Absurd

We start with a large, hulking mad man (has to be big George Eastman) being chased by a man in black (Edmund Purdum, a prolific actor in Euro Trash, best known for "Pieces" and his misfire at Directing on "Don't Open Till Christmas") through some woods.

They run to the grounds of a house where Psycho Man impales himself while trying to climb a spiked gate. He staggers to the house and proceeds to slop his innards on the owners' clean floor.

Psycho Man is then taken to Hospital where, during an operation, the Doctors notice he seems to be healing all by himself.

The mysterious man in black is hanging around and gets picked up by the local Police.

Sgt Engelman (Charles Borromel, from D'Amato's "Caligula: the Untold Story" and "Ator") is the World weary Cop in charge and he asks the man in black what his connection to Psycho Man is, but he gets no answers.

But when Psycho Man escapes from the Hospital, after drilling the head of a Nurse, the mysterious stranger tells his tale.

Purdom's character turns out to be a Bio Chemist Priest (now you don't see many of them around) who runs a research institute where Psycho Man escaped from after being contaminated (all this is never made clear) thus giving him the power to re-grow dead cells. This means that he can repair damage to his body, and only destroying the brain (the one thing he can't repair) will kill him. But the contamination has also turned him into a sadistic killer.

Meanwhile Big George is heading back to the house where he spilt his guts, where the Parents are away leaving the children, including a disabled Daughter named Katya (Berger, Daughter of Euro favourite William Berger) and a brat called Willy, in the hands of the baby sitter Emily (Annie Belle from Deodato's "House on the Edge of the Park").

What more of an opportunity can a psycho killer ask for?...

This movie (also known as "Anthropophagus 2", Horrible", "Monster Hunter", "Zombie 6: Monster Hunter" and "Grim Reaper 2", in true, confusing Italian fashion) is a classic example of all that's right and all that's wrong with Joe D'Amato.

When he's Directing the gloriously nasty deaths he delivers pure, gratuitous, exploitation gore sequences that made these 80's cheese fests so popular. But in between these scenes it's tedium of the most frustrating kind. Where his "Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals" had nudity and sex to keep the viewer awake between the gore, "Anthro 2" gives us only bored looking actors endlessly driving around, walking around and sitting around.

This is most annoying after what should be the start to a long, full on horror finale after a girl has a pick axe slammed into her head (nice effect) and Big George enters the house.

So, now we have a psycho killer in the house, and three perfect victims. Go for it Joe!

But no, Joe does not go for it. Instead, after this false start, we have scenes of Emily walking around, Willy watching TV (on which D'Amato has already bored us to tears with lots of footage from a really bad soap opera), Purdum and the Cops driving around and the children's Parents at a friends watching a football match (of which we are shown what seems like the entire first half, almost as if D'Amato is desperate to make you think this is an American film) while smoking endless cigarettes.

This goes on for nearly 20 minutes! What big George has been up to during this time is anyone's guess.

This is perhaps the biggest missed opportunity in horror cinema and the viewer never really recovers from the disappointment of it all.

But all is not lost of course. This is after all an 80's Italian gore film. And we have some moist and nasty gore goodies on show. The drill scene and the notorious band saw death are classic examples of gratuitous gore that the Italians were so good at. Both are slow, deliberate and never shy away from the sickening details. Crass, tasteless, unnecessary and just what the Doctor ordered to satisfy the baying gore hounds.

The famous oven death falls into the territory of the fetus removal from "Anthropophagus" (to which this film has no link to other than another Eastman psycho) in that the thought of what is happening is worse than what we are shown. This is mostly due to the actress pulling a face and acting like she simply has indigestion and is not having her head slowly baked.

Performances are adequate with Purdum (dubbed, I think, with an accent that makes him sound like Rozzano Brazzi from "Omen 3: The Final Conflict") giving a nicely intense performance and Big George, well, just doing what Big George does best!

The music by Carlo Maria Cordio is strange mixture of electronic tunes, cheesy rock guitar, a piano cue straight out of Argento's "Inferno" and a rehash of some of the music he dead for Lenzi's "Eaten Alive" (which also found it's way into "Cannibal Ferox"), but does he job well enough.

Strangest music though has to be when Katya turns on the tape player in her bedroom to confuse Eastman (don't ask) and maniacal organ music blasts out! No boy bands for this girl.

So gore is splashed, the crippled miraculously walk (could Big George really be playing Christ?) and in between we all fall asleep.