73 BC. Five gladiators of ancient Rome, tired of the mistreatment meted out to them, revolt, only to be tainted by immense violence. Spartacus will avenge the victims of crucifixion, rape and infanticide by executing the five murderers right in front of the temple of the goddess Nemesis.
Today. Three Roman boys are in a car together with two foreign girls they met the night before. The group is on their way to a forest in which an illegal rave party will be held. By now dark, they park their car on a dirt road and continue on foot through the dense vegetation. The boys' intentions do not seem to be the purest.
When ancient Rome meets the Circeo Massacre. When the rape&revenge mixes with the zombie-movie or to shoot it big when Lucio Fulci's dead merge with De Ossorio's. This is Morituris.
After a very successful (by now trendy) animated theme song/prologue from which the story of the gladiators is evinced, among other things well set to music through the choice of folk sounds traceable to the Romanesque period, Morituris displays a blatant lack of ideas, revealing an ignorance typical of the new Italian genre cinema.
From the very first minutes, the viewer is catapulted into an obscene and interminable minute-long speech, useless to the continuation of the film and which, among other things, seems to steal space from the already slender length of the film. The more observant might find similarities with the first few minutes of In the Market, but fortunately the game holds up here and although we are not faced with a Tarantino-esque screenplay, the actors manage to hold their own.
Why therefore continue in the consideration of the film? Because Morituris is, in its own small way, a masterpiece.
Director Raffaele Picchio's debut feature differs from current Italian productions in its underlying originality. Where many continue to hail and pay homage to the now-extinct talent of Dario Argento, persevering in the vain attempt to forge a new identity for our cinema on the casts of what was, Picchio chooses even more retro paths, those of the 1970s.
The story, linear and almost banal, is written by Gianluigi Perrone six hands with Tiziano Martella and with Raffaele Picchio while the special effects are by tricolor icon Sergio Stivaletti. The music section of the work, on the other hand, is signed by Riccardo Fassone.
The crew works properly and succeeds in lavishing the viewer with the undoubted love felt for Lucio Fulci's cinema, De Ossorio's cinema, and the most extreme metal music.
If Raphael Picchio is a fan of films about the Blind Resurrected, he has managed to fully prove it by giving us sacred images worthy of the first appearances of the Knights Templar in The Tombs of the Blind Resurrected. Likewise, the crude groans of the gladiators undoubtedly recall the moans of the living dead in Fear in the City of the Living Dead.
Extremely low-budget, the film has no explicitly gory scenes, so the collaboration with Stivaletti must be considered almost wasted.
Note of merit for lead actress Valentina D'Andrea, who seems to have reached a professional turning point with this work. Her facial expressions quintessentially mirror the classic victim in the rape&revenge first and the fodder for slaughter in the slasher later.
Brief kudos also to the other performers who did not force the choice of dubbing.
Morituris is ultimately the icon of our peninsula's dormant filmmaking talent.
This is at least as far as the German cut version edited under the title Morituris - Das Böse gewinnt immer is concerned. This edition carries an under-18 ban on the cover although it contains almost no trace of explicit violence in its 63-minute running time. In essence easily overlooked because even while offering a broad perspective of the film's value, it amputates it of its true nature of brutality, pessimism and anti-religiosity.
Fortunately, however, I was able to view the uncut version as intended by Raffaele Picchio and Gianluigi Perrone, which can be found under the French edition with the title Morituris - Legions of the dead and with a total length of 83 minutes. Italian film censorship has obviously not reached across the border and so those who want to enjoy the film in its unbiased entirety will have to look for it in the transalpine edition in which the version with Italian DTS 5.1 audio is included.
From the very first seconds, that is, during the antecedent preceding the animated theme song with the opening credits, we are placed before disturbing scenes. In fact, it only takes a few frames to lead us into the hell of pedophilia, which, although hinted at, clearly illustrates what motivated MOIGE to file a complaint against the film.
The uncut version of Morituris features not only the interminable opening speech, this time perhaps alleviated by the substantial extra minute-length available, but also a conspicuous and almost unacceptable sequel of violence of all kinds that could make one cry for exaggeration. Slaps, kicks and punches as well as the lowest moral degradation are only an incipit of the indigestible rape scenes against the two foreign girl protagonists.
Morituris leaves nothing to the imagination and, just to cite one example, we will witness violent oral intercourse after which the victim will find himself spitting out copious doses of semen.
Or again we will see Francis Malcolm torturing a woman who is subjected to a bondage practice in which a mouse channeled through a tube descends ravenously to her genital insides.
The carnage enacted by the returning gladiators this time, however, fully demonstrates the choice to count Sergio Stivaletti among the ranks of the crew. Excellent old-style special effects that will entertain and paradoxically relax after the brutal rape sequence.
Those accustomed to rape&revenge eagerly awaiting the arrival of divine vengeance for the rapists will have to think again. The thugs will be punished, by the girls themselves, only with a stone and a stab in the abdomen. The rest will be taken care of by gladiators, serving the Goddess Nemesis who judges no one.
In Morituris there is no divine justice and God is relegated to a corner, in the shadow of the jaws of fate, ruled by Nemesis.
Like Moira, here Nemesis represents justice above any deity, faith, or belief. To the goddess, gladiators offer the blood of their victims, slaughtering good and bad in the presence of an order that is above men, their god, and earthly and otherworldly justice.
Only 12 people appear in the film, all reaped (or not?) at the hands of the gladiators under the will of Nemesis. Five of these are executioners (the pedophile of the antecedent, the three thugs, and the sexual pervert), while four are the victims of the former (the child, the two foreign girls, and the slave Of erotic play).
Of others one will never have the right to know anything. To bad, fate has been generous. May it also be so toward Raffaele Picchio and Gianluigi Perrone.
Nemesis' will be done.
Curiosities from the French language version:
- The three thugs are Italian while the girls of French tourists.
- In discourses centered on musical tastes, the name of the Australian band Bestial Warlust is literally translated as a Bestial Profanation.
