The Girl in Room 2A (1974)

Wow! Such a good movie.

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Too much of everything

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This one drags until thankfully the stupidity of it all overwhelms the drudgery. A young girl, just paroled from prison, is sent to a boarding house by parole officer Rosalba Neri. Now we all know that something is wrong with this house, as we've just witnessed a girl being ceremoniously killed by a sadistic cult led by someone who is a big fan of the 1965 Italian film Bloody Pit of Horror. Our girl Margaret isn't too slow on the uptake either, spotting quickly a huge bloodstain on the floor of her room that keeps reappearing, sussing rapidly that the landlady is a bit of a loon, and reckoning that the landlady's son Frank is a nutter. An encounter with a man investigating the apparent suicide of his sister, a previous tenant of Room 2A, further confirms her suspicions. This leads to a long investigation/romance that goes on and on.However, it's also about this time that the film's daftness begins to rise, what with the terrible acting of the nurse in a loony bin, choppy editing, and a flashback sequence where women are whipped in a Jess Franco fashion. The director also thinks it's a great idea to include upbeat jazz music at the most inappropriate of moments, like when the hero is thrown into the back of a car with a snake in a suitcase (a really crap way to kill someone, seeing how they just murdered everyone else without leaving anything to chance). The gore increases around this point too, as does the introduction of two muscle men who take on the cult. You also get an explanation as to how that bloodstain keeps appearing on the floor of room 2A, and I use 'how' on purpose because you'll be asking 'why' even after you find out what's happening. There's also the mystery of who is in the red mask if you still care about that by the end of the film.Not much Rosalba in this one either. This is a hugely stupid film but sometimes we need a bit of that in our lives too.

Here maybe is proof positive that nobody understood the sex slasher thriller quite like the Italians. American William Rose wrote & directed this atypical little Giallo production right there in Italy with actual Italians, and while entertaining enough for fans of low budget European made horror it never quite comes alive in spite of some nifty locations and a great cast. Even the usually reliable Berto Pisano's musical is kind of just there, and if nothing else you can almost always count on some decent music when watching Italian genre cinema. Strange.Daniela Giordano plays the young waif recently released from a women's jail for a crime she didn't commit who finds herself wrapped up in a web of intrigue involving a cult of devil worshipers (?) who target girls just like her, all of which ended up staying in room 2a of a boarding house from hell. And all of which either ended up insane or dead after being subjected to some really cruel forms of ceremonial torture that gives the film its reputation amongst connoisseurs of Euro Trash.Giordano is a feast for the eyes just sitting there at a bus stop but the show is stolen by beefy Samson Peplum actor Brad Harris as a big palooka Yankee living in southern Italy for reasons that are never explained. Harris offers the film's hero a beer at one point and you just have to laugh. He and his 6' 3" 275lb buddy Willie from Brooklyn ride around in Harris' little Volkswagen Beetle looking for action, and the film's standout moment for me was seeing these three huge guys spill out of such a tiny car when running to the rescue with the hero in the big climax.Which is surprisingly anti-climactic and involves a literal cliffhanger that has the most inappropriate dramatic music tacked onto it until BLACK EMANUELLE GOES EAST. It's more fun watching Harris & Willie batter down the iron door to the castle, and if anything director Rose missed an opportunity to better contrast this doofus Stan Wojohowitz-like American presence with the Italian culture they seem so out of place in. They are so huge every scene with Harris feels claustrophobic as he squeezes through doors or tries not to demolish the furniture by just leaning on it during conversation scenes.There's some good bits to the film too, like Spaghetti Western actor Frank Latimore as a tortured cult associate driven mad by realizing he literally sold his soul, a welcome nude scene by Ms. Giordano, various torture sequences and a couple of potent gore effects. But when compared to the usual flair of Italian Giallo fare its all pretty artless & matter of fact. Not that there's anything wrong with that mind you, it's just a cheap little Italian B movie, and it's always life affirming seeing Brad Harris take two guys & crack their heads together like a pair of coconuts. Now that's the stuff!5/10

A young girl named Edie is mysteriously kidnapped and taken to a country house where she is tied up,stripped and hung from the ceiling by her wrists.She is then tortured and finally killed by a long spear that penetrates her soft flesh Meanwhile the beautiful Margaret just released from a women's prison takes a room at Mrs. Grant's remote country mansion.Soon the strange things begin to happen...This sleazy and rather perverse giallo from Ramiro Oliveros is quite similar to Massimo Pupillo's "The Bloody Pit of Horror".The action is slow and the mystery elements aren't well-handled,but there is enough nudity and misogynistic violence to keep fans of Euroexploitation happy.Give this one a chance.7 out of 10.

well now this was not bad but not good... it started off with this girl living in this mysterious house and some really bad death scenes and a killer with a red mask. i remember being about 7 or 8 and seeing a few of the scenes really late on TV one night.. but it was all kind of hard to recall. how ever the thing that saves this little film is the over all creepy way it unfolds its self . it kind of feels like a they were rushed to finish it. anyways ...its kind of hard to get a hold of a copy of it so if you see it maybe it will be worth $$$ to the right horror film buff worth a rent but maybe not worth buying .. only for die hard horror film fans of the 70's