When the lead actor in a horror film that he is working on is murdered, a film editor has to contend with an egotistical replacement actor, a wife who takes too much interest in his work and a detective who thinks that he is guilty in this weird mix of horror, comedy and mystery elements. Co-director Adam Brooks is great as the jaded, ageing editor in question who claims that he has trouble distinguishing between movies and reality, and its best, the film blurs this line. There are several points where something grisly occurs and it takes one a while to work out whether it is 'actually' happening or just a part of the film being edited. There is also a neat homage to 'Videodrome' late in the piece - Cronenberg's iconic film about a network programmer unable to separate hallucinations from reality. For the most part though, 'The Editor' is just odd. The story does not make much sense with some uncanny supernatural elements and some unexplained bizarreness in which Brooks actually seems to enter the reels of the very film he is editing at one point. The final twist at the end is baffling too. Brooks is, however, the only actor who plays his part in a down-to-earth manner and with everyone else overacting, turning it up to 11, it seems evident that the film was intended to be a comedy first and foremost. If one does not focus on deciphering the plot too much, the film does in fact have several funny bits and pieces. The dialogue of the film within the film is hilariously bad, and then there is a replacement editor who insists that 'The Battleship Potemkin' was edited by Albert Einstein!

Dear lord this movie had me howling. It's one of the finest examples of deadpan spoofery since 1980's "Airplane!" or if you're really up on your cinematic satires, it's a lot like 1978's "Movie Movie" with George C. Scott.

What makes this film thoroughly enjoyable is that it's not just pure silly absurdism; there's actually some brilliant substance there. The visual gags are very subtle, the script is so witty that you might miss half of them, and of course the big selling point is that this 2014 flick is a meticulous, hilarious time machine back to 1970s cheese. It's authentic right down to the mens' mutton chop sideburns, leg warmers for the ladies, the alpha male's penchant for randomly slapping women, and of course gratuitous nudity with a capital g-string (the nudity starts out mostly in context, but by the end of the flick, I'm not exaggerating, there are people randomly taking off their clothes and walking around naked in the background). If you grew up watching all those bad 70s crime dramas & horrible horror flicks, then you'll be guaranteed a good in-joke and belly laugh every 5 minutes for this entire 95 min ride.

The plot, as you might have guessed, is about a fingerless, downtrodden film editor "Rey" who becomes the focus of a cavalcade of campy murders on the set of a film he's editing. Enter the unhinged detective "Porfiry" who is something like Starsky, Hutch, Dirty Harry and Peewee Herman rolled into one. Choice lines include

"Where were you the night of the murder?"

"I went home. And shaved my p***"

(Porfiry lifts up woman's skirt, hold shot for 5 seconds)

"Your story checks out."

If this sort of irreverent, tongue-in-cheek humor tickles your funny bone, then I guarantee you'll be a dancing skeleton by the time the film ends. I don't even know what that means. But suffice it to say that "The Editor" is a lot of fun.

Now a word about the "brilliant substance" I mentioned earlier. The film actually explores some very thought-provoking, poetic thoughts. As the film progresses, Rey the editor begins to lose the distinction between reality and the trashy horror flick he's editing. Lots of great surreal visuals accentuate this mindbending transformation, and for those of us trying to keep score, "The Editor" becomes a movie within a movie within a delirium. There are a few subtle cues as to which plane of existence we're in (such as fake movie blood being bright red while real world blood is a darker more realistic hue),but the crisscrossing flashbacks, delusions, hallucinations and bizarre murders can be very disorienting, in an awesome way. None of it is random. I'm convinced that if you watch this film a 2nd or 3rd time, as I'm about to do, you'll see that beneath the wackiness is a really solid story about that place where reality and delusion intersect. "It's like Plato's Cave" says our hero. "I haven't seen that movie," responds the sidekick. Great stuff!

Formerly prestigious film editor Rey Ciso (a fine performance by Adam Brooks) makes do cutting together trashy exploitation flicks after losing four fingers on his right hand. When folks involved in the latest picture Rey's working on start meeting gruesome untimely ends, naturally Rey gets pegged as the prime suspect behind the murders.

Writer/director Brooks and Michael Kennedy astutely capture the more gloriously lurid and outrageous aspects of 70's Italian giallo horror fare while also gleefully poking madcap fun at same: We've got a ridiculously convoluted plot full of absurd twists and turns, deliciously excessive blood-spurting violence, pulsating music, colorful characters, scorching hot kinky sex, stylish widescreen cinematography, overripe dialogue, a pleasing plenitude of tasty bare female skin, and even a totally bonkers surprise ending.

Moreover, it's acted with zest by an enthusiastic cast: Paz de la Huerta as faded starlet Josephine Jardin, Matthew Kennedy as pesky macho inspector Peter Porfiry, Conor Sweeney as vapid blonde hunk Cal Konitz, Udo Kier as flaky shrink Dr. Casini, Laurence Harvey as the helpful Father Clarke, Kevin Anderson as crude producer Francesco Mancini, Samantha Hill as eager apprentice Bella, Tristan Risk as the lusty Veronica, and Brett Donahue as stuck-up jerk Claudio Berti. A delightfully over-the-top treat.