The biggest mouthful in Italian genre cinema, and Luigi Pistilli chomping down on them with gusto. But enough about the skeezy rape scene between Pistilli and Anita Strindberg which occurs during this film's opening sequence (badum-tsch); what's Your Vice all about, you ask? (Even if you didn't ask that, I'm gonna pretend you did and answer it.)

My Vice follows Irina and Oliviero, who live in a crumbling mansion which acts as a perfect metaphor for the state of their marriage. When Oliviero's part-time mistress is killed, and then the mansion's housemaid is killed, and then a prostitute with whom Oliviero's arranged a rendez-vous is killed, something seems afoot. The mistress and prozzie killings turn out to have been committed by Michael Sheen, playing the role of a bookshop owner, but the housemaid's murder, which was hushed up by Irina and Oliviero, remains unsolved. Add Oliviero's randy niece Floriana into the mix, along with a healthy dose of unhealthy incest, Ivan Rassimov lurking in the background, along with a seemingly omniscient cat, and you have yourself a prime slice of Gastaldi/Martino pie.

​It's not necessarily the tastiest slice, however, but it'll still leave you feeling nicely satisfied. And I'll leave that metaphor there, and move swiftly on. This represents a change of pace from the other Gastaldi/Martino collaborations from the early 70s, apart from maybe All the Colours of the Dark (similarities include Satanism [kinda; it's the name of the cat here], hippie groups and Ivan Rassimov lurking among the scenery). There's no jet-setting, comparatively few characters, and most of the action takes place in and around the aforementioned crumbling castle. 

Martino doesn't necessarily use the locations to their best advantage, with the opportunity for a gothic atmosphere evocative of Mario Bava and Antonio Margheriti's best work being largely missed. There are moments of brilliance, though, chiefly when the scene specifically calls for an atmosphere of claustrophobia, which seems to be enough to focus his attention on the task at hand. I'd qualify all this by saying that I heave a sneaking suspicion that Martino was making do with slightly compromised locations, with the references to the crumbling state of the mansion-as well as Oliviero's need to sell off furniture-possibly being a clue to the production's being stuck with a location which they did not have permission to dress. I'll hopefully know more once I've watched the supplemental features on the Blu ray (EDIT: nope!). I can say with certainty, at least, that Martino's fondness for kinetic handheld work is much in evidence here, with his typically brilliantly-precise framing of these shots present and correct.

One area where the film falls short is in its depiction of the hedonistic goings-on within the castle walls. As usual for an Italian 1970s picture, the black character (the maid) is little more than an object of exoticism, and the sex and nudity seems to have a slight 'at-arm's-length' quality, as if the film can't quite commit to revelling in the indulges it depicts. There's a vague sense of fusty displeasure, or judgement, regarding sex which is also evident in other Martino works (eg Torso, and especially his early 1990s thrillers). He certainly doesn't film a lesbian sex scene with the relish of, say, Silvio Amadio. The middle third, in which Edwige Fenech pretty much goes through the cast like a hot, sexy knife through butter, probably played on paper like something from a Radley Metzger film, but the joie-de-vivre of those films is largely lacking on screen here.

Then again, this is a murder-mystery film, not a sex romp. It's not a complete success as a giallo, but there are some decent moments. The murder of the maid, in particular, is a highlight. Daniela Giordano, playing Oliviero's lover, gets a decent death too, albeit one which calls to mind the far superior early kills in Torso. The make-up effects also evoke those in Torso (not a good thing, though). The mystery at the heart of the film is solid, nothing more. It's widely known that this is a (very) loose adaptation of a famous old horror tale, which turns out to be more of a spoiler than I'd anticipated (if you know the basic outline of the Poe story, and bear it in mind when observing the characters'  behaviour and utterances, you'll know upon whom to focus your investigative eye), so I won't go into that here.

I will say, though, (slight SPOILERS) that the decision to hide the corpse of one of the principal characters seems bizarre, as the villains seem to be voluntarily creating a situation which evokes Georges Franju's earlier 'Spotlight on a Murderer', a film about the tribulations a greedy family endure when trying to secure the inheritance of a wealthy relative who's disappeared. If a cursory internet search has not lied to me, Italian law imposes a waiting period four times as long as that which the Franju protagonists have to endure before the wealth can be inherited, which makes the decision seem even more mental. So why hide the body, why not just frame someone else for the murder? I'll tell you why, it's because the film is an adaptation of a certain story, as referenced above, and a hidden corpse is thus a requisite. (Slight SPOILERS end.)

One other moment of note comes towards the end, with some mad-person-at-a-typewriter activity which Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick would famously utilise later in The Shining. That's not to say that this film was an inspiration on the latter one; they're both homaging/ripping off Les Diaboliques. The staging of the scene in Your Vice is eerily similar to that in the Shining, though. Plus, it just goes to show how influential the Clouzot film was, and still is on mystery cinema. 

​In general, this is a qualified success. The decadence and sexuality are dialled down from earlier films like All the Colours, when the story really demands that they be dialled up. There's a rehashing of the secondary, independently-operating killer from The Case of the Scorpion's Tail, although the ultimate identity of the killer does represent something of a departure for the Gastaldi/Martino team. The music here, by Bruno Nicolai, isn't as attention-grabbing as some of the more famous giallo scores, but in terms of complementing-rather than overwhelming-the on-screen action, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better giallo score anywhere. Again, though, you mightn't want the music to occupy a complementary role; you may well want it to drive the action, to overwhelm it, and you. This sums up the film, really; nead and tidy, not loud and brash. In some ways, things had gotten a bit stale for Gastaldi and Martino by this stage (only by their extremely high standards, mind). Not to worry, though, they'd soon be back with a far better example of how to set a film around a single, isolated location, with a special effects make-up budget of a tenner: Torso.

This is a veeeery borderline giallo, but fuck it, it had Italian financing and stars Rosalba Neri. Plus I  paid almost twenty quid for the Blu ray, so it's getting reviewed. One could argue that it is a murder-mystery film, in that there is a (self-)murder, and something of a mystery as to how the relationships between film's characters progressed/deteriorated to the point at which we first meet them, when one of them is compelled to commit the aforementioned (self-)murder.

Ronald Marvelling's daughter isn't happy with her father's recent behaviour; he's married her friend Alecsa, and will likely change his will to include his new bride. She's right to be suspicious-Alecsa actually fell in love with young cad Pietro before she even married Mr Marvelling, and wasted no time in beginning a cheeky affair. Marvelling, who had no illusions as to what made Alecsa fall for a septuagenarian millionaire (you might even say he wasn't marvelling at her apparent adoration...), is nonetheless distraught when he uncovers the affair, and he takes drastic measures to end his humiliation, and wreak revenge upon his unfaithful wife from beyond the grave...

Or is it from beyond the grave? This is one of any number of gialli which flirts with the idea of the dead coming back to life. In this case, apart from a brief hallucination towards the climax, we get the classic 'character-who-sees-a-corpse-move' trope. And, in common with most depictions of this scenario, we don't actually see the alleged movement. This tends to set up a situation wherein  we question both the sanity and motives of the person (usually a woman) who claims to have seen the reanimation. Are they seeing things due to psychological distress, or are they acting out a pre-ordained role, either wittingly or unwittingly, which calls for them to plant a ghost seed in the minds of their companions? In this case, it's fairly clear that we're not witnessing an example of the latter instance. As with the majority of the films which incorporate potential corpse reanimation, this isn't a black-gloved-killer-on-a-spree film; it's of a more psychological bent. In fact, this film delves deeper into its characters' psyches than almost any other giallo, with largely admirable results. 

The characters are given far more space to breathe than is usual in a giallo, and for much of the running time we see two of the characters trapped in a seaside apartment with no means of escape. We witness the (rapid) deterioration of alliances and social niceties among the imprisoned pair, with frequent cutaways which initially fill in the blanks as to how the characters have ended up in their unfortunate situation. As the film progresses the cutaways become more abstract, ending up as a beguiling mixture of memories and fantasies, with dialogue in the makeshift prison morphing from external sniping to internal monologues and imagined/reinterpreted conversations. Things become almost poetic, and the juxtaposition of the increasing dehumanisation and savagery of the living conditions within the prison with the memories and regrets of the characters creates an intoxicating atmosphere of raw human emotion. It's more Last Year at Marienbad than Strip Nude for Your Killer (although Rosabla Neri does come through with some nudity early doors), but all the better for it.

That's not to say that the film will blow you away emotionally, as the people at the centre of the film are quite base, and the more room that's given over the characterisation, the more we see that these are vapid, borderline uninteresting characters. However, there's something about the juxtaposition between past and present which gets me in films; a raw power generated by the direct acknowledgement of the inexorable passage of time which is ultimately the black-gloved killer stalking us all. Simple scenes which would mean little on their own become powerful eulogies to a time past, a time lost, which will never be recovered. Juan Logar, who was active as recently as 2013-showing admirable defiance in the face of time's relentless march-understands the power inherent in such temporal juxtapositions, and does a fine job balancing the necessary genre elements (sex scenes, occasional mild gore and whiskey drinking*) with the more arty concerns.

Style-wise, there's not a huge amount going on, although one distinct camera movement recurs so often that it bears analysis. The move in question is a crab around from a tight close-up of one character to an over-the-shoulder shot of the same character and the person to whom they're talking. It's possibly meant to represent the decision to share oneself with another that is the fundamental basis of all relationships. Or, it might be a visual representation of the duplicitous turn taken by Alecsa's affections. Equally, it might just have been a economical way of cutting down on the number of camera set-ups.

The music is initially ludicrously bombastic, but once it settles down it becomes surprisingly effective, and evokes the right amount of nostalgia and wistfulness in later scenes. The acting, too, is more than serviceable, with the vast swathes of the film passing without any spoken dialogue never really dragging. In fact, the only time things do get a bit too slow occurs right at the beginning, when we witness Marvelling wander around his apartment examining the window shutters and observing his wife fool around on the beach below the house. We have no frame of reference as to what's going on, and what is going on takes so long that interest wanes somewhat, but once this sequence passes things pick up nicely.

Starring almost the same cast and featuring much of the same behind-the-camera talent as Luciano Ercoli's previous giallo Death Walks in High Heels, this film charts the next phase of the director's obsession with leading lady Nieves Navarro, moving from High Heels' leering focus on her body to a more stately investigation of her mothering potential. Don't worry, it's more than that; it's also an incredibly convoluted and unbelievable, but mostly fun, mystery thriller. Or 'giallo', if you prefer.

After agreeing to take a new hallucinogenic drug so the effects can be documented by a magazine, Valentina has visions of the murder of a wide-eyed young woman by a camp-looking older man. She begins seeing the camp man everywhere, and tries to get the police to intervene. They, as well as seemingly everyone else, seem to calmly accept that Valentina has had a vision of a six month old murder, but refuse to accept anything else she tells them, even when everything else she tells them seems far more credible. Another, slightly (only slightly) less camp-looking man also begins following her, trying to warn her that she's in danger (she knows, man, but no-one will listen to her, apart from the bit about her crazy vision!). She's taken to a mental asylum to meet the man convicted for the six-month-old killing she's apparently witnessed, who turns out to be not camp in the slightest. The bodies continue to pile up, even if, still, no-one will listen to Valentina. Not even her sometime-lover Stefano nor her  flirty friend Gio. Will anyone believe her before it's too late? And will she unravel the tangled web into which she's unwittingly stumbled while she's at it?

First things first-I should stress that the 'vision' which Valentina has while under the influence is indeed genuine, although it doesn't necessarily depict exactly what everyone assumes. In some ways it prefigures Lucio Fulci's The Psychic, which places a vision in an even more prominent position in the plot. To enjoy either film, you'll need to buy into the concept of second sight, or else you may as well not bother watching. (If you're someone who watches these films to scoff, you can fuck right off.) It's strange to think that the script, and plot, here are the work of Ernesto Gastaldi, who likes to paint himself as the grounded-in-reality alternative to Dario Argento's tricksy, sleight-of-hand brand of gimmickry. There's no sleight of hand here, I suppose, but interrogating the reliability of memories is hardly more outlandish than a hallucinogen bringing on a psychic vision (not that Argento was averse to indulging in a bit of psychic bantitry). 

That leads me on to one further caveat-the film does sometimes come across as being conceived of by old fuddy duddies, who regard drugs as dangerous, unknowable things which bestow outlandish powers upon their abusers. There's an undeniable fascination with the seedy glamour of the lifestyle, as seen in the scene where Valentina attends a weed-and-possibly-opium-fuelled party, but the characters are extremely quick to expound upon the dangers of evil, evil drugs.

Anyway, onto the film itself. It's another long one, which takes a slightly different approach to the more languidly-paced High Heels. Here, the twists and turns come thick and fast, but ultimately this becomes a weakness. High Heels contented itself with a few key twists, and the second half in particular gave the film time to breathe (to the point where, as noted in my review, your mind may wander and solve the case before the police). Here things are a bit  breathless, and when almost every scene contains a bit of rug-pulling, you eventually become so dizzy that you're in danger of tripping yourself up. Then you might wee your pants in the shock of the moment, and your entire class will laugh at you and call you 'Pissy-pants' for the rest of the year. But yeah, this is basically a convoluted way of saying there are too many twists here, and each one is slightly devalued as a result. 

Saying things in a convoluted way is quite apt, the plot of ...at Midnight being quite the convoluted beast. It's one of those ones where almost all of the  characters are guilty to some degree. In High Heels, you get a sense of a wider world in both Paris and the English countryside, with new characters regularly introduced throughout the entire film to support this sense. Here, although a few newbies do pop up as things progress, you get the sense that you're watching things unfold in a hermetically-sealed world, where only the film's characters really exist. Such is the omnipresence of several of the supporting cast that you begin to suspect that Valentina must have a tracking chip implanted somewhere. It's also possible that the city setting hurts the film a bit in this regard; we're more likely to buy the idea of the countryside being full of oddball red herrings, and it's also easier to keep tabs on someone in a quaint village setting.

Re: the pace of the twists and turns, given the eventual explanation the film offers up as the solution, you could argue that the breakneck speed is necessary, as you're more likely to have forgotten characters and events which aren't quite wrapped up in a neat little package by the Big Reveal. You might, for example, wonder how three people managed to gain access to a certain apartment towards the end of the film. You might even ask why Valentina has been targeted by a certain gang at all.

One final semi-criticism-once again, the film's length does lead to a slight dissipation of tension as we approach the finale. This isn't helped by moments such as when Valentina sees three crucial, and evil, characters in an apartment directly opposite hers and tries to phone the investigating police inspector, despite his repeated refusal to believe anything she says. When she's informed by a comedy copper that he's not in the office at that moment, she essentially sighs, shrugs and shuts up. Why wouldn't she be desperate to tell anyone from the police about the killers who are, at that moment, metres from her? It's not as if she'd encounter any more scepticism than she's already guaranteed to get from the inspector. Not only that, she seems to half-forget about the killers, not bothering to look out her window again after initially spotting them. It's as if Ercoli (/Gastaldi) knew that there was another talky scene coming up before the finale proper could get going, so he doesn't bother trying to wring any suspense from this Rear Window-esque set up.

But enough grousing. This is still a superior giallo in almost every respect (music being the only below-par aspect for me; Stelvio Cipriani having been replaced here by Gianni Ferrio). Once again Ercoli directs with a kind of contained flair which only occasionally grates, and even then it's usually because of slightly dodgy camera operating (this only occurs once or twice, so don't let this put you off a viewing). His penchant for half-obscuring characters' faces in close-ups, particularly when they're being a bit nefarious and tricksy, has returned from High Heels. It doesn't quite work as well here, possibly because there are fewer close-ups in general and the arty ones thus seem a bit shoehorned-in. 

The killer (the main killer, anyway) has a great look as well. I referred to him as being 'camp-looking' above, and this is very true, but it's creepy camp. He looks like a slightly more evil version of Andy Warhol or Paul William's Swan from Phantom of the Paradise, and he has a terrific run (more of a trot really). There are liberal shots which take advantage of the reflective nature of his sunglasses, suggesting that Ercoli (/Gastaldi) has been watching The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh. Gastaldi's certainly been watching it anyway; he wrote it, and seems like the sort of man who wouldn't be averse to watching his own films. It's often difficult to maintain a sense of menace when you see a killer as a whole person, rather than a series of disembodied close-ups (something I touched on when writing about The Cold-blooded Beast), and here Ercoli very much succeeds. The hired goons who turn up near the  end also have a great look, especially Luciano Rossi. Maybe the key is to combine an impassive face with sunglasses, which both characters have in common. 

The weapon used here is also novel, being an iron fist with spikes (which, in another logic-gap eerily reminiscent of Cold-blooded Beast seems to be on open display in the insane asylum). You may wonder why every character seems to use the same weapon, or at least a version of the same weapon, but don't forget we're operating in a closed-off world here, where iron fists are the only weapons available. Until the latter stages of the film anyway, when knives and guns make a belated appearance. But still, marks to the makers for originality.

The ending's main twist isn't too bad, possibly because there's so much going on that we've almost forgotten that we should be looking at our roster of characters for suspects. Well, you might have forgotten about that; I definitely didn't. I definitely didn't at all, at all. It all leads to a fun chase/fight sequence on a roof which plays like a slow-motion take on the ending of Ichi the Killer. You'll also get to see Simon Andreu's pleasingly idiosyncratic headbutting technique not once, but twice. And as a bonus there's the worst parking job in history, when Valentina and her beau arrive on motorcycle at an art exhibition. What more could you want?

Also known with the bizarre title The Fox with the Velvet Tail (bizarre not because of the title itself, but because it has zero relation to the film whatsoever), this is a film which takes its cue from the Gastaldi and Lenzi sun-drenched 60s thrillers, rather than Argento's stalk-and-slashers.

Trapped in a volatile marriage, Ruth finally spies a way out for good when she meets Paul, a dashing younger man. Given that he's played by Jean Sorel, Paul isn't necessarily all he's cracked up to be, however. He quickly makes himself at home in Ruth's seaside mansion, and, after Ruth narrowly survives a couple of unlikely 'accidents', her soon-to-be-ex-husband pops in for a visit. With a mysterious blonde woman looking on from a rented villa next door, and Roland, Paul's old friend from Vietnam, also lounging around like a character from a Jess Franco film, will Ruth emerge unscathed from the eye of the hurricane, or will she choke on the fox's velvet tail?

For a film that's 100 minutes long and features absolutely no blood-or onscreen killings-this is pleasingly engaging stuff. It toys with the viewer slightly, with the initial mystery seeming to concern the motives of Jean Sorel, which, as any giallo fan will tell you, tend to be nefarious. Just as you're beginning to think that you have the film all worked out, and pitying it for its naivete, it shows its hand completely, telling you exactly who is trying to do what to whom. This occurs pretty much halfway through, and the remainder of the film is a continual series of twists and turns, some of which are obvious, but even that sometimes seems to be deliberate, so as to obfuscate the build up to further, less obvious surprises.

The film largely takes place in a single location, a Franco-esque seaside villa, and,  as is common in this sort of giallo, there are very few characters. The reasonably clever plot mightn't be enough for the more gore-hungry fans out there, but it should satisfy the more cerebral cineaste. The performances are all decent, with Sorel doing his patented smarmy cad routine which would've been so familiar by this stage that elements of it must have slipped into his real life persona. Analía Gadé, playing Ruth, seems to have declined to do any front-on nudity, but acceded to offering a rear view.  The small print of the contract seemingly didn't put a limit on the amount of rear nudity she'd do, however, and José María Forqué takes every opportunity, and shoehorns in a few non-opportunities, to showcase her rear in all its glory. There's also a delightfully cheesy early sequence in which she's topless, but her wares are obscured by a succession of inanimate objects; the end result cannot fail but to bring Austin Powers to mind.

One iffy point is the attitude of the police, who (mercifully, given their evident lack of prowess) play a very minor role in proceedings. There's always a chance that an eventual court case will alter/correct the events of the final reel, but part of the process of buying into a film is the rejection of such notions, unless expressly signposted as a possibility by the director. Here, the police have clearly stumbled into a messy domestic situation, and any fool could see that there's some blackmail action happening. A realisation of this might've given them pause for thought in their interpretation of the circumstances surrounding the death of a leading character, but they seem happy to take said circumstances at (apparent) face value. As I said, the film concludes with arrests, which are by definition not definitive judgements, rather than deaths, and there's no doubt that everything feels narratively satisfying. It's just a shame it doesn't feel true-to-life.