Pizza (1996 film)

Pizza is a 1996 horror film written and directed by in his directorial debut, and starring Fleischer and. In the film, David Richards (Fleischer) is an American pizza delivery boy who lands in a mysterious predicament in Rome and how it causes a dramatic change in his life.

Produced by and Rising Spirit Pictures as an American-Italian co-production, it premiered in the  on August 29, 1996, and was released in Italy by  on September 9 and in the United States by  on September 16. It then received widespread acclaim from critics, and became a major critical and commercial success.

Plot
In, David Richards is an American pizza delivery boy who lives with his girlfriend, Eleanor, an aspiring novelist researching material for a horror story. Richards does not believe in the supernatural but is afraid of anything paranormal. Eleanor keeps telling him that he will soon realise the presence of supernatural beings. At first, Richards is confused and scared, and his fears are confirmed when he discovers that a spirit possesses his boss, the pizzeria owner Adalfredo Mazzariello's daughter.

Meanwhile, Eleanor becomes pregnant, and after a brief altercation, Richards and Eleanor get covertly married. One particular day, Richards goes out to deliver a pizza to a customer and returns to the restaurant in shock while covered in blood; he keeps muttering Eleanor's name, seemingly worried about her. When his boss questions him, Richards explains that he had been to deliver a pizza to a customer named Lucia in a bungalow and recounts the events at the place.

Lucia requests Richards to wait downstairs while she goes upstairs to get money for the pizza. Almost immediately, the power goes out, alarming Richards. While waiting downstairs, Richards hears a loud unidentifiable noise from the bedroom upstairs. Going up to investigate, he finds Lucia murdered suspiciously and notices a slice of pizza he had delivered to be missing, suggesting that there may be somebody else in the house. Horrified, Richards dashes to the door only to realize it is locked from the outside.

Furthermore, when the murdered woman's husband Mario arrives, he at first believes he stumbles upon his wife having an affair. Through his cellphone, Richards communicates with Mario and explains his situation thoroughly, instigating Mario to aid him in getting out of the house. Moreover, Mario suddenly disappears from the front entrance and is found by Richards inside the house, mysteriously murdered in the same room as his wife, with two slices of pizza now missing. Also, Richards encounters the couple's child "Federica", identical to the spirit's name allegedly possessing Mazzariello's daughter.

Richards tries everything to get out of the house, including breaking down the sealed doors leading outside and using the house phone, which works even though the line is dead. He manages to contact Eleanor using the phone and gets her to contact the local police. When a couple of officers arrive at the bungalow, Richards believes that Eleanor had requested them to help him, but they reveal that four people died in that house- Lucia, Mario, their young daughter, and a girl named Eleanor, implying that she is Richards' girlfriend. The police disclose that Richards is a suspect and attempt to arrest him. Confused, Richards does not believe them and attempts to escape to search for Eleanor.

Richards then witnesses the police getting dragged into the house and killed. At this juncture, Richards, in a horrified state, runs back to the restaurant. While Richards is unconvinced that Eleanor is dead, his friends at the restaurant and Mazzariello start realising they had never seen Anu; they also observe that Michael's home does not have any evidence that he lived with Anu. Also, the haunted bungalow witnessed the untimely deaths of a married couple, their daughter, and two police officers whose ghosts Richards interacted with earlier. Meanwhile, Richards seems to continue his search for Eleanor, has constant health issues, and seems to be disturbed by supernatural entities.

As Richards stops and calls Eleanor during a delivery, the true story of what had happened is disclosed. The then-fictional had planned a raid at Mazzariello's house. Mazzariello, who has diamonds worth around 20 million hidden in his restaurant, hides them in a candy box and asks Richards to deliver them to his house. But Richards has a bike accident and comes in contact with the hidden diamonds. Richards and Eleanor decide that stealing those diamonds would improve their lives and support their baby. So they concoct a clever story in which Richards convincingly "forgets" the pizza bag at the "haunted" bungalow, which Mazzariello would never enter into, given his fear of the supernatural. Meanwhile, Eleanor has left for Sicily with the diamonds and her belongings and obtained fake documentation using which Richards and Eleanor can settle abroad.

After the phone call, Richards goes to deliver a pizza to a house and encounters a series of events similar to the story he had narrated. Inside, he meets a girl identical to the "Federica" described in his tale. Richards is locked inside the home with "Federica" curiously looking at him. The lights then go out.

Cast

 * as David Richards
 * as Eleanor Richards
 * as Adalfredo Mazzariello
 * Battista Russo as Alessandro
 * as Mario
 * as Lucia
 * as an exorcist
 * Liam Black as a police officer
 * as Richards' friend