The matinée audience for a spaghetti western are locked in the theater by the police after one of the viewers is shot dead during an on screen showdown. A perplexed inspector interviews the quirky, blasè patrons (including a pair of adulterers, a couple of drug dealers, a bathroom pervert, and a nerdy, audience-watching sociologist) one at a time and begins to realize most of them are being evasive for one reason or another. Getting nowhere fast with this motley crew, he decides to re-enact the crime as TV reporters and a gawking crowd begin to gather outside the cinema...
This is where it gets reely strange: with the cops stationed everywhere, an usher volunteers to sit in the dead man's seat as the movie is shown again -and he's also offed during the shootout in the western. The sociologist offers a very bizarre theory that the inspector is willing to listen to but the Commissioner doesn't buy it and insists the crime be re-enacted one last time with himself playing the victim ...uh oh.
Referencing a classic Ray Bradbury short story about children who imagine lions roaming the African veldt in their bedroom then lure their parents in to be devoured, this unique "science-fiction giallo" toys with the concept that TV and movie images define reality as man becomes a slave to his inventions. Unusual and thought-provoking, one viewing isn't enough to absorb it all (especially the wry social commentary) and I'm surprised this telefilm is so obscure -it deserves more. A reel find for me -for real.
This is where it gets reely strange: with the cops stationed everywhere, an usher volunteers to sit in the dead man's seat as the movie is shown again -and he's also offed during the shootout in the western. The sociologist offers a very bizarre theory that the inspector is willing to listen to but the Commissioner doesn't buy it and insists the crime be re-enacted one last time with himself playing the victim ...uh oh.
Referencing a classic Ray Bradbury short story about children who imagine lions roaming the African veldt in their bedroom then lure their parents in to be devoured, this unique "science-fiction giallo" toys with the concept that TV and movie images define reality as man becomes a slave to his inventions. Unusual and thought-provoking, one viewing isn't enough to absorb it all (especially the wry social commentary) and I'm surprised this telefilm is so obscure -it deserves more. A reel find for me -for real.