One of the films which was made in the period following Blood and Black Lace in which the giallo had yet to fully establish its parameters, The Murder Clinic is often referred to as a gothic horror. While it does take place in an old, crumbling mansion (which'll be familiar to anyone who's seen Blood for Dracula or Slaughter Hotel), it's definitely more gial than goth.

After dumb (mute) Janey acts in an extremely dumb (stupid) way upon finding an intruder in her sanitorium bedroom (she runs away from the heavily-populated house to the dark and isolated woods), she's brutally slashed to death by a hood-wearing maniac. The killing is covered up by the sanitarium's owner, shifty Dr Vance, and his ratchety head nurse, Sheena. Together they convince newly-arrived nurse Mary that Janey's family arrived at dawn to take her away. Dr Vance then takes a trip to the hills to dispose of the body, where he's witnessed by Gisele, an unscrupulous woman who we've just seen club her husband to death (to be fair, he seemed to have aspersions towards doing the same to her). Gisele stages a 'chance' meeting with Dr Vance, and he takes her back to his sanitarium where she immediately sets about amassing enough info for a spot of blackmail. Meanwhile, Vance's horrifically-scarred sister-in-law, Laura. stalks about in the upstairs attic, his wife grows ever-more distant, the patients roam about the corridors at night (Vance apparently not being a big believed in locks), and the hooded killer gets ready to strike again. And again and again.

Well, maybe not again and again. This is one of those films with an early box-ticking murder which then settles down for a long period of watching people watch other people act shiftily. It's definitely one of the better examples of such a film though, and things don't really drag until the final couple of reels (which, admittedly, is a pretty fatal flaw; that's when things should be amping up). The vast majority of the film takes place in and around Dr Vance's sanitarium, which gets nice and dark at night, lending an easy gothic touch to proceedings. Occasionally too dark, in fact, for us to see what's going on (possibly a fault of Film Art's Blu ray, but I don't think so).  There's some decent storm action early on, and the 19th century setting allows for a lot of candles, and adds to the general sense of isolation, and imprisonment, of the inmates and residents of the sanitarium. To cap it all off, you have the classic trope of the mad woman in the attic (as with all the residents and inmates, apparently free to roam as she pleases at night), so those of you who love your gothics will find much to enjoy here.

Laura, the aforementioned mad woman, has a long line of antecedents, among them the likes of Jane Eyre's Bertha, but also has more contemporary connections, most obviously the tragically deformed characters at the heart of Eyes Without a Face and The Awful Dr Orloff.  The attempts of Vance to perfect skin graft techniques through experiments on animals doesn't exactly chime with the period setting, though (saying that, rudimentary grafting procedures did indeed take place in the nineteenth century). Still-isn't Vance a head doctor (and THE head doctor of the sanitarium; ithankyou)? What's he doing pissing about sticking skin onto guinea pigs??

Another slightly anachronistic element is the building site on which Laura has her tragic accident (she transforms into a shapeless bundle of rags and falls into a lime pit). I might just be being unwittingly dismissive of the building techniques of the nineteenth century, but the whole thing seemed way too modern a set-up. Anyway, the flashback itself is great fun, being one of those impossibly jaunty montages where everyone seems constantly on the point of bursting into hysterical laughter, such fun are they having. But, of course, such sequences are always a prelude to a fall,  at least in these sort of films, so if you ever find yourself in one, try and internalise some of your happiness.

There's a definite krimi vibe here at times too, not least in the slightly out-there hooded robe costume sported by the killer. A costume which, coincidentally, is  exactly the same as that worn by another character at regular intervals. This is classic giallo territory-the creation of a red herring through costuming (see Torso's neckerchief and any numbers of characters who break out a pair of shiny black gloves halfway through a film). It's a nice way to cast suspicion on someone without needing them to act suspiciously per se (although here, Laura-who wears an identical cape to the killer-attracts attention for everything she does, being the madwoman in the attic). God knows there's enough characters acting suspiciously here, half of them, admittedly, being sanitarium inmates who take full advantage of Vance's open door policy.

To close, I'll briefly dissect the final couple of scenes of the film, with attendant spoilers, so stop reading NOW if you haven't-Vance's wife is the killer-seen the film. I warned you! The scene in which Lizabeth-AKA Mrs Vance-admits her guilt before expiring (having also fallen prey to the turning-into-rags-and-falling-from-a-height congenital defect which claimed her sister) sees her admit criminal responsibility for her actions, but lays the moral blame squarely at her husband's (unlocked) door. She done the murders, but only because she was jealous of her sister "and all the others." Given that we've seen Vance proclaiming his love for newbie nurse Mary mere moments before, we can kinda see where she's coming from. He's left kneeling over her corpse, the judgey gazes of his colleagues raining down on him from above, and the sense is that he'll be left bearing his guilt for the rest of his life. The period setting aids the film here, as his philandering ways would have been seen as extra-naughty back in the day.

But then, just as you're applauding a fairly middle-of-the-road film for such a deliciously dark ending, it goes and throws in some classic 'ride off into the sunset' Hollywood nonsense. Vance, passing Mary as he leaves the sanitarium for the last time (what about your patients and guinea pigs, doctor?) stops his carriage and leaps out, in an obscenely romantic gesture. It proves enough to win Mary over, and she gladly signs on to take over the role of future-scorned Mrs Vance. It's a pity that the filmmakers felt the need to ruin the searing effect of the previous scene with such saccharine nonsense. 

I bought this film because Troy Howarth, in the first volume of his So Deadly, So Perverse books, had written about it, claiming that it just about fell on the right side of the giallo boundary line. How he came to this conclusion, while tossing films like Short Night of the Glass Dolls over said line, is anyone's guess. Perhaps the terrible print used for the Retromedia release played extra-dark on Troy's TV, leading to his imagination taking over and concocting a half-imagined film out of the darkened embers which remained onscreen. Nah, I'm kidding. Fair play to Retromedia for at least releasing this, and I'll call Troy's bluff and review this as a giallo. It kind of is, I suppose, in a way.

After a weird hippie gives him a gift of a mannequin (?!), frustrated artist John Ward does what anyone  would do-he takes her home and dresses her up like a prostitute who he's just met and who let him sleep with her for free for no reason and then he fantasises that the mannequin is real and has conversations with her and starts fucking her and then imagines that she's actually his old girlfriend/muse who at some point in the recent past started sleeping around behind his back. Well, that's what I'd do anyway. Anyway, the Sensuous Doll, as the ex-gf/muse seems to be credited, becomes more overt and brazen in her manising, and John becomes more and more consumed with jealousy, with shocking consequences (in a murdery, if not plotty, sense).

It's slightly unclear whether the portion of the film detailing the breakdown of John's relationship (and mind) is a flashback, or if its a subjective depiction of his reliving his recent past through the mannequin. If it's the latter, he engages in a lot of supposition and extrapolation when imagining conversations between other people to which he did not bear witness. Logic suggests it's the former, until an end-of-film 'revelation' tells us that John has been seen chatting away to the mannequin, apparently re-enacting scenes from their past. 

I suppose if you view everything as occurring through the crazy filter of Crazy John's mind, it would explain one or two things. For example, the Sensuous Doll's forgiving her clandestine lover-played by Venantino Venantini-abandoning her for a sojourn in Barcelona when he shows her a plane ticket as proof that he was indeed abroad, and not aboard a broad (although he may, of course, have been aboard a broad while abroad). Anyway, why does that plane ticket also gain loverboy his forgiveness-he still abandoned her! (And, he keeps bloody raping  her too.*)  Even after we seem to have left John's warped perspective behind, the film resolutely refuses to settle down and behave normally. The police apparently decide not to bother investigating whether or not the Sensuous Doll ever did exist as a real person, instead *SPOILER* arresting John for mannequin murder *END SPOILER*. I say 'spoiler'; anyone who has seen any Italian film ever will know where this is going based on the synopsis above. And this film, even though it's technically Italian-Turkish**, is no different.

That's one of the most disappointing things when considering this film as a giallo; the lack of a twist or surprise to liven things up. Even the mannequin aspect, while bizarre, isn't exactly original; Mario Bava had well and truly been there and done that before. The central figure of the tortured artist is also pretty much a classic cliché, even if here he's possibly less tortured and more batshit crazy. If I wanted to stretch this piece out, I'd ruminate on the possible metaphorical significance of the Sensuous Doll as representative of a piece of art which takes on a life of its own, leaving its creator languishing in the dusty doldrums. Sort of like how a director of a successful film for which the star takes all the plaudits might feel. However, from browsing his filmography it doesn't seem like Renzo Russo was the victim of anything of the sort. In fact, this film being a success may have prevented his career seemingly stopping stone dead after its release.

It's not terrible; Farley Granger is always fun to watch, even if he must've been hard up for cash at this stage in his career, such was his omnipresence in Italian genre fare. And Erika Blank and Krista Nell are pretty good to look at as the dolls (calling their characters the Sensuous Doll and Subservient Doll respectively pretty much defines the parameters by which they should be judged, so I can objectify them, thank you very much). There's some good location footage of Istanbul, and the hippie scene is one of the better examples of how middle-aged Italian directors were all at sea when it came to engaging with the counterculture.

​There are also moments of visual style, with some neat scene transitions involving characters walking 'through' the camera (again, not original-Bava and Margheriti in particular were fond of this-but you'll find some well-crafted examples of it here). The music is pretty poor for the most part, apart from one unbelievably beautiful and haunting theme, replete with warbly Edda dell'Orso-style vocals, which plays as the mannequin first comes to life. Despite some shaky handheld camerawork, the acting, lighting and (especially) music combine to create a moment of almost transcendental beauty, as the disconnected, damaged artist finds momentary kinship and acceptance and even love, albeit only within his crazy mind.

So, all in all, this is barely a giallo, and doesn't really bring much to the table. I may reassess if I get a chance to view a better presentation than is currently available, but then again I definitely won't. Still worth watching for that transformation scene, though, and then you can sit back and let the nonsense wash over you like a lovely, albeit rape-scented, Turkish bath.

I'll preface this review/ramble by saying that I've only seen the US version of this film, which is slightly shorter than the original, and has different music cues. Shorter though it may have been, it was nonetheless very much long enough...

Inspector Franz Bulon is hot on the trail of a drug-dealing gang who keep offing suspects just as he's about to take them in. He's also on the trail of his hot wife, whom he suspects of infidelity. Does that last bit make grammatical sense? Probably. You know what I mean, anyway. But yeah, Bulon tracks down the assassin, Sexy Max, but decides against taking him in. Instead, he cuts a deal: Sexy Max will kill his possibly unfaithful wife, and Extremely Unprofessional and Crazy Bulon will overlook all the other murders. But that's not the end of it; strap in for a couple of slight twists which will literally make you breathe normally.

As you may have gathered, I don't overly rate this one. The characters are all extremely unlikable, which isn't necessarily an issue, but they're also so fucking stupid. Max, played by Robert Hoffmann (an actor who frequently gets slammed for being bland, but he's perfectly fine here), gets caught after he leaves his trademark lucky dollar right beside one of his victims; Bulon is incompetent on any number of levels. As for Lisa-who's supposed to be a mysterious femme fatale figure-the only mystery here is how she can be so blithely reckless without getting herself killed. (That's not a spoiler; the film begins at its end [in the US cut at least] with Lisa at a funeral wearing the titular veil, and takes the form of an extended flashback.)

The film was made in the pre-Argento days, when The Sweet Body of Deborah had supplanted Mario Bava's early works as exerting the most influence on gialli. Unlike that film, and most gialli actually, the main male characters are of the what-you-see-is-what-you-get variety, with no real hidden agendas to provide intrigue and twists. There's a slight police procedural vibe too, without too much procedure actually being on display (there's no real need; the film-taking after its male characters-doesn't hold many cards close to its chest, so we know the murderer's identity, for example, almost immediately). And the policing-Christ, is John Mills's Bulon an annoying protagonist! His obsession with proving his wife's infidelity is such that you start hoping that he's right, just so all that time and energy won't have been misplaced. And, so you can watch his stupid grizzled face crumple with grief. The character is probably supposed to come across as obsessive and driven, but it's just pushed a bit too far, especially when he engages Max to kill his wife based on nothing more than a gut feeling that she's been fooling around. Where's the evidence, Mr Policeman?! And stop ignoring your co-workers when they greet you in the morning, you asshole!

There are a few twists and turns as the film progresses, but they're more like leisurely sweeping turns than sudden rug-pulls. As well as Lisa's potential infidelity, the question of whether or not she's involved in criminal activity is also bubbling to the surface, but the end reveal here is incredibly anodyne. I was hoping against hope that the criminal subplot would pack a greater punch than the fidelity one (which wouldn't be hard), but it's resolved in an extremely casual, throwaway manner, which pretty much sums up the film as a whole. 

The sexual envelope is slightly pushed, with regular flash cuts to shots of female nudity (featuring an obvious body double for Luciana Paluzzi), and Paluzzi does look pretty damn good, but the film is still under-charged sexually. The scenes with Lisa and Max might have come across as a bit steamier if I wasn't shaking my head in bemusement at her naivete in admitting him to her house (and body),when it should've been patently obvious that he was a hired assassin. I guess Lisa's just a bad girl with a death wish, or something.

Luciano Ercoli's first giallo film doesn't hit the heights of his later Death Walks films, but it's still well worth a watch. Why? Why, I'll tell you...

Pill-popping drunk Minou spends her days lounging around her moddy apartment resolving to get her life in order, while her husband spends long hours at the office. Unfortunately, her life gets even more out of order when a strange man follows her one night, before pinning her to the ground and claiming that her husband is a murderer. After a creditor of her husband turns up dead under mysterious circumstances, Minou's faith in him, and her marriage, begins to crumble. The mysterious stalker man produces apparent proof, in the form of an audio recording, of her husband's complicity in the murder, and uses this as leverage to sleep with Minou. Unfortunately, this is only the beginning of her problems, as the mysterious stalker man isn't done yet; he comes back with some forbidden photos of Minou and him having sex. Her repeated claims that she's being blackmailed fall on deaf ears due to a lack of evidence, resulting in her husband, as well as the police, being not above suspecting that the lady is going mad...*

This film was made just as  Argento's era of dominance was beginning, and it represents a juncture between the Ernesto Gastaldi-led money-grabbing schemes, and the psychosexual madness of the new wave of gialli. Here, the central plot relies upon the police mistaking one of these motivations for the other, although the long arm of the law does reach out just in time to save the day (while we're at it, the justification a leading character gives for withholding crucial information from the police until the last minute is one of the more egregious examples of 'cinematic logic', which would hold absolutely no sway in the real world).

Women take centre stage here, with Dagmar Lassander's Minou struggling against the scepticism of her husband (Pier Paolo Capponi) and the unwanted attentions of her stalker  (Simon Andreu, playing Ivan Rassimov), with only her friend Dominique (Nieves Navarro) seemingly on her side. Sexuality is in plentiful supply (which is not to say that there's much nudity, so perverts can get back in their box), with Minou's repeated submissions and humiliations contrasted with Dominique's carefree attitude to sex and sensuality. Things do go a bit far, however, when DOminique reacts to her friend's tale of her initial encounter with Andreu/Rassimov by longingly stating her wish to be the subject of similar rapey attentions. She also tries to explain away Minou's behaviour when they come clean about the adultery and blackmail, telling Capponi that his wife thought "like a woman." 

That's not to say that Minou is reduced to a passive victim. She does lean heavily on her ever-present tranquiliser pills, which seem to have little effect, but she does show some bravery in seeking to take control of the blackmail situation, even though her attempts to do so prove futile. She's on the weak side, but she does acknowledge this, and laments the powerless of women in the macho culture in which she lives, something that could almost be seen as the thesis behind Dario Argento's approach to depicting terror in his first 15 years or so of work.

Even though she does resort to drink and drugs, the film doesn't really seek to use this to suggest any ambiguity as to whether the events depicted are real or imagined. Scenes such as the ingenious talking clock sequence leave us in no doubt as to the truth in what we've seen. Instead, the promoting of this ambiguity is part of the devilish plan which targetted Minou, as evidenced by the many instances where a crucial piece of evidence which would support her claims proves frustratingly elusive when she attempts to involve her husband or the police. 

The aforementioned talking clock sequence is one such instance of this, as is a classic example of the 'cleared out apartment' scenario, where Minou brings everyone to the blackmailer's apartment only to find it completely abandoned and, apparently, looking as if it hasn't been inhabited for "years." (One can only assume that there was a healthy layer of dust, or else a particularly musty smell. Otherwise, I'd imagine it'd be quite hard to date how long a newly-seen room has been empty with any accuracy). The Inspector's investigations apparently prove that the room hasn't been inhabited for over a year, and nothing more is said of the matter-it's just one more apparent symptom of Minou's escalating paranoia and madness. Except it isn't; we've clearly seen that Andreu/Rassimov did live in the apartment, and yet the exact mechanics of how he managed to rent/inhabit it-and furnish and unfurnish it-undetected are never revealed. This is nothing new though; it seems to be an unwritten filmic rule that such disappearing acts can be pulled off without leaving a trace of evidence. It's just a shame that the characters in the films aren't aware of this rule, or else people like Minou wouldn't have such a hard time being believed.

Her pill-popping habit exists primarily as grist to the mill of the plot devised by the film's villain, in that is predisposes people to think that she's prone to madness and hallucinations. It's redolent of the portrayal of drugs in the later Death Walks at Midnight; which is to say that none of the positive effects of tranquilisers are even considered; instead, it's viewed as a Drug, which automatically makes it bad. Even the kindly doctor has no time for them. To be fair, tranquiliser abuse is definitely a bad thing, and could indeed lead to an escalation of paranoia etc, such as is apparently suffered by Minou. But alcohol abuse is also a bad thing, and yet the film doesn't seem to have any qualms about this vice; several characters, not least Minou's husband, seem to take everything that happens to them as an excuse for indulging in a cheeky whiskey.

In terms of the plot/mystery angle, the film is fairly low key. There are no murders until the final ten minutes, and precious few characters who could be considered 'suspects'. This is one of the films where we can plainly see who's menacing Minou (Andreu/Rassimov), but his true motivations, and the identity of any possible collaborators, is where the mystery lies. In many ways, the surprise here is not who's involved, but who's not. Some reasonably clever framing towards the end, which deliberately obscures the identity of one half of a bed-dwelling couple, is a moment of excellent misdirection. The filmmakers initially seem to have goofed by being too obvious in their obfuscation, only for it to turn out to be a deliberate overplaying of their hand, designed to make us condemn them for being too 'obvious'. 

The final scene does come across as rather glib, all things considered, and the attempts at deep, psychological realism-an area to which the film occasionally closely strays-  are left eating the dust of the car which drives off into the sunset. All scars, physical and psychological, are forgotten, and all is well with the world. Except, it's still the same world which represents a constant threat to women. And, one of the people in the car is the person who withheld crucial information from the police for an absurdly long time. But still, the baddies are dead, the goodies are alive, and, at the end of the day, this is a pulpy thriller designed to entertain an audience. It's on the slow end of the genre, particularly for the time it was made, but in the hands of the hugely underrated Ercoli, its emerges as a definite winner.

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.

After (very, very soon after) she begins receiving threatening phone calls and survives an encounter with an intruder in her apartment, Nicole Rochard leaves her stripping life in Paris to be installed as the countryside mistress of an English doctor, Dr Matthews.  The mysterious caller seems to think that Nicole has a cache of diamonds which were stolen by her father, a recently-murdered jewel thief. Nicole's Parisian boyfriend tracks her down in England, as does Dr Matthews' wife. Right about then she happens to disappear, later turning up drowned. After Dr Matthews survives an attempt on his life, and his wife does not, the police engage in a race against time to catch the killer before all of the shifty characters circling the case meet their demise.

This is one of the very best gialli of all time. It's not perfect-the first half hour sometimes plays like a love letter from Luciano Ercoli to Nieves Navarro's body-but it's never less than entertaining, even with a fairly extended running time (107 minutes). The direction is top notch, when Ercoli can tear his focus away from his soon-to-be-wife's ass, and the story is one of Ernesto Gastaldi's very best.

​Death Walks on High Heels provides one of the more enjoyable examples of a police-led investigation as well. The interplay between the investigating officers, Bergman and Baxter, veers between lighthearted and overtly comical, sometimes coming across as being as broad as the police banter from comedy-giallo The Weekend Murders. Somehow, this doesn't really hurt the film at all, with the jocularity of the police scenes contrasting nicely with the wild intensity of the parallel investigation of Simon Andreu, Nicole's spurned Frenchman. The relative scarcity of graphic murder scenes (there's only one full-on murder depicted-which is actually surprisingly graphic and gory-as well as a brief throat slitting at the start, although there is also a surprisingly-jarring eye-operation scene) helps keep the overall mood light, with the tone not dissimilar to that of Hitchcock in his pomp.

The parallel investigations are given almost equal screen time, and allow for a relatively non-linear approach to the plot (for a plot-driven giallo, anyway). We're privy to the information uncovered by the police, and witness snatches of conversations involving Andreu's Michel, which afford us a privileged position when attempting to figure out just what is going on. This is one of those mysteries in which almost every suspect is guilty of something; you just need to figure out what exactly is going on, and then link the motivation to the suspect. And, while there aren't quite clues provided, a logical approach to deduction should help to you land on the correct answers.

This isn't the criticism it would be for many films; for one thing, the extended length does allow for more thinking-time, and, the longer it goes on, the more your mental list of possibilities will taper towards the solution. Also, if you know your  Gastaldi gialli, you'll have a fair idea as to what the likeliest motivation behind the killings is. Still, even if you do guess who is guilty and why, it shouldn't sully your enjoyment at all; the film is much too damn fun for such trifles to really matter. It also holds up on repeat viewings, even if you might question why one character doesn't say anything when confronted with apparently decisive evidence of their guilt towards the end of the film. Well, eye tell a lie,* they do say something, but only after the truth has outed. The only other hole I could find-which isn't so much a hole as a missed opportunity-concerns Dr Matthew's reaction to the suggestion that Nicole could have been his attempted assassin. (SPOILERS) If he'd positively identified her, he'd have an iron clad alibi for her murder, and would have further strengthened his attempts to fudge her time of death. Then again, he doesn't seem to have ever been considered a true suspect (mostly, I'd imagine, with the intention of inculcating the same mindset among viewers), so doesn't really need to firm up his alibi. All the same, I can't help feeling that his reactions are designed to fool the viewers, and not psychologically consistent with his character. (SPOILERS END)

One interesting red herring-which may not even be an intentional one-concerns the resemblance of Matthews' wife to Nicole. They look so alike that I did a double take when she first appeared, so similar to Nieves Navarro does Claudie Lange look. This leads us to consider the possibility of a classic switcheroo, with one of the women assuming the other's identity. It's not overly likely, or even possible, given how events play out, but the thought does linger in the mind, distracting us. In the end, it seems to be nothing more than a coincidence, and one which wasn't even intended by the filmmakers. I'd be hard pressed to believe this, but given Ercoli and Navarro's personal relationship, it's just possible that he (and she) saw no resemblance between the two actresses, similar to the way that parents of identical twins can always tell them apart. I have to hold my hands up here and confess that I don't possess any great skills in the art of facial recognition, and often have difficulty remembering faces and telling people apart (I struggled greatly to differentiate between Anthony Steffen and Gabriele Tinti the first time I saw Tropic of Cancer, and, away from the giallo, I also couldn't tell Kevin Spacey and Russell Crowe apart in LA Confidential [in my defence, I knew who neither was at the time I first saw that film]), so this paragraph might just be an ode to my own failings as a human.

In some ways, there's not a huge amount to write about High Heels. At least, there aren't many aspects of the film which demand to be analysed. Again, not a criticism-the film is, to my mind, frothy fun from first to last (it's hard to even be mad at it for the endless nudity in the first half hour, although the bizarre blacked-up get-up Navarro sports for the first of her stripteases should raise some heckles), and easily one of the top ten gialli of all time. So, break out your blue contact lenses, put any dead bodies you have lying around on ice, and prepare for 107 minutes of pure entertainment. And then, probably best to get rid of that dead body ASAP (but have an alibi sorted, too!).