In short: Charly, Days of Blood (1990)

Original title: Charly, días de sangre

Because his son Charly (Fabián Gianola) is introverted, doesn’t date and is just plain weird – at least that’s his opinion - Inspector Santos (Norman Briski) convinces Charly’s best bud Daniel (Martín Guerrero) to take Charly and some friends to the Inspector’s big ass house in the country. Daniel is also to bring a girl for Charly to have sex with, a suggestion the guy takes in his stride, I gotta say.

He also – alas, off-screen - manages to find a proper candidate for the project. The first day of Daniel, Charly, friends and girlfriends at the house does run to what must be Inspector Dad’s satisfaction, but the night brings more than Charly’s sexual hang-ups (if you want to call having performance problems in the house where your older brother burned to his death right in front of you a hang-up), for someone is stalking and spying on the friends.

The next morning starts with a dead cat, and the rest of the weekend away devolves into a whole salad of murder and hysteria.

For the first twenty minutes or so, this Argentinian SOV slasher is one of those perfectly weird movies you can only encounter in this part of the movie world (I mean SOV horror, not Argentina). The – long – scene in which Inspector Dad explains what’s what to Daniel is absolutely incredible, the young man keeping an improbably straight face to the fidgety scenery chewing and bizarre demands of the older man – line delivery and the lines themselves are incredibly bizarre. The scene is capped with a fountain of exposition delivered while the old man is taking a piss. The audience at least is somewhat prepared for this at that stage, for we witnessed an introductory scene in which the good Inspector tells a bewildered colleague - whose “what!” reaction is the most naturalistic bit of acting in the whole movie – that he “loves evil” but “hates evil-doers”.

The mix of fidgeting and improbable non-sequitur dialogue continues for a bit, until the film alas calms down to become a straightforward if slow and competently shot slasher with quite a bit of female nudity (one could argue more than is good for it) that is entertaining enough if you lack taste like I do.

Fortunately, the film takes a turn back to the weirder for the final act, when the killer turns out to be what I can only describe as a were-burn victim, and some pretty good gore gags ensue. This is also the rare slasher lacking a final girl; though I wouldn’t exactly call this a plus. We also get a cop who just shrugs when he sees his boss suffering a heart attack, as well as a downer ending as if this were made in the 70s. By the standards of SOV slashers, that’s rather a lot.