Discopath: 24 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

If you've been reading any of my reviews in the past you'll know that I'm a hopeless fan of the Giallo genre.  That sleazy exploitation of sex and death, stylized by music and camera genre.  It appears I'm not alone in this strange attraction as there have been a number of films in the recent years that pay loving homage to it.  Between Berberian Sound Studio, The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears, and The Editor it seems that us Giallo fanatics are coming out of hiding.  Unfortunately, like many Giallo's from the 70s and 80s, they're not all good and 2013's Discopath is a prime example of one of the unfortunate lesser films of the genre.

Set in New York and Montreal, the film follows a twisted killer named Duane Lewis, played by newcomer Jeremie Earp-Lavergne, who suffers from psychotic breaks at the sound of music.  Set in the 70s while Disco is the rage, Duane is brought by a girl to a discotheque where he loses his mind, never to regain his sanity.  While Earp-Lavergne is quite good at making the stereotypical psycho face, his performance in this piece was blandly straightforward as "the bad guy."  Don't get me started on the "cops" of the story.  It's like writer/director Renaud Gauthier just couldn't be bothered to do any actual research, writing the characters completely off of other Giallo films.  This would work if it were intentionally funny, but the actors didn't seem to be in on the joke, if there was one intended in the first place.

Most Giallo's don't let you know who the villain is until the end, in an Agatha Christie whodunit way, but there have been a few notable exceptions like Hatchet for the Honeymoon and The Stendhal Syndrome.  With that the experience then becomes about how is the killer going to get caught?  The audience already knows who he is, but the characters do not necessarily which adds to the tension.  At least, it's supposed to if done properly, but Discopath unfortunately fails at this.  The key problem of the film is that the characters are all flat and there is no real focus to them.  This is an issue in most lesser Giallo's, the focus becomes all about the camera style, lighting, music, and the kill sequences and the story and acting takes a tremendous back seat.

The film is indeed shot quite well and the lighting is quite superb, especially in the discotheque club sequences.  The music is a plethora of disco and synth, including an often used disco rendition of Flight of the Bumblebee.  The gore is indeed inventive, I've never thought of someone sticking a body full of broken LPs and they certainly don't scrimp on the blood.  The problem, of course, is that just focusing on these details does not the save the movie from bad acting and bad writing.  Were it not for the incredible embellishment to all the other details I'd probably have just turned it off and called it a loss, but I stuck through it regardless.  This is another one that belongs in the MST3K category.  Watch it with friends, an ample amount of alcohol, and take the piss out of it.

2 out of 5 skulls.