Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

MARIO GAUCI This is only the fourth effort I’ve watched from this director (whom I met and found quite genial at the 2004 Venice Film Festival Italian B-movie retrospective) and also, possibly, the worst. As was the case with THE BRONX EXECUTIONER (1989), which preceded it, this is a prime example from the tail end of the Euro-Cult era – prime because it shows the depths to which the previously invigorating style had fallen by this time! Here, in fact, we get a plot revolving around – I’m not kidding, folks – a killer phone! Pretty but bland Charlotte Lewis – in her third film after PIRATES (1986) and THE GOLDEN CHILD (1986) – is a model who, apparently, has just ended an affair; she keeps expecting her architect lover to call her back but, every time the phone rings, all she gets is static accompanied by voices from the beyond (or some such crap). She befriends a new tenant at her apartment block who, conveniently, knows of an authority on paranormal activity (William Berger) – who, hilariously, explains that the negative energy which is unleashed, say, during family arguments can manifest itself via home appliances into a deadly force (I swear I ain’t making this up)! Among the highlights...er...lowpoints of the film are: the grumpy bartender from whose dingy place the heroine calls a couple of times (it seems that the chain-of-events can only be broken by having Lewis go through her paces again, EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962)-style!), the sheer variety of preposterous-looking phones on display, the apparatus of the heroine’s photographer friend sneaking up on her before the kill, the sarcastic cop who greets Lewis on reporting the strange occurrences (“And what’s the toaster up to, I wonder?”), the would-be rapist killed by a barrage of coins shooting out from a telephone booth, and Berger’s own bloody demise (with the phone affecting the pacemaker he’s fitted with and causing the doctor’s heart to explode)! The film’s climax is rather confusing and, apparently, finally sees all the ‘lost souls’ inhabiting a flock of doves and flying out the window of the ‘possessed’ office (a lonelyhearts service!). For what it’s worth, the score – by ex-Goblin Claudio Simonetti no less – is effective enough, despite the inclusion of dated heavy-metal numbers on the soundtrack.

HumanoidOfFlesh A stunningly beautiful Charlotte Lewis stars as a woman who is terrorized by a ghosts who torment her on the phone.Driven to the edge in terror Charlotte is forced to confront this chilling mystery in order to save her sanity and her life.I can't believe that Ruggero Deodato,the director behind "Ultimo Mondo Cannibale","Cannibal Holocaust" and "House on the Edge of the Park" directed this absurd piece of trash.Admittedly the music by Goblin front man Claudio Simonetti is pretty good,but the story is painfully stupid.The script by Franco Ferrini is ridiculous and it makes no sense,the acting is bad and there is absolutely no suspense.The scene in which a prospective rapist of Charlotte Lewis is killed by coins ejected from a subway telephone is more than laughable.Don't waste your time with this piece of crap.There are far better Italian horror movies out there!

crazy-23 What a sales gimmick! This is certainly not an erotic thriller. There is a fraction of a second nipple flash at best, and this is while….being seduced by….her possessed TELEPHONE! She spends the entire movie running around screaming and terrified by eerie sounds on possessed telephones around the city. Through the stupid chaos of telephone cords attacking people, fish dying from telephone squeals, and quarters shot out of a pay phone killing a guy, this movie should have been placed in the low budget horror section. It doesn't earn the title thriller or erotic in the least! For a better movie with Charlotte Lewis see Bare Essentials instead.

Michael A. Martinez It is truly saddening to see a once-great director such as Deodato delivering such a second-rate giallo such as this. This movie was so terrible it effectively put an end to his movie career. The box lies, this is no "erotic thriller", hell during the film's 97 minute running time, Charlotte Lewis barely shows us one nipple! I thought it would pick up once William Burger showed up (in one of his last roles), but his character is killed off rather abruptly and lamely. This movie fails in pretty much every way. Claudio Simonetti's music is little more than noise, and the plot made very little sense at all. For some reason, Lewis is terrorized by ghosts which attack using phones. (?) By the end, the characters all seem to have forgotten the previous 90 minutes of hell they went through, and casually laugh as they sick the evil spirits on someone else, Lewis's ex-boyfriend. What?!? This movie did little for me besides anger me.... and bore me half to death. For genuine 80's Deodato fun, watch THE BARBARIANS or THE ATLANTIS INTERCEPTORS, let this one rot on the video store shelf. Argento could make a better giallo than this!