45 Years Later: Lamberto Bava's Macabre

So, just a little note before I jump into this one: I absolutely love Italian horror, but I especially love it when it just goes totally bonkers and takes me for a ride that I could not have possibly expected, even after watching thousands of horror films in my many, many years on this Earth. Like, if you tell me that a movie is about an ancient curse and an Italian filmmaker decides that some random neighborhood cat has summoned aliens that have created a new breed of zombies that want to eat people only wearing purple pants, then yeah, I’m all in.

That being said, Lamberto Bava’s directorial debut Macabre is definitely a wickedly subversive slice of Italian horror that subverts any expectations you may possibly have going into it, and I totally adore it, rough edges and all.

Before I discovered Macabre back in 2020, the only Lamberto Bava-helmed horror films that I had watched were Demons and Demons 2, which most fans know are totally banana pants viewing experiences (in a good way, of course). But even if you have some sense of who Lamberto Bava is as a storyteller, it still cannot fully prepare you for everything he delivers in Macabre, as it feels like this audacious fever dream that only a filmmaker with the last name Bava could get away with making.

Macabre opens with a card telling us the film was “inspired by true events,” which supposedly happened in the late 1970s in the city of New Orleans, where the film is set. A whole lot is going on in Macabre, but the basic gist is that Jane Baker (Bernice Stegers) is an unhappily married mother of two who has a separate apartment where she regularly meets her lover, Fred Kellerman (Roberto Posse), for their sexual dalliances. It’s also important to note that the boarding house where they meet is owned by Mrs. Duval (Elisa Kadigia Bove) who lives there with her visually-impaired adult son named Robert — yes, the character’s name is Robert Duval (played by Stanko Molnar) — and they are very aware of what Jane and Fred are up to.

One fateful day when she steps out to meet Fred and leaves her kids home alone, Jane’s suspicious daughter Lucy (Veronica Zinny) decides to act out when her mother leaves and get a little rebellious, so she tries smoking, goes through her mom’s lingerie drawer, and repeatedly calls Jane at her love nest as a means of annoying her. Frustrated that she can’t get her mom to give up her side piece and just be with her dad, Leslie (Fernando Pannullo), Jane lashes out by drowning her little brother Michael while playing with his boat in the tub (a very normal reactionary thing to do for a pre-teen to do).

When Jane gets word that her boy has drowned, she and Fred leave in a hurry to get to her house. As these lovers race their way through the streets of New Orleans, it’s evident that they should have been more careful, as they’re in a horrific car accident that leaves Fred decapitated and Jane an emotional mess after losing two different people she loves on the very same day.

After spending a year at the Sacred Heart Mental Hospital, Jane is now estranged from her husband, so she moves back into her apartment to start anew — or so we think. Turns out, Jane is still hung up on Fred (and way more distraught about losing him than her own son, which speaks volumes about her character), and the real reason she returns to their love nest is so that she can reminisce about her lover and their intense sexual connection.

We see that as Jane settles back into her abode that she has a Fred shrine in her apartment with all sorts of remnants left behind by her dead lover, which is understandable considering we all grieve differently. And considering the trauma she experienced, seeing Fred decapitated right in front of her, that might seem like a pretty reasonable thing for Jane to do at this point, now that she’s distanced herself from her husband and daughter.

But that first night she’s back, Jane turns on music, puts on her lingerie that she was wearing the day that they were last together, and works herself up into an orgasmic frenzy. A bathrobe falls, and it seems like Jane’s convinced it’s Fred’s ghost returning to her. However, this is an Italian horror movie that we’re talking about here, so things are actually a bit more “complicated” than that, and the less I say about that, the better for anyone who hasn’t seen Macabre.

What’s interesting, though, is that for as much as this movie is focused on Jane and what she’s up to, little Lucy also gets a lot of time front and center in Macabre as well, and makes for an interesting foil to her mom. At the start of the movie, it feels like Lucy is desperate to keep her mom’s attention at home, but as the story progresses, Lucy is clearly an antagonist, and it is evident that she has a bone to pick with dear old mom. At one point, Lucy says to Jane, “Don’t worry, I’ll be back,” and her delivery very much seems like an ominous threat (funny that this was several years before The Terminator turned such a phrase into an iconic moment of dialogue.

Lucy shows up one day when Jane is out and wants to go into her apartment while she’s gone. Robert lets her in, and she leaves a photo of her younger brother on the table, something that she knows will surely be triggering for her mom. When Lucy tells Robert what she’s done, she lies and says she left a photo of her father, which demonstrates that Lucy is playing some Melrose Place-style of psychological warfare here, but we don’t know why exactly. But she is trying to get under Jane’s skin, even asking at one point, “Am I going to get those wrinkles around my eyes, too?” while her mom is applying makeup, as she knows that Jane is wrapped up in her own sense of vanity.

It’s Lucy’s manipulations that set up Macabre’s absolutely bat-shit finale, and it’s pretty ballsy that Bava utilizes a child character in such a manner here. As Lucy pretends to go elsewhere when her dad drops her off, she ends up visiting her mother instead, bringing Jane flowers with a big smile, and offering to make dinner. Lucy’s good girl act is a complete facade, though, and that’s when shit goes completely sideways in Macabre in some rather surprising ways, even by Italian horror standards.

Something else that I wanted to mention here is that I think it’s rather interesting that Bava uses a visually-challenged character to bear witness in Macabre, as it feels unusual but it also makes sense. Much like Robert, who has to try to figure out just what on earth is going on with Jane, we as viewers are never exactly sure what is happening inside her apartment whenever Bava cuts away — until the film’s final moments, that is. And I don’t think we come away with all of our questions resolved here, either, which is a big reason why I dig Macabre as much as I do.

Pushing the boundaries of sexual perversion and familial dynamics, Macabre may not be Bava’s most audacious directorial effort, but I do think it is one of the most freakishly brazen filmmaking debuts to ever come along, and it is undoubtedly one of the most unique films to be released in 1980 to boot.

Even though its very final shot doesn’t make a lick of sense, I don’t even know if I cared at that point because everything else that preceded the final 10 minutes of Macabre is like pure WTFery too. So, basically at that point, I am pretty much like, “Yeah, sure, why not, Lamberto?” And if you’re a fan of Italian genre cinema, or even just movies that skew a little on the weird side, I highly recommend making some time for Macabre, as there is a mother lode of weirdness to unpack here (it’s currently streaming on Tubi, and I believe it is the uncut version as well).

It may not be the most polished or well-conceived horror movie to be released in 1980, but I do wish more first-time directors would take swings as big as the ones that Lamberto Bava takes with Macabre because it is a one-of-a-kind cinematic experience, to say the least, and it’s a film that has been living in my head rent-free for years now because of those swings.