A vacationing couple (Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni and Diego Ribon) head up into the Alps and end up running into a lady who begs them for help from some attacker. They drive her to a small village, she runs away, they meet a local crazy with a voicebox who warns of witches, they go camping, run into the woman again and get attacked by her. Oh, and this femme fatale has a large claw that extends from her groin and tries to kill people. This Italian film is heavily influenced by THE EVIL DEAD, but you can see director Andreas Marfori just doesn't have the talent to pull it off. It is like he watched Raimi's film with no translation. It is a shame as the film has many things going for it (nice camera work, great locations, tons of gore), but Marfori just can't get it to gel thanks to his incredibly wonky staging. He also overdoses on the use of the steadicam. The final scene with Coralina walking away from the carnage while followed by the steadicam goes on so long that it becomes a joke. Just when you get tired of it, the director then cuts to her continuing to walk with the camera in front of her for another minute or so. Jeez, such a shame.

Up until yesterday, it was Demon Wind (1990) that held the coveted top spot on my list of most blatant and bloody awful Evil Dead rip-offs, but that pile of dung has now been pushed into second place by Andreas Marfori' s Evil Clutch, a cheap and nasty Italian imitation of Sam Raimi's cult classic so flagrant that it even has the nerve to refer to its demons/monsters as 'the evil dead'!After perhaps the most tedious credits sequence ever committed to film—a seemingly never-ending series of Polaroid snaps with a couple chattering inanely about their travels around Europe on the soundtrack—it's straight into Raimi mode for the first of countless hand-held low-angle tracking shots, which follows a young couple into a barn where they begin to make out. The bloke doesn't seem to be put off too much by the fact his bird is a bit of a minger, but when the gnarly pincer that has been hiding up her snatch tears off his junk, he's clearly wishing that he'd had higher standards.Now, at this point, you're probably thinking to yourself 'Hey! This film actually sounds pretty cool', but trust me, it isn't, because after the 'claw in the cooch', it all goes rapidly downhill: Cindy (Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni) and Tony (Diego Ribon), the annoying couple who were yakking over the opening credits, make an appearance and spend most of the first half of the film wandering aimlessly around the Alps engaged in further dull conversation, occasionally bumping into a strange man with an electronic voice-box who tells them weird stories, and the woman who owns the vagina with the vice-like grip who turns out to be a witch. Any semblance of a plot vanishes completely.The second half of the film is a little more lively, with quite a lot of cheap-jack gore on display, including crushed hands, an exploding decapitated head, some chainsaw gore and a fish-hook in the face, but I found that no amount of unconvincing severed body parts and bloody wounds could possibly compensate for Marfori's derivative visuals and incomprehensible script, the dreadful acting, dismal lighting, or Cataldi-Tassoni's irritating non-stop hysterical screaming.

Sex is a crude, disgusting thing, and Evil Clutch has "sex" written all over it. It's a full-on nasty, gritty, down-and-dirty assault on the glamour of sexuality and the fetish of... domination, I'd have to say. Featuring a witch with a claw-hand where a vagina should be (and only comes out when she's getting fresh with one of her fellas), her creepily obsessed father who follows her around without letting her know, her zombie sex-slave who she keeps chained in a kind of horse-pen hidden by foliage and dark shadows, the slave chasing around her other lovers and killing them in a playfully aggressive way, and the world's strangest plant ever- one that only seems to eat testicles. Is the witch killing the men to feed the plant? Does the plant give her powers? And most importantly, what the hell does she mean when she says, "It's not all over! It'll never end! One day, all of this will be destroyed!" I have absolutely no idea but I think I like it. Kind of like a Rita Repulsa rant, only with some kind of nightmare-connotation. It's schlocky as all hell, and in any other film, I would have groaned and rubbed my eyes to check that they were really seeing what I thought they were seeing. But this is the real deal.The plot begins with a creepily romantic montage of photographs, acquainting us with the main characters- a new couple who met in Europe. Him undoubtedly Italian (the hunky and quietly intense Diego Ribon). Her Italian but posing as American, I believe (the lovely Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni, from Argento's Opera and Lamberto Bava's Demons 2). Some plot summaries make mention of her being a college student, so perhaps she met him studying abroad. They're a happy couple, but when they meet the witch, things begin to get strange. Their plan to head into the mountains for their camping vacation is detoured by a stop into a local village, which is completely vacant of people. They then meet the witch's father, a man who uses an electronic machine to amplify the vibrations from his throat. In place of a voice, he has a disturbingly sharp-pitched robotic buzz. He tells the two vague clues that there's curse that hovers over the area. Then, he tells them a story about a couple like them who are making out on the beach when the man suddenly, inexplicably gets the impulse to kill his girlfriend and bury her in the sand.It's moments like this that make Clutch something worth seeing. It's so bizarre, you can't help but be transfixed by it. I've never been able to forget it and whenever I watch it, I can't take my eyes off it. Maybe that's because it's compellingly bad. It's hard to tell with Italian horror movies. And after seeing at least two dozen by now, I have to say- the more confusing, the better. As long as something's happening, it doesn't matter how insane it is. And Evil Clutch is never at a loss of things to show you. It's the closest film I've ever seen that came to real insanity. Not because it's convincing at showing us characters losing their minds. But rather, because it follows a progression of a movie with no sanity or logic or sensibility. Which makes it feel like a pretty real horror. It's almost Texas Chainsaw Massacre-like in its' long sequences of people walking or running off alone, not knowing where they're going but looking for anything they can find that looks like a way out. The film is highly skilled at dragging out scenes of driving and walking, adding music or taking it away, and making them almost too real.The freak-factor of Clutch is essential to how unpleasant a film it is. And what I can only hope were expectations on the part of some that seeing the couples together at the beginning of the movie would provide "guys" with gratuitous "T" or "A." Neither are here. Which I have to say is another thing that makes the horror more pure. There are only suggestions of sexually-driven acts of violence. One spectacle, a death scene, that almost resembles a wrestling match- one guy taunting (with a high-pitched cackle) and humiliating the other, knocking him down, then choking him before finishing him off. It's almost him saying he'll punish (the victim) for taking his woman. Again, in any other movie I would have groaned. It's a stupid idea if you see it that way. But it's "too" creative and detailed. And too animalistic to feel like a typical zombie or serial killer dispatching. As this is happening, there's a quietly piercing electric rock guitar wailing and a neatly rumbling drum-machine beat chanting this on. And as the attacker finds the victim, he laughs at him and grabs him in an aggressively sexual way. There's absolutely no mistaking what's really going on, under the grunting.It's a stunning film in many ways. All of them unappealing. But effective as some of the darkest, most deeply disturbing horror I've ever experienced. I might feel that this is was just a strange film and not something much more, were it not for the finale. The finale kind of puts a cap on the weirdness, as the camera angles get so uncomfortably close to every detail of what's happening than you'd ever want to be. I was speechless as I watched blood-gushing brains, fish-hooks tear into skin, and the greatest zombie meltdown sequence this side of 1986's Street Trash. Again, like 1974's classic Chainsaw, what makes this ending work is that every second is played out in graphic detail until it almost becomes agonizing. I enjoy that and so rarely get to see it in horror. The astonishing finale with an exhausted, terrorized Tassoni trying to find a way out of the maze-like woods, plays a lot like the hedge sequence from 1980's The Shining, only all in one shot.

"Evil Clutch" is a decent if somewhat unspectacular possession entry.**SPOILERS**Traveling through the countryside, Cindy, (Coralina Cataldi Tassoni) and Tony, (Diego Ribon) stumble across frantic Arva, (Elena Cantaone) along the road and offer her a lift. Arriving in the next town, only local left Algernoon, (Luciano Crovato) gives them a tour of the village and regales them with stories about the haunted woods surrounding the village, warning them not to venture within or be cursed to the fate of the demons who lurk there. Unfazed by the stories, they venture into the woods and decide to restart their original intent of hiking into the woods. Forced into an abandoned cabin when a storm rolls in, they quickly realize that there's a demonic spirit amongst them out to satisfy it's unquenchable blood-lust, and as they're trapped within by the fact that there could be more creatures amongst the dark woods, are forced to battle the demon to get out of the woods alive.The Good News: This one wasn't all that bad when it really counted on it. The main issue here is the fact that the film really decides to ladle on the blood and gore for the conclusion to this. There's a lot more in here than expected and that's what really impresses, due to the amount in here. There's a great decapitation by placing the head through a cart's wheel and turning it, an ax tearing a body to pieces, having a throat ripped out, both hands are chopped off with a giant claw, a chainsaw ripping up a creature with chunks of flesh and blood flying in every direction, an exploding head and much more, including the few pieces spread throughout the rest of the film as most of that was just what happened at the very end of the film. This also includes more good stuff as the look of the zombie who actually looks rather nice. Suitably disgusting with a rancid look that actually has the look of being decomposed with the make-up effects being a real highlight with these creatures. The fact that both of them are like that is what's so great about them, as they look really great and manage to score big. The main demon in here looks a little cheesy with the bugged out eyes, but otherwise, there's some good work to be had with the look on display. There's also a bunch of fun to be had from the fact that the end is a huge action scene, and is all the better for it. The chasing through the deserted ruins underground is a lot of fun, the confrontations inside the house are really great, and even atmospheric at times, which is also nicely put through the rest of the film. Some of the scenes of them hiking through the forest, as well as the first scene in the cemetery where the demonic force circles the lone person inside managing to feel creepy at times and getting some much-needed atmosphere into the film. The last plus is the fact that the film decides to act out the back-story rather than just simply tell it. That's all that this one has going for it.The Bad News: There wasn't a whole lot really wrong with this one. Most of the problems here stem from it being a really obvious rip-off of another film for pretty much it's entire duration. There's a lot of indications, from the possessed beings in there along with the demon views and the general story outline happen to be the exact same as another horror classic out there, and it doesn't do many favors with this since it is so obviously done and doesn't really do anything to separate the two. That's where the main flaw from this comes from, as there's very little to say about a film where it uses another story straight without doing anything else to fix it. The other flaw to this one is the maddening and completely irritating habit of the film being way too dark for it's own good. The fact that the film takes place at night is the main source, as being naturally dark makes these scenes impossible to figure out and rather irritating to miss. The fact that it's supposed to be able to see these scenes, since the film goes dark at the key moments, the kills from the creatures, and to be cheated out of them is something that doesn't really deserve to be that way. This one could've worked the darkness in well, but to be so dark as to be impossible what's happening on-screen is really where the film suffers. These are the problems that hold the film down.The Final Verdict: With some really good parts to it and a couple of flaws, this one isn't that bad and could be worthwhile for some. This one will mostly be appreciated by the most undiscriminating of gore-hounds or European-horror fans, while others out there won't be so forgiving of it's flaws.Rated R: Graphic Violence and some Language