A Guest Review from Hugh Robertson ©2012

Starring:  Mauro Cipriani, Irene Giordano and Gabriele Guerra

Written and Directed by Christian Arioli

Distributed by Chemical Burn Entertainment

The Italian movie “Nina-Crazy Suicide Girl” begins with four women being held captive in the basement rooms of a villa.  Red hooded and robed Satanists unlock one of the doors and give two of the women some sandwiches to eat.  Obviously drugged and abused, one of the women takes the sandwich and tries to get the other to eat.  The Satanists then unlock another door and try to remove the other two women from their room.  One becomes hysterical and she gets her head slammed into the wall by a Satanist, killing her instantly, while the other woman escapes and runs out of the villa.  Unfortunately she steps on some glass on the lawn and falls to the ground.  As she removes a piece of glass from her blood-gushing foot, the Satanists catch up to her and hold her.  The female leader of the cult, Marcus, shows up and asks the woman “Anna, why?”  She then puts a gun into Anna’s mouth and literally blows her brains out.

The movie then cuts to the home of Anna’s mother who is fretting over her daughter’s disappearance with Nina (Irene Giordano) and her partner Yarj (Mauro Cipriani), who is Anna’s cousin.  They agree to help her find Anna, but first want to search her daughter’s room for any clues.  They find a pornographic DVD from Xtasy Video hidden in one of her books.  Upon watching it they suspect that Anna has been secretly working there.  Nina decides to investigate the video company for clues to Anna’s disappearance, while Yarj goes to visit the Detective investigating the case.

Nina poses as a Hungarian porn actress to audition for the head of Xtasy Video, while Yarj interviews the Investigating Detective.  There he finds a connection to Xtasy Video in the Detective’s office.  While auditioning for the head of Xtasy Video, Nina steals his notebook which contains a link to the Satanists and quickly leaves to meet up with Yarj.

 Upon leaving the Detective’s office in his car, Yarj starts being followed by a woman named Maria who he subsequently stops and questions.  It turns out she is looking for her missing sister Greta, who was a friend of Anna’s.  She also believes that there is a connection between Xtasy Video, the Detective, and the missing girls.  Eventually our protagonists, with Maria in tow, head out to the villa of Marcus and the other Satanists to rescue the missing girls if they are still alive.

Independent Italian Director Christian Arioli’s movie is a sequel to his short film “Crazy Suicide Girls-Operation Bioterror” and is a fairly lackluster effort.  You would probably need to see first movie to understand the characters as their relations are not readily explained in the movie.  Nina and Yarj are not police officers, but some kind of avenging crusaders, I guess, as this is never explained in the movie. Even though Nina carries a sword and the DVD’s menu suggests a martial arts/horror film, she is no “Kill Bill” heroine and only uses her sword once at the climax of the movie.  The plot and script are uninventive and uninspired with cliché plot devices and segments thrown in just for their exploitiveness.  At least 3 times characters are conveniently called away allowing the protagonists to find clues within seconds.   An overlong Satanic cult sacrifice serves no purpose except to allow some more sex, nudity, and gore.  The action is predictable and there is no real mystery to what is going on and who are the criminals.  The climax has no suspense or tension and the ending is a lame attempt to set up a sequel.  Most of the acting is one-dimensional and bland (but never bad) with the exception of Mauro Cipriani as Yarj.  A young Jean Reno look alike, he exhibits the best acting skills and has a strong screen presence. Hopefully he can end up in better movies.

Technically the film is fundamentally sound.  Shot on video in a widescreen format there are few digital or encoding artifacts except in some wide shots.  The camera remains essentially static (no budget for dollies or crane shots I guess) with a couple of creative shots and the film is at least well lit.  The speech is audible and the music and effects mixing is competent.  Arioli’s editing doesn’t usually detract from the film, but it won’t win any awards.  Gore and makeup effects are well done, realistic, and bloody, a blow torch torture scene will make you cringe,  the exception to this being a beheading near the end.

Complaints aside, at 77 minutes, Arioli’s direction does keep the film moving at a brisk pace and you will never be bored.  There is enough violence and nudity to spice up the plot and the movie is competently done with no glaring technical glitches to distract you.  For a category between bad and mediocre I would call this movie adequate. On the Smash or Trash score I give this movie a 4 out of 10.

You can pick the movie up here, folks.

My thanks to guest reviewer Hugh Robertson. Hugh is a filmmaker, editor and a movie aficionado. His expertise lies in European horror films. Robertson resides in Virginia.

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