Mario Bava's son Lamberto Bava takes the reins of directing to mostly successful effect. In this tension-building horror, a woman leaves her children behind to meet with her lover, only to end the day with her son and lover dead. A year of institutionalism later, she returns to the set of her affair in the house of the blind man Robert, and creepy things begin happening... to Robert, it seems like a visitor is coming and having a sexual affair with the woman in the night, but nobody's entering the house. Is she possessed? Is it a ghost? Or is she herself pulling her old forays right out of the grave to continue them as if nothing ever happened?
Macabre is interesting because it actually lives up to expectations in unexpected ways. Basically, Bava the Younger shows off strength in the way he paces his reveals. He gives the viewer just enough time to guess what is behind the door, in the freezer, or up the stairs, and then actually shows it as if it's already revealed. By the time you actually see what's going on, you no longer want it to be the case; it's terrible to be so right all the time. In the meantime, the relationships developed among Robert, the woman, and the woman's daughter provide more than enough dramatic tension to earn the sensationalistic thrills.
So overall the movie is a decent, dark little idiosyncratic horror movie. There are some massive plot holes ("We visit his grave every year" -- interesting habit to have when he hasn't even been dead an entire year yet), some less-well-paced scenes ("This room needs a woman's touch"), and a dishearteningly dumb twist for its final shot ("Robert Duval's death remains a mystery"). But a horror movie seen from the perspective of a blind man, a crazy woman, and her proto-psychopathic daughter is well worth at least a first viewing for horror buffs.
--PolarisDiB
Macabre is interesting because it actually lives up to expectations in unexpected ways. Basically, Bava the Younger shows off strength in the way he paces his reveals. He gives the viewer just enough time to guess what is behind the door, in the freezer, or up the stairs, and then actually shows it as if it's already revealed. By the time you actually see what's going on, you no longer want it to be the case; it's terrible to be so right all the time. In the meantime, the relationships developed among Robert, the woman, and the woman's daughter provide more than enough dramatic tension to earn the sensationalistic thrills.
So overall the movie is a decent, dark little idiosyncratic horror movie. There are some massive plot holes ("We visit his grave every year" -- interesting habit to have when he hasn't even been dead an entire year yet), some less-well-paced scenes ("This room needs a woman's touch"), and a dishearteningly dumb twist for its final shot ("Robert Duval's death remains a mystery"). But a horror movie seen from the perspective of a blind man, a crazy woman, and her proto-psychopathic daughter is well worth at least a first viewing for horror buffs.
--PolarisDiB