Stefania Stella, a bizarre choice for a female lead, is horrible; she looks unattractive and mannish, has an unattractive speaking voice, and can't act or perform. The male leads are Fabio clones who can't act either. Terrible acting all around! Donald Pleasance's role is so small as to be an unnecessary cameo (I understand he died during production?). He is badly dubbed; his real voice, as good as ever, can be heard in some of the rawer footage included in the "deleted scenes" on the DVD. Terrible directing, scripting, dialogue. Even the cover art for the movie is poor; it looks like a puppet, and guess what - when that scene comes around we discover that it is indeed a dummy, no surprise. Lighting is boring: all cool blues and warm oranges, like in an unimaginative music video. A waste of time; not even a single scene to recommend it.

Fatal Frames should have become the next big giallo. But what a trouble this flick had. Shooting started in 1993 but being ripped-off by investors the first trouble came. From their on it really became a flick full of disasters. Donald Pleasence, Rossano Brazzi and Ciccio Ingrassia made their final appearances in this flick. So a lot of rewriting.

Putting in some famous names of the genre like Pleasance, Angus Schrimm and Linnea Quigley didn't made it even worth viewing (small appearances). The lead, the so-called sex symbol being used to make video clips is another failure, Stefanie Stella, aged only had one feature, her exaggerated boobs. Complete miscasting on that era. Even as she go into a sex scene she is still wearing her knickers while having sex, really?

The beginning of the flick is okay but once the killings are done, even that isn't that good on part of shooting, the effects were laughable (machete not going into bodies while hitting them hard) and low on blood, this flick turns into a blah blah flick, sometimes showing the shoot of the clip with Stella.

It do has the giallo atmosphere, the use of blue and red lighting. The black glove is in tact and the whodunit is overall in this flick but nothing is worth seeing. Like the title said, fatal frames indeed for the production team never to arise again in the scene.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0,5/5 Effects 1/5 Story 1,5/5 Comedy 0/5

People are acting like this movie is completely devoid of any merit, which is simply not true. Any true horror fan can take one look at the cast and automatically rebuke those claims before even seeing this movie. But I'll admit that it does have some major problems, glaring plot inconsistencies and annoying / awful acting... but claiming it is the worst giallo or worst horror film ever made is ridiculous.

New York music video director Alex Ritt (Rick Gianasi, SGT. KABUKIMAN) goes to Rome to direct a new video for European pop sensation Stefania Stella ("A household name in Italy!") in an effort to broaden her international appeal. Meanwhile, a cloaked psycho is hacking up beautiful young women with a machete and taunting police with black-and-white videos of his/her crimes. The bodies and blood are nowhere to be found and the same pattern of murders occurred years earlier in New York City, making Alex (whose wife had been killed by the same nut) a top suspect. Is he the victim of a psycho-stalker, being set-up by someone or is he the psycho continuing his crimes abroad? Police commissioner Bonelli (David Warbeck, who spends most of his time sitting behind a desk),Interpol agent Dr. Lucidi (Rossano Brazzi),American FBI serial killer expert Professor Robinson (Donald Pleasence) and others sort through the clumsy clues that obviously either implicates Alex or Stefania in the crimes. Pleasence, sadly aged, frail and dubbed, hobbles around on a cane, has to respond to threats like "I'll rip off your head and shove it up your @ss!" and is involved in a HALLOWEEN in-joke. Subplots introduce us to other characters/suspects, including a blind psychic (Alida Valli),Alex's former father-in-law and Broadway director (Geoffrey Copleston),a parapsychologist (Linnea Quigley),a raving graveyard dweller who may be a ghost (Angus Scrimm) and others. Most of the younger guys have long greasy ponytails so they'll be suspects when we see shadows of a long-haired killer.

The acting ranges from fair to awful, the dialog is even worse and the story itself goes all over the place, though admittedly the resolution actually did take me by surprise. This film, basically an attempt to revive giallo, is also blessed with high production values (and an obviously high budget),excellent cinematography (from Giuseppe Berardini) and breathtakingly beautiful location work around famous Roman sites (the Trevi Fountain, the Colloseum…) that make it well worth sitting through for travelogue value alone. In addition to the sites, there are tons of knowing visual and technical references to the Italian horror classics of Mario Bava, Dario Argento, Riccardo Freda and others.

Stefania Stella's phonetic English line reading is atrocious (and has a weird Eartha Kitt-like infliction to it),but she is blessed with lots of off-the-wall campy-tacky charm (similar to that of Cher in the '80s) and her singing voice and songs are hilariously corny. She also has a sex scene with Alex in front of video monitors playing her own video (!) to show off her silicone breasts. It's somewhat of a vanity project for the "actress" / singer (who gets lots of solitary close-ups and also produced it),but is an entertaining mixture nonetheless.

FATAL FRAMES took years to complete, was a winner of the "Lucio Fulci Award" at the 1996 FantaFest in Rome, features make-up effects by Steve Johnson and has a good supporting line-up of familiar genre faces to keep horror nuts happy. The special edition DVD has lots of music videos from director Festa (who had made over 100 in his native country),three Stefania Stella videos, trailers, deleted scenes, bios and a good behind-the-scenes "making of" short. It was dedicated to Pleasence and Brazzi and was the last film for both. Warbeck also passed away soon after. Much of the cast also popped up in a videotaped pseudo companion piece called SICK-O-PATHICS.

Grade: 5 out of 10