Il tunnel sotto il mondo (1969) User Reviews

The story evolves

[richardomer-73256 · 7/10 · 11 November 2017]

I'm sure most people will find this movie either confusing or annoying, but for me, it has charm. First off, the story is based on a Frederic Pohl short story concerning a man who awakes from a dream and goes through his day. It's the same day, over and over. Another man has figured things out and together they explore a passageway which leads them to discover the stunning truth. They are little robots built to test marketing ideas on. Actually, they were once human but their city was destroyed by an industrial accident and their consciousnesses have been transferred into the little robots. Their memories get erased every night and a new bunch of advertisements are tested.

Well, that will explain maybe the first ten minutes of this movie. Then the auteur's imagination drifts off to other weirdness including a master computer who wants to find God and a space alien who tells him his world has been destroyed and then there's a weird, talkative religious savior who gets shot and finally it seems the whole thing starts over again.

But I like various points along the way such as the monkey men who have an animated discussion and the woman who is a space alien or maybe a goddess.

Arthouse is not Cozzi's strong point.

[Bezenby · 3/10 · 8 May 2018]

Who'd have thought that Luigi Cozzi's first film would be a sci-fi arthouse adaptation of a book I'll never read? Play down the sci-fi elements and up the arty to farty levels and you can pretty much guess how this following plot is represented:

A man dreams he's shot in a marketplace and wakes up in bed on 32nd July. He is interviewed as he walks to work and interviews people as part of his job. Every night he can't get it up for his wife and then he dreams he's shot in a marketplace, leading him to wake up on 32nd July, get interviewed on the way to work, then interview people blah blah blah.

Where's the eggs that make people explode? Where's Lou Ferringo throwing a bear into space? Where's David Hasselhof wearing mascara and fighting stop-motion robots? Where's that bit from Demons Six where the entire cast dies halfway through the film? What about Hercules turning into Godzilla and fighting King Kong in space? Come on Luigi, think outside of the box.

Luigi Cozzi would go on to make some of my favourite Italian genre films but here thing were almost reminding me of Jess Franco's Succubus. That's not a good thing. Cozzi's overactive imagination is still here, but the material completely lost me here. Next!