Horror Movie Reviews
More Details...Price: $14.98 |
Title: The 10th Victim (2001) |
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Review of The 10th Victim
- Long before reality shows took over the TV airwaves and violent parodies like Series 7 and Battle Royale hit international screens, Elio Petri made this campy social satire of a future in which the bored, the ambitious, and the just plain violent can sign up for a deadly game of cat and mouse. "The Big Hunt is necessary as a social safety valve," explains one TV personality. "Why control births when we can control deaths?" Marcello Mastroianni, who plays the womanizing Italian media darling with a gift for ingenious assassinations, becomes the target of sexy champion Ursula Andress, a New York Amazon with a wardrobe as deadly as it is chic. She'll pocket $1 million if she can successfully kill Mastroianni, her 10th and last victim, but on the side she concocts a deal to do the deed in concert with a live song-and-dance extravaganza mounted by a tea company.
Directed with tongue firmly in cheek, Petri lampoons the whole media obsession with high-risk contests and games of chance with cool style, absurdly chic fashions, a bouncy score of organ riffs and funky lounge sounds, and a comically blasé performance by Mastroianni. It's like Fellini gone ballistic with a hint of Divorce, Italian Style: a battle of the sexes in a world where spontaneous shootouts are forever erupting in the fringes of the frame. --Sean Axmaker
Amazon.com
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Comments for The 10th Victim
- Posted on 2007-10-20
Clever But Thin
According to film lore, actor Marcello Mastroianni was so impressed with a short-story by science-fiction author Robert Sheckley that he sent it to director Elio Petri. The result was a groundbreaking Italian film that alternately shocked and amused audiences of 1965--and which, like the 1976 NETWORK, proved prophetic re the rise of "reality television."
Set in a future imagined in terms of minimalist 1960s fashion and design movements, THE 10TH VICTIM (LA DECIMA VITTIMA) presents us with a world that has subliminated the human race's hunger for violence into a game known as "The Big Hunt." Register as a member and you become preditor and prey, with each player seeking to survive while killing ten others in order to win fame, fortune, and national acclaim.
American Caroline Meredith (Ursla Andress) is particularly celebrated and--after dispatching her ninth victim via her boobytrapped bra--is eager to win the grand prize by taking out her tenth: Italian Marcello Polletti (Marcello Mastroianni.) But an advertiser promises her even bigger bucks if she can turn it into a television ad for his product, creating a situation in which Caroline cannot simply kill Marcello at will: she must do it at a particular place and time where the cameras will be rolling.
In order to accomplish this, Caroline decides to seduce Marcello with both her body and the lure of cash--which he badly needs--for a television interview. Marcello is no fool, and even as Caroline plans to blow his head off for benefit of television he's signing his own advertising deal to accomplish her death by crocodile. But there's a further complication: even as they attempt to manouver each other into death, they also unwillingly fall in love.
THE 10TH VICTIM was extremely celebrated in 1965; today, however, it reads as slightly thin. We've become used to the idea of people who are willing to do just about anything on television, and the idea of murder by game show isn't nearly so farfetched as it used to be. The film scores, however, in its specific ideas, which range from exploding boots to a government that occasionally switches out your apartment's furniture whether you like it or not. The DVD transfer is quite nice, but bonuses are limited to cast notes and the theatrical trailer. Recommended, but mainly for fans of 1960s futurism who haven't lost their sense of humor!
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
Score: 4
- Posted on 2007-01-06
Curious movie
This movie in true scifi form was quite ahead of its time as far as its theme goes, a tv show in which contestants become assassins of each other and earn a living that way. Last few years, a couple of American movies were made around the same topic. However, they don't have Ursula Andress and Marcello Mastroianni in it and that wonderful 60's wacky visual interpretation of what the future would look like.
Will it ever go this far on tv to satisfy the ever increasing and by the media itself ever stimulated need for thrills and kicks, without which people don't seem to be able to sense they're alive anymore or so we're given to believe? The cynical me and optimistic me have not finished that debate as yet to give an answer.
The acting in this movie is not exactly mindblowing and the movie's main subject is not exactly deeply explored, but it has a lot of curiosity value in that it is rather unique in its depiction of what may be in store for us and is quite entertaining at that.
Score: 3
- Posted on 2006-04-13
a real 60's treat
Start with Marcello Mastroianni, Ursula Andress, and Elsa Martinelli, throw in a fun story and premise, incredibly stylish sets, and you have 60's classic camp. Add in Mastroianni's wonderful, dry wit and self-effacing manner, Andress's beauty and wardrobe, and the deal is done.
The story starts out in the ruins of Penn Station in NYC (demolished in order to put up the ghastly Madison Square Garden which now exists on the spot), which alone makes this DVD worth its reasonable price. It takes place in the future, in a world where violence and war have been eliminated, and human bloodthirst has been redirected towards The Hunt. Victims and hunters are assigned in Geneve and, should a member survive ten hunts, he will be set for life. This is the 10th hunt for both Marcello and Ursula, and the fun ensues as they flirt, deceive, trick, make love, and try to outdo each other in making hilarious commercials.
Pure fun, wonderful acting, beauty and style. Enjoy!
Score: 5
- Posted on 2005-09-29
How could the reality shows end one day
Well, though with movie is about 30 years old, it can tell much more about our present times then other new movies. We are in the future in this movie, and competitors are sort on killers and victims. But one victim (recent killer) falls in love with woman killer and it's a problem for organizators. If you see line present reality shows, this movie could tell you, how they all would end - in "reality show", there is nothing tabu and there human life has sense only as jackpot.
Score: 5 - Posted on 2005-08-31
A 60's Pleasure
If you are a fan of:
Marcello at his Mastroianniest
Ursula in full sexual animal mode
60's design and fashion
Dry to the exreme humor
Stylistic Italian direction
Then buy this disc! Oh yea, the story ain't half bad either.
Score: 4