by Kennedy and Brooks, who also have major roles, along with acting as producers and writers on it (because of the small size of their company, everybody tends to be assigned a myriad of various jobs). The two of them had co-directed before, on another horror-comedy, Father's Day (it was while editing that film that Brooks came up with the initial idea for this movie), and had both directed short films for their company before that, with Kennedy doing Street Racer and Punch Out, while Brooks had done Sebastian and Alan, Cool Guys, and Fireman. Since then, the two of them have co-directed another short, 2018's Chowboys: An American Folktale, as well as episodes of their company's web-series, Divorced Dad.

Going back to something I mentioned earlier, the film is such a nonsensical, almost stream of consciousness experience, both in terms of its story and the characters themselves, that actually talking about them is difficult because the majority of them are just so out there. Plus, few of them have any truly redeeming factors, as they're either sleazebags, assholes, morons, or a combination of those traits. The titular character, Rey Ciso (Adam Brooks), has a couple of questionable moments, like when he's checking out Bella when she bends over in their introductory scene and, when he's in a confessional, he admits to have wished for awful things to happen, but otherwise, he comes off as one of the more decent people in the film. He's living a pretty crappy life to say the least: he's lost the fingers on his right hand, which has forced him to work on a trashy movie for an equally trashy director, one who often mocks him for his disability; he's married to a has-been starlet who does nothing but berate him and pine for others, like her former leading man and, later, the newly appointed star of the movie Ciso is working on; his young protege, Bella, has feelings for him but he doesn't feel like he can reciprocate them because of his marriage, leading Bella to reveal herself to be quite unstable; and, following the first couple of murders on the set, he becomes a suspect. As the movie goes on and more people die, things get worse and worse for Ciso. He's ordered to re-edit the film in various ways, before being fired and hired again, only to then be threatened by the new lead actor, Cal Konitz, for cutting him out of it due to his awful acting; his wife eventually leaves him for Konitz; Bella is murdered; and Inspector Porfiry continues to dog him about being the killer. However, Ciso himself begins to wonder if he isn't the killer, as he finds evidence that could point to that being the case, and also starts having bizarre, frightening hallucinations and blackouts, while others are experiencing supernatural happenings. But, in the end, it's revealed he isn't the killer, and he and Porfiry work together to stop the real one. And, in a random post-credits scene, Ciso is shown living a much happier life, this time married to Bella.

Out of the main cast of characters, Inspector Peter Porfiry (Matthew Kennedy) gets the most screentime, enough to show just how bizarre, inept, and downright shitty of a person he is. When he arrives on the set to investigate the murder of Claudio Berti and Veronica, Porfiry comes off as pompous, insensitive, and awkward, making light of the situation, accepting the dimwitted Officer Giancarlo's explanation for why he didn't cut down Veronica's still hanging body, and acting very accusatory towards Rey Ciso. His suspicions grow when he realizes the victims' fingers were severed in the same manner as those on Ciso's right hand and he also learns he was in an insane asylum for a while. After another actor on the film is murdered, Porfiry forces Ciso to tell him the story of how his fingers were severed and his commitment to the asylum, continuing to hound him at every turn afterward. He becomes all the more convinced of his guilt when he talks with the asylum's director, Dr. Casini, and is told a very different version of Ciso's commitment, one which involved him trying to kill his assistant. Eventually, he comes to believe that Ciso has ties to the occult, despite Father Clarke, whom he often mocks, insisting he's a righteous and pious man. When he finds Cal Konitz's body and, after breaking into Ciso's home, finds books on the occult and a film can full of severed fingers, Porfiry chases him down and attempts to arrest him, though he soon finds he was completely wrong in his suspicions.

Though I've already mentioned some of Porfiry's personality flaws, that only skims the surface of what a garbage human being he is. For one, it's apparent that he's just as, if not more, crazy than any loony killer he's chasing, as shown when it's revealed he and Cal Konitz's girlfriend, Jasmine Rain, were once lovers themselves: you see him

approach her after she's fallen down in the rain (she appeared to be running from him), smack her across the face several times, kiss her passionately, rip open her blouse, grab handfuls of mud, smear it all over his face, and then yell and ululate crazily, while also pounding his chest. This predilection he has for crazy and out there sex is seen again when he makes love to his wife, Margarit, as he slashes her across her chest with a broken wine bottle, wears his holstered gun over

his shirtless torso for much of the act, and takes an anniversary cake, splatters it on her, and grabs and smears chunks of it across his face, again while yelling and smacking his head. Speaking of Margarit, who suffers from hysterical blindness after discovering the bodies of the first murder victims, Porfiry is hardly sympathetic to her plight; rather, he's put off by the way she looks with her now clouded eyes, something she doesn't exactly

miss. Granted, when the killer breaks into their house late in the night, he does try to save Margarit when she's held hostage, but ends up putting an axe through her head because of the killer. Fearing the wrath of Margarit's father, Chief O'Connor, Porfiry chops off her fingers to make her look like another murder victim, feeds the fingers to her seeing-eye dog, and when Officer Giancarlo shows up on the scene, he uses his dimwitted nature, along with some booze, to get him to support his version of events, as well as talk him into working undercover at the studio. In fact, Porfiry seems to have more affection for Konitz, as the two of them become so close after they first meet that a homosexual connection between them is more than merely hinted at.

Besides all that, Porfiry is also just an inept idiot. When Konitz drops a razor-blade when they first really talk, Porfiry, rather than becoming suspicious about his having a potential murder weapon, instead merely gives it back to him (he also ignored how Konitz was loading his trunk up with a plethora of potential murder weapons beforehand), and later, when Konitz admits to having threatened Ciso with a chainsaw for cutting him out of the

movie, Porfiry is more taken aback by Ciso's having edited him out, declaring him a madman. Moreover, he gives Konitz the idea of getting back at Ciso through his wife (though not to the extreme that Konitz eventally takes it). Also, while tailing Ciso and spying on him and his wife while they're having dinner, Porfiry walks into the restaurant, up to their table, smacks Josephine across the face, and admonishes Ciso for not keeping his woman in line, adding he won't do it for him again. He

reads books on the occult in order to find the connection with Ciso and yet, is not at all fazed when reading an incantation aloud causes his coat arm to catch on fire, before accusing Father Clarke of being superstitious about the ancient texts. And, during the climax, when he chases after Ciso, only to eventually learn that Josephine is actually the killer, he not only tries to cover his ass by saying,

"I knew it!", but, once it's all over, tells Ciso that Konitz admitted he himself committed one of the murders... a revelation he didn't act on at all. Finally, in the last scene, Porfiry finds himself in some alternate dimension, one where everyone's relationships and occupations are switched around, the wounds he suffered during the confrontation with Josephine are minor, and, in the church's belfry, he finds film reels showing him doing the very actions he's doing at the moment. A final pull back reveals he's on the film strips in an editing machine, which is then switched off.

In contrast to Brooks' and Kennedy's plentiful screentime, the top-billed Paz de la Huerta has only a handful of scenes in her role as Rey Ciso's wife, Josephine Jardin. For most of the movie, Josephine is nothing more than one of the worst aspects of Ciso's overall crappy life: a bitchy, self-centered, washed up actor who couldn't care less about her husband. In her first scene, her only concern is how her former leading man, Claudio Berti, is getting along on the movie Ciso is editing, and when he asks her how she would feel if Claudio were to die, she says she would never stop crying, before calling Ciso a "stupid cripple" and slamming a door in his face. She keeps on thinking only about herself when the two of them go out to eat one night, as her reaction to Ciso mentioning that there was another murder at the studio is to take it as a reminder of her now nonexistent career, before going on about how she feels sick and that he'll have to clean it up when she throws up on the floor. Even crazier, when Inspector Porfiry walks in, slaps Josephine, and admonishes Ciso for not keeping her in line, she agrees with him, asking Ciso if she's supposed to slap herself. Later, Josephine becomes interested in Cal Konitz when she watches the demo tape he gave Ciso, saying he might be even better than Claudio. And then, when Ciso tells her he just got fired from the movie, Josephine whines and throws a tantrum about who's going to pay for everything and keep her lifestyle viable. After Konitz abducts Ciso from his home, he attempts to take his revenge on him for cutting him out of the movie by "raping" Josephine in front of him. However, Josephine obviously enjoys it and her reciprocating is too much for Konitz to handle, as he gives up and leaves. Josephine then claims she's going to marry Konitz... or, at least, she was, until she murdered him and Jasmine Rain when she found out they were still together.

In the end, Josephine is revealed to be the killer (that is, save for Claudio's initial replacement, Cesare, whom Porfiry says Konitz confessed to murdering himself), with Ciso and Porfiry coming upon her after she's finished butchering Francesco Mancini, whom she was apparently having an affair with, at his mansion. Everything she's done has been part of some unspecified occult ritual, though the purpose of it and what she was hoping to eventually accomplish with it aren't explained. She basically goes mad, repeatedly proclaiming herself to be an incarnation of Death, and Ciso and Porfiry work together to defeat her, the latter dousing her with gasoline, while the former, after being unable to strike a match, uses his wooden fingers as a makeshift torch in order light her afire.

Cal Konitz (Conor Sweeney) starts off as Claudio Berti's sidekick in the film they're making, but when Claudio is murdered, he hopes this will make way for him to become the star. Unfortunately, his hopes are dashed when Francesco Mancini hires another man named Cesare to take over... but, when Cesare is also murdered, he gets his chance, with Mancini ordering Ciso to recut the movie to make it look as though Claudio was Konitz's sidekick. While Konitz's inappropriate enthusiasm about now being the star due to someone else's death, his loading his car's trunk with knives and a chainsaw, and his dropping a straight razor should make him a suspect, the dimwitted Inspector Porfiry is too busy trying to pin the crimes on Ciso. Speaking of dimwitted, Konitz proves to be quite dumb himself, thinking "Einstein" was the name of a filmmaker rather than Eisenstein and also randomly saying, "Speak of the devil," not knowing the appropriate context of the expression. He's also perverted enough to show himself dry-humping a woman on the demo reel he gives to Ciso, which leads to Josephine getting the hots for him; he treats his girlfriend, Jasmine Rain, like crap, nastily criticizing her at every turn; and appears to have some repressed homosexual tendencies, given his remarking on the size of Cesare's package when they see each other at the showers and when he imagines making out with Porfiry while having sex with Jasmine, an attraction that, again, doesn't seem totally one-sided either. Finally, he's revealed to be unhinged, too, as he threatens Ciso with a chainsaw when he finds out he cut him completely out of the movie for his bad acting, and after that doesn't work, he tells Porfiry of it, saying no normal person would react to such a threat in the way Ciso did. He then gets the idea to abduct Ciso and rape Josephine in front of him, but that fails as Josephine proves to be more into it than Konitz would like (he appears to actually beg Ciso for help when she's forcefully grabbing him and kissing him back) and he quickly leaves. Later, while having sex with Jasmine, the two of them are chainsawed to death by Josephine, and at the end of the movie, Porfiry later tells Ciso that Konitz did admit to having killed Cesare in order to become the movie's star.

Ciso's young assistant and protege, Bella (Samantha Hill), is more than just someone who admires him for his expertise in cutting. Rather, she's someone who's worked with and become attached to him to the point where she's fallen for him. There's a hint of this fanaticism early on when she's shown watching Ciso as he walks home, but she soon lays it all out for him when she shows him a reel she's assembled herself. She becomes so upset when he points out a single, common mistake she made that she crazily cuts herself with a razor, before lauding Ciso's "artistic" skill with his wooden fingers and proclaiming her love for him. She tries to kiss him but he rejects her, saying she's too young to know what love is, leading her to scream crazily when he physically pushes her away after she tries to force herself onto him upon proclaiming to see him for who he really is (the sound of her screaming attracts Inspector Porfiry, who believes it's a sign that Ciso is up to no good "again"). After creepily watching him speak with Porfiry from the editing room's doorway, Bella decides to find the identity of the killer herself and goes through the reels of film, as there were hints there may be some footage of the murders among them. She does hit upon something but doesn't get a chance to tell Ciso, and comes close to finding the truth when she views one reel, only to be murdered herself. After that, she becomes an apparition that Ciso often sees, particularly when he has visions of a strange, alternate dimension, and following the ending credits, you see she's now alive again and living a comfortable, happy life with Ciso.

Udo Kier appears in a couple of scenes as Dr. Casini, the very bizarre director of the asylum where Ciso was once committed. After saving Inspector Porfiry from being attacked by a patient who likes to bite people after enticing them to kiss her, Casini tells him a very different version of how Ciso came to be there, mainly that he went mad, cut his fingers off intentionally, and then tried to kill his assistant. He goes on to say that Ciso believed all of humanity was just, "Marionettes on a stage," likening his mindset to the concept of "Plato's Cave." When Casini mentions that Ciso's release was signed for by Umberto Fantori, the director who originally hired him as an editor, he reveals he had the form framed and hung on the wall of his office, nuzzling it and saying he was so excited to have Fantori's "autograph." As if things weren't already strange and uncomfortable, Casini shows Porfiry footage of Ciso's former assistant, Giuseppe, who's also a patient at the asylum. When the inspector asks why he's wrapped up completely in bandages, Casini answers, "I don't know. Weird. Really weird." As you can expect, Kier's soft, airy way of speaking makes this scene and his lines come off as all the more strange and uncomfortable, especially the end of it, when he's visited by that patient from before in his office; she says, "Kiss me," and he says, "Bite me." Casini appears again in the ending, when Porfiry discovers that everything is not as he thought it was. Now, he's suddenly the staff psychiatrist at the department whom Porfiry must speak with and, when he runs out in a panic, Casini, again, softly intones, "Weird. Really weird."

Father Clarke (Laurence R. Harvey), though fairly straight for the most part, still comes off as weird in his initial scene, when Ciso speaks with him in a confessional. Recognizing his voice, Clarke ignores his plea for help and instead asks him what it's like to work on movie sets, as well as what happened to Josephine Jardin. But, in his later scenes with Inspector Porfiry (whom he, at one point, compares to a "young Donald Sutherland,"), Clarke insists Ciso is no killer, describing him as a "God-fearing Catholic" who once patched up the church's bell-tower, and also informs Porfiry of an ancient Roman superstition that editors could act as bridges to the netherworld. When Porfiry pours over some old tomes of occultism and brings one of the books to the church, Clarke attempts to warn him of the evil he's meddling with, but to no avail, and he's also unable to sway the inspector's suspicions away from Ciso. And then, during the ending, when Porfiry's perception of reality falls apart around him, he runs back to the church, only to find that Clarke now appears to believe the old superstitions about editors and says the bell has been damaged and hasn't rung for over a hundred years.

As loathsome as some of these characters are, Francesco Mancini (Kevin Anderson), the director of the movie Ciso is editing, is both sleazy and a full-on douche, as he often makes fun of Ciso's wooden fingers, calling him a cripple and saying he thought it would be fun to have a disabled person around. He's also totally insensitive about Margarit's blindness, preferring she'd cover up her eyes as opposed to her exposed breasts in one scene; he isn't exactly broken up about the murders taking place, coming off as more concerned with how he's going to finish his movie; in the middle of the film, he just ups and fires Ciso because having a cripple around isn't working out to be as fun as he thought it would be and also because Giancarlo, working under cover, shows up claiming to know a lot about filmmaking and also agrees to work for half the salary (which is already just $75 a week); and then, when Giancarlo is murdered, Mancini actually asks Ciso back, acting like a real ass-kisser in the process (fortunately for him, Ciso had already completed a cut of the movie before he was fired). In addition, Mancini is revealed to be having an affair with Josephine, whom he nastily insults to Ciso and Konitz at one point, but is murdered and gutted by her when she's revealed to be the killer in the climax.

Other notable faces in the film include Canadian filmmaker John Paisz (you can see a poster for his film, Crime Wave, on the wall in one scene); musician Dan Bern, who appears briefly as Umberto Fantori, the intimidating, gangster-like filmmaker whom Ciso initially worked for; and notable TV actor Jerry Wasserman, who appears in a couple of scenes as Chief O'Connor, who initially

threatens Inspector Porfiry over his daughter's, Margarit, involvement in the case, saying she'd best come out unscathed (many plot synopses I've seen of the movie talk about a scene where O'Connor angrily berates Porfiry after Margarit is killed but I've never seen it in the actual film).

Like before, before I start criticizing The Editor, let's first talk about what it gets right, which is quite a lot, actually. For one, the movie's look is spectacular, especially when you consider that the money Astron-6 head to work with was a mere $90,000 (although, that was far more than they'd ever had before). Not only do the production values look quite high for the budget but you can tell the filmmakers absolutely love the

genre they're spoofing, as they captured the look of it to a T. Gialli and many other Italian horror films, particularly those of Mario Bava and Dario Argento, are known for their brilliant, deep color schemes and lighting, and The Editor is drenched in it from head to toe. Sometimes, you get scenes that are enveloped in deep, Technicolor-esque reds and blues, akin to the palette of Argento's Suspiria, and other times, you'll see lighter blues along with pinks, akin to the look of

his film, Inferno, which is to say nothing of the garish, tackier-looking reds, oranges, and greens you also see. All of these vivid colors are often used in nighttime scenes or in dark interiors with lots of deep shadows around them, making them truly lovely to look at. The filmmakers also manage to invoke the inherent

sleaziness of these films, not just in the personalities in many of the characters or with a lot of gratuitous nudity and sex, which it has plenty of and sometimes randomly, but also in the way a number of scenes have this sort of golden-brown, tacky gloss to them, often with a lot of smoke in the air from the characters' cigarettes. Finally, they're able to nail the feel

of the late 70's time period the genre blossomed in, with the fashion, hairstyles, and rocking mustaches the men often have (Inspector Porfiry especially looks like he's from that period, with that mustard-yellow turtleneck sweater he wears under his brown coat, his brown pants, and his curly head of hair and 'stache, which come off kind of like John Holmes).

Besides the film's very look, there are some visuals in it that are particularly striking and downright creepy in some instances. Many of these have to do with the bizarre visions Rey Ciso begins to have, such as, while he's in bed with his wife, he sits up and sees a figure staring at him from the darkness. The way the figure looks and is shot is quite creepy, as the face is completely in black (it almost looks as though it has a furry, cat-

like head), save for its bright blue eyes, which radiate out of the darkness. Another memorable moment is when, while in the bathroom, Ciso opens the medicine cabinet and climbs through a portal that leads into a bizarre dimension with massive film reels and worm-like creatures floating about. He sees a vision of Bella being murdered on a large screen similar to that on an editing machine, while also seeing a backlit

vision of himself with the same bright blue eyes as the figure he saw in his bedroom. After that, you get a moment where he sees his constant vision of Bella in that dimension, accompanied by a shot of his severed fingers crawling along the ground, while he walks up to a bubbling pool of a black, oil-like

substance, which he sticks his hand into, and then sees the vision of Bella screaming at him in terror (again, it's amazing that they managed to make these scenes look that good for so little money). Near the end of the movie, you have a surreal moment where Ciso climbs out of the editing machine, covered in the same substance, which also includes his hand pushing against the screen, which becomes stretchy and like flesh. And, fittingly, the actual editing of the movie is quite good and also interesting in its use

of split-screens in several scenes, as well as the montage used to show how Ciso's career as an editor began and an effective use of fast and slow-motion to make scenes come off as more kinetic or surreal.

Another thing that helps the movie feel like it's taking place in the 70's is the production design. The sets were built in a warehouse and were purposefully made to look like interiors you would see in the 70's, especially the interior of Rey Ciso and Josephine Jardin's home, as well as Inspector Porfiry's house and the bedroom where Cal Konitz is seen having sex with Jasmine before

they both get chainsawed. The backstage of the studio helps give off the impression that the movie Ciso is working on is a low-rent, trashy affair, with its true set only appearing when we see snippets of the movie as it's being cut together, and the editing room is always bathed in an orange-red light, with film reels hanging around in a manner kind of akin to meat in a slaughterhouse (a rather appropriate

analogue given the term "cutting,") and horror film posters on the wall. The place also has a public shower, something I didn't expect a studio to have (they very well could, seeing as how I've never visited one), and you also see the screening room, where Claudio Berti and his girlfriend are murdered at the beginning of the movie. In addition, the

filmmakers managed to create a set that simulates the feel of an old church interior, one which doesn't look all that surreal or unsettling, until you get to some nighttime scenes with lightning flashing outside and a lot of darkness around the characters. They also created a convincing, Vertigo-like staircase leading up to the bell-tower, which is

presented in a dark, medieval style, with a spot hidden behind a section of wall that's bathed in a hellish, red glow. The only truly normal-looking locations are those seen in the exterior daytime scenes, which manage to look like they were shot somewhere other than Canada, for the most part.

No tribute to Italian horror would be complete without copious amounts of gore, and The Editor also provides plenty of that. Among the lovely sights on display here are an axe to the face in the opening scene (which turns out to be something Ciso and Bella are cutting together for the movie); Claudio Berti getting his throat sliced open and spewing blood, while his girlfriend, Veronica, is eviscerated with the same straight razor, after which her bloody body is

found hanging from the ceiling; a woman's face getting ripped off in the movie within the movie, revealing her screaming, blood-covered skull, as well as her rolling eyes, before it's placed right back on, as if nothing happened; Cesare getting stabbed in the throat; Ciso's fingers getting severed by a blade in his account of what happened to him; a shot of him with blood streaming out of his mouth and his

severed fingers lying on the floor in Dr. Casini's version of events; Inspector Porfiry accidentally putting an axe in Margarit's head before cutting off her fingers and feeding them to her seeing-eye dog; Bella getting stabbed in the hand and then in the gut with a pair of scissors; Giancarlo getting his stomach sliced open, his intestines ripped out and then wound up in a projector, before his fingers are sliced off; Jasmine

Rain getting a chainsaw into her shoulder, pouring blood all over Cal Konitz while the two of them are having sex, while his death happens offscreen, with his severed hand and body being found later; Porfiry's hand getting blown into a mangled mess when his gun backfires; and Josephine's face melting when she's set on fire at the end. It's all practical, over-the-top, and absolutely glorious. What's more, the filmmakers made sure to make a distinction

between the gore in the actual story and the movie Ciso is editing: in the latter, the blood is more of an orange color (possibly alluding to how a number of 70's horror films made that same mistake), but when a death happens in reality, it's much redder and more real-looking.

In addition to the gore, the filmmakers also made use of some other interesting practical effects work and props, namely in a scene where a Betamax tape suddenly breathes while Ciso is holding it in his hand and when the screen on an editing machine becomes fleshy as he pushes his way out of it, both of which are obvious homages to David Cronenberg's Videodrome. They also created the worm-like creatures you see wriggling through the air in the dark dimension he finds himself in, as well as the vision of his severed fingers crawling along in the other dimension, which was accomplished through stop-motion rather than CGI.

There are numerous homages and references to various movies, both gialli and other genre fare. Some of these references are very specific, like the aforementioned Videodrome ones, while others are more broad and general. Other examples of the former include Margarit being blind with a seeing eye-dog, the random appearances of spiders, and the surreal, otherworldly ending, all of which reference Lucio Fulci's The Beyond; the moment where Porfiry is playing fetch with the

dog, only for him to bring back a severed hand, is akin to the opening of Fulci's The New York Ripper; the notion that one of the murders was the work of Cal Konitz while the rest were done by Josephine is kind of like a plot point in Dario Argento's Tenebre, where it's revealed that some of the murders were the work of a killer other than the main one; a book on the occult called Three Mothers is a

reference to Argento's "Three Mothers" trilogy, consisting of Suspiria, Inferno, and The Mother of Tears; there's a poster on the wall in the police station at the end that references The Fifth Cord; the moment where Ciso is pursued on the road is an homage to Hitch-Hike, with Adam Brooks even looking like Franco Nero in terms of both his clothing and hairstyle; Veronica puts on a pair of

panties similar to those seen in Weird Science; the hidden camera footage of some of the murders is akin to Brian De Palma's Dressed To Kill; and the floating worm creatures bring to mind similar entities in Stuart Gordon's From Beyond. Those are only a handful of the numerous references in here, which is to say nothing of the more broad-strokes examples, like the previously discussed colorful lighting, the numerous fake posters on the walls, which are designed to look like those of actual

gialli, Bella almost getting scissors to the eyeball (most will probably think of Fulci's Zombie but there are numerous Italian horror films with that same image) and a wine brand that Porfiry drinks in one scene that says "Giallo" on the label.

Finally, I have to give a lot of credit to the filmmakers, not just for what they were able to pull off with so little money but also for doing so throughout a long series of trials and tribulations. They filmed this thing over the span of nearly a year, shooting what they could on weekends while they continued working day-jobs during the week. During that time, they initially had to deal with a slow crew they hired off the internet, discovered

nine days in that the person they'd hired to keep track of costs spent $20,000 more than they had, which forced them to get more funding and go back to doing everything themselves, sometimes lost actors and locations right before they were to shoot, discovered that one of their digital cameras' memory card was destroyed and everything shot on it was unusable, and accidentally broke an

expensive filter they had on loan. They also did some things that are incredibly dangerous, such as make up their own fire retardant gel when they couldn't get any of the official stuff for a few real burn gags, held real, running chainsaws very close to actors (that expression of terror on Adam Brooks' face is not acting), and actually let a couple of cars run off a cliff! Now, that was going a tad too far but, again, I have to admire their dedication and determination to make this movie, no matter what.

All that said, The Editor is a movie I can say I admire and respect more than I actually enjoy. The main reason for that is, ironically, its biggest draw: its sending up of gialli and other Italian horror movies. It's abundantly clear the people behind the film are fans of this subgenre (or, at least, they were; the long and arduous production of the movie kind of made them lose their taste for it) in how they satirize the abundant gore, the sleaziness, the

hokey, over-the-top, dubbed performances, and how nonsensical they tend to be, but the thing is, that gimmick starts to get old long before the 94-minute running time is up. It's cute and clever when the movie first starts and you're watching these weird characters dealing with a series of grisly murders on the set of a sleazy giallo being filmed, but as the movie goes on and it starts to get more into the "meat" of the story, such as it is, I, at

least, start to think, "Okay, okay, just get on with it!" Except for a handful of characters, namely Rey Ciso himself, you can't really relate to anybody because almost none of them act normal, and there are also random acts of weirdness going on in a number of scenes, such as in one where Cal Konitz, Mancini, and Porfiry are talking to Ciso and you can see some girls playing patty-cake in

the background. That leads me into something else: the film's bizarre tone. Again, I get that it's a parody, but the tone is just off-putting to me, and many of the instances of humor, like when Porfiry slaps Josephine and admonishes Ciso for not keeping his wife in line when he's supposed to be secretly tailing them, Dr. Casini's being so happy that he got Umberto Fantori's "autograph" on a release

form (for that matter, the whole scene between Casini and Porfiry is weird), how crazy Porfiry gets while having sex, and his and Konitz's perceived repressed homosexuality, just leave me thinking, "Was that supposed to be funny? It's just weird and, in some cases, stupid." And finally, during the latter half, the movie gets way too weird for its own good. I know I shouldn't be taking it seriously,

as it's making fun of another convention of the genre, but Ciso's weird visions (as spectacular as they) are, the random instances of the supernatural, and the ending with Porfiry breaking into the church bell-tower and discovering he's on a film strip in an editing machine just make me roll my eyes because they come off as needlessly cryptic.

In case you're thinking I don't care for this movie because I'm not a fan of Italian horror, I want to make it clear that couldn't be further from the truth, as there are a number of those movies, particularly gialli, that I do like. At this point, I've seen a number of Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci's films, as well as a handful of Mario Bava's work, and I've enjoyed most of them. I don't particularly care for Argento's Inferno or Fulci's Manhattan

Baby, but I do like movies such as The Cat o' Nine Tails, Deep Red, Suspiria, Zombie, The Beyond, and Black Sabbath, to name a few, and in watching them, I can go along with a lot of the tropes The Editor sends up (weirdly, I can understand what's going on in many of those movies I've named, including Suspiria). Maybe it's just that I can't take it when those tropes are amplified in the manner they are here or that the movies Astron-6 produces aren't my thing (I've heard from somebody who's seen some other films of theirs that they likely aren't), but for whatever reason, The Editor is one parody movie I'm not big on.

Appropriately, the movie opens in a seedy, smokey club, where a woman is doing a provocative dance for a crowd of leering men, with one man in particular watching her with great interest from the shadows. She concludes her performance with a fire-eating act that she performs while bending over backwards. She's then seen walking down a green-lit alleyway on her way home afterward,

when she hears something. Glancing behind her, she doesn't see anything, but when she tries to walk on, she gets grabbed from the side by a pervert, whom she quickly knees in the groin, leaving him groaning in pain and yelling threats at her, while she rushes off and makes it through her home's front door. Calming herself down, she removes her clothes and heads to her bathroom, unaware that

someone is lurking out on her front step. It then cuts to a shot from around a corner of her walking out of the shower and drying herself off, before she heads to her bedroom. However, an axe-wielding figure is shown to be standing in another hallway. In her bedroom, she puts a very flimsy, see-through nightgown on over her nude body, and goes to close her open window, when she's grabbed

from behind and a syringe is used to inject something into her through the neck. The intruder places her body on the bed, telling her she's completely paralyzed, and reveals a large spider, which he says is very aggressive and venomous. He puts the spider on her leg and, as it crawls up her body, the killer reveals his axe, telling her that her boyfriend, Arturo, can't save her now, and smashes the axe into her face, spraying a nearby

picture of Arturo with blood. The movie then cuts to Rey Ciso and his young assistant, Bella, piecing together the scene that's just been shown, the former cursing himself for the clumsy jump-cut that occured due to his wooden fingers. Fortunately for him, Bella is able to find a strip to fix the mistake, and he allows her to splice it in herself, which she does so quite well. But then, Ciso's attitude turns morose, as he motions towards the scene of gory

violence and says, "That's as close to living as you and I will ever come," adding, "If this is living, I want no part of it," before getting up and walking out of the room.

On his way out, he gets a shock from Claudio Berti, the actor playing the lead in the movie, when he jumps out from behind a section of wall and yells while holding a devil mask to his face. He then apologizes, saying he thought he was his girlfriend, Veronica, who played the part of the murder victim in the scene Ciso just assembled. Veronica shows up behind Claudio, scaring him

instead, and the two of them joke about what would become of the movie if Claudio had scared Ciso to death or if she had scared Claudio to death. After the two of them kiss very passionately, they go off elsewhere in the studio, while Ciso heads on home. On his way, he's followed by Bella, who watches him with a longing expression on her face. Following a scene

between Ciso and his wife, Josephine Jardin, in their home, which shows how broken their marriage is, it cuts back to the studio, where Claudio runs a cut of the film for him and Veronica to watch. While Veronica tries to cuddle up to him, Claudio is clearly more interested in watching his really bad acting in a scene where he finds a woman's slain body on a dance floor, declaring to his partner, "We'll catch the killer who

killed her." The two of them are then faced with the killer, while Claudio tries to get Veronica to pay more attention to the film. After a moment with Ciso at his home, we see more of the movie, with Arturo and his partner running in slow motion towards the killer, followed by Arturo knocking the head off of what is clearly a mannequin. Claudio, again, is amazed with himself, while Veronica tries to get his attention by removing her robe, revealing

she's wearing nothing but a pair of blue underwear underneath, and does some exotic dancing for him. Claudio makes it clear he'd rather watch himself than her, while behind a rack of clothes, a black-gloved figure with a straight razor is stalking them.

Realizing her seduction isn't working, she puts her robe back on and goes back to nuzzling and kissing Claudio's neck, while on the screen, his character claims to have known all along that what they rushed at was a mannequin and shrugs off some bullet wounds to his hand as, "All in a day's work." Suddenly, the image disintegrates and fades out, horrifying Claudio, who fears Ciso will have his head, as

they were watching his workprint. Veronica tells Claudio Ciso will cut it as many times as he asks, adding, "He's pathetic," which leads to Claudio slapping her across the face and then immediately saying, "I guess you're right." This act of violence against her seems to get Veronica all the more horny, as she starts kissing Claudio very passionately while sitting in his lap. But then, Claudio

stands up, holding her with one arm, saying he heard something and looking nervously around the room. Veronica tries to get on with the make-out session but Claudio says, "I've heard these old studios have ghosts, and I'll be damned if I let myself see one." It doesn't take much for Veronica to get Claudio's mind off ghosts and now, with no film to distract him, he starts reciprocating, placing

her on one of the seats and kissing her as he leans over her. But, it doesn't last, as the figure comes running in behind Claudio and slashes his throat open with the razor. Veronica screams as his blood pours all over her before the body collapses on top of her. She pushes him off and tries to make a run for it but is cornered and slashed repeatedly, her blood splattering on the projection screen, which itself is slashed. The film suddenly cuts to

Ciso, whom Bella finds asleep in the editing room. After she wakes him, he's confused, asking her to confirm if he went home the night before, but their conversation is cut short when a horrified scream echoes through the studio, causing Bella to drop the pot of coffee she was holding. It then shows the source of the screams: a woman who's just found Veronica's bloody body hanging in the projection room.

Inspector Peter Porfiry arrives on the scene and, after examining Bella's body, which is still hanging in the screening room, and noting the severed fingers on one hand, he speaks with the film's director, Francesco Mancini, as well as Ciso and Cal Konitz. He particularly questions Ciso, as he was the last one who saw the victims alive, and he mentions having seen Claudio, whom he says was

dressed as the devil. Porfiry becomes amused at this and plays around with the very devil mask Claudio was wearing. He then learns Margarit was the woman who found the body and comments that he knows her well, pointing at a wedding ring on his hand, before bumping into the body himself. Frazzled, he angrily asks one of the officers on the scene, Giancarlo, why it hasn't been cut down and

goes along with his flimsy excuse of not being to find a ladder. Going back to Ciso, he notes how he's having trouble lighting a match because of his wooden fingers and lights it and his cigarette for him. Porfiry then leaves, advising them all not to trust anyone until he's found the culprit. On the way out, he learns from a doctor that Margarit is suffering from hysterical blindness due to the shock of finding the body. When he sees her clouded, white

eyes, Porfiry is anything but sensitive, asking the doctor if she'll look like that forever, making her self-conscious about how she looks and adding to her hysteria. Ciso is then formally introduced to Konitz, as well as Cesare, a lookalike to Claudio, as Mancini tells the editor he's going to need all of his skills in order to make this work. Konitz also gives Ciso a Betamax tape of his demo reel, which the editor is befuddled about how to work with.

At the police station, Chief O'Connor warns Porfiry that his daughter, Margarit, had best come out of the situation completely unblemished, adding that he's going to have Giancarlo keeping an eye on her in the meantime. O'Connor's threats about him being busted back to a traffic cop get to Porfiry to the point where he vomits into a waste basket when the chief leaves his office.

The film cuts to a small section of several women dancing very provocatively, when Cesare and Konitz rush in, playing their movie roles. They grab one blond woman in particular, as Cesare says she fits the description of the killer they're looking for. Betting her face is actually a mask, he rips it off, only to reveal a bloody mess of gore, innards, and a skull, as the woman screams

hysterically. He then pushes her face right back on and makes it stay. The film cuts to the editing booth, as Ciso watches the scene, which reveals how bad Cesare's acting is before he's dubbed; Ciso is also obviously quite depressed over his lot in life. It then switches to Mancini's mansion, where he's being questioned by Porfiry, telling the inspector he knows Ciso was once in an

asylum but not much else. After Porfiry leaves, complimenting him on one of his movies, Mancini is quite thrilled when a woman comes down the stairs behind him. She asks him if what she's wearing is what he wanted and he excitedly yells, "Yes!", several times, a shot from behind revealing she's holding a knife behind her back. Also, he yells so loud that Porfiry

hears him while walking away from the house. Ciso, in the meantime, goes to a church and tries to make a confession, talking about having had impure thoughts that have come to pass in reality. The priest, Father Clarke, however, is more interested in knowing what it's like to be on a big, fancy film set, and also asks what became of Josephine, inquiring if she's dead. Back at the studio, Cesare walks naked toward the communal shower after a trio of very

lovely women have finished showering. He hears an eerie voice call his name from the hall behind him, but turns around and sees no one there. He's startled by Konitz when he turns back around, and his co-star proceeds to "compliment" him on the day's work, saying, "You almost sounded like a real American human being," as well as remarks on the size of his penis. After exclaiming, "This is turning out to be a great night after all!", he runs down the

adjoining hall naked, while Cesare finally walks into the shower. Just as he turns on the water and starts rinsing down, he hears the voice from before again. Again, when he looks behind him, he doesn't see anyone, and tries to brush it off, only to hear it again. This time, he walks to the edge of the shower, and when he gets right to the entrance, a razor is jammed into his jugular.

Ciso is shown sitting at his editing machine, re-watching the scene from earlier, only to be shocked when he sees footage of Cesare being murdered in the shower. He quickly looks through the film strip he's reviewing, when Konitz comes in, all bubbly about how Mancini is going to promote him to the movie's lead now that Cesare is dead. Out in the hall, Porfiry examines Cesare's body and finds that,

like before, the fingers on one hand have been severed. As the body is being rolled out, Konitz excitedly films it and even tries to get a shot of the body under the cover but the officer pushing it prevents him. Mancini shows up and, after yelling at a woman who's trying to get sexy with him it's not the right time, orders Ciso to reedit the movie to make Claudio look like Konitz's sidekick all along. Commenting

that he could use some of the footage Konitz gave him, Ciso reveals that, in his ignorance about Betamax, he ruined the tape, much to Konitz's annoyance. Porfiry shows up, noting how Ciso is always wearing the same clothes and asks if that's because he didn't go home the night before; Ciso, in turn, notes how Porfiry is wearing the same clothes as well but he retorts he has to because he's an

inspector. Porfiry then brings up Ciso's having been in an asylum and presses him into explaining himself, unless he wants to be arrested. He goes on to talk about how he met Umberto Fantori when he was an up and coming editor, and a flashback shows this meeting, which involves Fantori dabbing his cigarette ashes into Ciso's hands and talking about how he can see into his heart, which has made him decide he's the one to cut his

movie. They shake hands, leading into a montage of the movie in question and the acclaim it received, particularly Josephine Jardin for her performance and Ciso for his editing, which he wins an award for. Ciso narrates that he had a perfect life, when Fantori told him his next movie was to have no end, middle, or beginning, and he agreed to edit the world's longest movie. He says that years of work drove him to his breaking point,

while Josephine's star fell, and it all came to a head one moment when, exhausted and half-mad from being overworked, he accidentally sliced off the fingers on his right hand. He's shown gasping and exclaiming, "No!", as he watches blood spray out of the stumps that were once his fingers. Getting back to the real movie, Ciso explains he spent some time in a hospital but denies it was an asylum, before heading back to his editing room.

When he does, Margarit walks backstage with one of her breasts hanging out. Mancini tells her to, "Cover those things up," but it turns out he was talking about her blind eyes, which he covers with a dark pair of glasses.

Meanwhile, in the editing room, Bella is looking through the film strips, when she appears to get an eerie feeling and looks about the room, at the posters for horror movies on the wall and then closely at the images on a line of film strips hanging across from her. Ciso then bursts in, causing her to gasp, and when she asks, he assures her that they themselves are in no danger of being

murdered, that actors are the ones who make such enemies. When she goes to start working on the footage of Cesare, Ciso stops her, telling her he'd rather see the reel she says she's been working on lately. Out in the parking lot, Porfiry meets up with Konitz, who's handing out autographed pictures of himself to anyone who will take them, and is introduced to his girlfriend,

Jasmine Rain. It's revealed that Porfiry and Jasmine were once lovers themselves, the latter describing him as a, "Strong and passionate man." That's when we get the weird flashback of Porfiry making crazy, rough, kinky love to Jasmine as rain pours down on them in a wooded area. Konitz finds this story amusing and invites Porfiry to join him and Jasmine for dinner; Porfiry tells Konitz he has to take a rain check, as he has more "investigating"

to do, completely ignoring how Konitz is loading knives and a chainsaw into the trunk of his car! As Konitz and Jasmine are pulling out, Porfiry spots a straight razor on the ground. He picks it up and rushes after the car, only to give it back to Konitz, who makes the age-old comment of how he would lose his head if it weren't attached. Even more obliviously, Porfiry tells him he doesn't want to leave something like that lying around while a killer's on the loose, saying it could be a weapon in the wrong hands. 

Back in the editing room, Ciso comments on the skill with which Bella put together her reel (there's a very suggesting shot of him holding a strip out in front of the camera, juxtaposed with it going right up her middle, all while he says it's a, "Beautiful body of work,"), but says she forgot one reaction shot. Distraught at this, she suddenly starts cutting herself, but Ciso stops her before she can do any

real harm to herself. She starts praising him as a real artist, likening him to Van Gogh ("With his wooden ear," as she comments), and then cries out of shame for what she did. Ciso tries to cheer her up, but when she leans in for a kiss, he rejects her, saying he's "happily married." He also writes off her declaration of love, saying she's too young to know what love is, but she insists she does, talking

about the light she feels he gives off, and then asks, "Mr. Ciso, make me a woman." She tries to come on to him but he tosses her off, yelling, "I said no, goddammit!", and grabs a reel off the machine. Bella suddenly starts screaming madly, but he simply slips out and closes the door behind him. Out in the hall, Ciso runs into Porfiry, who asks what the screaming was about, and Ciso simply says it was

his assistant, saying she's a "mad little girl," unaware that Bella is watching from the doorway behind him. Porfiry also tries to take the reel of film but Ciso refuses and walks out, with the inspector threatening to get a warrant. In the editing room, Bella starts sifting through the reels, trying to find a clue to the killer's identity. Following the scene between Ciso and Josephine at the restaurant, with Porfiry coming in and demanding Ciso keep his wife

in line, the film shows the two of them in bed later that night. At one point, Ciso sits up in the dark and looks around nervously, first down the hallway and then about the bedroom. Initially, he doesn't see anything, but then, he sees a dark figure in the corner of the room, one with vivid blue eyes that radiate out of the darkness. Ciso watches in terror as the figure steps out from where he was hiding, though remains in the dark, except for his eyes.

Ciso quickly turns on a lamp by the bedside, but then finds there's no one there. Josephine angrily complains for him to turn the light off and does it herself when he doesn't comply.

Elsewhere, Porfiry sneaks into the institution where Ciso was once a patient and, after creeping down a long corridor filled with sleeping, female patients, pushes aside a large, sliding door at the end, only for it to creak loudly. Turning back around, he sees he woke the patients up, as they sit up in bed and stare at him with annoyed expressions. He heads into the records room and

finds Ciso's file in a cabinet, only to open the folder up and find nothing inside. The cigarette lighter he's been using as a makeshift torch goes out and he spends a few seconds trying to get it to relight, when he hears some giggling in the darkness. Suddenly, the lighter is ignited by one of the patients, who whispers to him, "Kiss me." He's taken aback by this, but when she repeats it,

he complies and kisses her, only to recoil when she starts biting into his lower lip. She's grabbed from behind by Dr. Casini, who remarks how she almost got away from him, before he sedates her using a very large syringe. After that, Porfiry talks with Casini in his office, where he's told that Ciso attempted to kill an assistant of his, Giuseppe. A flashback shows Giuseppe walking down into an

editing room, only to find Ciso with his back to him, seemingly bent over in pain. When he turns him around, Giuseppe discovers he's apparently cut off his fingers with a pair of scissors, with one of the severed fingers dropping out of his open mouth. Before he can react, Giuseppe is grabbed by the head and Ciso shoves him towards the screen of the editing machine. The movie cuts back to the present, where Casini tells

Porfiry the concept of "Plato's Cave," where men are raised to think that shadows on the wall are people, animals, and everything else, adding that Ciso believed nothing in life was real, that, "We're all just marionettes on a stage. We convinced him otherwise, but he didn't stay in our institution for very long." He also tells Porfiry that Ciso's release was signed for by Umberto Fantori, and then silently gushes about having the director's

signature on the release form, which he has framed and hanging on the wall. When Porfiry considers speaking with Fantori, he learns he's been dead for years, and when he inquires about Giuseppe, Casini shows him some disturbing footage of the former assistant sitting in a cell, completely wrapped in bandages, but offers no explanation as to why. On his way out, Casini asks Porfiry not to tell Ciso about their conversation. After he's gone, it's revealed the patient from before was hiding behind the door the whole time. She says, "Kiss me," and Casini responds with, "Bite me."

After a brief scene where Ciso is shown washing his face in the bathroom, only to notice a cigarette burn appear in the upper right corner of the screen, Porfiry comes home to find Margarit asleep, with a "Happy Anniversary" cake sitting on a dresser across from the bed (for some reason, a subtitle comes up clarifying what it says, I guess for those of us who have a hard time reading cursive, especially

when it's written in frosting). Standing over Margarit, he's surprised when a German shepherd suddenly lunges at him. Margarit wakes up and stops the dog, whom she says is "Rolfie," a seeing-eye dog her father brought over. The subject of her blindness and how it's affecting their relationship comes up, with Porfiry having to reassure her that he still loves her. The two of them kiss and that leads

into a kinky, slow-motion sex scene, where Porfiry, after downing a bottle of wine, smashes it on the back of a chair, the pieces falling down on Margarit, and then takes the smashed top and slices it across her chest. He suckles one of her breasts, puts a blindfold on her (obviously, doing so is pointless, but as I've said, this movie isn't concerned with logic), pours something in her

mouth and on her now naked body, before finally talking his pants off and beginning the actual act. While she's riding him, Porfiry looks to his left at Rolfie watching them going at it, and then notices one of Konitz's signed photos sitting framed on the dresser across from them. Seeing the latter appears to encourage Porfiry to put on a better performance (in one shot, you can see a big portrait on the wall of the two of them lying on the floor, with her

naked across a tiger-skin rug), which leads to him grabbing the cake, dropping it on her chest, and grabbing chunks of it and slathering it across his face, as he smacks his heads and yells crazily; Margarit seems rather disturbed by what she's hearing in that instance. A brief cutaway shows a scene from the latest cut of the movie, with Konitz's character talking with Margarit's, who says that when the murder took place, she was home, "Washing my

hair, and shaving my pussy." Konitz actually lifts up her skirt and comments that her story checks out, while Ciso is seen with his head in his hands, obviously wondering, "What is my life?" (that's how I sometimes feel with the stuff I watch and review on here). Back at Porfiry's home, he's suddenly awakened while sleeping with Margarit by the sound of someone knocking on the front door and gets up to answer it. When he opens the door, he finds no one there waiting for him.

Inside, Margarit comes downstairs, but Rolfie leads her into the kitchen, where the door slams shut and she gasps loudly. Hearing her, Porfiry rushes back in and to the kitchen door, calling for Margarit and telling her to open the door, only to see there's no lock. Margarit senses that someone is in the room with her, as a black-gloved hand comes into frame, grabs her face, and pushes her back against

the side of the door. Unable to budge the door, Porfiry runs outside, grabs an axe, and runs back in. He yells for Margarit to stand back from the door and starts hacking at it, unaware she's being held up against the door at knife-point. Upon smashing a large slit in the wood, Porfiry looks in and asks Margarit if the killer is in there and if it's

Ciso, neither of which she can confirm, obviously, due to her blindness. He continues chopping at the door, until he smashes a big chunk out of it, which is when the attacker pushes her head in the way, causing him to accidentally smash her in the head with the axe. Immediately realizing what he's done, Porfiry walks into the room, removes the axe from Margarit's body, and, bending down, kisses her right hand in grief before hacking off the fingers

and feeding them to Rolfie. Suddenly, Giancarlo comes in, pointing a gun at Porfiry, who springs up, still holding the axe. Porfiry immediately admonishes Giancarlo, saying he's the inspector on the case, and feigns sending him after the killer, only to then trick him into touching the axe and getting his fingerprints on it. Further exonerating himself, Porfiry says he saw the killer, describing him as a "black figure," and pours both of them a

drink, telling Giancarlo he needs someone to operate for him undercover. Getting him to take a swig of the liquor, he tells him to testify in court that he saw the killer, further confusing the dim-witted officer by saying the drink is making him forget he was there the whole time. He gets him to agree to say he saw the killer, telling him he'll make a good cop one day, despite the fact that he already is one.

The next day, Giancarlo starts his undercover job as a new editor at the studio, prompting Mancini to fire Ciso on the spot, saying Giancarlo is very knowledgeable about film and mentions how Ciso practically cut Konitz out of the movie. Ciso stomps to the editing room, where Bella tries to tell him something, but he quickly shuts her down, telling her it's not a good time, explaining that he's been fired. While grabbing his

bag, he finds some bloody clothes inside and quickly closes it before Bella can see, asking her if anyone else has been in the room. Bella tries to speak with him again, saying what she has to tell him is on that very subject, but Porfiry suddenly comes in and yells at Ciso over how Casini told him a very different story of his commitment to the asylum. Ciso responds that what he told him was how he remembered it, adding that

everyone is an editor of his or her reality, before storming out past him. Porfiry chases him to the door leading out to the parking lot, yelling that he wasn't done talking with him, but Ciso ignores him and goes on home. When he gets there, he finds Josephine watching Konitz's Betamax demo on a tape player she says she spent $500 on (after he

notices a wrench laying next to a napkin that has "FIX THE PLUMBING!" written on it by the door). Though he's put off by the tape, which Josephine initially thinks is something he put together, as it's nothing more than Konitz dry-humping a half-naked woman on the floor, Josephine is totally captivated, saying Konitz is magnificent and possibly even better than Claudio.

Her mood instantly sours when Ciso mentions his firing, as she petulantly whines, "Who is going to pay for the food? Who is going to pay for my clothes?! Who's going to pay for this damn, $500 Beta machine?!" Ciso walks off to the bathroom, while Josephine lets out an anguished scream, as Konitz does the same on the tape. Meanwhile, in the bathroom, Ciso drops the bloody clothes into

the sink, pours a flammable liquid over them, and, after some difficulty, strikes a match and lights them afire. He watches them burn, when he looks at the medicine cabinet and opens it up to reveal a sort of portal (one which makes me think of Poltergeist) that he's able to climb through, entering a bizarre dimension.

At the same time, at the studio, Bella prepares to have a look at the strip of film she believes will reveal the killer's identity; while she's getting it ready, she slightly cuts her thumb on the edge of it. In his strange, alternate reality, Ciso sees an image of Bella as she looks at the editing machine, watching a piece of footage of a masked figure in a trench-coat walking through a door; at that very moment, the same figure appears in the

doorway behind Bella. Ciso sees this and futilely yells for Bella, only to see a dark vision of himself, with the vivid blue eyes of the figure from before, walking towards him. Bella finally notices the intruder, who is now approaching her while brandishing a sharp knife. Appearing to realize who it is, Bella tries to escape but ends up struggling with the attacker. While Ciso screams helplessly in the dimension,

Bella is overpowered by the killer, who stabs into her left palm and then, as she struggles to remove the blade, grabs a pair of scissors and holds her down on the editing deck, attempting to plunge the scissors into her eye. Bella grabs the killer's hand and, with all of her strength, is able to stave off the scissors from going into her eye until she manages to shove them away. This doesn't save her,

however, as the killer comes down with the scissors, when the film cuts back to Ciso's bathroom. Josephine turns on the sink, putting out the burning clothes, and admonishes Ciso for this, as he lies in the bathtub, having apparently been hallucinating from the fumes. Ignoring her, he gets up and runs out of the room, worried about Bella. When he gets to the studio, he finds her dead in

the editing room, her body slumped over the editing deck with the scissors sticking out of her chest. Devastated and brought to tears over this, Ciso has a breakdown (his anguished sobbing is totally silent) and then stumbles out of the room. Giancarlo shows up and Ciso grabs him by the throat, slamming him against the wall, demanding to know where he was. Giancarlo tells him he was out studying and grabbed some more books to help him with his studies.

Unconvinced, Ciso pushes Giancarlo into the backstage area, but the two of them are separated when Konitz restrains Ciso from behind, while Mancini comes in, demanding to know what's going on. They both accuse each other of being murderers, with Giancarlo almost blowing his cover by saying he's a cop, and Ciso tells Mancini of Bella's death. The director tells Konitz to call Porfiry and then help Giancarlo clean up the

editing room. When the two of them are alone, Ciso questions Mancini as to how he guessed Bella was killed in the editing room, as he never mentioned it, but Mancini quickly brushes him off and orders him to get out and not show up again. As Ciso walks away, Mancini grumbles, "Making movies used to be fun." Ciso then sees Konitz and Giancarlo clumsily attempting to remove Bella's body from the editing room. Later, when he's by

himself, Giancarlo does some editing of his own and is impressed with his "skill," although he shouldn't be, as one end of the reel is a knotted mess. He also doesn't notice an actual tarantula sitting on the screen while the scene from the movie involving the spider plays behind it. He starts looking through an instructional book to see what he should do next, when the tarantula crawls over the top of it and onto his hand. When he realizes

what's going on, he immediately jumps and flings the spider away. Then, hearing something in the hallway, he pulls out his revolver and slowly creeps out into it, nervously pointing his gun here and there. At one point, he accidentally fires a shot at the floor and jumps back, dropping his gun. He bends down to pick it up and when he does, the masked killer is revealed to be in the editing room

behind him. Turning back around, Giancarlo has enough time to see the blade before his stomach is slashed open, his intestines ripped out and wrapped in a film projector, and his fingers sliced off. As a result, the next scene has Mancini kissing Ciso's ass, asking him to help him ou with finishing the movie, when, much to his surprise, he hands him several film cans containing a completed edit. Mancini is

delighted and hugs Ciso, before telling Konitz to carry them to the screening room, which he does... but not before he clumsily drops the cans on the floor. He picks them up and walks off, prompting Ciso to ask Mancini, "Where do you find these people?"

Following a brief scene where Porfiry, while keeping tabs on Ciso at the church, meets with Father Clarke and is told of the ancient Roman superstition about editors acting as bridges to the netherworld, Konitz is seen watching the film with Mancini, visibly unhappy over what he's seeing. In the next scene, Ciso, while walking home, realizes he's being followed up the road, when the car guns it and chases him

up a small hill. He dives off to the side to avoid being run down, as the car does a circle and parks. An enraged Konitz gets out, unlocks his trunk, and pulls out a chainsaw, while Ciso is restrained from behind. Konitz comes at him with the chainsaw, threatening to cut him into pieces for removing him from the movie, but while Ciso is, initially, terrified as Konitz swings the saw around in front of him, he notes his constant blinking and then tells him he doesn't believe he'd do

it. Konitz insists he would but Ciso tells him he's a terrible actor, that he blinks whenever he's trying to put on act. This infuriates Konitz even more, as he puts down the chainsaw after letting out a frustrated scream and settles for decking Ciso in the face. He and his companions leave him lying on the road, with Konitz threatening him further if he doesn't cut him back

into the movie, while Ciso sees a ghostly of vision of Bella hovering over a nearby lake. He's then seen back at the editing machine, watching Konitz's poor acting as he does a scene with Margarit. Suddenly, the machine switches off and Ciso finds he's unable to turn it back on. Getting up, he looks at another piece of equipment, only to find himself thrust back into the strange dimension

from before, where he sees another spectral vision of Bella flashing around. When he approaches her, he's suddenly in the editing room again, as she lets out a scream and her face distorts in a disturbing way. Meanwhile, Konitz and Jasmine are having their long delayed dinner with Porfiry, where he tells the inspector of how Ciso cut him out of the movie and that he didn't react the way a normal person would

when he threatened him with a chainsaw (he says this as he randomly puts a spoon in his shirt's breast pocket). Porfiry, in turn, tells him he believes Ciso has some connections to the occult and that Josephine may be the key to getting him to cut him back into the film.

Josephine is shown looking through a book while watching Konitz's demo reel again, when she seems to get an idea and puts said book, titled Three Mothers, on a table covered with autographed pictures and other memorabilia of the actor. When Ciso arrives at his home, he finds no sign of Josephine, while the tape is still playing on the TV. Approaching it, he sees its nature suddenly change, as it shows a clip of Konitz dressed up and

looking like Ciso, claiming his wife's being raped, while cutting back to him, again, dry-humping a woman on the floor. Ciso quickly takes the tape out of the player but it keeps going on the TV screen, with the woman on the floor becoming Josephine in one cut, and when he turns the tape over, examining it, it suddenly breathes in his hand and he drops it in shock. Following the sound of some mad yelling on the screen, Ciso sees Konitz

remove the wig he was wearing while acting as him, prompting him to grab a wrench and smash the screen. When he does, a dark figure is revealed to be standing in a doorway behind him, and he's knocked unconscious while looking at the smashed innards of the TV. In the next scene, he's tied up in front of a bonfire and sees Josephine on the ground. Konitz says he's going to get his cut of what he owes him and, ignoring Ciso's

promise to cut him back into the movie, removes his shirt, unbuckles his pants, and starts raping Josephine. At least, it starts out as a rape, with Josephine whimpering for Ciso to stop Konitz, but it soon becomes clear she's into it, embracing Konitz and returning his advances. This is a reaction he wasn't expecting or wanted, and when she gets too rough for him, actually scratching him

around his rear, he whispers for Ciso to help him. He soon decides he's had enough and gets off Josephine, says he has to go, tells Ciso, "I'm really sorry about that," and leaves the spot. Josephine proclaims that she and Konitz are going to get married, before giving Ciso a half-hearted apology, saying she'll always love him but isn't in love with him. She gets up and, saying she has to go meet up with Konitz, runs off into the night, leaving Ciso by himself, still tied up. But, by the next day, he's managed to free himself and makes his way back to his house, where he, again, sees the apparition of Bella and follows her into the dark dimension again.

While Porfiry does some research into the occult at an old library, Ciso, while following Bella, sees the bizarre image of his severed fingers crawling along the ground and is drawn to a bubbling pool of a black, oil-like substance. He dips his hand into it and when he pulls it out, he sees the specter of Bella letting out a silent scream, as a screen wipe transitions to a close-up of the killer's black-gloved hand outside of what's revealed to be Konitz's

apartment. There, he gives Jasmine a fright by throwing a switchblade dangerously close to the bit of wall next to her face, and though she's not at all amused by this, he forces her to forgive him by roughly making out with her and the two of them fall on the bed. Back with Porfiry, he's so engrossed in his reading that he doesn't realize there are tarantulas all around him until they're almost on top of him. When he does,

he jumps out of his seat, kicks away and stomps on those closest, then grabs the book he was studying and leaves with it. Meanwhile, Konitz finds he can't get it up, wondering if it's because he feels bad for what he did to Ciso. He then asks Jasmine to talk about her love affair with Porfiry, and when she does, it appears to do it for him. But, when he turns to look at Jasmine, he only sees Porfiry, though still speaking in her voice, and starts

making out without any problems. At that moment, the real Porfiry brings the old book to the church to have Clarke help him in translating the Latin. When he reads some of it aloud, Clarke warns him not to do so, only for his left coat-arm to inexplicably burst into flames. Porfiry isn't at all fazed by this, as he casually puts it out, writing it off as just a bit of fire, and ignores Clarke's

warning to destroy the book, saying he'll do so when he finds out Ciso's part in everything. Clarke, like before, insists Ciso has nothing to do with anything evil, telling how he once patched up the masonry in the bell-tower. When Porfiry's guard is down, Clarke tries to take the book from him but Porfiry holds onto and leaves with it, saying he has a date with a friend. Back with Konitz and Jasmine,

the two of them are now totally naked and doing the nasty, but a split-screen reveals the killer is prepping a chainsaw at the same time. When they're really getting into it (which happens when Konitz spots a framed autograph of Porfiry nearby), the killer walks in with the running chainsaw and plunges it into Jasmine's shoulder as she's straddling Konitz. Her blood splatters all over

him as the two of them scream, and he pushes her off him and over the side of the bed, only to get trapped in the opposite corner as the killer moves in, sawing at the wall while approaching. Konitz uses anything he can grab to defend himself, even resorting to crappy, pseudo-karate when the killer is almost on top of him, but it proves futile in the end.

The next day, Porfiry is on his way to meet up with Konitz with Rolfie. On the way, Porfiry decides to play a little game of fetch, grabbing a stick and throwing it. Rolfie chases after it but what he brings back is a severed hand with the fingers missing, which Porfiry immediately realizes belongs to Konitz. In the next scene, Porfiry heads straight for Ciso's home and breaks down the door, entering with his gun drawn. Ciso

doesn't appear to be there, and the place also seems to have been ransacked, but he does find an open book with cutout pictures of Konitz attached to the pages, with red symbols drawn around them. Porfiry is horrifed at the sight of this and becomes very upset, as some cross-cutting reveals he'd found the rest of Konitz's body in the nearby river and dragged it out. Managing to get ahold of himself, he closes the book to find it's the

one Josephine was seen reading earlier. He also looks up into the fireplace and finds a film can hidden in it. Removing it, he finds it's full of severed fingers and drops it in shock, spilling them all over the floor. Now thoroughly convinced of Ciso's guilt, Porfiry flees the scene, while elsewhere, we get the bizarre vision of Ciso escaping the other dimension by climbing through his editing machine, completely covered in the oil

like substance. He heads out to the studio parking lot, hijacks and hot-wires a car, and takes off. As soon as he does, he finds Porfiry is on his tail and the two of them engage in a chase through some backalleys, with Porfiry backending Ciso's car, before they head past a railroad and out onto some gravel backroads. The two of them accelerate rapidly, with Porfiry getting alongside Ciso and attempting to force him off the side of the road,

before backending him again. Ciso takes a detour off to the right in an attempt to lose Porfiry, only to drive to the edge of a cliff and fall down a large chasm. This doesn't stop the completely deranged Porfiry, who follows him over the edge as well, but unlike Ciso, he falls out of the car before it hits bottom. After several seconds of silence and no movement, Ciso regains consciousness and

manages to break his way out of his destroyed car. Looking over at Porfiry's car but seeing no sign of the inspector, he attempts to stagger away, only for Porfiry to pop up on the other side and draw his gun on him. He tosses Three Mothers at him and derides the occult significance of editors that he's heard lately. Seeing that Ciso is thinking about running for it, he warns him not to, but he does so anyway, with Porfiry firing on him and chasing him through some woods (a scene that looks straight out of First Blood, I might add).

It cuts briefly to Mancini's home, where he's looking at a tarantula he keeps in a glass container, trying to get it to eat something he just put in there with it. He's interrupted when a woman walks in, someone he's been expecting but who he thought had stood him up. Outside, Porfiry limps towards Mancini's mansion, where he spots Ciso running while holding an axe, thinking he's about to murder his "final victim." He intercepts him and, again,

pulls his gun on him, refusing to listen to him and not noticing that, behind him, Josephine is sitting on the ground, rocking back and forth and quietly chanting while manipulating Mancini's severed head. Ciso tries to warn Porfiry of what's behind him, as Josephine stands up while holding a knife, but when he still won't listen, he rushes him. Ciso gets shot twice and collapses, only for Josephine to stab Porfiry in the back, a far

off shot revealing she's lit a bonfire and another fire in the shape of a pentagram. Realizing Josephine is the one behind everything, Porfiry raises his gun and shoots, only for it to backfire badly, blowing his hand into a mangled, bloody stump. Josephine laughs at his pain, while Ciso calls to her, as she says she's always hated the name Josephine. She also claims to have sacrificed everything for him, and now prefers to be referred to as simply

"Death." In the middle of this, Porfiry rushes over to a gas can nearby, grabs it, and starts flinging it on Josephine, as she repeatedly yells about wanting to be called Death. Porfiry yells for Ciso to light one of his matches but, like before, he finds it almost impossible to do so with his wooden fingers. The inspector makes him realize said fingers can work in and of themselves, and as Josephine

prepares to stab Porfiry, Ciso puts his wooden fingers in the bonfire and rushes at her. He grabs her gas-soaked arm with his burning hand and lights her aflame. Her entire body is immediately engulfed, as she flails around and screams in pain, and Ciso and Porfiry watch as her face is melted off before she collapses. The two men embrace as if they're old friends and Ciso tries to make sense of what Josephine did, with Porfiry saying Konitz had admitted he was the one who killed Cesare. Looking at Josephine's charred remains, Ciso prepares to head home, when Porfiry notes his bullet wounds. Ciso simply says, "All in a day's work, partner."

Some time later, Porfiry walks into the police station and tells Chief O'Connor he's planning on taking some time off. O'Connor, in turn, tells him he needs to talk with the staff doctor, Casini, given how he lit a person on fire. Porfiry brushes off the coincidence of the doctor's name, until he mentions Josephine Jardin, whom O'Connor tells him was never married, to Rey Ciso or anyone. He believes this is the type of delusion he should be

talking with Casini about and Porfiry becomes indignant, telling O'Connor he should afford him some more respect, only to be slapped twice across the face. O'Connor tells him the person he respects is Inspector Giancarlo, whom he says he gave a bronze shield while Porfiry was sleeping off his "pathetic hand wound." Porfiry is especially put off by his referring to Giancarlo as an inspector and is horrified when the supposedly dead man walks

into the office, wearing his very clothes, along with Jasmine Rain, who's wearing a nurse's uniform, and Casini, who says they have a lot to discuss. Completely freaked out and confused, Porfiry exclaims that his account of everything is true, before running out of the place, yelling that he's the inspector; Casini can only intone, "Weird. Really weird." Porfiry runs to the church, where he confronts Father Clarke, demanding to know where

"the editor" is. Clarke, in turn, says he not only doesn't know who he's talking about but would never associate with an editor or "their ilk." He also denies that Ciso ever repaired the bell, saying it hasn't rung in over a hundred years. Porfiry runs up to the bell-tower, where he finds a sealed off section of the wall, a red glow emitting through some small holes in it. Ripping it open, he finds a

skull sitting atop several film cans that have tiny candles around them and, after briefly examining the skull, takes out one of the film reels and looks at it carefully. He sees his own image on the celluloid, doing exactly what he's just done, and he looks up and yells, "No!", as the camera pulls back to reveal his image on an editing machine, which a black gloved figure switches off. After the ending credits, there's a brief scene of a very happy Rey Ciso coming home to Bella.

The music score is by a whole host of people, most notably Claudio Simonetti, whose band, Goblin, did the memorable music for Suspiria, as well as a number of the memorable cues for Dawn of the Dead, and who himself scored Tenebre, Demons, and Opera, just to name a few. He performed the music for the film's opening, which has that same distinct sound he brought to his scores of the 70's and 80's, with an electronic, percussive beat accompanied by an ethereal sound and a woman vocalizing over it. Other parts of the score were done by a variety of people including Astron-6's own Jeremy Gillespie, Trevor Tuminski and Norman Orenstein of SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada), the music group Vercetti Technicolor, and Brian Wiacek, who'd done the music for some of Astron-6's past films. Throughout the film, the music continues to have much of that distinctive sound of Italian horror, sometimes sincerely, as with Simonetti's contribution, and other times coming off as more of a sendup like the movie as a whole. In any case, it's quite good for the most part, managing to be fairly menacing and atmospheric in some scenes, fairly low-key and subtle in others, and even kind of heartfelt at points, like in one scene between Ciso and Bella. Some of the more memorable pieces of music come in at the end, where you get a Deep Red sort of theme that starts out soft when Porfiry climbs up to the bell-tower and then crescendoes into a full-blown, fast-paced, electronic track that plays over the first part of the ending credits, transitioning into a similar piece afterward. There are some parts of the music I'm not that big on, like the sappy-sounding piece that plays during the flashback to Porfiry and Jasmine's love affair (though, I think that's meant to come off as kind of cringe), but, while it's not something that's likely to be completely stuck in your head, it's another aspect of the movie that successfully bring to mind one of the tropes of the genre it's parodying.

The Editor is a movie that, if nothing else, deserves to be admired, not just for how effectively and genuinely it sends up the giallo genre, with the colorful cinematography, striking images and scenes, the feeling of their inherent sleaziness, the accuracy of the time period, the over-the-top gore and kills, impressive practical effects, good music score, and the numerous references and homages to various movies in the genre (as well as outside of it), but also with what the filmmakers went through to make it happen. But, that said, your enjoyment of it will depend on, one, if you yourself are a fan of what's been satirized, and two, how long you can stomach the same sort of jokes and parody. For me, the intentionally hokey acting and dubbing, the numerous bizarre and, in some cases, downright loathsome characters, and the overall illogical and confusing story wear out their welcome long before the movie begins approaching its conclusion. I can definitely appreciate its technical sophistication and the inherent affection for Italian horror, but that's not enough for me to say it's a movie I enjoy watching. I know many others will disagree but, for me, I seriously doubt I will ever watch this movie again, and the same goes for any of Astron-6's other productions.