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!). 

 And so we come to the third and final entry in Massimo Dallamano's sexy schoolgirl series, also known as the 'Schoolgirls in peril' trilogy. He didn't direct this one himself, having sadly died in a car crash a year or two before filming, although his script remained in place (there are six credited writers, but it's hard to say if some of them came on board after his death to rework the material, or were involved beforehand, or were just credited for quota purposed).

After the discovery of the mutilated body of a schoolgirl in a large waterfall-dam type-thing. Inspector Di Salvo is tasked with solving the case. Under pressure for a swift resolution due to the prestigious circles in which the victim moved, Di Salvo refuses to toe the line, and gradually uncovers evidence of a sex ring involving young, lovely schoolgirls, and further evidence that links this ring to certain pillars of the community.

There may have been six writers contributing to this film, but the end result is lacking in depth or nuance to an alarming degree. Coming across as a hodgepodge of the two previous films in the trilogy, What Have... Solange and Your Daughters, this film combines sex rings and teenage abortions with motorcycling patsies and sprinkles them over the by-now-standard schoolgirl shagging shenanigans. These shenanigans could be said to constitute the reveal to one of the film's mysteries, specifically what caused the death of Angela, the discovery of whose corpse, replete with a mysteriously mutilated vagina, kickstarts proceedings. 

However, anyone who was familiar with Red Rings' canonical heritage wouldn't have considered the provenance of her injuries to be a mystery-it's a sequel to the schoolgirl sex films, so she was clearly involved in some schoolgirl sex which went wrong. Of course, you might be expecting some sort of clever double-bluff, but the longer you watch the film, the more you'll realise that this is unlikely to be the case. Interestingly, Alberto Negrin-who replaced Dallamano in the director's chair-does throw in a reference for those familiar with the film's giallo heritage, when the camera focuses on a leather glove on a character's bedside table. At this point in the film, we haven't as yet seen any leather-gloved killings, so the uninitiated (and stupid) might mistake the shot's focus to be fashion-oriented. If you're being charitable you might also say that the scene in which Fabio Testi's Di Salvo meets the teachers at Angela's exclusive boarding school is an homage to the same scene in Solange, as opposed to a lazy copy-and-paste job (there's even a teacher who arrives late, mirroring Testi's own entrance in Solange).

The other mystery the film presents is the identity (/ies) of the person (/people) going around killing anyone who seems to have knowledge of the underage sex ring.* The final revelation was presumably designed to be a huge shock, but it falls slightly flat (SPOILERS ahead). A large reason for this is that the film regularly employs the classic giallo eyeball close-up, but frames the eye in too wide a shot. This means we can clearly see the eyelash colour of the eye-owner, which mightn't be an issue if the eyelashes were a nondescript colour (anything but ginger). Alas, however, they are ginger, so that somewhat gives the game away. (They were clearly using the actual actor for the eyeball shots too, and not a body-double.) 

(Still SPOILERS) The ginger-eyelash owner, Angela's little sister Emily, seems initially to be a typical cute child-who-helps-the-police, a la the two girls who help catch the killer in ...Daughters, but as the film progresses she becomes something more. What exactly that 'something' is, though, is unclear. Whatever it is, it's enough to see her taken cruisin' by the police at night to shoot the shit. And it's enough to allow her to be virtually omnipresent, observing the older girls who were her sister's friends almost non-stop. You wonder what her attendance record must have been like for her own classes.

It's likely that Dallamano saw her as a symbol of purity fighting against the corrupting forces which would soon begin targeting her, an assertion I'm basing on Di Salvo's treatment of her once she's 'unmasked' as an attempted killer; he basically ruffles her hair and tells her to behave herself in future, even though she's repeatedly tried to murder a girl. The fact that she targets one specific girl, again and again and again, renders her, for me, more of a psychotic killer with unrelenting focus, a la Michael Myers. Her killing skills haven't caught up with her mind just yet, but they will... I won't get into Dallamano's skewed view of women and sex here, because I've discussed it enough with regard to the earlier films, but suffice to say that none of the other five writers have, to my money, managed to slip another perspective into the script. (SPOILERS end.)

And the script, as I said above, is lacking in more than alternative perspectives on women. The investigative process is so prosaic that it becomes almost an avant-garde send up of police procedurals (which was very much not the intention). I'll point out at this juncture that I'm reviewing the film based on the German Eyecatcher DVD, which may well have been missing some footage, despite billing itself as being uncut. There are two main breakthroughs in the investigation, which lead to the unmasking of the motorcycling stooge, and sex ring mastermind respectively. 

The first breakthrough happens offscreen, after Di Salvo barges his way into a dormitory at the school and demands that the girls start talkin'. We then cut to him arriving at a strangely-located caravan, which is apparently the weekend home of the motorcyclist who carries out the sex ring's dirty work. The second breakthrough happens because Di Salvo has uncovered-again, offscreen-some info about the shady past of another suspect, a clothes shop owner who was previously charged with producing art forgeries. After asking ex-forger about this, to a wall of impassivity, Di Salvo then sits on the info for a long time before deciding to actually dig out the file on the case (his methods for uncovering this info in the first place presumably didn't extend beyond another cop casually mentioning something to him). This file provides him with the identity of the sex ring mastermind, and the case is mostly closed,with all that remains being the ruffling of a child's hair. 

This is extremely lazy plotting, and we aren't even privileged with a view of the files Di Salvo reads on his visit to the police hall of records. We are treated to a rambunctious score, but if I wanted to watch a man impassively reading with a stirring soundtrack, I'd be a rather strange individual. And, in further weak writing, once you find out the identity of the mastermind you might wonder why the file in question even exists any more.

Returning for a moment to Dallamano's favourite topic-women-the character of Di Salvo's girlfriend here is truly bizarre, even for him. We first see her through Di Salvo's eyes as he catches her shoplifting, which is apparently a common occurrence for her. She abruptly exits the film halfway through, fed up with Di Salvo running out to try and solve murders, but in her brief onscreen time she never fails to mention how she's a shoplifter. One might think she represents unrepentant criminality, or something, but she doesn't-it's just lazy characterisation. She's a shoplifter, so no need to have her do or say anything else. In fact, she may only exist at all to add to her boyf's characterisation: he doesn't just investigate murders offscreen, he also lives with a criminal!!! Wow. (Surely he doesn't need any more characterisation, though; the scene where he interrogates a suspect by taking them on a rollercoaster, and sending them on a second loop for good measure,** already marks him out as a crazy maverick.)

It may also just be an attempt at humour, something which is prevalent throughout this film in what is possibly a half-hearted nod at the comedic turn the poliziotteschi had taken in the late 70s. The humour is hit-and-miss; actually, no-it's all miss, apart from one moment where Di Salvo's partner misunderstands a question while looking at a billboard ( I won't attempt to do the joke justice here, as to attempt to do so would be to suck away what little fun exists in the film). 

That's possibly a bit harsh; it's not a terrible film, just not a very good one, and certainly not as good as its canonical predecessors (for all their faults). Alberto Negrin does seem to know his way around a giallo, but is hobbled by an extremely lacking script (which is partly his fault, as he's one of The Six). You do get more than your fill of sleazy nudity, not-quite-enough murders, and absolutely no decent investigative scenes. Oh, and you do get one of the better examples of that absurd cinematic entity-the One Sided Conversation With a Killer Who's the Audience's POV (see My Dear Killer for an even better instance of this). What you don't get, sadly, is a film worth watching.
​

Greta, whose friend and sometimes-lover Sally has disappeared while working as secretary to a famous author, manages to secure the same position for herself. Her intention is to uncover the truth about what happened to Sally, with her suspicions aimed squarely at the author, Richard Stuart, and his wife Eleanora, who practise a seemingly carefree, hedonistic lifestyle. After Richard learns of Greta's motivations for taking the job, he decides to abandon his in-progress novel in favour of beginning a new murder mystery story about a woman investigating the disappearance of her friend, which seems to contain uncanny echoes of her own situation.

​Unable to gather any conclusive evidence of the Stuarts' guilt, however, Greta finds herself becoming increasingly drawn to Richard, and convinces him to reveal the truth about what happened to Sally. Is he really divulging the truth, however? Or is  he telling the almost-truth, while omitting a key detail? Yes, yes he is.

This is a film which has a big reputation among internet fanboys, but let me tell you-it's not the plot, acting or cinematography that has won their approval. Well, the cinematography has something to do with it I suppose, specifically the decision to film the lovemaking (/rape) scene between Rosalba Neri and Barbara Bouchet in super slow motion. But yes, that scene, and the general presence of those two leading giallo lights in the same film, is what accounts for much of the hullabaloo surrounding Amuck!. Its unavailability in a watchable format for many years didn't do its reputation any harm, either. But now that it's readily available in HD formats, what's it like? (And by 'it', I don't mean the sex scene [although that does look pretty spectacular on Blu]; I mean the film).

Sadly, the film isn't all that good. The initial set-up is promising enough, with the ulterior motivation behind Greta's taking her position with the Stuarts laid bare almost immediately, followed by her taking her position for the aforementioned bare lay, but not a hell of a lot happens thereafter. The set-up is more Agatha Christie mystery than murder-heavy giallo, with the plot centred around a single murder which takes place prior to the events depicted in movie. We do eventually see  a representation (not necessarily an accurate one) of this murder, but the first 'real-time' killing happens within the final ten minutes of the film. 

A paucity of murders doesn't necessarily equate to a paucity of set-pieces, and there is a strong scene in which Greta's life is endangered during a hunting expedition.* That's about it though, apart from a mildly suspenseful sequence in which Greta has to escape from a cellar and return a key to Richard's office without being seen. There's a vague sense of gradually escalating dread, and an ever-increasing threat to Greta's life, but, as is repeatedly made clear, she herself has chosen to take up her position with the Stuarts, and then refuses to leave it, so our sympathies for her are limited.

Surprisingly, given the relatively sedate plot, we don't actually get all that big an insight into the characters. Italian genre films in general tend to be lacking on this front; they can never quite nail a comprehensive psychological investigation of a character (their preferred investigation being of the external, murder-solving sort). Saying that, one of the things we all love about these films are their moments of crazed non-sequiturs, or, to put it another way, the barmy characters doing barmy things. If the focus was on a realistic character study, the wilder eccentricities which form much of the giallo DNA would be lost. That's not to say there aren't giallo which successfully delve into the depths of the human psyche, it's just that this isn't one of them.

One of the main reasons for our inability to really get to know Greta is her lack of a friend or colleague who can act as a sounding board. She does relate her suspicions to the local police commissioner, but for much of the rest of the time she's mute, even during (one-sided) conversations with her hosts/employers. When she does speak, she displays all the hallmarks of the slightly vapid giallo heroine. One of the more egregious examples of this comes when she's trying to explain to the commissioner how Richard is toying with her with the details of his new story. She says, "He’s dictating everything to a tape recorder and... oh it’s much too difficult to explain." No it isn't! Just tell him that the recordings detail the real-life murder of your friend, you fool!  

This is an example of behaviour which could only exist in a film, along with the classic phonecall-in-which-someone-tells-the-police-they-they-know-who-the-killer-is-and-will-tell-them-face-to-face-rather-than-just-saying-the-bloody-name-over-the-phone. Barbara Bouchet actually does a good job of emoting throughout, but there's not quite enough on the page for her to work with. 

Speaking of there not being enough on the page, the mystery plot is amazingly thin. Without giving too much away (well, OK, giving too much, but not everything away) this is a film in which you're led for most of the running time to think that one thing has happened, only for a lateish semi-twist to apparently tell you that you were slightly, but not totally, incorrect. But then another twist tells you that, actually yes, you were a hundred percent right all along. Not exactly from the M Night Shymalan school of shocks. There is a late, late attempt at another twist, through the final line of the film, but this revelation doesn't actually change anything or make us reconsider anything at all. 

Considering the plot-heavy nature of Silvio Amadio's first giallo, Assassination in Rome (compare the length of my synopsis for that film with this one), the lightweight story here is something of a surprise. He was likely attempting to create more of a mood piece (a sexy mood piece at that). There are some atmospheric scenes, and the cinematography is very handsome, if never overly suspenseful. Amadio was clearly a director from the classical school, with no avant-garde Argento-esque (or even Martino-esque) touches on show here beyond the slow motion sex. For a lot of you, though, those scenes will lead to more than enough avant-garde touches. you disgusting pervs.

If this film really cost only €15,000, as claimed on Imdb, then that's a pretty admirable achievement. Not that it's an especially good film-at all-but the producers have definitely wrung every cent out of that budget. The lighting, camerawork and set design are, for the most part, pretty decent, although the more I think about it, the more the film has that increasingly-common look whereby the visuals seem to be highly modern and polished, but they're actually just desaturated, with upped contrast levels, which isn't hard to do in editing. Still, said producers have also managed to cover the day rate of both Franco Nero and Tinto Brass, which I'd have thought would alone almost account for that fifteen grand budget.

Supposedly-but not really-based on a true story, Crazy Dog, or Cannepazzo, details how Marco seeks to uncover the truth behind the identity of the titular serial kiler who murdered his father twenty years before, despite the killer being known to have committed suicide, which suggests that the truth has already been somewhat uncovered. His investigation takes the form of an interview of Raul Chinna, a famous criminologist. Chinna tells Marco about an (ironically) unreported aspect of the case, namely the investigation  into the of murders by a reporter (there's the irony) called David Moiraghi. As the interview continues, we discover more about David, as well as Marco's father, and, ultimately, Chinna himself.

This film exists very much at the periphery of the giallo. Peripheral pretty much sums it up on many levels: the audience are peripheral figures, as we watch one man tell another about the activities of a third man from twenty years before. Flashbacks-within-flashbacks abound. The slick style, probably one borne out of the necessity of masking budget deficiencies, also keeps us at a distance, as the film jumps about manically without stopping to breathe. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it's not a good enough film to be improved much by more breathing room (as such, it should probably be humanely put down by suffocation). 

By contrast, the central investigation is so central that it has two distinct layers. The superficially 'main' investigation is that of Marco, out to (re)uncover the truth behind his father's murder. However, as stated, this investigation proves to be nothing more than sitting and listening to another character speak. David, the reporter of whom Chinna speaks, conducts the second, and in many ways only true, investigation, which takes up much of the screen time but is in fact extremely lacking in terms of detective logic. The only investigative breakthrough comes thanks to some wild extrapolating from David based off a newspaper report of a missing veterinarian, from which he surmises that the killer has based himself at an abandoned location where the vet used to perform experiments on animals. Hence the killer's self-awarded title, Crazy Dog.

The investigation is so prosaic that David doesn't even manage to uncover the connection between Crazy Dog's first eighteen victims (one of whom is Marco's father) himself; instead he gets essentially kidnapped, and the connection is laid out for him by the kidnapper. As with much of the film, the plot strand of David's kidnapping doesn't really stand up to scrutiny in terms of logic and motivation. The main purpose seems to be to distract the viewer from what's really going on. This could be said to be the intent behind much of the goings-on in gialli over the years, but here the leaps of logic come across as annoying and distancing, rather than being charming and eccentric.

I won't spoil the ending, with its twin revelations, but I will say that I guessed them both extremely early on. The twists are big, so big that they overwhelm what's come before, and are far from satisfying (and are very similar to each other). So that's pretty much it: a poor, predictable film noteworthy only for its cameos and its peripheral association with a once-burgeoning Italian filone.  The first 70-odd minutes is rendered redundant by the end revelations, and doesn't possess enough style or excitement to have made the slog through them worthwhile. The characterisation is OK in spots, as is the acting (Nero goes way OTT, and is saddled with ridiculous dialogue, but is still magnetic), but there's nothing about this film that will live long in the memory after watching it.

This film's title is coincidentally the emotional state in which I found myself after watching it.

After attending the funeral of their schoolfriend Jennifer Lopez (not that one), four girls find themselves being picked off one-by-one by a masked killer, who apparently is another, forgotten, schoolfriend. Oh, and they still find the time to take drugs and have sex. A lot of sex.

The film, billed as the first American giallo,* unfolds out of chronological order (which was very 'in' in the late 90s/early 00s), which adds absolutely nothing of value to proceedings. That's not surprising, though-pretty much nothing in the film could be considered as having any value. The cinematography is (I think; the DVD is shockingly-poorly authored) terrible, the acting worse, and the script makes the cinematography and acting look Not Too Bad.

The most impressive thing about the film is that its makers managed to persuade six actresses to disrobe (and, I think in at least one case, actually have sex) on camera for something which is as no-budget and low-hope as this is. An end-of-end-credits title card informs us that the director had identified "stylish visuals, techno scores, the whodunit element, violence, gore, large amounts of melodrama... (and) liberal amounts of nudity & sex" as being the hallmarks of the giallo genre. He's not wrong (apart from the techno bit), so it's a shame that he proves incapable of making something which showcases this knowledge of the filone. Sure, there is an extremely liberal amount of nudity and sex, but that's not an exclusive hallmark of the giallo film. The rest of the elements identified as being integral to the giallo are MIA.

The actresses were likely chosen for their aforementioned willingness to disrobe. They certainly weren't chosen for their acting talents; scenes which don't include bath-wanking, clothes-changing, showering or sex-having tend to depict the girls struggling to believably portray taking drugs, or chatting in monotones about men. The idea seems to have been to incorporate some earthy social realism into the mix, to pay lip service to issues such as drug addiction and eating disorders. The problem is, the characters don't really need to eat anything, so paper-thin are they.

And, for a film which features many scenes of women talking, it still struggles to pass the Bechdel test, such is the concern of the characters with looking good and impressing their men. Not to say that some women aren't like that IRL (in real life, yeah?),  but I'd say it's unusual for two of them to, as happens here, have an in-depth conversation about how they don't want to lose their boyfriends only to immediately launch into full-on lesbian action. Especially when they're sunbathing at a public beach (it must have been cold, or early in the morning, though, as there are no background artists visible at any stage on the ensuing scenery-munching scene).

The mystery which is notionally at the heart of the plot-who is killing these girls-is not one which seems to concern any of them at any point. Indeed, this may be the one justification for messing around with the timeline-if we lose track of how many of the friends are dead at a given point, we're less likely to pick up on their apparent total indifference to their predicament. There are a couple (literally) of suspects, but the longer the film plays the more you realise that we're just going to be treated to a last-second reveal, with no layers of mystery to be penetrated (unless you find the vagina an impenetrable mystery, in which case I would say you're in for a treat, except the shoddy image quality will likely only add to the vaginal mystique). 

The kill list-a list of the five main characters' names on a white board, with those who're killed marked off-is a decent, if not original, idea, which at least provides some semblance of a coherent structure. It did remind me that we never actually saw one of the characters being murdered though, so the kill list is at best a qualified success. And, the handwriting is very sloppy. 

Not seeing one of the characters being murdered barely qualifies as a letdown here, given that we'd have seen much even if the kill did happen onscreen-most scenes play out in static, poorly lit, poorly framed wide shots, with gore minimal at best. The grading is even worse, with much of the action playing out in tinted, monochromatic 'style' which can surely never have seemed like an actual good idea. 

The director, Sean Weathers,** was very young when he made this. I don't want to be too harsh on him, but he's since gone on to make over a dozen further features, so hopefully he's long since moved on from the level he displays here. He seems nice enough in the extra features, and the self-belief on display is admirable, if horribly misplaced. Still, he should focus on the positives-he seems to have had a prodigious talent for easily convincing women to take their tops off, which is something that, as the late 2010s unfolds, it appears is not shared by a large proportion of other males in the American film community.