Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare Beach is a prime slice of late-’80s Italian horror filmmaking. Though it may not be as visually stylish as Dario Argento’s Opera or Michele Soavi’s The Church, the film nevertheless delivers the goods sought after by genre aficionados: set pieces of gory violence and unabashed nudity, a raucous heavy metal-infused soundtrack, and a complete disregard for conventional narrative logic. What’s more, in typically Italian fashion, Lenzi’s film gleefully smashes together various genre tropes in engagingly unpredictable fashion.
Glum footballer Skip (Nicolas De Toth) and his horndog buddy Ronny (Rawley Valverde) arrive for spring break in South Florida just as a killer on a motorcycle starts electrocuting young revelers in a variety of amusingly improbable ways. Taking a page from the Jaws playbook, the primary concern of the local bigwigs—Mayor Loomis (Fred Buck), dipso medico Doc Willet (Michael Parks), and brutal police chief Strycher (John Saxon)—is to keep the party going by denying that anything is wrong. In this case, their campaign of disinformation extends as far as burying victims’ bodies in a nearby phosphate mine.
Nightmare Beach most notably differs from your typical American slasher movie with regard to its unflattering depiction of its characters. Authority figures are craven and corrupt, while the spring breakers seem entitled and oblivious. Elsewhere, bartender and potential love interest Gail (Sarah Buxton) is mad at the world since the death of her sister. Even our dynamic duo have their flaws. Skip tends to sulk because he lost “the big game” for his football team, and Ronny tosses around rubbers like confetti while on what he likes to call “beaver patrol.”
But the film reserves its most scathing portrayal for the disapproving scourge of religion represented by Reverend Bates (Lance LeGault), who, despite his Bible-thumping, can’t even keep his own hard-partying daughter (Debra Gallagher) in line. It’s not uncommon for Italian horror films like Lucio Fulci’s Don’t Torture a Duckling to feature a Catholic priest as the killer. But Lenzi and co-writer James Justice dilute the usual institutional indictment by making Bates a Protestant minister and single father. Rather than having a desire to maintain his victims’ innocence by sending them straight to heaven, Bates seeks to bring down the wrath of god on recalcitrant sinners via electricity (and occasionally garroting).
One of the incidental pleasures of Nightmare Beach comes from its location shooting around Fort Lauderdale, fictionalized as Manatee Beach. The verité footage of hotels, storefronts, and dive bars will be fascinating to those who grew up in the city back in the day. Lenzi and his crew seem to take particular delight in the oceanside wet T-shirt contests sponsored by the likes of Playboy, since they devote more time capturing them than is strictly speaking necessary.
But, for its part, Nightmare Beach seems to take a dim view of the festivities. Early on, Willet refers to spring break as “the annual migration of the idiot,” and the film’s final shots emphasize all too literally the wasteland left behind by the young partygoers. This ending casts a bit of a pall on Skip and Gail’s requisite departure for ostensibly happier environs, which is yet another way that Nightmare Beach stands out from others of its ilk.
Image/Sound
The 2160p UHD transfer of the film looks terrific. The blue waters, green leaves, and neon-colored beachwear of South Florida come through vibrantly, and depth and detail is evident throughout. Some of the blacks in the darker scenes are a bit soft, but it’s not too distracting.
The audio comes in English Master Audio stereo and surround, as well as Italian stereo and surround. Both stereo mixes are more organic, but the surround mixes nicely open up a few scenes. But they all do right by the charmingly schizoid soundtrack, which alternates between some pretty cheesy pop numbers and the driving metal score from Claudio Simonetti.
Extras
The big extra here is a spirited commentary track from film critic Samm Deighan, who has a lot to say about the career of Umberto Lenzi from his peplum days in the early 1960s to his final film in 1992. Deighan also helpfully setting Nightmare Beach in the context of Lenzi’s earlier works and relating it to genres like the biker film and the summer camp slasher. Apart from a handful of trailers, the other extra is an enjoyable interview with composer Claudio Simonetti, who talks about his career both with Goblin, working on scores for the likes of Dario Argento and George Romero, and his solo work for directors like Lenzi and Lucio Fulci.
Overall
Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare Beach is a gonzo slice of late-’80s Italian horror, replete with gory killings and surreal narrative non sequiturs.
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