1956 - Chartres (France): a group of French researchers, investigating strange experiments conducted in the early 1900s by one Paul Zeder, a personage in the odor of Satanism, discovered strange properties of certain soils referred to in the jargon as "K zones."
In Italy, Don Luigi Costa, a deceased apostate priest, was literally obsessed with the abilities of these soils, theoretically capable of raising the dead...
1983 - Bologna: young writer Stefano, receives an old typewriter as a gift.
The item, purchased by girlfriend Alessandra at an auction, had belonged to Costa.
Stephen finds strange phrases imprinted on the reels of ink tapes and thus finds himself embroiled in a seemingly unresolved mystery.
Haunted by increasingly circumscribed and evidentiary facts and circumstances, Stephen travels to an abandoned facility, a former colony near Rimini.
It is right in there that some scholars are trying to revive the dead: and one of the first guinea pigs is Fr. Luigi Costa...
Avati's excellent artistic foray into the fields of horror (he had previously made the similar The House of Laughing Windows), Zeder was presented to great acclaim at Myfest in Cattolica in 1983.
And one understands, after viewing, why the film has been a success (with audiences and critics) all over the World.
In the credits, as will also happen for Lamberto Bava's Macabro, the subject is also incredibly attributed to Maurizio Costanzo.
For years there has been an ongoing diatribe about the fact that Pet Sematary also has many points in common with Avati's film: the novel written by Stephen King (and brought to the screens in 1987 by Mary Lambert) is officially dated 1984 while Zeder dates from the previous year. It is therefore unclear whether, and how much, the similarity between the two works can be ascribed to chance.
Essential and effective, the soundtrack holds some importance in the overall success of the film.
Terror, for Pupi Avati, is never explicit; it is not given by a disemboweled body or a slashed throat: on the contrary, what is most frightening (and terrifying) is rather the naive (but evil and alien, no longer "human"), piercing eyes and chilling smile of Luigi Costa, when he rises from the grave and stares, with a never-before and never-again so evil gaze, at the control cameras...
Review by Undying1
