| Trauma Released: 1993 MPAA Rating: R Genre: Slasher Nuts and Bolts: A serial killer known as the Headhunter stalks its victims in the urban sprawl of Minneapolis. Sixteen-year-old Aura Petrescu may hold the key to uncovering the secret of the Headhunter’s identity; but only if she can stay away from her captors at the Faraday Clinic long enough. Summary: Let’s talk about Georgia Jackson. Georgia is an African American chiropractor from Minneapolis. She works late at her office and is expecting a new patient. But the patient she’s expecting is likely NOT the person that actually comes to greet her. A shadowy figure wearing dark clothes and black leather gloves enters her office. This is the Headhunter (No, not me). Heady withdraws a strange looking device from his satchel. It’s a handle of some kind with a looped ring of retractable razor wire. The killer ropes it about Georgia’s neck and cuts her head clean off. He then dumps the head in his satchel and proceeds on his merry way. The next day, we meet David Parsons. David is an artist for a local broadcasting agency. On his way home, he finds a sixteen-year-old girl readying herself to jump from the top of a tall bridge. He pulls the car over and approaches her. Coaxing her away from the bridge, he offers the girl (Aura Petrescu) a meal and a place to stay. They go to a restaurant and David tries in vain to break through Aura’s mental shields. Aura pilfers his wallet and then heads toward the restroom. She pukes up all of her food and escapes through a back door. She isn’t on the street for more than two minutes, when staff members from the nearby Faraday Clinic pick her up. Aura is a patient of the clinic who had escaped and her keepers had been looking all over for her. They actually return her to her family’s home to see if they wish to re-admit her to Faraday. Aura is sent to her room while her mother and father invite a bunch of friends over for a strange occult séance. Her mother, Adriana kicks off the séance by trying to commune with victims of the Headhunter. The session is recorded and a strange voice speaks through Adriana. Unfortunately, the killer’s identity is never revealed. While all of this is going on, Aura escapes from the house. The séance breaks up and the guests go outside to try and find her. But lo and behold, the Headhunter is ALSO on the Petrescu estate. Aura stumbles upon the headless remains of her father, and in the distance she sees the silhouette of the Headhunter holding her parents’ heads in his hands. Aura flees in terror and runs off into the night. Lets switch scenes for a moment. There’s this little kid named Gabriel Pickering who likes to watch the apartment next door through his bedroom window. Gabriel doesn’t realize it yet, but the person he is spying on happens to be the Headhunter. Gabriel sees a dark black face staring down at him from the window. He believes it to be the killer, but in fact it is actually the head of Georgia Jackson. More on this little brat later. So now we go back to David. David is curious about the strange girl he met the night before. He talks a bit with his co-worker and even the TV station’s anchorwoman Grace Harrington (Whom David happens to be porking on the side). Aura eventually runs back to David and returns his wallet. He offers her a place to stay and she reluctantly agrees. Grace isn’t too fond of this, as she fears that David may play ‘hide the salami’ with the younger girl and so calls the Faraday Clinic. So Doctor Leopold Judd comes along and takes Aura back to the clinic. He groans on an on about repressed memory or some such nonsense and makes her eat these bizarre psychotropic berries. Supposedly, they are meant to increase her memory. Aura begins hallucinating a bit and she is taken to another room and strapped down. Her nurse is an ugly ass woman named Hilda Volkman. As Hilda administers a few injections into Aura, the Headhunter enters the hospital. Firstly, he takes care of a doctor by braining him with the business end of a hammer. Then he makes his way towards Hilda Volkman. Hilda becomes the Headhunter’s next victim and the killer decapitates her with the strange looking razor gun that was mentioned earlier. By this point, David has tracked Aura down and helps her to escape from the hospital while the killer is busy building his head collection. Back at David’s house the two decide to investigate the Headhunter murders a bit more closely. David learns the identity of the nurse and discovers that she rents a self-storage facility on the other end of town. The two take off and break into Hilda’s storage space. They find a photo containing a group of doctors and medical staff including Hilda and Georgia Jackson. David is now convinced that the Headhunter is out to kill everyone in the photo. They try to track down one of the other doctors shown in the photo. This would be Linda Quirk. David calls Linda and asks her about Hilda. Linda becomes suddenly very scared and knows that the medical staff and she all harbor a horrible secret. She flees in her station wagon just as David arrives at her house to question her. He follows her to the Hopkins House Hotel and rents a room. But hot on their tale is the Headhunter. The Headhunter first stops at Linda’s house and kills her lesbian girlfriend. From there he learns of Linda’s current location. He arrives at Hopkins House and finds Linda in room 301. Same routine as before boys and girls. Hammer to the head followed by hand-held razor wire head slicing device. Or as the Queen of Hearts would say, “Orf wiv ‘er ‘ead!” In a manner befitting the Headhunter’s MO, the killer activates the sprinklers in the room. Note: It’s postulated earlier in the film that the Headhunter only kills during a serious rainstorm. David races down the hall to try and save Linda but he is too late. Her head is three feet away from her body but the ole girl still manages to croak out a few last words. She says, “Lloyd.” So now David decides that he has to track down Doctor Lloyd (Brad Dourif) who was also shown in the afore-mentioned photograph. He finds Lloyd on a street corner near Saint Bartholomew’s hospital. Like Linda, Lloyd is very close-lipped concerning the dark secret that the medical staff is responsible for. He screams at David (as only Brad Dourif can) and tell him to leave him the fuck alone. Lloyd goes into Saint Bart’s. But lo and behold, the Headhunter has been sticking close to David like shit to a monkey. Ignoring David for the nonce, the killer follows Lloyd into the hospital. He attacks him near an elevator and exposes his head to the empty shaft. The elevator car rumbles downward tearing Lloyd’s head from his neck. Poor Lloyd. Lets check back with that snotty little punk Gabriel. Armed with a butterfly net, Gabriel sneaks across the yard and breaks into the house of the Headhunter. (The reasons as to why he is doing this are just too retarded to explain in detail). Anyway, the killer isn’t home but Gabriel finds the Headhunter’s melon-lopper. Idiot kid nearly takes his own damn head off with the thing. As he’s rumbling about he hears the killer returning home. (There’s also a matter of him squishing a lizard in his hand but that’s not really all that important). Suffice to say, the clumsy little fuck manages to escape out the window that he came in through. Doesn’t anyone have respect for another person’s privacy anymore? Why can’t people conduct their hobbies without every little Tom, Dick and Fuckface wanting to poke their mucous-laden little noses into the mix! So now night closes in. It’s been a hectic day and David and Aura try to sleep it off. The sexual tension between the two is brewing, but thus far nothing has really sparked between these guys. Throughout the course of the night, Doctor Judd of the Faraday Clinic breaks into David’s house and accosts Aura. He commands that he is going to return her to the clinic. David awakens and chases Judd out of the house. Judd hops into his car and takes off. Now police captain Travis has been investigating the Headhunter murders and appears on the scene just as Judd’s car hydroplanes away from David’s place. The cops (As well as David) give chase and the scene ends when Judd’s car careens off an embankment. Judd dies in the crash. Captain Travis opens the trunk of the car to find several severed heads lying in the back. He concludes that Judd was the Headhunter and the case is closed. David heads back to his house only to discover that Aura is gone. In her bed is a note that says she is returning to be with her mother. David recalls the sixteen-year-old’s suicidal tendencies and believes that she may have drowned in nearby Lake Veronica. He swims all throughout the lake calling her name but to no avail. Okay, my memory is a bit fuzzy on the next few segments so bear with me. Some time passes and David is still pining for the loss of Aura. For whatever reason he comes along Gabriel sitting in his front yard. He begins to believe that something fishy is going on at the house next door. He knocks on the door of the Headhunter’s lair and who should answer but……….. [WARNING: Killer’s identity will now be revealed] …Aura’s mom Adriana! Yup. Apparently she was never decapitated after all. On the night of her parents’ alleged double murder, Aura believed that she saw the shadow of the killer holding her parents’ heads in his hands. In fact, it was Adriana holding the severed head of her husband and tugging at her own hair to make it seem as if she were holding a head in front of her face. Aura is actually trapped inside the basement of the house. Adriana ends up capturing David and chaining him downstairs. Now it’s time for the Scooby Doo ending where the villain reveals their true motives. Apparently, Adriana was pregnant with a second child some time ago. The birth was a difficult one and required an entire team of doctors to deliver the baby. During the event, a horrendous lightning storm struck the hospital shorting out the lights and sending slivers of glass down on the medical team. One of the operating doctors was startled by the event and slipped with the scalpel killing Adriana’s unborn child (Whose name was Nicholas by the way). So out of revenge for this tragic accident, Adriana decided to end the life of everyone present in the operating room including her husband whenever it rained. Now while mum is explaining all of this, that fucker Gabriel sneaks into the house again. What the hell is this kid’s problem. He gets a hold of Adriana’s head chopping tool and through a strange series of misadventures manages to use it against Adriana herself. Mom is dead (again) and David and Aura are free to carry on their illicit if albeit illegal love affair (remember, she’s only sixteen). Acting/Dialogue: Christopher Rydell ALMOST endears us to the character of David Parsons. But he spends too much time making goo-goo eyes at Aura and not enough time composing an actual structurally sound sentence. He spends the bulk of the movie with a perpetual question mark hanging over his head and its difficult to get behind him as the hero archetype. Asia Argento is not only the character of Aura but she is also the daughter of director Dario Argento. She really doesn’t offer much in the way of acting, but her cute Italian accent goes a long way towards her overall screen presence. Piper Laurie plays the part of mom and her character is really not all together different from when she played Carrie White’s mom in Carrie. The only person that really excelled was Brad Dourif as Doctor Lloyd. Shamefully, he is only in the movie for about two minutes, but he does treat us to some of his over-accentuated psycho-theatrics. Gore: Okay, I’m starting to think that I watched a seriously edited version of this film. The FX in this flick were SUPPOSEDLY done by Tom Savini, but I have a hard time believing that the gore-whore who brought us Day of the Dead and Friday the 13th could have in any way been involved with this film. Despite the nature of the killer’s motives, the gore is ultra-light. They didn’t even show Brad Dourif’s head getting pounded off by the elevator car. Just a blood smear on the wall. That’s it. Bah! To his credit however, Savini delivers in the talking head scene involving Linda Quirk. It is really fucking eerie to watch her head gibbering on three feet away from her bloody body. Guilty Pleasures: Asia Argento shows off her tits for a brief second. Although she has an admirable body, the scene is completely pointless and was included for no other reason than to have the director pimp his daughter out to the lowest common denominator. But hey, speaking on behalf of the lowest common denominator, its not like we rent these films because they’re tasteful right? The Good: Right off the bat, this film gets props because it spotlights a serial killer who goes by the name of Headhunter. How cool is that? I really liked the idea of the Headhunter only killing people whenever it was raining out. In retrospect it makes for a nice literary (if not scientifically feasible) metaphor. You ever break a bone and long after it heals you find it acting up whenever it rains out? I suppose Adriana’s internal pain works along the same lines. Her child was killed inside of her womb during (and because) of a rainstorm and as such, it causes her to suffer a mental breakdown whenever it rains. Kind of cool. I like. Although the pacing is a bit slow, I think Argento does a good job at keeping your interest. David is semi-likeable but he does a good job at being the ‘normal’ guy who is suddenly thrust into a very strange world. He is constantly finding himself at cross-purposes. On one side, he’s got this hot mature professional woman who wants nothing more than to have her face slapped by his dick. But on the other side, he actually prefers the meek and younger Aura. It’s easy to lust for what is within your reach, but more difficult to lust for that which you cannot have. I guess that’s the angle Argento was going with here. Or maybe he didn’t have an angle at all. Maybe I’m just trying desperately to come up with several paragraphs worth of text for the Good column here. Anyway, the point of Trauma is that it keeps you guessing as to the motivations and identity of the killer. It’s not the type of movie that allows for audience participation, but its fun to watch the characters try and solve the mystery. Argento keeps a solid hand on the suspense and the cerebral tension is one of the highlights of this film. The Bad: As I eluded earlier, either I saw a grossly edited version of this film or else it really DOESN’T make any bloody sense what-so-fucking ever. My primary thorn comes in the form of Aura Petrescu. From the moment she is introduced we are told that she is to be a pivotal character at the core of the entire Headhunter escapade. We know that she is young and we know that she has escaped from a clinic, and we know that her family partakes in some rather unorthodox practices. Immediately, the mystery is thrown at us and we concentrate all of our efforts towards divining Aura’s significance in the whole affair. But does Dario deliver on this? NO! We come to find out that the only reason Aura is in the clinic is because she has an eating disorder. That’s it! All that nonsense with Doctor Judd feeding her psycho-berries was just a load of horseshit! It resulted in nothing. At her core, the character of Aura is nothing more than a vehicle through which we can expose the mystery behind her mother’s crimes. She’s the god damned fucking Mystery Machine. All we need now is Fred, Shaggy and Daphne to jump on her so they can get a ride. (As it stands, David doesn’t even get a ride from her) The identity of the killer probably would have come as a greater shock were it not for poor editing. We first see the Headhunter’s face when she takes the life of Papa Petrescu. Aura is standing in the woods and sees the shadowy silhouette of the killer holding pop’s head. I guess it was supposed to look as if the killer was holding the heads of both parents but that’s not how it came across. To the viewer, it looks as if mom is the killer. But then they later confuse us by saying that BOTH parents were killed. They try and clear up the confusion with the psycho-berry scene, but by then its too late. The suspicion of the Headhunter’s identity is already placed into the minds of the audience. Now let’s examine Adriana’s motivations. She is apparently killing all of those whom she felt was responsible for the death of Nicholas right? So what was the point of the séance in the beginning? Why was Adriana trying to reveal the source of the killings when she herself was the killer? On top of that, there’s the character of Leopold Judd. How exactly did HE figure into all of this mess? Was he in cahoots with Adriana? Is that why he had the heads in his trunk? Or did she plant them there herself in the hopes of framing him? Why was Judd so hung up on Aura? Aura knew nothing of this entire affair and yet Judd seemed to feel that she was somehow integral to this whole mystery. What was he really doing when he broke into David’s house? Was he truly trying to attack Aura or was he trying to warn her? Too many questions, not enough answers. The final complaint: Special effects artist Tom Savini is KNOWN for his extravagant and gruesome handiwork. He’s the guy that made George Romero’s Day/Dawn of the Dead movies so captivating. He’s also the guy who is responsible for a fair share of the gore known to the Friday the 13th series (Parts 1 and 4 to be exact). But his colorful visuals are all but ABSENT in this movie. Yeah, he made that cool talking head scene, but beyond that his work is REALLY sub-par. What a disappointment. Again, maybe I’m watching an ‘edited for television’ version of this turkey. The next time some director wants to make a movie based on the namesake of your's truly, I hope they handle it with a little bit more style and consistency. Great Lines: “You did it!” --Anonymous crazy person at the Faraday Clinic screaming at David as he rescues Aura. Overall Rating: 3 out of 10 severed heads. Not even Asia Argento’s fun bags could save this one. |
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