FILM GUTTER REVIEWS: ​SICK-O-PATHICS (1995)

Sick-o-Pathics is probably one only for the most hardcore of cult movie afficionados. It looks cheaply-made, there’s nothing particularly original here and the cameos were obviously a ploy to suck in viewers such as myself and sadly just don’t deliver in time or impact.

Dir. Brigida Costa and Massimo Lavagnini, 55 mins
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Honestly, I’m a pretty big fan of anthology horror – probably even more so as I get older. In fact it’s something I’ve noticed across all the facets of my life – I’m leaning towards shorter books and TV shows with less series – perhaps I just don’t have the same attention span anymore. Anthology horror can provide a lot of entertainment in dividing a film up into pieces, with all the fun of the framing device around it too. I’ve got a lot of favourites too – The ABCs of Death, Little Deaths and Phobia among them. Even though the subgenre itself can be hit and miss, if you have a few crackers then you can certainly go home happy after watching it.

Which brings us to Sick-o-Pathics, a 1995 Italian offering with an almost alarmingly short runtime of just under an hour. Maybe that should have set alarm bells ringing, but I must admit I was drawn in more than anything by the list of cameos here. Lewis Coates – sorry, I mean Luigi Cozzi – Joe D’Amato, Lucio Fulci, Linnea Quigley, Dario Sachetti, Sergio Stivaletti and more besides. There you have a veritable smorgasbord or horror and cult film royalty. Sadly to call most of these ‘cameos’ is a bit strong, as several of these appearances are in commercials between segments and last only a matter of seconds. That left me feeling ultimately a bit short-changed – the movie would lose literally nothing for them not being there, and those commercials probably add about ninety seconds total to the runtime. And as much as I hate to harp on the length of the film, the 55 minutes is also padded by a behind the scenes section after the final credits – so you’re probably getting about 45 minutes of actual movie when you come down to it.

I could maybe have forgiven all that if it’d been a great 45 minutes – but sadly it’s anything but. Our framing device is a rude street thug who stumbles upon the lair or movie director ‘Dare Dane’ (Dardano Sachetti) who insists on showing his films to this philistine who’s seen none of them. There are three segments – we kick of with Hello Dolly, which barely runs ten minutes and sees a man buying himself a sex doll that turns out to be murderous. I’ll give it credit for a truly gross scene where the doll spits out all the – how can I put this delicately? – ‘deposits’ from past users over her new owner. But other than that it’s pretty throwaway, and closes with a silly twist that doesn’t really add anything.

On a side note, it did occur to me this is the fourth killer sex doll I’ve seen, after Love Object, The Bitch is Back and The Sex Doll She Bitch. Is this some sort of trope I’ve just not been aware of? And if you must watch one, go for Love Object – it’s genuinely a great film.

We then move on to The Poor, The Flesh and The Bag (what does that title mean? Can anyone illuminate me?) in which a man finds a bag that he tries to return to its owner, but with money trouble impending instead takes it home and tries to pry it open – only for it to promptly grow an eye, then legs, then razor-sharp teeth with which it kills our protagonist and his wife. It’s plenty bloody, but I can’t say anything further than that really.

We close with Aerophagus, which is a spoof of Anthrophagus – honestly I haven’t seen the source material for many, many years, so I expect a certain number of the jokes probably passed me by. To call this gross-out humour probably doesn’t do it justice, and it’s about as subtle as a sledgehammer. I laughed once or twice, but not really enough to justify this one taking up about half the run time – including a montage of people walking the streets that eats up about three minutes.

Ultimately Sick-o-Pathics looks cheap – going for that shot on video aesthetic that seemed to be a feature of the 80s and 90s – and also feels cheap. It draws you in with a bunch of barely-existent cameos, then delivers three poor segments that deliver in the gore and grossness but precious little else. I have seen worse, but that wouldn’t be an especially long list. There might be some cult value for the absolute completists out there, but everything here has been done better elsewhere. There are better SOV movies, there are better anthology movies, there are better horror-comedies and there are certainly better ways to spend an hour of your life.

RATING: 2/10. I’ve given it a couple of points for the times it either grossed me out or made me chuckle a little, but Sick-o-Pathics is probably one only for the most hardcore of cult movie afficionados. It looks cheaply-made, there’s nothing particularly original here and the cameos were obviously a ploy to suck in viewers such as myself and sadly just don’t deliver in time or impact. This really could have been a fun project, but it just doesn’t land as it might have.