Monday, August 26, 2024

"The Computer Doesn't Know Everything, and Neither Do You" - Specters (1987)

It is time to return to Italy for the 1987 supernatural horror film starring (in a sense) Donald Pleasence. In the tradition of Lamberto Bava's Demons (1985), though showcasing only one monster, Specters is a frightening tale of pure evil invading the real world.

Of course, some of your universe's critics fail to understand Specters. For example, reviewer Whovian says "this film makes absolutely no sense whatsoever." Reviewer The_Void writes, "The plot is a complete mess and I found it very easy to get bored." And reviewer Coventry writes, "it's a silly and lackluster film."

Read on for a more realistic appreciation of director Marcello Avallone's Specters...

As a crew of engineers uses machinery to dig a subway tunnel far below the surface of Rome, Professor Donald Pleasence instructs his graduate students to measure various Roman ruins. Informed that the subway construction has opened a deep hole in the ruins, Professor Pleasence and his students investigate. “No one has crossed this threshold in 2,000 years,” Professor Pleasence intones as he discovers a sign carved into stone. “Whether invoked or not invoked,” he translates, “evil will come.”

Ignoring this warning, Professor Pleasence digs up a stone with a monstrous face etched into it. 

That very night, an overdressed middle-aged couple parks their convertible in the woods and drinks champagne from the bottle. When the man disappears mysteriously, the woman finds blood on the car, then, unadvisedly, walks into the forest. Soon, she is attacked by a monster that looks suspiciously like a statue of the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

However, the attack is revealed to be a scene from a movie that is being shot (as usual in situations like this, the filmmakers have cut around the movie set to make the director, crew, camera crane, etc. invisible until after the onscreen director says, “Cut.”) Humorously, the overdressed actress kisses the creature when the take is finished.


At Professor Pleasance’s office, situated in a building in the middle of some ruins, the archeologist tries to figure out what the exposed hole in the ground means. One of his students says, “Professor, according to the printout, it seems to be—“

“The computer doesn’t know everything,” Professor Pleasence says. “And neither do you. Two hundred years before the Christians built the tomb of Domitiano, there was somebody else living underneath this mausoleum. Legend speaks of a monstrous divinity to whom human sacrifices were made.” He then leads his students on a walk through the ruins, avoiding a high school group taking a tour. “Domitiano was sacrificed to a bloodthirsty pagan god, a god of evil. That sacrifice provoked something.” Also, the tomb was sealed for 2,000 years.

The filmmakers then follow the schoolchildren, who are led through the deep catacombs by a blind tour guide who tells them spookily, “If you are quiet a while, you can even hear the distant voices of those who are…buried here.”

Surprisingly, a male and female student find the tour guide boring, so they decide to take a detour through an unmarked catacomb and start kissing. They are soon interrupted, first by a mouse and then by a loud wind that blows through the tunnel. Of course they find the wind more terrifying than the mouse, until the mouse is joined by dozens of its tiny compatriots who surround the girl. Then the ceiling begins to fall onto the couple.

Surprisingly, nothing bad happens. The filmmakers suddenly cut to outside, where the boy, Mike, is wheeled into an ambulance. His girlfriend Maria rides in the ambulance with him.

Aboveground, the tour guide speaks with the high school teachers who led the trip. He tells them, “That place is…for those without eyes, for those who can’t meet the gaze of a demon who has the power to confuse us…Evil is not just a symbol. It has a face.”

The film returns to the subplot of the monster movie actress, Alice, who, after much badinage with a friend about how both of them love spaghetti, asks her boyfriend Marcus (one of Professor Pleasence’s grad students) to go away for the weekend. He doesn’t want to go with her and she threatens to return to New York. A mysterious hooded beggar interrupts them eloquently: “It’s time to leave. To run away from this rotten place. The centuries and the wickedness of the people who live here have corroded it to the core. From its womb have come forth blind monsters. Go, go now! Flee the city before evil, which is tired of hiding in the bowels of the earth, decides to wake. Leave before the sinister howls of the phantoms engulfed us all!”

Meanwhile, a restaurateur is attacked by wine blasting out of wine bottles.


Running away, the restaurateur trips on the carpet and dies when his head smashes through a window on which is painted a stylized version of the MGM studio logo, Leo the Lion’s painted teeth on the shattered glass ripping his throat.


The next day, Marcus is assigned to take a camera down into the secret catacombs discovered by Professor Pleasence.

Suddenly, he falls through a large hole and his colleagues are no longer able to track him on the Atari 2600 they have set up aboveground. He finds himself in a big chamber he identifies as a tomb. 

Just as suddenly, his colleagues are able to see through his camera and track him just fine.

Marcus finds a sarcophagus in the tomb with a Latin inscription (“Malvm” — “Evil”). There is also a four-pronged instrument jammed into the stone, which of course Marcus pulls out.

Surprisingly, nothing bad happens.

Marcus returns to the surface and Professor Pleasence inspects the instrument/dagger Marcus found. He also discusses it with his colleague for several minutes; ominously, his colleague accuses Professor Pleasence of having morals and no imagination.


In the next scene, the professor’s colleague returns to his home (which is connected to the labyrinths for some reason) and assigns his black-clad henchman to steal the artifacts from Professor Pleasence. 

Later, in a stylish and highly original scene that is in no way inspired by Nosferatu (1922), the shadow of a man with pointy ears and claws assaults Alice — but it is just a dream or hallucination.


Later, the wind attacks one of the professor’s grad students who is working in an office that is inside a giant tree trunk, for some reason. She decides to open the sarcophagus of evil, but changes her mind. In any case, a big clawed hand comes out of the sarcophagus and attacks her, then chases the black-clad henchman through the tunnels. Finally, the unseen creature attacks the professor’s colleague in his basement, crushing his head against the stone wall.


As the film moves into its final act, Professor Pleasence and Marcus finally open the sarcophagus of evil. Perhaps predictably, they find it is empty.

Later at night, Alice records a pop song in a studio and has a vision that the microphone turns into a bright green snake. She runs out of the recording studio and jumps into Marcus’s car.

Still later at night, one of the grad students wanders an empty museum (where, as usual, a small monkey is allowed to roam free and climb on the museum exhibits). Suddenly, the evil wind begins blowing, alarming both the grad student and the monkey. The student finds something in a back room and immediately calls Marcus, interrupting a romantic session with a nude Alice. Marcus dresses quickly, saying, “If you decide you don’t want to see me again, I understand. It’s…uh…the way it is.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Alice says, as angry as she is topless. “Don’t bother to call!”

Marcus rushes alone to the museum. After a jump scare in which the monkey jumps and screams before Marcus gives it a snack he has been carrying around, the police arrive at the museum because Marcus has found his colleague’s body. 

Meanwhile, in an Elm Street-like sequence, Alice is suddenly dragged into the mattress on which she is sleeping (this time bottomless rather than topless).


At the same time, Professor Pleasence, after experiencing some mild wind, takes a flashlight into the catacombs and sees a pair of glowing green eyes.


Moments later, Marcus travels to the catacombs and finds the professor. “I saw evil, Marcus,” Professor Pleasence says ominously. “I looked into his eyes.” He tells Marcus to close the tunnel before it’s too late, and then he dies.

Marcus enters the catacombs, apparently with no plan, where he encounters Alice, who has been pulled into the catacombs through her mattress. An earthquake separates them and Marcus nearly falls into a narrow crack in the earth. 

As Marcus deals with the crack, Alice watches as the evil demon digs its way out of either the floor or the wall. The monster itself is an impressive Sergio Stivaletti creation with big horns, wings, and fingers. (Frighteningly, it does not resemble at all the Nosferatu shadow that attacked Alice.)


Of course, Alice runs away through the catacombs. She runs into Marcus, who escaped somehow from the crack in the earth but who is immediately attacked by the demon, whose face is even more impressively frightening (if that is possible) than its body.


Marcus and Alice are aided by the blind tour guide, who appears suddenly and then has his heart ripped out by the demon. They use this distraction to run through the catacombs some more. Now water gushes from the ceiling, blocking their progress (fortunately for the two lovers, the catacomb water appears quite clean).

Marcus carries Alice out of the tunnels and quips, perhaps inappropriately, “Maybe I can find a couple days for our honeymoon.”


Instead of punching him, Alice kisses him. The filmmakers cut to Alice’s apartment, where the two make love, but in a shocking stinger of an ending the demon’s hand bursts from the mattress!

The End



If Donald Pleasence were in Specters more, or had a more consequential role, the film would no doubt be considered a classic of Italian horror. As it is, the film is a classic in terms of mood and atmosphere, with gorgeous lighting, impressive catacombs, and the general feeling that anything could happen at any moment (frequently, of course, wind blowing things around). The catacombs beneath Rome are truly frightening, especially when one considers one could run across a body embedded in the walls, or even thousands of gallons of water of unknown origin spilling from the walls and ceiling at any moment. One wonders how real Italian archeologists survive in such an environment! Marcello Avallone (known for several erotic films before turning to horror) is to be commended for creating such a powerful and realistic depiction of such a dangerous job, and also for the reminder that when one escapes from a nameless pre-Christian evil by walking out of the Roman catacombs, one should really go back and seal the tunnels before suggesting a quickie honeymoon.