It's hard to know what to make of this gothic giallo from Romano Scavolini. As a murder-mystery, it fails miserably. As a gothic horror, likewise. As an examination of the lingering effects of childhood grief, or of what happens when cracks appear in the tenuous structures of civilisation to which we all subscribe, it's also a failure. But as a film, it's a qualified success.

A young girl-the titular Mariale-watches her father gun down her mother and a nude lover in a countryside idyll. The father then turns the gun on himself. Years later, Mariale lives in her family's crumbling castle in near-captivity, sedated by her husband Paolo and their creepy servant Osvaldo. She manages to break the lock on one of the castle's telephones and dictates a telegram, to be sent to several old friends, inviting them to visit the castle. Despite Osvaldo's initial efforts to repel the visitors, Paolo decides to let them come in, hoping to persuade them to leave at the earliest opportunity. After taking a tour of the castle, the group play an after-dinner game of Mariale's choosing, which revolves around ideas of submission and domination. They also appear to have a bit of drink taken, and things very quickly get messy, with the already-unlikable visitors revealing even more reasons to hate them. Then, finally, they start being offed one by one, until the not-very-shocking, not-very-grisly truth is revealed.

This is a pretty uneven film, although considering it was made by the same man who gave us Nightmares in a Damaged Brain a few years later, that's not really surprising. As stated above, it doesn't really succeed on any specific level, but it is worth a watch nonetheless. The cast is pretty top-notch, with Ivan Rassimov notable in that he plays by far the most sympathetic character. Maybe 'sympathetic' isn't quite the right word, but he's willing to call the rest of them out for being the unlikable assholes that they are, and he's the only character who seems capable of something approaching rational thought (ironic given that the rest of them refer to him as 'Poet' in a snidey manner). His slamming of attempted rapist Jo's "idiotic talk and dirty kisses" is shady as fuck, too.

SPOLIERS! Mariale, who is simultaneously the main protagonist and antagonist, reacts slightly differently to Jo's attempted rape of his girlfriend Mercedes-she walks right up to him and kisses him. She's set up initially as a victim-we witness the traumatic childhood murder-suicide of her parents, and then discover her years later, apparently held prisoner by a callous husband and creepy servant. We sympathise with her attempts to avoid sedation, and cheer at the success of her cry for help, achieved after she breaks the flimsy lock on one of the telephones. Why she didn't just call the police should be the first question asked by the discerning viewer, who before long will have arrived at the incontrovertible conclusion that she must be guilty of the series of murders, despite her status as possibly the most likely suspect. 

NO SPOILERS! I say'before long'; that's not strictly true. The murders don't actually begin until 55 minutes have elapsed (if you discount the prologue killings). To make up for this, we're treated to a quick succession of kills for the next twenty minutes of so, none of which are top of the range set-pieces, although a dog-mauling scene is imaginatively shot with some interesting point-of-view camerawork, which doesn't intercut that well with the scene's non-POV footage. The very first murder is almost casually introduced, in a sequence which cuts between it and some softcore lesbianism, all scored to some light-hearted muzak (odd, as most of the rest of the score is nice and powerful). This-along with the lack of mystery at the heart of the plot-is one of the chief giallo failings of the film, which before that point has veered variously between gothic horror (never quite crossing into fully-fledged G.H. though) and bizarro satirical/social commentary-laden drama.

The exchanges between Gustavo and his black girlfriend Semy seem to exist to criticise a what would nowadays be referred to as 'toxic masculinity' (and racism), but on the other hand Semy doesn't help herself with some of her scatty behaviour and utterances. Scavolini also can't resist including a de rigeur 'exotic dance' scene for Semy either. Rassimov's Massimo, with whom we're most closely aligned, criticises Gustavo's behaviour (and, justifiably, that of most of the guests), which does suggest that this is one of the more socially-aware and progressive gialli. The game played post-dinner seems designed to expose the truth about human nature, specifically the selfishness and immorality which lurks just beneath the surface of respectable people with their respectable behaviour. The point is somewhat laboured, though, and could have been made in a more measured manner throughout the film, which instead moves clunkily from sequence to sequence in a stilted 'gothic scene to social commentary to murder set-piece' manner. There's a great opportunity for some early killing when the guests go exploring the tunnels in the castle's cellars-the separation of characters being a pre-requisite for murders in a single-location mystery-but Scavolini curiously passes it up, no doubt because his A to B to C formula hadn't yet reached K for Killing.

The existence of a thruple (a polygamous word for a three-person couple, keep up you squares) also hints at a progressive viewpoint, although this is undercut by the already-detailed rapey behaviour of one of the thruple's males, Jo. The other male in the triangle, Sebastiano, also covers himself in unglory when he chooses to covertly observe Jo's assault rather than intervene. In fact, Gustavo (who looks confusingly like Sebastiano) behaves in much the same manner when he stands idly by as his gf Semy tries to escape a horde of scorpions in the animal room. In both instances Rassimov's Massimo comes to the rescue, with Mariale gliding in after him to emphasise the increasing control which she's exerting on proceedings. The film could probably be seen as a treatise on the arrogance and underlying cowardice of the male, and the ability of the female to thrive when she escapes the domineering influence of the male, up to a point (the point being the final ten minutes). This interrogation of gender stereotypes is present right from the beginning, with Mariale's fully-clothed mother picnicing with a fully-nude dude.

SPOILERS! As well as gender stereotypes and behaviour dynamics, the film also somewhat investigates the effects of grief. I say 'somewhat' because while it does show that traumatic events of the past can exert an influence over present-day matters, with Mariale donning her mother's death dress to literally wear the events of the past on her sleeve, the execution-specifically, Mariale's executions-isn't exactly a nuanced representation of the effects of grief. But saying that, this is a giallo, not a Dogme film, and past traumas pretty much exist solely to provide a backstory/motive for a killer, and this film does scratch the surface of the topic more than most. It kind of has to, though, given that  unlike something like, say, Bird with the Crystal Plumage, we know the identity of the trauma victim from the start, so they're never far from position numero one in terms of suspects. 

NO SPOILERS! To sum up, this is a very flawed but somewhat interesting film. It's stylishly-shot (far, far, far more so than Nightmares), with the lighting on one shot which has the characters descending a staircase by candlelight being particularly impressive (most Italian films adopted a crude 'shine a torch at the actor with the candle' approach to lighting such sequences). There are also several stylish swooping camera moves, particularly during the debauched after-dinner behaviour, with the suggestion that the film is 'looking down' on its characters in more ways than one (specifically, in two ways). The music for this sequence is a thinly-veiled facsimile of In a Gadda Da Vida, a song which inspired more than one Italian knock-off. As for Scavolini, the jury's still out on him as far as I'm concerned, especially knowing the bizarre film he'd go on to create nine years later. Nightmares is either the work of a flawed genius who's decided to lower himself to making trash, or the work of someone who thinks he's a genius and has lowered himself to making trash. Or maybe it's just the work of a not-very-talented filmmaker who's prone to occasional flashes of eccentricity/inspiration. A White Dress for Mariale brings us no closer to solving that mystery, so kudos to Scavo for at least giving us one tough-to-crack puzzle.

This is definitely more of a supernatural gothic horror than a giallo, in as much as it is a supernatural gothic horror film which happens to feature two kills early on in which we cannot see the killer's face. But, it's usually listed as part of the giallo cannon, so here we go.

A young, incredibly beautiful and apparently dead woman is found in the wreckage of a crashed carriage in 1909 somewhere in Germany or Austria or Switzerland or Luxembourg. Despite being clinically deceased (no heartbeat; doesn't react when her eyeball is stabbed) she is to all intents and purposes 'alive', but cannot remember her name or from where she has come. A clue comes in the form of a neck pendant reading 'Greta 2006', which also incorporates an old Inca design which apparently was used in reincarnation rituals. Walter von Ravensbruck and his wife Eva, who discovered Greta in the wreckage, take her in and each fall in love with her. After a servant girl and the doctor who examined Greta after the crash are murdered, Eva takes against Greta and walls her into a disused room in the basement of their large house/castle. Mere walls aren't enough to contain an undead Swede however, and Greta returns to wreak havoc on the von Ravensbrucks, including Walter's father Herbert, to whom she was previously married (and to whose wedding Walter-who's about three years younger than his dad-and Eva apparently weren't invited). Will Greta ever find peace, and will the inspector sleepwalking his way through the film finally figure out what's going on?

This is different to most gialli (in that it's not a giallo, but whatevs) because the supernatural idea of a reincarnated woman turns out not to be merely a ruse designed to scare someone to death/into signing over their claim to an estate. This is made fairly explicit early on, in that our first glimpse of Greta is of her corpse laid out and being mourned by her incestuous brother, and it's confirmed when Klaus Kinski's mad doctor (he's not really meant to be mad, but come on-it's Klaus) can't detect a heartbeat and then sticks a pin in her eye to no response. A world in which reincarnation is possible is not really suited to a giallo film, as the threat of death-the bedrock upon which the genre's sense of danger is built-carries less weight if it's not a terminal event, but, as I've said (and will stop saying now), this isn't really a giallo.

We do get a couple of 'faceless killer'-style killings, although the fact that the mystery angle is suddenly dropped after killing number two suggests that the script, which was apparently more of a traditional mystery when first conceived, was adapted somewhat on the fly. From the point where Greta returns from her walled-in tomb we see her cut a swathe through the cast, and we can only assume that she was responsible for the two early murders (although there's a chance that the creepy butler Simeon, who seems to be in on her secret, was the initial killer; not that it really matters). It is notable that the first murder is committed by a shotgun, something rarely utilised in gialli (or slasher films) due to the slightly routine nature of a gunshot killing. D'Amato certainly does his best to sex things up here though, with some inventive, if ludicrously unrealistic, facial make-up effects.

There's a clear Poe influence at play, with cats suddenly becoming prominent right about the time that Eva walls Greta into the room in the basement. Plus, Walter actually resembles Poe fairly closely (and there's a bit of incest thrown in as well, which would no doubt have pleased ol' Edgar).  Greta's role as avenging angel clad in red and black can also be seen as a personification of the Red Death, with her second resurrection being revealed to Eva at a Masque-rade ball. The story is very much a hodgepodge of various fragments of Poe stories, with some gialloey iconagraphy* sprinkled on top, and a single reel diversion into the realm of the sex film (where D'Amato would later reside permanently). The traditional giallo slo-mo flashback, replete with ethereal music and smiling, silent characters recurs throughout; in fact, as much as half of the film is comprised of dialogue-free sequences. 

As a rule, these flashbacks seemed to largely be confined to gialli set in the past (see A White Dress for Mariale and The Murder Clinic), which suggests that filmmakers knew that they were faintly ridiculous, or at least incongruous with standard 1960s/70s behaviour-people then were protesting wars and smoking ganja, not lolloping through meadows smiling like loons. Of course, what passed for 'normal' behaviour, and depictions thereof, in the films c. 1970 are now often derided and mocked by contemporary audiences, who would doubtless find the slo-mo flashback sequences to be doubly guffaw-inducing (and one wonders if audiences in 2050 will chortle away at the films that we unquestioningly lap up as entertainment-quite possible, if people cop on and realise in the interim that Marvel movies are bullshit). 

Trapped in among all the slo-mo frolicking and Poe references there is a meditation on desire and freedom struggling to (ironically) break free. The love triangle which develops could have formed the centrepiece of the film, but instead is limited to the aforementioned sexy sex reel. Greta also gives a heartfelt speech to Walter about how she identifies with his pet birds, as she too feels trapped by her 'owner' (him), to which he responds by laughingly telling her that the bird she has taught to say her name is actually a chap. Men as a whole don't really come off great here, being either leering pervs (Kinski and Luciano Rossi) or sly, shy pervs (Simeon, and Walter to some extent). The women are more forceful, driving the narrative and being responsible for pretty much all the kills (and attempted kills), although man is still in control for the sciencey reincarnation bit. So, this is a world where a male God has control but women have agency.

The film is very stylishly shot, with excellent use of wide-angled lenses, and the soundtrack is fantastic (the opening credits feature possibly my favourite giallo score of all time, with a extremely sparse soundscape punctured by occasional guitar stings). It's definitely D'Amato on top form, and he knew it-it's the only film he ever directed which bore his actual name, Aristide Massaccesi. The stalk-and-slash sequences aren't quite as tautly executed as Argento at his best, and after Greta is unequivocally revealed to be responsible for the killings they become almost choreographed dance sequences, but they're never less than visually arresting. The same goes for the make-up effects which, although frequently ridiculous, very much go for the jugular in every respect. D'Amato also finds an interesting halfway house for his presentation of violence, marrying the quick. incisive cutting of an Argento set piece with the lovingly lingering presentation of gore effects of a Fulci gore effect.

As I think I may have hinted at before, this isn't really a giallo. As with many fringe efforts, if it was made elsewhere in the world it would simply be a supernatural horror film which features two killings in which we're not immediately sure of the killer's identity. Despite the semi-regular presence of a police inspector, there's no real investigation into the murders (indeed, the two 'anonymous' early killings are never mentioned by anyone after they happen), and any mystery that is present in the film surrounds the exact provenance and intentions of Greta. But even this isn't really a mystery-we have a fair sense of what she's about from the start, and nothing that happens is exactly a shocking revelation.** Instead, possibly wisely, D'Amato plays up the incredibly ethereal beauty of Ewa Aulin as she ghosts through the film seducing and destroying. She may not be a giallo killer, but by damn she's certainly a killer gal. And, on that dud note, I'm off to watch Candy.

*AKA eyeconagraphy-witness the violence visited upon Greta's eyeball, as well as the shots of eyes silently observing characters through windows and cracks in doors. 

**There is a semi-twist in the very last shot, although it's undercut slightly with the plethora of questions it raises as to the inspector's general competence and quality of eyesight.

This giallo takes the fish-out-of-water trope to the max, being entirely set (and largely shot) in Haiti. It incorporates elements of mondo films-with one of its co-directors having a background almost exclusively in that arena-and also throws in some sexytime and spy thriller material for good measure. It's a fairly unique rum-infused Caribbean cocktail, but not one that really hits the spot (unless you're a craven alcoholic with low standard/a superfan of Anita Strindberg's baps). 

Fred and Grace Wright, who look nothing like their names, holiday in Haiti, ostensibly to try and save their crumbling marriage and check in on Fred's old college buddy Williams. Williams has a day job as a doctor, but by night works as a scientist, developing a powerful new hallucinogenic drug which is a target for several interested investors, as well as a black-gloved killer who's offing Williams' assistants and several of his suitors. As Grace becomes enamoured of the island's raw sensuality, her husband's real motivation for visiting the island becomes clear. But is he the mysterious killer, or is it someone else, someone who's a less-obvious suspect? Course it bloody is!

One of the film's failings is actually its lack of suspects; in common with many gialli it slightly over-extends itself with the number of killings, and by the time we come the the big reveal there are very, very few potential suspects. That, added to the presence of a reasonably big-name (and prominently-billed) actor in what appears to be an extremely throwaway cameo kind of tips the film's hat as to the killer's identity. But this isn't really a tightly-plotted thriller; it is, as stated above, a curious mix of influences which is content to do things on its own terms.

There's no real investigative through-line for the audience to latch onto; instead we're kept busy simply piecing together what exactly is going on, and what the characters are really after (the drug McGuffin for all apart from Grace-who wants sex-and Williams-who wants Grace, kind of). Actually, it's difficult to know what exactly Williams wants, as he stalks his way around the island seemingly trying to escape some past trauma which is never expounded. All we really know is that he doesn't need money, and is implacable in the face of death, something he repeatedly displays thanks to his unfortunate habit of finding corpses. That might be a trait he's picked up from the Haitian locals, given the police's apparent lack of interest in investigating the spate of murders, or of giving a shit when Williams reveals that he's been concealing a murder from them.

The past trauma from which Williams is seemingly hiding from is hinted at by some comments by his old college mucker, but the 'revelation' of who Williams really is, as Fred puts it snarlingly to his wife towards the climax of the film, contains no information that we didn't already know, and is surprisingly anodyne. Similarly, is the (SPOILERY) confession by Williams that he discovered his missing colleague Crotz's corpse several days previously supposed to be a shocking revelation? We've seen him (implacably) make the discovery, and it's fairly easy to deduce the identity of the corpse, the later phone calls supposedly made by Crotz notwithstanding. The lack of giallo experience of any of the main creative forces behind the film really shines through in moments such as these. (END SPOILERIES)

The casual approach to the giallo aspects of the film can also be seen by the fact that the first three kills happen offscreen; the first murder we see occurring at the halfway point. It's as if the directors suddenly realised that they needed to spice things up with a few murders, leading to a couple of fairly brutal and drawn-out murder scenes belatedly rearing their heads (this also supposes that the film was shot in order, which is unlikely in the extreme, but hey ho).  There are other failings-the plot to entrap the killer makes no sense unless his identity was already known to the architects of said plot, to give one example. And, the revelation that Williams was a dab hand at using a spear gun in his youth which comes literally seconds after we've seen a spear gun murder is so heavy-handed it beggars belief. 

The aim when foregrounding characters as suspects should ultimately be to put one over on the audience, and have them suspect the wrong character come the time of the big reveal.  To achieve this, you need them to think they're outsmarting the film, and picking up on visual or aural cues which were supposed to bypass them (but which have actually been deliberately planted by the filmmakers, in a kind of double-bluff). If Williams' prowess was hinted at through a half-seen framed photo in his house, for example, or if there was a spear gun glimpsed in the corner of his bedroom, framed in a manner which leads the viewer to suspect that their eagle eye has picked up on some vital info the film was trying to sneak past them, then Williams might have been a viable suspect (setting aside the fact that we've seen the killer spying on him earlier in the film-there could, one supposes, have been two killers working independently). But the clumsy shoehorning in of the spear gun dialogue here has the opposite effect-it's so nakedly obvious an attempt to cast suspicion on Williams , we know straight away that he's innocent.

What the directors*-at least, one of them (Giampaolo Lomi)-were good at was filming documentary footage. The native voodoo rituals are shot with energy and do seemingly capture a sense of authenticity, with Lomi himself (as well as an end credits spiel) stating that they were ceremonies which were staged for the film, but were nonetheless genuine. Given mondo films' propensity for playing fast and loose with the truth it's difficult to fully accept this assertion, but I'm no expert in voodoo, so I can't point to anything specific to debunk it. (The slaughter of the bull in the first, and main, ceremony is certainly, and lamentably, genuine.) One of the main purposes of the ceremony seems to be to showcase as many topless young women as possible-is there any giallo featuring a black woman which doesn't involve an exotic dance sequence?

The veneer of authenticity of the ceremony lends it some credibility, and it's certainly a less egregious display of female flesh than you'd see in many a giallo, but the film does inarguably position the native Haitians as an 'other', denying them any real identity apart from their voodoo rituals and street bazaars. There's nothing necessarily overtly racist in the film (although I suspect that the subtitles on the Camera Obscura DVD may have fudged over a few derogatory terms for black people), but it certainly isn't overflowing with enlightenment, to the point where no native characters are really prominent enough even to be considered suspects for the murders (scientific advancements being, after all, anathema to their earthy way of life). And, there is a certain fetishisation of the young virile black man, but at least that's a variation on the more common fetishisation of the young, sexy black woman. Although given that I'm a proponent of the futility of reading single characters as being representative of groups of people as a whole, maybe it's just that these films happen to showcase the few black people who are into dancing and sex. After all, it's not as if one in, say, seven white males are murderers, is it?

*There's some debate/confusion over who actually directed the film; Lomi claims that Mulargia treated the film as a holiday, only occasionally turning up  to supervise goings-on, whereas Mulargia, who's now dead and thus has been denied a right-to-reply to Lomi's comments on the Camera Obscura release, did say previously that Lomi was brought in to film the voodoo rituals in a documentary style, but didn't direct the rest of the film. I'd tend to believe Mulargia, given the difference in style between the 'documentary' sequences and the remainder of the film.

Artistic trendsetters and influence-makers are, of course, hugely important from a historical perspective. However, just because The Jazz singer marked the beginning of people talking in films, it doesn't mean it's the best film which involves people talking. And-you're probably way ahead of me here-just because The Sweet Body of Deborah ushered in the wave of black-glove-killer-lite seaside dramas featuring rich people tricking each other into murder and suicide, doesn't mean it's the best example of such films. Or even that it's any good at all.

Newlyweds Deborah and Marcel travel to his hometown of Geneva, ostensibly so she can get a sense of who her new husband is (should've done that BEFORE the wedding, love). They run into a past acquaintance of Marcel's who accuses him of being a murderer because his ex-girlfriend, traumatised at Marcel's having left her for America and Deborah, has committed suicide. The couple leave Geneva to continue their honeymoon, but find that they can't escape the past so easily, with threatening phone calls, and Marcel's old friend Philip, following them across the continent.

It's probably a bit harsh to say that this isn't any good at all, however, it's far from a top drawer giallo. As an example of the 'rich people double cross each other' subgenre (upon which I think I've bestowed a different descriptive title every single time I've referred to it), it's nowhere near as good as several of the later Lenzi imitators. And it's not necessarily even that trailblazing, given that it, as with all those films, owes a huge debt to Les Diaboliques. and the concept of a woman/couple being harassed by the sea had been done before (Ernie Gastaldi's Libido). However, this film does it all in colour-garish, garish colour-with the odd flash of nudity, which seemed to catch the attention of Umberto Lenzi and Ernie G (who, to be fair, wrote it) to influence their subsequent efforts.

So, this is an important film in as much as several other, better films may not have existed without it. But still, that doesn't make it any less of a slog to get through. There is, as stated, no black gloved killer, which is fine, but there simply isn't enough there to maintain interest for the still-brief 92 minute running time. The central conceit of a couple being pursued for a past 'crime' (which in this case isn't even a crime) isn't really fleshed out at all. You get a couple of phone calls (one of which is technically an impossible call, with the film never explaining how a phone line which has been out of use for a year was able to take a call*) and Luigi Pistilli's Philip lurks in the background a couple of times, showing off his skills in the 'vanishing from view while the main character rubs their eyes to make sure they're not hallucinating' area (top tip-if you're ever the 'viewer' in this situation, don't look away-keep a close eye on the intruder and place an immediate call to the authorities). But there's never a real sense of overpowering evil closing in on the couple-although, to be fair, this could be partly explained by the end twists, of which more anon.

The idea of a song motif being the source of a kind of Proustian recollection of memory-and guilt-for Marcel is neatly done, and would reappear in Deep Red, among other films. However, the film as a whole is curiously silent (at least, it is in the English version I watched), with long stretches which feel aurally dead, lacking the requisite foley sounds of clothes rustling and footsteps to create any believable facsimile of reality. These sequences just involve dialogue being exchanged over heavy silence, with even a climactic scene which involves Philip breaking into the sleeping couple's villa being played out with no score, which deadens the mood horribly. Nora Orlandi's soundtrack is decent (and very 60s), but it appears that either she didn't compose enough non-slinky lounge tunes, or the editor wasn't keen on using  them.

There are a few extremely 60s nightclub sequences  (going by gialli, what few black women there were in Europe in the 60s/70s must have almost all worked as strippers), and a game of twister that has to be seen to be believed. Although, by the time this sequence comes around you might well be ready to give up on the film, as it comes quite deep into the film, and the fact that the two main characters, and potential victims, are laughing and dancing around their garden without a care in the world kind of sums up the general lack of tension in the film as a whole.

Things do finally pick up with Philip's aforementioned home invasion and (SPOILERS) 'death'. Attentive viewers will have noted that for about ten minutes in the middle of film every time Marcel speaks it's to try and engineer an excuse to leave Deborah, which heavily suggests that he's not quite the catch he appeared to be. And it's true-he is, in fact, in league with Philip and his 'dead' ex as part of an inheritance scheme (the standard motivation in these films). This twist is even less surprising for modern viewers given that Marcel is played by Jean Sorel, which essentially means that the 'surprise' is that Jean Sorel is Jean Sorel. To be fair, contemporary audiences wouldn't have viewed the film armed with such knowledge, and it's hardly its fault that it was successful enough to spawn all those similar films with Sorel in near-identical roles.

There's (STILL SPOILERS) a second twist thrown in for good measure at the end-Deborah is apparently in cahoots with her extremely annoying neighbour George Hilton, and was orchestrating an inheritance scheme of her own which trumped that of Marcel. However, this is the very definition of a twist for twist's sake, and rivals the one at the end of The House on the Edge of the Park for implausibility-how did the unconscious Deborah know that she'd be abandoned by her 'killers' minutes before she bled out? If Hilton had been on site to intervene quicker it might be believable, although this would have ruined the second twist ending by placing it before the less surprising Sorel one. Still, on the other hand it wouldn't make No Sense What So Fucking Ever.

I don't want to be too down on the film, but it's just hard to be in any way 'up' about it. There are some semi-stylish sequences, and a few of those 'idiosyncratic', shall we say, moments that only exist in old-school Italian films-look out for the Big Lebowski-esque goons who threaten Marcel, the classy "I'm raping you" response Marcel gives when Deborah asks what he's doing when he literally sweeps her off her feet, and the very real reckless driving which sees several near-crashes with civilian drivers at a couple of points in the film.  Look out for those, but don't be on the look out for a great film; nothing of that sort to see here.

*And staying with phone lines for a minute, what's with the 'police' phoning Deborah to make sure that she's kept the line open and not hung up on the threatening caller? Did they know that Hilton would sneak into the house and hang up the phone behind Deborah's back? No, course they facking didn't!

Lucio Fulci's follow-up giallo to the New York Ripper uses its predecessor's plot outline and shares its location, but this is a very, very different animal altogether. Part one (and part only) of a mooted trilogy of music-themed gialli, it's the work of a director struggling to keep up with pop culture trends, something which hadn't been a concern of his since his pop pictures of the 60s. This is indicative of the increasing struggles of the Italian film business as a whole to stay relevant, and the relatively-for Fulci, anyway-restraint shown in the gore scenes suggests that either he was willing to toe the commercial line, or his hands were tied by the producers. If only they'd taken advantage of his being incapacitated in a such a way to stab him in the heart before he made the film. Only joking, it's not that bad!!!

Someone is slashing their way through a troupe of dancers at the bizarrely-named 'Arts for the Living Center' in New York. And by 'slashing' I mean 'chloroforming and then stabbing them in the heart with a large hatpin'. Lieutenant Borges, giving NY Ripper's Jack Hedley's Lt Williams a run for his money in the ineffectual cop stakes, is lukewarm on the trail of the killer, with the guilty party seemingly one of the students or teachers of the school. Or is it, in fact, Ray Lovelock's alcoholic actor, George Webb, who begins a romance with head teacher Candice Norman after she dreams about him murdering her and tracks him down in real life? Why do the students keep hanging out along in the academy as its closing? And why don't the plentiful CCTV cameras get any shots of the killer??

This isn't top tier Fulci; in fact, only the relatively decent budget raises it somewhat above such late-career lowlights as Demonia and Aenigma. Definitely his worst giallo, the film is a tired retread of the New York Ripper, coming from the same writing team, possibly even using the same story outline. However, whereas the Ripper was, for better or worse, an extremely powerful treatise on misogyny, misanthropy and urban alienation, this film is Fulci on autopilot, seemingly unconcerned that the script reads like a hastily thrown together first draft.

Both Murder Rock and the NY Ripper feature investigations by policemen, rather than the amateur sleuths which proliferated a decade previously in the filone's heyday. It's easy to poke fun at Italian films for their occasionally clunky English dialogue and lapses of logic-and it is precisely the out-of-leftfield nature of the films which is a core part of the appeal for many-but it's impossible to overlook the fact that the Lieutenants are, to put it mildly, not very proficient. Having an amateur sleuth who has something personal at stake gives us a more passionate central character, in whom we can forgive the occasional duff move because they're not policemen. These amateurs typically become obsessed with and consumed by their investigation, whereas with coppers they're just doing their job. And when it's a copper just doing their job, they need to do a good job. Or even a passable one.

Cosimo  Cinieri, Fulci's go-to guy around this time,  certainly looks the part, but his Lt Borges is an absolute disaster of a detective. His first big pronouncement is to daringly suggest that "the killer-the murderer-is someone who has easy access to the school." Huge insight there, given that the first murder happened inside the school. Then, after a secret recording is used to identify a student who, claiming to be the murderer, phoned in a threat to kill again, he secures a confession from the self-confessed killer. Said confession is immediately dismissed, on the grounds that the student knew he'd be caught, and was merely publicity-hungry. But-how did the student know he'd be caught? He was only identified because Borges' colleague secretly recorded the students talking to the police. Maybe the student, who has made a call identifying himself as the killer and who has confessed to the murders, might actually be guilty? I mean, he's not-there's still half the film left at this stage, but Borges didn't know that! Finally, after the killer incriminates themselves by referring to a piece of evidence which was kept secret from the general public, Borges allows them to leave the police station without so much as a tail, a gamble which kind-of pays off when the killer commits suicide, but one which completely unnecessarily threatened the life of at least one character.

It's not just Borges whose work is of a questionable standard (the films' writers, for example, are also guilty of same). His colleague Professor Davis, the equivalent of Paolo Malco's identically-named character in Ripper (possibly also played here as gay by Giuseppe Mannajuolo) dismisses Claudio Cassinelli as a suspect after a photo of the murderer's torso shows them wearing a leather jacket. Cassinelli, who was picked up outside the crime scene by police on an undefined stake out (why didn't they nab the actual killer when they left minutes before?), and who'd been having an affair with the murdered girl, was indeed wearing different clothes when arrested. Did the police enact a thorough search of the house to ensure that he hadn't changed clothes and stashed the leather jacket? Of course not; Davis dismisses the case against Cassinelli solely because he "always wears a suit and tie."  Egad. Although, again, I have to ask why the police on stakeout didn't just identify the leather jacket wearer once the photograph surfaces.*

The substandard police work on show is presumably why Geretta Geretta plots a copycat kill, based on the real murderer's modus operandi, and, after being unable to go through with it, sobs "They never would've suspected me." This despite her being the person who discovered the first murdered girl's body, as well as having the biggest motive of anyone for killing her intended victim. Presumably this would've led to Borges and Davis dismissing her as a suspect on some spurious basis. It's almost as if the police realise they're in a giallo, and are acting according to the laws of the film world, rather than the 'real' one! 

So, plotwise, things don't hang together too well. However, the same could be said for Ripper, which more than compensated for these failings. The same can't be said here, unfortunately, despite some token, and occasional, efforts by Fulci to amp up the style. Mirrors feature heavily, especially early on in the dancing scenes, to little real effect, and his beloved pulsing lights are very much in evidence, with the school signifying the approach of its closing time by introducing a weird on-off lighting scheme, and the murder scenes feature possibly the Fulciest 'bleached out photography' set up ever. An atmospheric slow motion dream sequence, echoing the surreal dream at the centre of Ripper, introduces Ray Lovelock's character, as well as (SPOILER) giving a large clue as to the murderer's identity, featuring as it does one of the killer's hatpins, which the dreamer wouldn't have seen before unless they'd already used them to kill women and birds). (END SPOILER)

The end sequence takes place in a CCTV control room, with the killer tormented by footage of their victims in their dancing pomp filling the screens. This sequence could've captured the mounting terror and confusion of the killer, but is hamstrung by flat staging, a poor score (more on that anon) and-for me, anyway-the distracting nature of the CCTV images, which seem suspiciously like professionally-shot film footage from non-CCTV angles. And, as previously posited, if the school features such extensive surveillance, how on earth did the killer escape detection?  The classic Fulci eyes-and-bridge-of-nose close up appears precisely once in the film, and, given its context, is an extremely unsubtle attempt at a subtle hint. The eye CU was never exactly utilised with any subtlety in Fulci's films, but here it has all the finesse of a fistbump with a concrete boxing glove. Or a director running on empty.

The film is apparently an unofficial adaptation of a novel called A Time of Predators by Joe Gores, although from reading the synopsis of the book I suspect that this is untrue. I also suspect that the Keith Emerson responsible for the awful plinkety plonk score was some randomer hired by accident, under the mistaken assumption that he was the famous musician of the same name. I'd even be tempted to suggest the Lucio Fulci who sat in the director's chair might have been a similar imposter, were there not sprinklings of his DNA evident throughout the film. And, unlike the terrible policemen who were at the heart of his 80s gialli, I know how to interpret a clue when I see one. So Lucio, you are, sadly, under arrest, charged with producing an anodyne, anaemic rehash of previous, far superior glories.

*There's a chance that the police are on the stakeout after the crime has been rung in, and are hoping that the killer returns to the scene of the crime. This, however, isn't made explicitly clear.

This is one of the most notorious giallo films of all time, and could be described as cinematic marmite, being variously considered as misogynistic filth and a late classic from Lucio Fulci.  Me? I quite like it (the film-I've never had marmite).

A killer who speaks in a voice which was blatantly ripped off for Itchy off The Simpsons is ripping his way around New York. Given the fact that the police investigation is being led by one of the Worst Giallo Cops of All Time, Jack Hedley's Lieutenant Fred Williams (probably not named in honour of the somnambulistic star of Vampyros Lesbos), the ripper manages to cut quite the swathe before any progress is made towards catching him. After one of his intended victims escapes alive, the police think they've a positive ID on the killer: Mikos Scellenda, a Greek pervert who attempted to molest the woman shortly before the killer struck. Dr Davis, a psychotherapist attempting to profile the killer for the police, doesn't believe Scellenda is the killer, and, given there's still half of the film left, we can be pretty sure that he's right. Who is the killer, though, and why do they speak in that crazy duck voice?

First thing first, I'll get straight into it and discuss the big M(isogyny). Having had that term used as a stick with which to lightly beat one of my own films, I think I'm well qualified to speak about it here. So, is The New York Ripper a misogynistic film? Was Fulci a misogynist? Am I? (I'm not; the idiot woman reviewer was wrong.) Fulci himself may well have had some slight issues with women, although it's extremely dangerous to extrapolate such observations solely based on viewings of his films and the opinions of those who've worked with him. And, anyway, a misogynist mightn't necessarily make a misogynistic film. 

By the same token, a misogynistic character doesn't automatically mean that the film endorses said character's opinions (YOU HEAR THAT, GILLIAN MIDDLETON? [I jest, you're alright]). The killer in this film undeniably hates women, but the film itself doesn't really row in behind this viewpoint. There are several murders of women, sure, featuring varying degrees of graphic violence, but the fact that the film is specifically about a man who hates, and kills, women necessitates this. And, given that it was a commercial film, and one made by a director garnering increasing fame for his graphic violence, the kills are of course going to be full-on. 

However, it's important to remember that a full-on murder depicted on screen is just that, on screen. One of the gorier deaths in my own giallo The Three Sisters featured the murder of my own mother. Do I want to kill her in real life? Of course not, I want to kill my father (not really, I'm jesting again [and anyway, he did die in the film as wel]). She was just a reluctant actor playing a role in a film, the plot of which happened to require her on-screen death. Of course, I did come up with the plot, and could have come up with one which required fewer female deaths, but I didn't. However, in my first film, The Farm, far more men than women die on screen. Again, I could have come up with a different plot, etc etc. My point is that a film depicting women getting killed isn't automatically a misogynistic tract. 

To get into more specific NY Ripper-related discussion, one of the main arguments in favour of it being misogynistic is the depiction and treatment of Daniela Doria's prostitute, Kitty. She's only fleetingly in the film, and spends her entire screentime nude. The camera never leers at her, apart from arguably during her death scene-although any leering there has more to do with highlighting special effects-but confining a prostitute character to essentially being defined by her profession, and depriving her of any clothes, isn't necessarily the most progressive depiction of a woman. Saying that, that does inherently assume that there's something degrading or shameful about the female body, which shouldn't really be taken as a given.

Another area of controversy is the character of Jane, played by a supposedly 25 year old Alexandra Delli Colli (I only note her age because she's so patently older than that; not as an attempt to shame her-she still looks very nice!). She's something of a voyeur/exhibitionist, her sexuality contrasting with her voyeur/impotent husband, who tolerates-and even encourages-her sexual adventures. These adventures encompass a peep show, a deeply uncomfortable encounter with some Hispanic guys in a bar, and a sexy hotel rendez-vous with Mickey Scellenda.  She ultimately pays for her licentiousness-as traditional society would no doubt view her behaviour as being-when the Ripper knifes her to death after she escapes Scellenda's eight-fingered clutches (that's just me saying that he has only 8 fingers, it's not a description of some kinky sexual act).

It's tempting, and easy, to read her demise as  a punishment for her perversions/sexual adventurousness, but equally she could be viewed as a victim in a male-dominated world which isn't yet ready to take female sexuality seriously. Whether or not the film falls prey to this inability to properly respect her sexuality is unclear (course it is-I've been banging on about this exact thing for several paragraphs now), but the fact that she gets sexually assaulted in a bar and still goes out on potentially dangerous night-time hook ups doesn't necessarily mean she deserves what she gets (of course), nor does the film necessarily endorse this.

To take a small lateral step, the pornography which is in abundance in Scellenda's apartment would seem to suggest a parallel being drawn between an obsession with sex and general deviancy. He doesn't seem to have any extreme porn, yet he clearly likes the stuff, and we know that he's into kinky sex, and not above trying to molest women on the subway. In short, he's a bit of a shit. But is everyone who likes porn as much of a shit as he is? Dr Davis, for one, likes porn (albeit of a more homoerotic bent than Scellenda), and while he does come across as a self-satisfied asshole, he's not a deviant killer. Is the short scene of him buying the gay porn mag designed to suggest that he may very well be such a monster, only for his ultimate innocence to show up such inferences as being inherently prejudiced? But then, does the film itself invite such prejudices by highlighting the gay porn-buying?

My point here is that these things aren't black and white; the film is neither inherently misogynistic nor inherently progressive. Like the fever dream at its centre, which begins with Scellenda's attempted assault on the train, the truth is more elusive than it first appears. It's probably easier to find evidence of the film being misogynistic than not, but that doesn't mean that Fulci isn't loading it with more nuance and intelligence than for which it's often given credit. And there's a level of self-awareness suggested by the early exchange between the young cyclist and the driver of the car in which she's ultimately killed (where the hell is the driver when the ferry docks, by the way?), in which he rants at her to get back in the kitchen, to suggest that the film was consciously creating a space within which to interrogate misogyny. And I've certainly taken my cue from that here.

To change tack completely, it's worth detailing just how poor a detective Jack Hedley's Lieutenant Williams is. He discounts the aforementioned car driver as a suspect for the cyclist's death due to a perceived lack of physical strength (which the ultimate killer doesn't seem to possess at all), despite the fact that she was murdered in his vehicle, and he was suspiciously absent at the time of the body's discovery. Previously, upon hearing that the ripper's first victim was overheard on the telephone making arrangements to meet a strange duck-voiced caller, he immediately dismisses the witness without asking where or when the rendez vous occurred. He claims that the killer is 'maybe... between 28 and 30 and has lives all his life in New York' after the second killing, an outrageous series of assumptions that are based on Nothing Whatsoever.

And, most seriously of all, he's indirectly responsible for the death of Kitty, his prostitute girlfriend, because he's so obsessed with locating a phone booth from which a call is being made that he ignores the fact that the killer explicitly told him that Kitty will be murdered shortly, which suggests-especially given the film's confining her to a single location-that it might be better to go straight to her apartment. Or at least to send one of the plethora of police vehicles to check on her, instead of bringing them all to one location. Is it his professional pride that prevents him from disclosing her location sooner, given his relationship with her, or is he really just that limited brainwise that he couldn't think beyond tracking the call?

Williams flits in and out of the narrative, as do all the 'lead' characters, which is indicative of the rudimentary narrative which doesn't really have a strong through-line. The film is very episodic in nature, much as Fulci's gothic horrors of the time were, with a seedy 42nd Street atmosphere* replacing the more oblique, supernatural vibe of those other films. The attempted murder/dream sequence which lies at the centre of the film does capture the disorientating feel of something like The Beyond, with the moment when the killer reaches under the cinema seat to grab the woman being particularly effective. The audio of this scene is terrific as well, even if the musical choices which accompany several of the stalk-and-slash scenes are idiosyncratic, to be polite. And what's with the Italian movies' belief that New York is a city of incessant horns, both of the car and ship variety?**

In terms of being a successful giallo, the film falls undeniably short. The mystery aspect is curiously handled, always towards the centre of the film but never really being afforded the respect it deserves. There are shockingly few suspects (especially if we take a leaf out of Williams' book and discount the car driver); possibly two, and at most three. The aforementioned dream sequence (SPOILERS) depicts the killer as the killer, with the revelation that it was (supposedly) just a dream being presumably intended to lead to us naturally directing our suspicions elsewhere-we've strongly suspected this character for a few minutes before his apparent innocence is revealed, and logic suggests that the actual killer in these films never assumes the role of suspect. This is an interesting-if not exactly totally original-approach to take, albeit one which would work better in a film which is more concerned with plot. Overall, plot certainly takes a back seat here to the sex, drugs and funky jazz music. And-whether you like it or not-to the killing of lots of nudie ladies. But still, if there's one thing that True Crime series can teach us, it's that women love to consume stories about women being killed, so maybe Fulci has made the most female-friendly film of all time.

He hasn't, though-he's made an incredibly powerful, angry film which, just as in something like Last House on the Left, is all the better and more shocking for containing such passion. Just be aware that you're unlikely to skip out of the room after seeing it, as it literally contains the most depressing and nihilistic ending ever.  But don't skip out of the room anyway, you're not six years old. And if you are six years old, please Christ do not watch The New York Ripper.

*To briefly return to talking about sex, I believe that the extremely perfunctory backstage interaction between Zora Kerova's sex show performer and one of her co-workers can be seen as being more significant than it might first appear-after seemingly climaxing onstage in paroxysms of delight, Kerova's disinterested shrug when asked how it was pulls back the metaphorical curtain to reveal the often performative nature of sex. Even though she performs a physical act with literally nothing to hide her body, the depiction of sex offered up to the audience is not authentic, much as the copious sex scenes in the film are being performed by actors. It also highlights how depictions of sex and sexuality are often dressed up to appear as more exotic and exciting than they really are, which can fuel resentment in people of the same mindset as the killer. So, while far from everyone who consumes pornography is a deviant killer, there is [erhaps something potentially dangerous in the selling of unrealistic dreams to downtrodden people.

**To be fair, I've never been there and the filmmakers have, so they may be right.

One of those gialli which would probably be never classed as such if it'd been made in, say, Oman, this effort from Luigi Cozzi does deserve some props for approaching things from a slightly different angle to the then-norm. Saying that, it's not as if he's reinvented the wheel-rather, he's taken a Hitchcockian short film concept and spun it out into a Hitchcockian feature. Does the added time mean added tension, given that a skillful manipulation of the former is a crucial ingredient in the better examples of the latter? No, course it doesn't; if it did I wouldn't have described the film as being derived from a short film concept.

Philandering Giorgio, played by Jorge Hill Acosta y Lara, AKA George Hilton (AAKA the man born to play such roles), chances upon a killer disposing a corpse in a river in the dead of night. Thinking quickly, he devises a plan which will simultaneously rid himself of his dead-weight wife, and solve his ever-increasing financial woes-blackmail the killer into offing his missus. However, neither he nor the killer had likely banked on a couple of star-crossed lovers stealing the car whose trunk houses Mrs Giorgio's corpse. And the killer, who tracks down the lovers with mostly-remarkable alacrity, had almost certainly not banked on the male lover bringing the ditziest woman in the world back to their coastal hideaway, necessitating the killer to kill again again. And Giogio definitely certainly didn't bank on stumbling across his wife's corpse in the back of a car parked right outside his house. Although even still he should probably have dealt with the discovery in a more level-headed manner. But hindsight is 20-20, and all that.

This is a strange film, obviously shot on an extremely low budget, with a very small cast and few locations. It is a departure from standard giallo fare, which comes as no surprise given Luigi Cozzi's cinephilia. It's essentially the classic 'getting pulled over by the police with a body in the trunk of a car' scenario stretched to breaking point, possibly inspired by Hitchcock's then-recent Frenzy. Its departures from giallo norms are legion, although there is some crossover-the soundtrack, for one, sounds extremely modern even today, and there is an investigation of sorts, even if the police inspector is far from a central character (but given the paucity of same, he's still about 4th lead).

The killer, played by Antoine Saint-John, AKA Max Schweik from The Beyond,   has a very creepy face, which is no doubt why he was cast (it's difficult to know for sure whether-as seems likely-he was an extremely limited actor, or just playing a part which didn't call for any nuance of performance). Sporting a permanent sheen of sweat, he looks like a skeleton hungry for the meaty flesh of women. And this is a predilection shared by the film (one could generously argue that 'film' should be replaced with 'marketplace' there), particularly in a bizarre late scene which cross cuts between a lovemaking scene between the male car thief and the stranded motorist he picks up, and a harrowing rape inflicted upon the female thief by the killer. 

This scene is probably intended to contrast tender love with the ugly flipside of sex, but doesn't really work because the 'tender love' scene a) involves a guy who's cheating on his girlfriend with the ditziest Femi Benussi character ever conceived (and those familiar with her filmography will attest that that is a hard-won accolade) and b) is filmed in such a way as to give maximum exposure to the actress' vagina. The rape scene is filmed in a slightly more impressionistic style, with the actress' body reduced or confined to a series of close-ups, conveying a sense of the objectivity with which the killer views her. The killer character doesn't really gain anything from the scene, however-in fact, his opening few seconds of screen time, which shows him fondling the breast of a woman he's just killed, provides pretty much all the characterisation he gets. There's a bit of aural experimentation on a couple of occasions, with his deep, gutteral breathing foregrounded, but this backfires on the second occasion in particular, as he sounds like a zombie (apt, given he'd go on to be one in The Beyond) and walks with a particularly slow, zombie-like shuffle, which is certainly different, if not overly threatening.

In common with other famous killers like Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees, Schweik here displays a preternaturally accurate homing capability. After stealing a car himself so he can give chase to the lovers who've pinched his, he unerringly sets off hot on their trail, despite the fact that they could presumable have taken an almost infinite number of routes. The pursuit does create some tension, and adds a general sense of foreboding and impending doom to the lovers' scenes, but not enough happens in the middle third of the movie. In fact, I'd argue that you could remove a 40 minute or so block from the middle of the film without losing much. You'd miss out on the classic police-stopping-the-car-with-the-corpse bit, which does have a bit of a spin here because the lovers aren't actually aware that there's a corpse in their boot, but owing to the scene's placement in the film, it's pretty obvious what the outcome will be. In fact, the frequency with which the corpse is almost discovered means that any tension inherent in the scenario so wrung out that there's no tension remaining in the scenario after a while.

One final point on Schweik's automobile pursuit-he seems to get up to all sorts of off-screen shenanigans. How else could you explain the fact that he's a mere few minutes behind the lovers as he passes through a garage, after which they're stopped by the police, only for him to then be half an hour behind them when they pass through a toll booth? (And the manner in which the toll booth scenes are shot tells you all you need to know about the paucity of budget; why build a fake booth when you can covertly film cars driving up to a real booth, then freeze-frame the action and have a conversation play out in voice over?) He then rocks up to the seaside resort seemingly hours after the kids' arrival. What's he been up to? And how the hell did he know where to go, at any point? This is a rare example of a film which would be far more plausible if it happened in the twenty first century of GPS tracking and mobile technology.

The seaside location seems fairly nice, although Cozzi doesn't go in for the sort of establishing shots which were used in sister seaside giallo Sister of Ursula and Eye of the Labyrinth to provide the illusion of a larger budget (to be fair, after the toll booth scene, he's not going to fool anyone into thinking that it's not an extremely cheap production). What little budget there was must have all gone into the absolute batshit insane production design of Giorgio Hiltonio's house, which is literally the gialloiest house ever (it's very, very, very yellow, you see). Painting Giorgio's sideburns grey must have cost a few bob too, I suppose.

This is one of the Ten Little Native Americans-inspired films, arguably being the most faithful giallo (unofficial) adaptation of the book. Is it any good though? Kinda!

After a gauzy opening sequence depicting four shot-from-the-waist-down men killing a shot-all-over young man who was busy shagging a young woman on the beach, we jump ahead twenty years. A nine-strong party is sailing to a secluded island for their annual holiday-rich patriarch Uberto, his two sons and daughter, the significant others of all of the above, and Uberto's sister Elisabetta. We very quickly discover that the family are of the Ryan Giggs persuasion when it comes to respecting familial romantic boundaries, and we gradually discover that the rich, self-centred assholes at the centre of the film may be even worse specimens of humanity than we initially thought. Still, the good news is that they're all getting knocked off, one by one, by an unseen killer who purports to be Charlie, the murdered dude from the opening sequence.

While not a top tier giallo, this film does score points for a rigorous adherence to logic, only to immediately lose them for being somewhat overly predictable. The killer's identity shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's seen more than a handful of murder mysteries (SPOILERY hint: if someone is presumed dead, with no body found, it's likely that we haven't seen the last of them) or who's read the Christie source material, which hinges on a similar twist. The solution is so straightforward that one of the characters cracks the case (at least, claims to) early on, but chooses not to intervene because they're enjoying having their inheritance percentage bumped up with every bump off.

This leads to a schizophrenic climax, where the unmasked killer is being pursued by the survivor, which is standard procedure. The difference is, however, that the film's, and most of the audience's, sympathies lie firmly with the killer. The character who's cracked the case and chosen not to act has arguably been passively responsible for the final few murders (although you wouldn't want to extrapolate that logic to apply it to too many real world scenarios), and they then assume the mantle of the 'ultimate' killer (or, perhaps more accurately, they resume the mantle). They're certainly a less sympathetic and likeable character than the 'main' killer, who arguably turns out to be the most normal person in the entire film (discounting the boat's crew, who are summarily dispatched early on).

One obstacle to the audience's guessing the main killer's identity (SPOILERS AHEAD) is potentially a lazy mistake from the filmmakers, and potentially an intriguing hint towards a second killer operating throughout. The boathands are dispatched by both hands of a killer in a wetsuit, who we see escaping overboard after completing the act. Now, at the risk of offending Sofia Dionisio, I'm pretty certain that the person in the wetsuit is not her, but a male man. This is either poor body doubling/lax framing, or else we're genuinely meant to pick up on the visual cue and assume that the killer is a man. That might seem at first glance like a cheat, but Dionisio's Carla does mention that the first person she killed was XXX, a murder which occurred after that of the boathands. It's possible that she was discounting them as not being worth noting, given that they were merely collateral damage,. However, another explanation is that they were killed and the boat cast free by another family member, likely as part of an inheritance scheme. It doesn't really matter who did it, in a way, as every single potential male suspect is a killer, as is Carla.* 

As I've stated, the end reveal isn't especially earth-shattering. We do get another twist, however, at around the hour mark. The opening gauzy murder, it turns out, was the four leading male characters murdering Aunt Elisabetta's lover Charlie, apparently for the crime of being poor. So, essentially, it turns out that the family (and in-laws) are all absolutely mental. There had been clues that they weren't all there-Venantino Venantini walking around in a pair of Daisy Dukes, and the fact that they chose to bury Charlie in a shallow grave right at the shoreline of the beach-but this revelation is the beginning of the process which ends with us cheering on the killer in the final showdown. The isolated setting works especially well as a cloak to mask the mass insanity, as interactions with the outside world would doubtless reveal the cracks before long.

There's a secondary twist/revelation which isn't foregrounded, or even remarked upon at all, but which is attendant to the reveal of the killer's backstory. Namely, Massimo Foschi has been shagging his cousin. Not the worst crime in a tale of multiple murders, but a bit icky nonetheless. Saying that, given the sexual proclivities of the family members, there's every chance that some cousin-shagging would've been willingly considered in any case.   (SPOILEYS END)

To sum up, this is a solid, enjoyable film which pushes the envelope slightly with its pantheon of villainous characters, but which plays it safe and sound with regard to the plot. The nominal lead actor is killed off surprisingly early, which may have been an attempt at some Psycho-style machinations, or merely an indication that there was no clear 'star' among the nonetheless largely familiar cast. The cinematography and soundtrack are well above average, and extreme props to Mr Baldi for not even bothering to offer up a reason as to why no-one telephones for help. A visit from the mainland police is obviously never going to happen; we have nine guests, and nine guests only (once the boathands are killed) for the titular crime. We know that, Ferdinando knows that, so why waste valuable screentime offering a pat explanation for  the lack of a phone call, when there are tits to be filmed?

*Another glimpse of a male killer comes during a strangulation scene. Although the snatch of a face somewhat resembles Massimo Foschi (and thus Cameron Mitchell), I'm fairly sure that in this instance the killer is meant to be Carla, and the fleeting glimpse is another error of framing.

It seems that by 1978 filmmakers had largely given up on trying to  attract punters by making gialli of a comparable standard to the classics of the previous decade or so; instead they adopted a stripped back approach, both in terms of plot and costume.

Ursula and the sister of Ursula, Dagmar (no wonder she prefers to go by the titular monicker) have grown up in boarding schools, cut off from their parents. After their father dies and leaves them an inheritance, they check in to a swish/rundown (I'm not sure how it's meant to come across) hotel on the coast. It soon becomes apparent that Ursula might not be in the best of mental health, as she seems incapable of basic human interaction, and also claims to be psychic. After a while, she claims that her father is not dead, and has followed them to the hotel. The various hotel guests fuck their worries away only to be dispatched one-by-one by a disembodied pair of eyes who sports, in silhouette form, a suspiciously perpendicularly-angled erection, which seems to double as a weapon (just like mine could, but I'm gentle with it). Is the killer the cuckolded hotel manager? Is it Marc Porel's twitchy drug addict, who is intermittently interested in Dagmar? Or has the girls' father returned from the grave to kill loads of women with his cock for some reason?

This film follows the form and logic of a porno, with the first stripping-to-lounge-music sequence occurring sooner than it would in many of its contemporary x-rated features. It doesn't quite cross the line into hardcore, but the parade of flesh and fucking cums quite close on occasion, not least in a bizarre climactic (in terms of when it occurs in the film) scene in which the hotel's middle-aged manager goes to town on the ass of his singing protégé, Stella Shining. Ms Shining performs the same shitty ballad every night in the lounge of the hotel, and is spoken of in reverential terms which would suggest she's a huge star. You'd have to ask the manager to confirm or deny this rumour though (I apologise for this excellent-but-dirty joke, butt I'm just engaging with the film on its own terms).

This isn't a good giallo, or a good film. It does deliver in the skin-and-sleaze department though, which was definitely the main focus of the filmmakers. The mystery is perfunctory at best (SPOILERS AHEAD), although one could almost view its solution as a weird double-bluff. Boiled down to basics, the plot concerns two sisters, one of whom is mental, arriving in a coastal hotel. Straight away, people start dying. Pretty standard set-up for a giallo, down to the fact that the sisters are from foreign (Austria in this case). Of course, the obvious solution-the crazy newbie is the killer-can't be the actual solution, because that's not how these films work. Except, in this case, that's exactly what's happening!

If we generously allow writer/director Enzo Milioni to claim the end revelation as a double-bluff, the title of the film could also fall into this category. Dagmar, the Sister of Ursula, is the closest thing to an audience identification figure/cipher in the film (she even has a wank halfway through). She seems to have the least to hide of all the characters, and such blandness is usually a sign-to seasoned giallo-watchers, at least-that the filmmakers are attempting to sneak the killer into centre stage right under our noses. Therefore. the way the film's title ultimately refers to Dagmar while more directly highlighting Ursula is actually a neat micro-example of this 'sneaking' in action. 

So, an hour or so into the film, when your appreciation for sex scenes has reached capacity (although be prepared to raise the limit of said capacity once you get to the insane ass-eating scene), your mind might wander towards the environs of the plot. Suddenly, you might realise that you're watching a film which is named after a character who seems least likely to have anything happen to them, or to be responsible for anything bad happening. "Aha," you might think to yourself, "Nice try Enzo! But I am wise to you. I shall citizens arrest Dagmar straight away, so the denizens of this hotel can continue their soulless rutting without fear of being dildoed to death." But you'd be wrong to think that.  If the title was a clever double-bluff by Milioni, designed to get us to overthink things and suspect Dagmar, bravo sir.

And yes, I did say 'dildoed to death'. Well, you did, in your mind, as you read this. That's right-the curiously-angled silhouette is not that of a real-life phallus; it's a huge wooden dildo which reposes fairly blatantly on  the dresser in the sisters' bedroom. I knew about the method of killing before I watched this film for the first time, so I can't comment on whether Milioni did the smuggling trick successfully with regard to weapon. Given that one scene begins with a CU of the dildo, racking onto Dagmar as she enters the room, it's probably fair to say that most semi-attentive viewers would've noticed it (and the weird silhouette shots during the murder scenes doesn't help Enzo's cause either). However, even the shot described above seems to link the dildo to Dagmar, and could again be interpreted by on-the-ball viewers as an attempt to cleverly tell us who the killer is without us realising. Of course, Ol' Clever Viewer is too clever to fall for that, except he's not-he's fallen fair and square for Enzo's entrapment! Bravo sir, again. (I'm almost certain that these 'Bravo sirs' have not been actually earned). But anyway, even if it seems like Dagmar must exist to do more than cue us to wank and walk around frowning (Stefania D'Amario had a fucking lovely frown though; check her out in Zombie Flesh Eaters for more of the same), it turns out that she does not.

I haven't written much on Michael Mackenzie's M-giallo and F-giallo distinctions before*, but I'll briefly outline the defining characteristics of both: M-gialli have male protagonists who drive investigations into a series of murders, whereas F-gialli have passive female protagonists, who are threatened and menaced throughout, before (hopefully) surviving. That's not to say M-giallo protagonists are all about control; Argento's characters, in particular, continually strive to exert a level of control on proceedings, and are continually undercut by external (often feminine) forces. As with any retrofitted categorisation of films, there are multiple examples which straddle the dividing line of the M- and F-. Fortunately, Mackenzie doesn't attempt to brush such examples aside in order to push a reductive theory, as so often happens in film studies; he's much too smart for that, and is most interesting when discussing films which don't neatly fit into his own categories.

This film pretty much does fall neatly into the F-giallo category, with one caveat-there is a male character conducting an investigation. However, he's not the main character, and we don't actually know about the investigation until the film's climax. Still, if the film took a different approach, Marc Porel's undercover narc could've found himself at the heart of a classic M-giallo. Well, he could've if he showed any interest at all in the series of murders which is occurring right under his nose. Instead, he shows admirable focus/reckless indifference to stick to his task of breaking open a drug smuggling ring. Indeed, he seems delighted when he finds the dildoed-to-death corpse of Stella Shining, seeing it as the 'closing of the ring' (I won't make another ass-related joke here; I'm above such base carry-on, and besides, writing this has essentially made the joke for me anyway) needed to box off his case. This despite Stella being a potential key witness as well. Maybe he was actually taking some of the heroins he was pretending to consume to play the role of undercover junkie (Porel certainly was consuming heroins in real life, sadly), and wasn't thinking straight.

He certainly wasn't possessed of the supernatural powers which a doctor (!) tells Dagmar are inherent in all men "to defend themselves against natural events like hunger, fear." Or maybe he was, as he seems reasonably well fed, and doesn't get too frightened at any point. But the real supernatural prowess is displayed by Ursula, with her apparent clairvoyance leading her to predict Dagmar's dating mishaps, and her own death. (She's obviously loathe to alter the path fate has chosen for her, or else she'd surely have not stood in front of an open window at the end of the film.) The supernatural element can be seen as being influenced by the Argento films of the time, or it could merely have been a device used to help introduce the character of the girls' father as a potential killer, even though he's dead. Ursula claims to have seen him, so has he come back as a ghost? Is he not really dead at all? Or is she just a bit nuts?? The accuracy of her (fairly low-key) predictions sets her up as a potential psychic, and means that we may take her word that she's seen her father, against all available and rational evidence. **

The music, including Stella Shining's warbly song, is mostly pretty shit, with a regular heavy porno vibe. The one exception is the driving synth score which leaps into life for the murder scenes, coming across like a mix of the Halloween and Absurd scores (and written before either of those). The seaside scenery is pretty beautiful, leading to a far more visually-pleasing film than the subject matter deserves (I could argue that Milioni deliberately sets such a grittily-themed film in beautiful environs to heighten the contrast between low and high, but I've already cut him more than enough slack). There are a couple of non-sex WTF moments too: an early scene involving a glass of sedatives being passed back and forth between the sisters anticipates the bribe scene in Naked Gun, and a shot of a dog which holds long enough that you know the editor has noticed the same thing as I did-the dog has the face of a man! Mental! But thien again this is a very, very mental film.

*Check out his thesis 'Gender, Genre and Sociocultural Change in the  Giallo: 1970-1975' or his excellent featurettes on most of the recent Arrow giallo releases for more.

**You could argue that the father is the killer, given that Ursula seems to be channelling him for her murderous shenanigans, but you'd pretty much be wrong. It is worth noting that the early reference to a large inheritance seems to set the scene for a potential appearance from the girls' estranged mother, giving two characters a presence in the film despite never actually appearing on-screen. It also sets up the film as taking the classic inheritance-scheme route, when it's actually one of the psycho-killer ones.

Yowza. This is a long, long was from Mario Bava or Dario Argento. Or Sergio Martino. Or anyone who made gialli with a modicum of style and class. Well, that's not entirely fair, as there is a definite stylistic approach here, albeit one designed to generate a maximum of footage on a minimum budget, as I'll discuss presently. But first, here's a brief description of some rapes and murders.

Inspector De Pol, played by a young boy with a fake wig and moustache (/an allegedly 33 year old Jeff Blynn), is trying to solve a double murder. The victims, a young couple called Fabio and Flavia, liked drugs (the only thing we see him write in his police notebook is 'Flavia, Fabio-drugs') and sex. Well, Fabio liked sex, of a peculiarly perverted bent, and Flavia went along with it, for the most part. We know this because lengthy flashbacks of their romantic escapades make up a good proportion of the running time. Anyway, some photos of an orgy which are found in their apartment lead them to one of the participants, Marzia, an old school friend of Flavia's (who must have been kept back several years). She's the subject of threatening phone calls from her ex, who murders a prostitute who also featured in the orgy pics. After a couple more murders, the ex is apprehended. He confesses to the three kills we've witnessed, but claims that he had nothing to do with the Fabio/Flavia killings. This turns out to be accurate when a local nosey parker, who was previously interviewed by the police, suddenly decides to come clean with some vital info which quickly leads young De Pol to the grim truth. Then the film's over, and it's time to take a long, cleansing shower.

Where to start? This is an absolutely insane film, which is clearly an incredibly cynical attempt to attract a cross section of audiences who enjoy the baser things in life. Specifically sex, rape and torture. The mystery aspect is risible, with the attempts of the police to identify suspect numero one, Marzia's ex, being woefully inadequate. They end up IDing him by tracing the sale of a gun he used; why didn't they follow the threatening ex angle more, and get an ID on him that way? Granted, the threatening ex wasn't necessarily the killer, but he was certainly a prime candidate. And, as it turns out, he was the killer. 

Well, he was the killer of three people (and we see him, face and all, during all three, so I'm not spoiling anything here). The initial mystery-who killed the Fs-lasts right throughout the film, until the sudden change of heart from the peeping tom. He has a nerve to greet the Inspector by saying he's been waiting for him to pay him a visit; the police already talked to you you old fool! 

So the plot is stuttering, at best. But the plot is only a minor player in this film; it mostly exists to show tits and torture. The flashbacks to Flavia and Fabio (whose sexual problems may be related to the fact that he looks suspiciously like Barry Manilow) are interminable; we get a sense of their characters within a couple of minutes-he likes drugs* and can't have straightforward sex; she goes along with it, for the most part, because she loves him. Once that's established we remain with them for a long, long time, to little end. Well, we do get to see Leonora Fani masturbating, and then being raped by Barry Fabilow, but is it worth the huge amount of screen time these acts take? (Yes and no, respectively, is my answer.)

The rape turns into a classic Peckinpah Rape, with Flavia seemingly won over by Barry's limp persistence, in the first of several fairly distasteful sequences. It's also not the only Peckinpah Rape, either. When you're crossing your fingers that a late scene remains a straightforward rape, without taking yet another about turn to become a PR, something's deeply wrong. Still, is it Peckinpah Rape if it's with your wife or partner? Of course it is! That was a trick question to weed out the dickheads.  If you answered no, piss off and enlighten yourself. But yeah, the numerous sex scenes cross the line in more ways than one.**

So, the film contains near wall-to-wall sex. Inspector De Pol says that the key to the case is sex (although he says the same re: drugs minutes before), and sex is integral to the plot, if not necessarily smoothly integrated to the film itself, with the fleshy scenes occasionally performing a narrative function, but more often than not grinding everything (except one grinding thing) to a halt, a la porny sex.

Things also grind to a halt for a gruesome torture/gore sequence, which is surprisingly effective. Most of the gore is passable, at best, and the effects in this sequence aren't perfect, but the concept of the scene (naked woman tied to a table's leg is sawed open [her leg, not the table's]) is icky enough, and one or two of the money shots are queasily powerful. The killing of the prostitute, via a scissors to the (UK & Ireland) fanny is also conceptually disgusting, but rather less effectively executed, with the dummy legs looking particularly fake. I hesitate to say it, but a much tighter framing would probably have benefited the scene. The thigh sawing scene actually finishes in a similar manner, but with slightly more restraint (PUN ALERT [the woman's restrained, remember]), which works much better.

Jesus, it's impossible to talk about this film without being infected by its extreme scuzziness. Anyway, to return to the question of style I raised in my introduction; there is a discernible style/approach in most of the scenes, and it's straight from the Jess Franco school of timesaving filmmaking. Time and again we get very long takes, with the camera panning and zooming from a fixed point. That way you get constant movement and (semi-)dynamism from a minimum of set-ups. There are very few shots in the film compared to the average 70s effort (and especially compared to the average modern-day one). This allows you space to contemplate how exactly your love of the filone, which was doubtless ignited by the Bava/Fulci/Argento/Martino classics has led you down this dark, dark alley.

There is something compelling about the film, in that you can't quite believe that something like this was commercially released and competently made (the soundtrack, which does mostly consist of recycled cues from Interrabang!, is impressive, and the camerawork is consistently good, in that the lengthy takes are competently framed and operated). One or two scenes do even approach a Franco-esque level of erotic charge (one of which-a brilliantly-soundtracked sequence of a coupling turning into a threesome in a cinema-features a surprise wanking cock), although there's so much sex and nudity that some of it had to be effective by the law of averages. There are way too many rapes for comfort, and the plot is borderline derisory-why did Marcia open the door to her apartment the night after her rapist/lover has been murdered? And how were there not more witnesses to Barry and Flavia's deaths, given the heavy boat traffic passing through in the background? But still, you don't watch this film for the Christie-esque plotting. And, be honest, you do want to watch it after reading this, don't you? You sick, sick bastard.
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*He's not great at taking drugs though; his first toot of coke sends most of it dispersing into the air
**They cross the line in two ways; morally and in the ropey adherence to the rules of camera placement