Darin
One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
HumanoidOfFlesh
Having murdered her husband and daughter Carol invents a new identity to start a new life.Unfortunately her tendency to express their unhappiness or disapproval by murdering her victims could jeopardize her romance with mathematician and philosopher Ignacio from Spain."Parano" mixes a bit of nasty gore including child murder with philosophical mumbo-jumbo.It features a cameo of Joe Dallesandro.The gore includes pretty splashy decapitation of an aspiring writer and intellectual and the double murder at the beginning of the film.There are endless tirades about mathematics and philosophy.To put it simply "Parano" is a pretentious and boring trash with not enough gore and nudity.But beware:"The patient is a woman aged 27,detained seven months ago.No occupation,she is suffering from chronic psychosis with delusions,hallucinations and paranoid symptoms".4 out of 10.
galexandre
To my knowledge, this film has never been released commercially in France, and no wonder why ! Shot in 16 mm, hardly audible, the story unfurls around a terrible bad actress pretending that she is a rebel to society by dismembering her family and people around her. Impossible to believe the poor thesp one minute, and the short gory scenes (a severed head on the freeway, a dismembered body in a cupboard, a dog with his belly ripped plus some gunshots) are barely OK. The director probably wanted to make a genre movie (horror for instance) while giving to it some social twist (the woman claims that for her, all social corporations like family, prison, mental asylum - where she ends up - are alike and lethal for individuality). For the fans, Joe Dallesandro has a short scene as the psychiatrist who takes care of Maria, lasting five minutes. Don't bother looking for the tape, even if I know it's been released, long ago in France, for rent. As for myself, I saw it at the French Cinematheque, the only place in the world where they would dare showing such a masterpiece !
