Talk about your dysfunctional families. Jane Baker (Stegers) leaves her two children unattended while she sneaks off for a tryst with her illicit lover Fred. While Jane is gone her daughter Lucy (Zinny), seeking diversion, decides to drown her little brother in the bathtub (see what happens when you don't have cable?). When she learns of the tragedy, Jane races home with Fred at her side, but the two are in a collision and Fred is messily decapitated by a guard rail. Jane is driven over the edge and spends the next year in a mental hospital. All in all, a less than perfect day for the Baker clan.

Upon her release Jane moves into Fred's old apartment. Robert, her blind landlord, harbors feelings for her, but Jane seems to have already found herself another lover. Robert hear's the sounds of lovemaking coming from the apartment upstairs, just as he did when Fred was alive, but he never hears anyone enter the building. Robert investigates and soon learns that Jane's lover is Fred's severed head which she keeps in her freezer.

Lamberto Bava hasn't fared as well in the film making game as his father the great Mario Bava. Frozen Terror (originally known as Macabre) was the younger Bava's first feature, and it's probably his best film, despite a few flaws. Several plot points are never explained. How does Jane obtain Fred's noggin especially since she's spent the last year riding on the disoriented express? Why does Lucy kill her brother? Why do the actors slip in and out of their southern accents (the film takes place in Louisiana) with such annoying regularity?

After a promising first ten minutes the pace slows down considerably. There's some good suspense here, though, and few honest to goodness gross-outs. Even the hokey twist ending that seems to have been added on at the last minute lends a cheesy sense of the bizarre to the proceedings.

A flawed but enjoyable Italian shocker. The film claims to have been based on true events (I know I have a grain of salt around here somewhere), and the script was co-written by Pupi Avati, director of Revenge of the Dead.