User Reviews

Don't Be Afraid of Aunt Martha is the translation of this title, which makes me wonder, in a week where I also watched Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things and Marta, is the name cursed?

Also known as Murder Secret, this Mario Bianchi written and directed movie had one of those presented by Lucio Fulci** titles on it. Bianchi also directed Satan's Baby Doll under the name Alan W. Cools and Kill The Poker Player as Frank Bronston. Later, he'd move into adult* under the aliases Martin White, Nicholas Moore, David Bird and Tony Wanker. To add to that, he also wrote the well-regarded giallo The Weapon, The Hour and The Motive.

One of six movies that Fulci edited - cannibalized, I guess - for Cat in the Brain***, this is closer to slasher than giallo and only really comes alive when the bloody murders kick in, which is really why you hire Fulci, I guess.

Richard Hamilton (Gabriele Tinti****, Emanuelle in America, Endgame) gets a letter from Aunt Martha (Sacha Darwin, Voices from Beyond), who he has not seen in decades and who his family has written off as dangerously psychotic. So he does what you and I would by bringing his entire family - Georgia (Jessica Moore, D'Amato's Eleven Days, Eleven Nights and its sequel), Charles, Maurice and Nora, his wife - to visit Martha at her estate.

The only person they find there is her caretaker Thomas (Maurice Poli, Five Dolls for an August Moon), who seems kindly but you know, this is an Italian gore movie, so no one is all that nice. The murders begin pretty much immediately.

Betrayed the other films that Bianchi made, the nude shower scene goes on forever and is even stranger because although the daughter is an adult, she acts like she is 15. She's somehow luckier than the youngest child, who runs directly into a chainsaw, and at that point, I thought to myself, "Well, now I can't give this a bad review."

The end of this movie is complete fake-out junk and therefore is wonderful. Also, big points for somehow getting Tinti to slowly kiss the maggot spewing corpse of his long dead aunt before getting into a slapfight with Poli.

This is one of a number of low-grade horrors with which Lucio Fulci was associated towards the end of his career: it’s actually the fifth I’ve watched (or, to be honest, made an effort to sit through) – following AENIGMA (1987), TOUCH OF DEATH (1988), GHOSTS OF SODOM (1988) and BLOODY Psycho (1989). They’re all terrible and unworthy of his talents (for the record, I’ve got two more of these to check out – MURDEROCK [1984] and THE RED MONKS [1988])…but also an indication of the depths to which the genre (and, by extension, the “Euro-Cult” style) had plunged by the end of the 1980s! Incidentally, the director of this one was the man behind the decent horror flick Satan’S BABY DOLL (1982), recently released by Severin in tow with MALABIMBA – THE MALICIOUS WHORE (1979), of which the former was an inferior remake.

The original Italian title of THE BROKEN MIRROR (a meaningless, generic moniker) translates to the more appropriate DON’T BE AFRAID OF AUNT MARTHA – which, presumably, is intended to evoke memories of the “Whatever” cycle of Grand Guignol-type shockers renowned for having revitalized the career of many an ageing Hollywood diva…but which had gone out-of-fashion some 15 years earlier! Anyway, the narrative concerns the arrival of a family at a country-house (most of these latter-day Fulcis seemed to go this route, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the locations were duplicated from one to the other!) – the property of the head of the family (Gabriele Tinti)’s aunt, who’s supposedly just been released from a lunatic asylum; however, she’s not there to greet them but the mysterious custodian (Maurizio Poli, from Mario Bava’s RABID DOGS [1974]) claims that she’ll be arriving soon.

The catch is that Tinti’s mother had confined the aunt (her sister) in order to appropriate herself of her sibling’s fortune: gripped by a sudden remorse, however, the former jumps out of a window – which has left an indelible effect on Tinti (then still a boy); that said, he doesn’t bother to get his aunt re-instated and makes use of the money himself! Sensibly, Tinti should have stayed away from his (understandably) revenge-seeking relative – but, invariably, the ill-fated heroes of this type of fare turn out to be awfully dumb! Soon enough, the bodies start piling up: Tinti’s eldest son is seen (by the audience but not the characters) mangled and hanging upside down from a tree – for what it’s worth, his introduction is treated as a red herring in an effort to generate some would-be suspense; the good-looking (and frequently topless) teenage daughter is knifed in the shower – which, actually, isn’t too badly done (again, it plays on the fact that, prior to this, she had twice been scared by her younger sibling’s practical jokes); the boy himself is viciously (and gorily) decapitated by a chainsaw; somewhat lazily, then, Tinti’s wife shares this exact same fate – except that the vessel of wrath in her case is the lid of a wooden chest…which makes for one of the most improbable celluloid beheadings I’ve ever come across!

At this stage, I have to mention an implausible turn-of-events: most of the deaths occur in one fell swoop – while Tinti’s gone out to visit the custodian; his wife drops him near the latter’s house, while she herself goes to do some shopping in town. By the time she arrives back home, two of the children have been killed and the murderer lies in wait to do her in too…but, when we cut back to Tinti, he’s just reached the custodian’s house!! It’s possible that this ‘delay’ on his part was intended to throw suspicion of the deeds on Tinti – especially after he ‘discovers’ the bodies propped up at table and Aunt Martha ‘appears’ to him (suggesting a deranged mind)…all of which, however, is negated by the fact that, immediately prior to this, he had stumbled upon five graves outside the house bearing the names of the entire family!

Eventually, it transpires that Poli is the murderer: he had been the lover of Aunt Martha – whose putrefied body he still keeps in the cellar (and on which the camera lingers in revolting detail for an inordinate length of time). The two engage in an extended scuffle, ending with Poli about to split Tinti’s head open with an axe…which takes us back to the very beginning (the journey to the country-house), except that it had actually been interrupted by the family’s car being wrecked in an accident – all its occupants killed but for Tinti (cue Aunt Martha’s voice declaring that his agonies aren’t over yet)! Ugh.

It's hard to find...and I'm glad! If this film dropped off the face of the earth tomorrow, it would be no great loss. yet another stupid and implausible Italian horror that attempts to be edgy and shocking, but actually isn't much more than incoherent and plodding, even neglecting to address huge, major plot points that it apparently wasn't aware it brought up. It's so unlikely in the first place, and the voice-over ending it is made hilarious by its attempt to make it all seem intentional.

The pacing is nonexistent and the whole thing is pretty predictable, except where it's random (and implausible there too). It's so predictable that you'll watch it, know exactly what will happen, and say to yourself 'no -- no, nothing's that stupid, nothing would do that anymore'. But you will be mistaken and it will disappoint you even more.

From the start, you'll find yourself wondering why these people, who obviously have pretty demanding lives, are so inanely doing the things they do. The father has no reason for doing what he does, especially. Nothing makes sense, and it's unfulfilling. This isn't the sort of 'dream logic' Argento could get away with when he was still good; it's just a mess of shoddy writing, and the ending is absolutely contemptible.

If you want to see something on a similar sort of note, watch Atrocious. It's not a masterpiece by any means, but it's far better than this rubbish. This isn't worth finding, and it's certainly not worth sitting through once you do find a copy.

The Murder Secret is a crazy giallo/slasher which, although directed by Mario Bianchi, was 'supervised' by Lucio Fulci. This inevitably means that the final product bears more than a passing resemblance to a Fulci flick, ie., it has a decent smattering of cheesy gore and a story that lacks any logic or cohesion. However, even with its flaws, The Murder Secret is still an entertaining film with enough good bits for it to be worth a watch.

A family travel to a remote country house where they hope to meet Martha, the aunt of the father, whom he hasn't seen for 30 years. When they arrive, they are met by the caretaker who informs them that Martha has been delayed and that she will arrive the next day.

But Martha never shows up, and one by one the members of the family are butchered by an unseen assailant.

The movie begins fairly sedately—Bianchi allows 45 minutes or so to introduce characters and build the story—but once it hits its stride, The Murder Secret doesn't let up, delivering plenty of welcome gratuitous nudity and some rather outrageous death scenes.

It is the mother who first reveals her charms during a brief 'sex' scene, but it is the cute (and busty) daughter who should be applauded for stripping off, not once but twice. It is immediately after her second strip that the violence really kicks in, with her bloody stabbing-in-the-shower scene. After that we get two great be-headings, one using a wooden chest(!), and another in which the young son gets decapitated by a chainsaw. This film certainly has balls, even dishing out the pain to the children!!

Unfortunately, after these juicy murders, the film rapidly goes off the rails, and the story becomes a jumbled (but still quite engaging) mess. It finishes with a surprise 'twist' ending which is a complete disappointment, making no sense whatsoever and completely lacking in originality.

But with its cheesy dialogue, no-holds barred killings, mad-as-a-bag-of-badgers killer, and OTT splatter, Bianchi's film is still a fairly fun way to pass the time.