Buio Omega (1980)

Dir: Joe D'amato

(aka Beyond The Darkness, The Final Darkness, Buried Alive)

Millionaire playboy Frank (an unforgettable turn by Kieran Kanter) is consumed by grief and decides to keep his beautiful girlfriend (Cinzia Monreale) around after she dies. He steals her corpse, embalms it and keeps it in bed with him at his isolated villa, convinced that nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan... and how could it, right? "Buio Omega" is a wild original. A film so unutterably barmy that it plays almost like an extreme Horace Walpole novel, blending high camp soap plotting and gothic melodrama with genuinely disgusting, graphic gore and sex. It's hard to take the latter elements seriously when the story hits its most absurd highs and yet still somehow the combination of gorgeous location photography, a fantastic Goblin score (one of their best ever) and the sheer grimness of the ideas leaves an unsettling feeling behind. It's illogical, uneven and ludicrous but you'll never see another film like it and for that it's kind of brilliant. ***1/2