When the promotional kit for Pierfrancesco Campanella's CATTIVE INCLINAZIONI surfaced stateside, the colorfully sleazy campaign promised a triumphant return to the lurid, racy "giallo" thriller tradition - that is, the flashy, violent and over-the-top genre pioneered by Mario Bava's BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, which jump-started the career of many talented (and just as many not-so) filmmakers, including horror legend Dario Argento. Needless to say, I so wanted them to be right, since Dario's recent return to the genre has proven less than sterling (although it's rumored his RAI television production DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK? shows a flash of his former glory), and Italy's flagging film industry has yet to produce a worthy successor to the giallo throne.

Turns out the hype was, let's say, a bit exaggerated. I'll rephrase that: BAD INCLINATION is not just a failed attempt to resuscitate the genre; it pretty much tosses the last lump of maggot-filled earth on the grave of an officially dead art form. That's still not saying enough: I want to point out that watching this film hurts more than sliding ass-first down a thirty-foot cheese grater and landing in a kiddie pool full of lemon juice. Still, in the interest of compassion toward you well-intentioned Italo-horror fans, I'll draw on my agonizing experience in order to spare you 95 minutes of pants-soiling, tongue-swallowing, brain-hemorrhaging torment. You're welcome.

Our story (we'll call it that for the sake of convenience) is set in the heart of Rome, which means as long as the camera is in focus and pointing at something, it's pretty much gonna look good. And if nothing else, the camera operators here do a decent job of presenting a colorful travelogue featuring the buildings and piazzas of the city, packaged in the trappings of a slick '80s music video. Our primary location is quite mysteriously beautiful as well: a rustic old villa that serves as apartments for a particularly loopy group of misfits. It also becomes the site of a series of bizarre murders, in which the weapon of choice is a razor-sharp metal setsquare (familiar to any architectural student who graduated before they invented the iBook and who may have made numerous mid-term suicide attempts with same), and the list of suspects - strangely enough - is exactly the same length as the list of tenants in that selfsame locale. Go figure that one.

There are more red herrings in this building than the Napoli Fish Market: the most visible of which include Florinda Balkan (known to giallo fans from Fulci's LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN and DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING) as a brooding artist in neon stretch pants painting a macabre portrait of a woman being killed with - wait for it - a metal setsquare; her drunk housekeeper, who saves all her Frangelico empties and is blackmailing her for some reason I couldn't figure out; a stringy teenage runaway whom Balkan pays to murder the housekeeper in her sleep; a young biker with a shady past who videotapes his icky bedroom exploits; and a scary-looking, washed-up '80s pop diva (Eva Robins, the transsexual "red shoes" vixen from Argento's TENEBRE, sporting a look best described as "Charo goes to Italy"), who pouts a lot and paws lewdly at her lover in the requisite "Look! Lesbians!" scenes, which are about as sexy as Dick Cheney in pink lederhosen.

In hot pursuit of the killer - well, room-temperature pursuit, anyway - is earnest cop Rita (Mirca Viola), who is questioned, belittled and patronized at every turn by a hilariously snotty magistrate with Pepe LePew hair, whose smarmy chauvinism makes him a trite joke (I half expected him to demand coffee and a blowjob), and whose constant attempts to torpedo the investigation make him yet another suspect. Oh yeah, and that's our pal Franco Nero (of DJANGO fame) in the Vampire Hunter D hat, scary wig and urine-stained overcoat, ranting about how the media loves a serial killer, and how much cooler he was in ENTER THE NINJA. He may be a suspect too, but mostly he's just embarrassing.

Anyway, there's the usual smattering of illogical plot twists, frequent death scenes featuring lots of flamboyant blood spray, more pretty travelogue footage, and endless stretches of dialogue at the police station (during which an annoying siren blares constantly to remind us WE'RE AT THE POLICE STATION!), interspersed with snippets from a badly-staged TV talk show in which the usual tired case is made about how the media exploits real-life murder as sensationalist entertainment for the bloodthirsty masses. (Yeah, we know, we know. Get over it.) It all climaxes in the requisite bloody shootout in the woods, and concludes with a ridiculous what-the-fuck coda that completely discards any form of plot resolution that came before it. Mama Mia.

Yeah, so there's the film. Yay. Now let's turn to Media Blasters' DVD itself - where some of my pain goes away, since this presentation is of far higher quality than the source material. To wit: The widescreen-enhanced 1.85 image is nearly flawless, with great attention given to the film's lurid color palette. Then there's the sound... though clear, solid and well-balanced, the English-dubbed dialogue track, the only one available on this disc, is responsible for a great deal of my suffering. Not that it's poorly reproduced - it actually sounds a lot less canned than most ADR. I'm talking about the voice "actors" involved (I can't emphasize those quotation marks enough), who collectively perpetrate some of the worst auditory crimes in the history of international cinema. Sure, it must have been pretty rancid to begin with, but I'm guessing it would have at least sounded more eloquent in Italian. Instead, we get lines that make Shaw Brothers kung-fu quickies sound like the collected works of Merchant Ivory.

There's extras too, in case you want to pry deeper into the inner workings of our clearly enthusiastic but painfully misguided participants. Through the attached "making-of" feature, and in the isolated interview segments with the director and two of the leads (not Balkan or Nero, though - too bad), I almost gained a modicum of respect for the cast and crew's genuine love of filmmaking, even as I lamented their inability to create a cohesive thriller that makes sense to anyone but an ether addict. These segments are in Italian with subtitles, again indicating how much more tolerable the film itself would have been if it had been presented in the same fashion. And if you don't believe my previous theory that even horrible dialogue sounds cool in Italian, watch the included trailer and listen for yourself.

In summary, if you've always wanted the opportunity to do the Mystery Science Theater thing to a giallo, here's your chance. Pick up a case of Messina, make a mighty batch of linguini with clams and invite your friends over to witness something truly miraculous: the Second Coming of Ed Wood.