Movie Review: Grease 2 (1982)

The law of diminishing returns dictates that most sequels will fail in their attempts to recapture the magic of the original, offering only a pale and unsatisfying imitation of what made the original film enjoyable in the first place. Grease 2 is no exception. It's a lazy cash-grab that can barely justify its own existence. The film isn't completely irredeemable, however, because it fleetingly captures some of the fun of the original Grease. Those moments are few and far between, but they're a welcome breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale movie.

Grease 2 picks up a few years after the original, which saw all of its main characters graduate from Rydell High at the end. Therefore, almost no one from the original cast returns, which is an immediate warning sign that this will not be a good sequel. A few members of the original cast are back, but it's mostly just the school faculty members, characters so minor I wouldn't blame you if you didn't realize they had returned. Maybe there are a few diehard Eddie Deezen fans out there who will appreciate his few brief scenes. The only notable Grease alum present is DiDi Conn, returning to play Frenchy, one of the members of the original film's Pink Ladies clique. After dropping out of high school (and beauty school) in the first film, she's back to finish her degree to pursue a career in cosmetics. Nothing really comes of this and Frenchy remains relegated to a handful of inconsequential scenes. She's really only here to give a few expository lines of dialogue explaining who the new characters are.

The new lead couple this time consists of Stephanie (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Michael (Maxwell Caufield). Stephanie is the queen bee of the new iteration of the Pink Ladies, and Michael is the heretofore unmentioned cousin of Sandy, the protagonist of the previous Grease. Michael is a new student at Rydell, having recently moved to the U.S. from England. This is a bit baffling, considering that Sandy was from Australia in the first movie. Who knows, maybe she has family in other parts of the world. The more likely case is that the producers probably couldn't find any good Australian actors and opted for a Brit instead. Either way, it's a lazy way to connect this movie to the original.

The premise here is basically a retread of the original Grease but in reverse. In the first film, good-girl Sandy falls for Danny, the leader of the T-Birds, a bad-boy greaser gang. In the sequel, goody-two-shoes Michael falls for the bad-girl Stephanie. In the first film, Sandy befriends the seedy Pink Ladies clique while trying to woo Danny. In the sequel, Michael joins the ranks of the T-Birds while trying to woo Stephanie. The flip-flop is just different enough that the movie could hypothetically work. Unfortunately, the duo of Pfeiffer and Caufield just don't have convincing chemistry. Their romance doesn't feel genuine, it feels mandated by the script. Having a believable couple is important for a movie that centers on romance and falling in love, but that is not the case with this film.

Grease 2 also struggles to stand up to the original because of its music, or lack thereof. The first Grease was adapted from a theatrical production, and as such relies almost entirely on music to propel the narrative forward. Grease 2 features far fewer songs and relies more heavily on story than the first. The original succeeds in part because it understood that the sheer power of catchy, memorable music could power through any narrative shortcomings. The sequel seems to value more narrative moments than musical numbers, which is a detriment to the movie overall.

In Grease, the songs come at such a rapid pace that it makes the lack of plot or complex characters not as noticeable. It's a movie of style over substance, the emotional impact of the songs superseding traditional cinematic expectations of plot and character. With the sequel, the songs are few and far between, leaving plenty of time for it to sink in that there's not a whole lot of substance to the film. You start to notice smaller details, too, like how painfully obvious the lipsyncing is during the musical numbers.

To make matters worse, the music just isn't as inspired as the first film's. A few songs, like "Cool Rider", possess a theatrical, Jim Steinman-esque raucousness that almost makes them memorable. However, those songs are all in service of a bland romance, so they lack the necessary punch to stick in your head when the movie's over. There's a good reason that the original Grease has one of the best-selling soundtracks of all time, while the sequel does not. To put it simply, the music in Grease 2 stinks.

Despite all of its flaws (and it has plenty of flaws), Grease 2 actually manages to get a few things right. If nothing else, the sequel accurately captures the tone of the original. Grease is a tawdry, tacky movie in the best way. It's campy and perverse, full of oversexed teens played by actors in their thirties, set in '50s but not really looking like the '50s. Grease 2 at least manages to preserve the original film's unconvincing period setting, the adults failing to pass for teenagers, and the inappropriate level of horniness. There's a musical number in Grease 2, "Reproduction", that's nothing but a single-entendre about sex. If the song had been better it might have been a classic, but at least the same sleazy spirit is there.

There's also one performance that stands out, Tab Hunter as the dorky substitute teacher, Mr. Stuart. Hunter looks like and seems to be channeling Christopher Reeve's performance as Clark Kent in the Superman movies. It's a confusing choice in a movie full of questionable decisions, but Hunter is sincerely goofy enough to rise above the wooden performances of his costars. It's a brief role, but it's a role that breaks up the tedium of the film anytime he shows up.

Grease 2 is not a good film, but it never had a chance. Following up a film as popular and beloved as Grease is not an easy task, and without the original cast returning, it was a sequel practically destined to fail. It's easy to write it off as a cheap cash-in on a successful film, but Grease 2 had potential. The role-reversal of the previous film could have worked if the chemistry between the two leads was convincing, and the music might have been better if it had been written by the original composers. Unfortunately, neither of those two things happened, so we're stuck with a movie that fails in almost every regard. But hey, at least we got a good Tab Hunter appearance out of it.

The Rebirth of Mothra Trilogy: A Retrospective

After successfully rebooting the Godzilla franchise with a series of films in the 1980’s and 90’s, Toho decided to try the same thing in the late 90’s with one of its other popular giant monster characters, Mothra. The resulting trilogy of films, Rebirth of Mothra 1-3 is a mixed bag. The films skew towards a much younger audience. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the films try to appeal to children in the most basic and irritating way, which is frequently the trilogy’s downfall. The three Mothra films never quite reach the heights of the rebooted Godzilla series, there are still moments of fun to be had.

Rebirth of Mothra (1996)

The first film starts off on the wrong foot by centering the film on two obnoxious kid characters. There’s nothing wrong with casting kids in movies, but the children in this film are utterly annoying. They whine and act like twerps the whole time. That’s not exactly the type of character I want to spend a whole movie with. To make matters worse, the DVD copy I have only featured the English dub,  which features particularly grating performances by adults using high-pitched voices to try to pass for children.

Essentially, the father of the two kids brings home an engraved stone he found while out working on his landscaping job. Unfortunately, that stone was a seal keeping an ancient evil from escaping. The evil in question is Desghidorah (literally, “Death Ghidorah”), the edgy, solid black, four-legged cousin of Godzilla’s gold space dragon arch nemesis, King Ghidorah.  Unfortunately for the residents of Japan, Desghidorah is released from his prison and sets out to wreak havoc.

The giant beast is released because of a spat between the Mothra sisters, diminutive humans who serve as the guardians of the giant moth. In the original Mothra movie, as well all other Godzilla films featuring Mothra, there were only two sisters, a pair of identical twins. The Rebirth trilogy adds in a third Mothra sister, Belvera, who looks like Rita Repulsa from the Power Rangers TV show and is evil for the sake of being evil. Belvera gets mad at her sisters, Lora and Moll, and after a protracted (and poorly green-screened) aerial chase between the sisters, Belvera releases Desghidorah. It’s also worth mentioning that the Mothra twins ride around on a tiny version of Mothra dubbed “Fairy”, while Belvera has a similarly-sized dragon for transport.

This is all an elaborate and convoluted setup to get two giant monsters to battle one another. I tend to evaluate Godzilla films on the strength of the fights, and the tolerability of the human story, and I feel the same metric is appropriate here. Luckily, the monster fights here are actually fun. A miniature model forest is set ablaze as Desghidorah goes on a rampage, which is a sight to behold. The whole Rebirth trilogy has an environmental slant so naturally the bad guy monster is also guilty of deforestation. During one of their battles, Mothra is mortally wounded. One of her larva undergoes metamorphosis and emerges as a new Mothra, thus the “rebirth” title. Two Mothras for the price of one!

The human parts of the first Rebirth of Mothra outweigh the fun of the fights. Annoying kids really put a damper on the fun of watching a giant moth puppet fly around on wire supports. It doesn’t help that the portions featuring the human characters frequently feel like something out of a direct-to-video kids movie you’d find on the tenth page of Redbox rentals. It’s all broad slapstick and characters yelling or shrieking. It feels like the whole first third of the film consists of Belvera chasing the two children around the house, smashing furniture and dishware in the movie’s attempt at physical comedy. Conversely, the last third of the film is pretty much just a brawl between Desghidorah (who has grown wings by this point) and Mothra Junior. The good and the bad of the first Rebirth cancel each other out. The end result is a movie that is approximately 50% fun, 50% intolerable.

Rebirth of Mothra II (1997)

Sadly, the ratio increase towards intolerability with Rebirth of Mothra II. This film doubles down on everything that didn’t work in the first film. That means more annoying kid characters, more annoying performances in the English dub, more corny environmentalism, and more subpar CG effects. This film centers on a group of kids who are on the search for an Atlantis-type lost civilization, who supposedly had a hidden treasure that could be used to save the environment.

Along the way, the kids pick up a cutesy sidekick named Ghogo. It’s one of those archetypal fuzzball puppets, like the Tribbles from Star Trek, or the Krites from Critters. Unfortunately, Ghogo is not a killer alien, he’s a big-eyed whatchamacallit with a phallic antenna sticking out of its head. Oh, and it has the ability to heal people with its urine. There’s even a POV shot of a wounded character getting peed on by the disgusting little furball. I sure wasn’t expecting to see that, especially not in a Mothra movie.

The Mothra twins aid the kids on their journey because a rise in global pollution has awakened Dagahra, an evil sea turtle sort of monster with beak-shaped laser cannons on its shoulder. The oversized sea creature also has the ability to release toxic starfish into the sea, which are poisoning the local sea life. The kids journey off into the ocean, Ghogo in tow, with only the Mothra twins for adult supervision. 

Belvera is back, too, with an even more ridiculous outfit than before, and a bunch of cyborg augmentations on her dragon (which may or may not actually be a robot, it’s not really clear). She’s following the kids along with a pair of dimwitted fishermen, in hopes of finding the treasure first, because it wouldn’t be a lame kids movie without dopey adult villains.

The kids find a hidden castle, a remnant of the ancient civilization that looks a whole lot like the sets from Legends of the Hidden Temple. Wacky adventure hijinks ensue. But don’t worry, the movie hasn’t forgotten it’s a giant monster movie. Dagahra shows up and whoops Mothra in an underwater battle. Apparently, her Achilles’ Heel is getting covered in poison starfish, so she goes out like a chump and sits around incapacitated on top of the castle while Dagrahra runs amok. 

While Indiana Jones-ing it up in the temple, the kids awaken the princess of the lost civilization, who informs them that their repulsive hairy companion is actually the secret treasure. Ghogo activates his magic powers, which supercharge Mothra, allowing her to shake off the starfish and return to fight the villainous sea turtle. She defeats Dagahra by transforming into a fishlike CG model dubbed Aqua Mothra, who separates into thousands of tiny Mothra that swim inside her foe’s mouth and destroys him from the inside. It’s absolutely ridiculous, but not the fun kind of ridiculous.

Returning to the metric of quality of fights and quality of human parts, Rebirth of Mothra II fails on both counts. The fights are underwhelming because they almost entirely take place in the water. The Godzilla movies have never had success with water-based fights, and the Mothra series is no exception. There’s no sense of scale when the only thing around the monsters is water, which makes the effects look faker than they usually do. The CG effects for Aqua Mothra are distractingly bad, too. It goes without saying that the human story for this film is just as obnoxious, if not more so than the first. There are three kids this time, which is one more annoying kid than the last film, and of course their gross little urinating companion. The adventure component feels cheap and recycled from other, better movies. This even copies the “invisible optical illusion bridge” bit from The Last Crusade. This is easily the weakest of the three films, and one of the weaker Toho monster movies in general.

Rebirth of Mothra III (1998)

After two duds in a row, the old adage that the third time’s the charm proves to be correct once again. Rebirth of Mothra III is perhaps the only consistently watchable film of the trilogy, if only because its human story is actually watchable. It also helps that this film brings in King Ghidorah as the antagonist, rather than a new monster. A familiar face is welcome after the edgy knockoff Ghidorah, Desghidorah, and the underwhelming Dagahra. 

This time, Ghidorah has shown up on Earth to kidnap children and steal their life force. He swoops over the city, spiriting away all the children in his path, magically transporting them to a giant fleshy dome.

To the movie’s great benefit, there’s only one kid character this time. He teams up with the Mothra twins to stop Ghidorah with a fantastically ridiculous scheme. Moll uses her magic to supercharge Mothra, sending her back in time to the Cretaceous period. The idea here is that Ghidorah first visited the planet during the age of the dinosaurs, and that Mothra can more easily defeat Ghidorah in his younger form. It’s basically The Terminator, but with a giant moth instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Truly, the greatest story of all the Mothra films.

Back in the past, Mothra dukes it out with baby Ghidorah. For whatever reason, the Ghidorah suit used for the Cretaceous era scenes is noticeably a guy in a suit, with his two hands serving as the left and right dragon heads. It’s really unnerving, especially watching him walk around because the Toho movies are generally good at creating the illusion that it’s not just a guy in a suit. It’s a bizarre uncanny valley sort of moment that’s actually kind of fun in its own weird way. 

Meanwhile, in the present, Moll goes into a state of suspended animation after exhausting her powers on the time travel stunt. Things don’t fare better for Lora, who has somehow been possessed by Ghidorah’s evil, an ability Ghidorah has never had before or since. Back in the past, Mothra gets tromped by dino-Ghidorah, but this is only a minor inconvenience. In the present Belvera breaks Lora sister free of the spell, allowing Lora to sing a magic song that powers up Mothra in the past. Mothra gains the upper hand, zapping off part of Ghidorah’s tail with an energy beam and dropping the rest of him in a volcano, but at the expense of her own life.

This would seem to be the end of Ghidorah, but Belvera notices that the present remains unchanged despite the apparent defeat of Ghidorah in the past. Turns out, the severed Ghidorah tail somehow burrowed in the ground like a worm and grew a new Ghidorah, the one still causing trouble in the present. Continuing the zany time travel shenanigans, a bunch of Cretaceous Mothra larvae show up to put the dying Mothra in a cocoon. Cut to the present, where the cocoon hatches with yet another iteration of Mothra, Armor Mothra. This ‘roided out version of the beloved bug blows up the pesky three-headed dragon for good. Also, Belvera turns good for some reason, tying up the trilogy-long Mothra sister storyline that was never particularly important.

Overall

The Rebirth of Mothra trilogy is messy and frequently painful to sit through, but it does have its rewards. If you’re a diehard fan like myself and willing to sit through annoying kid actors, there’s a decent amount of weirdness and quality monster battles. There’s enough monster action in the first film to almost negate the annoying human parts. While that can’t be said of the second one, it has enough bizarre qualities that it might play well to a rowdy crowd of friends. The third one is actually pretty good as far as films on the Godzilla periphery go. You could easily just skip the first two and go straight to the third. You’d miss out on the arcing story of the Mothra sisters, of course, but I don’t think anyone watches a Mothra film because of the Mothra sisters.

Movie Review: The Return of Godzilla (1984)

With this film, I've finally seen all the main Godzilla films, not counting the Netflix anime movies. A fitting way to wrap up, I think. However, maybe not the most exciting way to wrap up. I've never found solo kaiju movies to be as fun as multi-monster mashups. In solo kaiju outings, the burden of spectacle falls on a singular monster stomping around and destroying miniature sets. Those scenes will always be fun, of course, but it just can't match the joy of two guys in rubbery monster suits duking it out. The Return of Godzilla is still a decent film, it's just not as appealing to me as some of the others of the Heisei era.

This is a reboot of sorts for the Godzilla franchise, ignoring every film except for the 1954 original. Godzilla, as the title would suggest, returns to destroy Japan once more. It's never clear if this is the same Godzilla who somehow survived being vaporized at the end of the '54 original, or a separate Godzilla altogether. Either way, volcanic activity in the ocean has brought the big galoot back to Japan, and he's on a rampage.

The bulk of Return is dedicated to Japanese officials trying to figure out what to do about their giant lizard problem. For a while, before the whole world realizes that Godzilla has in fact returned, his Soviet-submarine-destroying undersea rumblings are blamed on the United States. Cue a Cold War-era diplomatic crisis. Japan steps in, revealing that Godzilla's back, but now the U.S. and Russia want to handle Godzilla themselves. All the governmental back-and-forth and heated diplomacy feel quite similar to the original '54 film and prescient of the most recent Toho Godzilla film, Shin Godzilla. In a way, this is the connective tissue between the original and Shin Godzilla. Three solo Godzilla ventures that are much more concerned about Godzilla as an entity and how that affects international politics, rather than a bunch monster fights and sci-fi kookiness. 

Your mileage may vary with Return. If you prefer your giant monster movies to actually be thematic and trying to say something, this will probably be your cup of tea. Especially considering the majority of the 60's and 70's Godzilla films were silly and kid-oriented, Return comes as a darker, more grounded take on the monster. Some people might prefer that. If you're like me, you might like the serious tone but still find yourself pining for monster fights. Of course, the rest of the Heisei era films deliver in that regard, but it's still a bit of a let-down. This is a perfectly fine Godzilla film, just not what I'm looking for in this franchise.

Movie Review: Son of Godzilla (1967)

In my quest to watch all the Godzilla movies, Son of Godzilla was one I kept putting off. It just seemed like the dud of the series. Even Godzilla vs. Megalon, another well-known low point for Godzilla, has a major cheese factor to it that makes it kind of fun. Sure, the absolute worst of the series is probably Godzilla's Revenge, but I saw that as a kid and barely remember it (that still counts in the overall "I've seen every Godzilla movie" thing, so hush). As a fully cognizant adult, I dreaded having to watch something with Minilla, Godzilla's not-quite-son. Nevertheless, my compulsion to finish the series won out and I went ahead and sat through it. It wasn't as bad as I expected, but that's not saying much.

The human storyline, the part you usually tune out while waiting for monster action, is sort of interesting. A group of scientists stationed on a remote island are fiddling around with weather technology, trying to find a way to terraform inhospitable areas of the planet, thus preventing overpopulation in the future. This is all just a contrived excuse to get Godzilla to show up, but it's an interesting idea. Meteorology is not a common subject in science fiction, so even though it's not really relevant to the plot, it's kind of an interesting aside. An experiment with a weather balloon goes haywire, which screws up the weather and causes all the bugs on the island to grow to kaiju-sized proportions. The crazy weather also unearths a giant egg, which unfortunately contains Minilla. The egg hatches, which causes Godzilla to show up to the island. The movie acts like Minilla is related to Godzilla, but this raises a lot of questions. Who is the mother to Minilla? Is Godzilla an asexual creature that spawns its own eggs? Who knows? The movie sure isn't answering these questions.

Godzilla and Minilla have a weird sort of father-son relationship. Godzilla tries to teach Minilla to breathe atomic breath, but the creepy little dude can barely muster a smoke ring. Other antics include Minilla jumping over Godzilla's tail while his dad tries to sleep, and otherwise making a nuisance of himself. It would almost be charming in a dopey sort of way if the costume designs weren't so gnarly. The Godzilla costume was apparently redesigned for this film, ostensibly to make him appear friendlier for the kid audience. He certainly looks less reptilian, but I don't know if he looks any friendlier. His head shape and eyes are strangely humanoid, which is quite unsettling. Little Minilla fairs no better. He too shares his father's unpleasantly humanoid noggin, complete with creepy Hamburglar buckteeth. He also looks like a sack of potatoes, and his roar sounds like a braying donkey. Definitely not what you'd call cute, especially compared to the more aesthetically pleasing designs the series would go on to use in the 90's Godzilla films.

Son of Godzilla isn't the worst film in the 65-year-old franchise, but it's definitely one of the weaker entries. This one is clearly going for kids and kids only, which is a perfectly fine goal, but I don't know how many kids would enjoy this. The monster stuff is pretty sparse, and the stuff with the scientists is too dry to hold most kids' interest. Godzilla does eventually do battle with the giant bugs, so maybe some kid watching this on TV back in the 70s would have been placated by that. I certainly wasn't.

Movie Review: Who Can Kill a Child? (1976)

Boy, talk about bleak. Who Can Kill a Child? is a Spanish horror movie about an island of killer kids, but played as seriously as you can possibly take an absurd premise like that. Thanks to some intense suspense and an eerie atmosphere, this transcends the threshold of shlock and delivers a genuinely unnerving experience. 

The movie opens with an extremely dour credits sequence that features nearly eight minutes of actual footage from various wartime atrocities like the Holocaust, the Vietnam war, and famines resulting from African civil wars. The accompanying narration articulates the idea that children always wind up suffering the most as a result of war. It's shocking and kind of exploitative, but bear in mind, this is from the heyday of exploitation movies so it kind of works. If nothing else, it sets the appropriate dour tone that is to follow. 

Once the movie begins in earnest, it follows Tom and Evelyn, a married couple from England who are vacationing in Spain before Evelyn gives birth to their third child. The opening third of this feels remarkably similar to the Stephen King short story, "Children of the Corn". The couple travels from a coastal Spanish resort town to the nearby island of Almanzora, only to find it mysteriously deserted save for a few taciturn tykes. There are no adults to be found on the island, which perplexes the couple. After getting a mysterious panicked phone call from a non-English-speaking woman, Tom and Evelyn go on high alert. A lesser film might have bungled this part; it's all too easy for characters in a horror movie to fall prey to that terrible "they're only making dumb decisions because the narrative says so" trap that plagues many horror movies. Thankfully, the characters are cautious and about as smart as a normal person would be in a bizarre situation like an island of killer kids. 

The couple slowly begins to realize that the children are the only people living on the island because they killed all the adults. Why they collectively snapped and why they're on a killing spree are never clearly explained, but the movie is better for it. Tom offers a hypothesis towards the end, suggesting that maybe it has something to do with the collective unconscious of children who have suffered during wartime. It's a pretty lame speculation, and thankfully the movie treats it as just that: speculation. It's much creepier never knowing exactly what caused the children of Almanzora to turn evil, but there are a few hints it's maybe something supernatural. The evil kids seem to have the ability to psychically turn regular kids into evil ones, just by staring at them. 

For a horror movie about killer kids, you might expect a great deal of violence, but Who Can Kill a Child? is tastefully restrained. The violence is very brief, and when it occurs, you really feel the dramatic weight. Horror movies, in particular, can be bad about cheapening the dramatic weight of violence. This, however, does an excellent job of making the few deaths feel shocking and impactful. We learn that the children were able to take over the island because no adult could bring themselves to kill a child (thus, the title). When push comes to shove and the tourist couple has to strike back, it's every bit as horrific as it should be.

This is a fantastic work of suspense. It's reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead, both in the silent, shuffling antagonists, and the film's downbeat ending. The empty Spanish village is as eerie as it is beautiful. It's a film that had the potential to be a goofy exploitation movie about evil children but instead delivers a harrowing, nail-biting experience. If you weren't creeped out by kids before, you will be after this.

Movie Review: Shock Waves (1977)

Shock Waves is an early entry into the niche subgenre of Nazi zombie movies. Like most films in this subgenre, it isn't very good. It's hampered by a low budget and an aimless script, but there are sporadically interesting things going on that keep it from being a complete failure.

The film follows a group of tourists who were either too cheap or not rich enough to go on a fancy cruise boat. Instead, they're aboard old man Robert Carradine's dinky boat. They spend the first half hour or so of the movie aboard the boat, arguing and otherwise wiling away the time until they get to the island of Nazi zombies. Eventually they near the island, and decide to go ashore after Captain Carradine goes missing. They find him dead in the shallows and search the island for help.

Unfortunately for the forgettable bunch of tourists, the island is occupied by Peter Cushing, who plays a scarred Nazi scientist who fled to South America at the end of WWII with a batch of supersoldiers. The ship sank and only Cushing seemingly survived, but the arrival of the tourists has somehow triggered the indestructible Nazi soldiers to come back to life and stalk the island. The movie is vague about how the zombies came back, but it doesn't really matter. What follows is a long stretch of the tourists wandering around the wooded areas on the island, occasionally stalked by zombies. Even when the film strolls into a climax, it still feels weirdly padded.

Sure, Shock Waves is cheap and uneventful, but is it entirely dull? Not exactly, because the movie has the good graces to make the Nazi zombies look really, really goofy. They wear goggles all the time because it turns out their weakness is sunlight for some reason. So basically, you have a bunch of guys wading through swamp water with giant welding goggles on. They look like frog-men, and it's really funny. It's not enough to make the movie worthwhile overall, but at least there are some silly looking villains.

Movie Review: Shock (1977)

Shock is the final film from Italian horror legend Mario Bava, and it's a bit of a flat note end a solid career on. It's almost creepy but not quite. The great cinematography Bava is known for is still present, at least, but it's not enough to make this a highlight of his career.

The film follows a woman named Dora (the lovely Daria Nicolodi), who moves back into her old house with her second husband and her son from her first marriage. She's moving back in after seven years away. We learn that she initially moved away after her previous husband, a drug addict, seemingly committed suicide at sea. 

Dora doesn't want to be back in the house, but her husband Bruno (John Steiner) seems to think it's a good idea. Unfortunately, the house seems to be haunted by the ghost of the old husband. Right off the bat, it's clear something is amiss. A sheet goes flying off a table while movers bring in boxes, but nobody seems to notice. It's an understated and eerie visual and one of the few genuinely creepy moments in the film. 

The ghost-dad sets about possessing the son, Marco, which doesn't sit well with Dora. He's a creepy little kid who sometimes has telekinesis and is apparently into incest. He dry humps his mom and later steals her underwear. Whether this is the result of being possessed by his ghost-dad or of his own perverse volition probably should have been made clearer.

Bruno is a pilot, and thus conveniently away from the house for most of the story. The majority of the movie is Marco being increasingly strange and Dora being increasingly paranoid. Things occasionally fall or smash as a sort of jump scare to keep the audience from dozing off. Marco makes a bizarre voodoo doll out of a photo of Bruno and a swingset, which causes the plane he is piloting to nearly crash. You know, normal possessed-kid activities. 

Eventually, after alternating scenes of Dora having nightmares about floating boxcutters and scenes of Marco pushing a slinky down the stairs, we find out the truth. It turns out that the dead husband didn't commit suicide, he was murdered! With a boxcutter! By Dora! And then the body was hidden inside the basement wall by Bruno! What a twist! It doesn't really make sense why they had to move back into the house in the first place, and this only further complicates things. Bruno claims the seven-year gap was to wait until the old husband was declared legally dead. But why move back in at all? My suspension of disbelief can only go so far.

Shock isn't unwatchable, and it's hardly the worst Italian horror movie out there, but it is a disappointing end to Mario Bava's career. The possessed kid is sometimes creepy, and there's a decent Goblin-esque score, but it's just not a compelling horror movie. Other movies have told stories with haunted houses and/or possessed kids better than this before and since. It's not exactly bad, it's just kind of underwhelming. It does not, sadly, have the power to shock.