Movies
Papi Avati’s ‘Il Signor Diavolo’ a Tribute to Horror Classics from the ’70s and ’80s!
Variety reports that Loic Magneron’s Paris-based Wide, a production-distribution boutique, has acquired international sales rights to Il Signor Diavolo, the latest -and 40th – feature from Italian horror icon Papi Avati.
Avati is best known for 1976’s The House with Laughing Windows and 1983’s Zeder which crowned him as a master of Italian giallo horror-thriller cinema at the time.
Starring Gabriel Lo Giudice and Alessandro Haber, and framed as a tribute to horror classics from the ‘70s and ‘80s, Il Signor Diavolo adapts Avati’s own novel that’s set in 1950s Italy and turns on a 14-year-old boy, Carlo, who kills Emilio, a special needs ward of the local priest. The film asks “why?”
“A fourteen-year-old boy, Carlo, killed Emilio, a disabled guy hosted by the local priest. The Italian Ministry of Interior wants to clarify what happened. The relation between the political institutions and the Church is tense. The ruling Christian party needs to protect the Church to keep its power. Carlo, the young murderer, talks about the Devil and accuses a nun of instigating him to kill his victim, Emilio. Carlo believes that Emilio caused the death of Paolino, Carlo’s best friend, two years earlier. Carlo wants to bring Paolino back from the land of the dead. By trying to do so, Carlo kills Emilio thinking he is an incarnation of the devil.”
Before updating the video nasty Faces of Death, director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei explored the dangers of online life in tech-thriller Cam, their feature debut that was acquired by Netflix in 2018 after making waves on the festival circuit.
At the end of last year, the Netflix exclusive quietly departed from the streaming platform, left without another streaming home.
It’s not an isolated story; Mike Flanagan’s Hush also left streaming entirely for a period until it was finally picked up on both physical media and other streaming services.
While the tech-thriller currently isn’t available to watch on Netflix, Tubi, Hulu, or any other platforms, that’s not a problem for Cam thanks to a very cool move by Goldhaber: the director has made his breakout film accessible to watch online for free via his website.
As his site notes: “CAM is unfortunately not currently available to view on any platforms, so you can watch it here if you like :).“
No subscriptions or fees necessary, just hit play.
Cam follows Alice (Madeline Brewer), who works as an online cam girl obsessed with her ranking on the cam site. The higher her ranking goes, the more it draws unwanted attention, and Alice soon finds herself replaced on her own show with a doppelganger.
Written by Mazzei, a former camgirl, it uses the horror thriller premise to examine the life of a sex worker; Alice’s career ambition is directly at odds with the shame it brings to her family, and how she tries to spare them from it by keeping them in the dark. It only compounds her danger when the doppelganger enters the equation in Goldhaber’s engaging thriller.
For a deep dive into the treacherous world of Cam, listen to Horror Queers’ episode on it now.
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