“How is it intellectuals are drawn to such shallow films?” Keith (Oner Tukul) asks somewhat rhetorically in “City Wide Fever,” counting himself among them as he discusses a paper his student Sam (Diletta Gugliemi) has turned in about giallo cinema titled with the same bravado as one of the Italian horror films would be (“The Inexplicable Pill of Eurosleaze Cinema”). There actually is something of substance in Josh Heaps’ debut feature, but the writer/director answers Keith’s question immediately as it imagines what if Dario Argento had found a phantasmagoria in the naturally occurring lighting of midtown Manhattan and a poor film student can’t help but submit to its lurid pull, a feeling that extends beyond the screen as reason or good taste are tossed out the window.
With the silliest use of a hard drive since Warner Bros tried to set up multiple franchises in “Batman Vs. Superman” as Wonder Woman sorted through file folders of B-tier superheroes on a laptop, “City Wide Fever” doesn’t even attempt to explain itself much as Sam is inspired to see her professor after happening on a USB drive that holds a plethora of information on Saturnino Baresi, a contemporary of Argento, Fulci and Bava whose notoriety never made it across the Atlantic as theirs did or even appreciated at home, but as she sorts through the photos of posters and script PDFs, she believes she’s uncovered a hidden gem. Her roommate Chloe (Angelica Kim) wakes her up from a cold sweat after making the discovery, far less impressed with the potential revival of some likely skeevy director than her friend yet wants to be supportive, and Sam gets the bug to direct herself for the first time, trying to track down a renowned cinematographer hiding out in Times Square for a documentary on Baresi, or as she describes it to Chloe, “a demented ethnography” as she tries to convince her to break plans to join her.
When Sam is met at the counter of an adult bookstore on the first leg of her search by a pair of clerks played by Douglas Buck and Larry Fessenden, it is clear “City Wide Fever” has a very specific audience of cinephiles in mind to appreciate the joke of two street legends toiling away at the lowest rungs of the industry, yet as Sam roams a seedy underbelly of a city that some believe lost its charm after the lawless ‘70s and the low-grade DV camera used to capture it is likely to bring some pangs of nostalgia as well, there’s a sophistication that elevates it beyond what could easily descend into a string of in-jokes, particularly when Ethan Johnson’s cinematography may not be conventionally easy on the eyes, but the compositions keep things compelling. It also has an engaging lead in Gugliemi, who can hold the screen as Edwige Fenech or Daria Nicolodi once did with a fierce gaze and a certain level of possession and although the indignities that await Sam would surely throw others off the path immediately, the actor convinces that she won’t be satisfied with anything less than what she started out aiming for, even if it means putting up with terribly unwelcome conversations with Uber drivers or a masked killer that seems to be stalking her once she takes an interest in Baresi and Heaps mischievously leaves it up to audiences to decide which is the more terrifying possibility.
“Reality is just what we tell each other it is,” Sam ends up saying to someone towards the end of the film as Sam’s obsession reaches the point of no return, a line made all the more potent by how immersive a fantasia Heaps is able to conjure around her as only the rules of a giallo film still apply to a descent into madness and even when the film has some self-reflexive fun by offering an explanation of those rules involving a “dismissal of logic and continuity” that it adheres to itself, the charm become as evident as the sleaze in “City Wide Fever” is, perhaps being a guilty pleasure but a pleasure nonetheless.
“City Wide Fever” screens at Alamo Drafthouses across the country as their Weird Wednesday show on April 15th.