Killer Contro Killer / Death Commando

Four professional criminals are hired by an unidentified employer to infiltrate a chemical plant, steal a briefcase from the safe, and then blow the place up.

Ferrari (Albert Janni) is the vehicle specialist, an ace driver who can hotwire anything.

Jaffe (Fernando Cerulli) is the safecracker, with a penchant for paying women to do bump and grind shows for him.

Cherry (Dalila Di Lazarro) is a conwoman, expert at finding a way into any location and characterised by both a ruthless streak and her commitment to her boyfriend, Sean.




Cherry justifies her actions

Sterling (Henry Silva) is the hitman, an impassive professional whose emotionless mask conceals a fondness for animals, the proceeds from past jobs clearly having gone towards the creation of what amounts to a zoo in the grounds of his mansion.








Classic exploitation of exploitation; note the absence of the J&B bottle that would have been compulsory ten years earlier.

The job goes according to plan and without a hitch – almost too easily, in fact.


Giallo-esque man-nequin and 80s big hair

At this point the man bankrolling the job, identified only as His Excellency (Edmund Purdom) decides that the four and their contact Hagen (Franco Diogene) are too much of a risk to his plans to be allowed to live and accordingly sends his minions to kill them.

Two of the four survive – the credit to Di Lazarro for her “extraordinary participation” gives a clue that Cherry won't be one of them – and go in search of revenge...

Though formulaic and lacking most of the sense of aspiration that characterised the Milieu Trilogy of the early 1970s, allusions to The Asphalt Jungle in the characters' names and traits taking the place of more profound political and social commentary, Fernando Di Leo's Killer Contro Killers is nonetheless competently put together and always entertaining – even if the caper comedy presentation of the build up to and execution of the job (including a nude trampolining Di Lazzaro who distracts the guards so Silva can shoot them with a tranquilizer gun) and a musical interlude which seeing Di Lazzaro deliver a number may seem ill-placed against the no-nonsense hard hitting action foregrounded elsewhere for some.

Certainly it hardly deserved the release it didn't get in Italy itself, a failure that sadly signalled the end of Di Leo's career.

This inglorious fate also shows how far the pendulum had swung against the Italian B movie by 1985 compared to its heydey. With Silva's presence explicable through his fondness for working with Di Leo, few of his countrymen now saw the point in going to Italy if there was work to be found at home on some direct-to-video product. And without a moderately recognisable and bankable star name, it was more difficult to sell the films internationally, resulting in ever lower budgets and a general vicious cycle from which the Italian industry has never really recovered.










The many / few faces of Henry Silva

Those new to Di Leo would be advised to seek out the Milieu Trilogy first – that the film is double billed with the Silva starring The Boss on Nocturno's DVD, with the company having also brought out Milan Calibre 9 and Manhunt, makes this a whole lot easier – insofar as certain moments, such as the introduction of Sterling wielding a bazooka, refer to his earlier work.

In this regard one also notes how Cherry demonstrates her ruthlessness by cutting off a bodyguard's hand to take the briefcase chained to it as a possible allusion to Yojimbo, Di Leo having worked uncredited on the screenplay for Leone's Fistful of Dollars early in his career, the connection enhanced by the way the piano and percussion driven musical cue at this point and others sounding very like Morricone's work there.

Unfortunately much of the rest of the music has that horrible 80s blandness and artificiality to it, with this criticism extending into the styles and designs and technologies on display, too close for comfort and not far enough in the past to be retro. Their time, like Di Leo's, will surely come, however...

Giallo fans will note that Jaffe is shot in the eye through the peephole of his door, an ironic fate for a peeping tom which also mirrors that of Daria Nicolodi's character in Opera – albeit decidedly less spectacularly – while The New York Ripper's Staten Island ferry victim Cinzia de Ponti turns up alive and well as Purdom's secretary.






The peeping tom is perfunctorily punished

Indeed, looking at this eye trauma scene in the context of Di Leo's career as a whole and in comparison with Argento and Fulci, one wonders if Di Leo's failure thus far to gain the recognition afforded them might not have been down to a certain lack of vision.

He could be relied upon to deliver the goods – there are plenty of shoot outs, chases and things exploding here – but rarely transcended the limitations of formulas to imagine those iconic did-I-just-see-that moments that make you sit up and take notice.

The question then becomes whether he considered himself first and foremost a professional – a theme which runs through this film and his oeuvre as a whole – or an artist.

Definitely a candidate for future research...

Profondo Thrilling

Very cool Italian language giallo site:

http://www.profondothrilling.com/-/index.htm

La Terza madre trailer

Dopo Suspiria, dopo Inferno...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDEaff-gc1g

Mother of Tears

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmsq1jr8NMw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TOjHDEMQqc

Il Vedovo / The Widower

Alberto Nardi’s business isn’t going too well. Creditors are hounding him, the next installment on his mistress’s fur coat is due and the lifts designed by his company may be about to precipitate a lawsuit. The eternal optimist, he’s nonetheless supremely confident that something will turn up. All he needs is for his wife Elvira to secure his latest loan and tide him over till then...

Unfortunately for Alberto, Elvira is far smarter than he is and easily sees through his schemes – and, for that matter, those of the other businessmen who consider him an easy mark – and refuses to bail him out, much to his embarrassment and annoyance...

At this point fate intervenes as the train carriage in which Elvira was travelling is involved in an accident, plunging into a lake with the presumed deaths of all on board. Alberto can hardly hide his glee, though does his best to act with appropriate solemnity at the hastily arranged funeral.

It is at this point, of course, that Elvira, who had ironically missed the train on account of an ill-timed telephone call from Alberto, unexpectedly resurfaces, alive and kicking.

Humiliated and embarrassed still further, Alberto thus decides that if the mountain will not come to him, he will go to it and plots for Elvira to suffer an ‘accident’...

Besides showcasing the considerable talents of director Dino Risi and Alberto Sordi and being a damn funny black comedy with a lot to say about Italian mores circa 1959 and thus well worth seeing in its own right for anyone interested in Italian cinema generally, Il Vedovo proves also to have a number of points of interest for the giallo fan in the form of the modernist high-rise in which Alberto and Elvira live, the importance of the telephone to the plot and Alberto’s choice of murder weapon: the elevator.

Do yourself a favour if you get the chance...

Der Fluch der grünen Augen / Cave of the Living Dead

Six young women have died in the same small village, known primarily for the caves nearby, in the space of six months. Suspecting unnatural causes, each death occurring at the same time as a power cut, the police dispatches Interpol man Frank Dorin (Adrian Hoven) to conduct an undercover investigation.

Dorin arrives not a moment to soon – or just a moment too late – as that selfsame night yet another young woman, the serving girl at the local hostelry, is found dead. The symptoms are exactly the same as the previous victims, the kind that might be ascribed to one of the vampires said to haunt the caves, were this not the 20th century...






Warning Shadows...

Gradually, however, Dorin is forced to accept what we and the village wisewoman already know, namely that there is something to that old legend about the caves being haunted by a vampire...

At this point the question for the viewer and Dorin alike becomes who this might be.

The innkeeper, who perhaps contrived to leave the last victim sans protective crucifix on the night she was attacked even as he proclaims his fear of the vampires?

The doctor who has consistently concealed the truth from the rest of the villagers and acts suspiciously before Dorin? (“You're just wasting your time, there were no murders, you hear, no murders at all”; this said in the manner of someone sounding like they're attempting something akin to a Jedi mind trick.)


Some of the locals / suspects, any of whom could be the Vampyr...

Thomas, the deaf outsider, or John (John Kitzmiller), Professor von Adelsberg's servant, the two men having no fondness for one another?

Or Adelsberg (Wolfgang “Dr Mabuse” Preiss) himself, given that his his and John's arrival in the village six months coincided neatly with the first death?






The Mark of the Devil?

In truth, however, anyone familiar with the terrain will have little difficulty in identifying the guilty party, especially when they recoil from mirrors (“In this house we don't tolerate vanity – I thought I made that clear when you first got here”) and spout dialogue straight from Dracula's phrasebook (“Please treat the castle as your own. Two or three of the doors are locked – please respect that.” )


“One doesn't see a thing,” as Dance of the Vampires puts it


An unintentionally near surrealist composition featuring Preiss

This West German / Yugoslav co-production was originally released under the title Der Fluch der grünen Augen, literally The Curse of the the Green Eyes, and picked up by US independent Robert Gordon for English-speaking territories.


This is not the moon – an unconvincing effects shot

Though the absence of the orginal version and dub for comparison purposes makes it difficult to know for sure, the overall impression one gets is of a somewhat inconsistent, by the numbers piece – you just know the professor's attractive young assistant is both love interest and imminent damsel in distress – that has its moments, very much second-hand borrowings to be sure, but fails to amount to much beyond them.

One notes, for instance, the way in which Dorin's investigation never really concerns itself with the mysterious power cuts and that his ventures into the caverns turn out not to require that night vision apparatus, traditional torches and lanterns sufficing, except for that moment when its use allows for some somewhat gratuitous – if Nosferatu referencing – use of the negative image.

It is also the awkward contrast between the approaches of Wolfgang Preiss, who plays the professor straight and Adrian Hoven, with his self-satisfied smugness suggestive of a more tongue-in-cheek approach also evident in the innkeeper's direct-to-camera address after the serving girl has resisted his blandishments once more (“And what am I left with? Just the wine!”)

Ultimately such moments seem to emblematize the gap between the traditional “it's only a horror movie” approach of the likes of Universal and Hammer and the more modern(ist) “what's only about it” approach of the likes of Hoven's future collaborator Jess Franco. It's not a case of one approach being better than the other, with the likes of the Preiss-featuring Mill of the Stone Women and Franco's The Awful Dr Orlof equally valid responses to the Hammer gothic, more that veteran director Ákos Ráthonyi – or his American interlocutors – might have been better clearly setting out their stall in one or the other camp.

[Cave of the Living Dead is available on DVD as part of Image's Euroshock collection]

A Special Cop in Action - torrent

If anyone wants the Italia a mano armata / A Special Cop in Action torrent, dubbed in English, it's available here:

http://tracker.zaerc.com/torrents-details.php?id=11861

Italia a mano armata / A Special Cop in Action

This, the third and last in the Commissioner Betti series, following on from Marino Girolami's Roma violenta and Umberto Lenzi's Napoli violenta, sees Maurizio Merli's dedicated, no-nonsense lawman presented with gangs of armed robbers and kidnappers.


Let's go to work








Appearances can be deceptive....

While the former are quickly dealt with thanks to a tip-off from an informer, with Betti recognising a purported hostage as another member of the gang and calling their bluff – “Shoot him then! Go ahead and do it! Pull the trigger! Shoot him I said, and we'll get rid of another criminal!” – the latter proves a tougher nut to crack.








But Betti is not fooled forlong

Though Betti soon tracks the kidnappers down and rescues the children – excepting the obligatory sick one, whose death provides yet another reason for him to hate criminals, over and above his own father's death at the hands of a 16-year-old gunman many years before; this being about as all the characterisation we get or require – he doubts that they were operating on their own, suspecting that his slippery old enemy, Albertelli (John Saxon) is the brains behind the syndicate...


One of the kidnappers also tries for a spot of rape, allowing for some gratuitous, if unpleasant nudity that the married to the job nature of the Betti character would otherwise deny the film.

Though on one level the bank robber plot is superfluous, an extra action sequence or two in a film that doesn't really need it, the way in which Betti encourages one gangster to shoot the other / the hostage is a crucial demonstration of his absolute lack of doubt, as also evinced by encounters with Albertelli; his high-speed pursuit of a couple of the kidnappers in a commandeered car, or his confidence that the truth will out when, two-thirds of the way through, he is set up and sent to jail...


The pieta in Italian cinema, ancora

One can well imagine another film, actor, character and scenario in which this hold up incident proves pivotal, as a wrong decision leads to the death of an innocent man dies and a more introspective, questioning narrative in which there is the possibility that Albertelli is in fact innocent or where the politics of law and order in the politiziotto in general are actually presented as a matter for debate rather than largely taken for granted. (One here notes that the figure of the police informer, a necessary evil as far as advancing the narrative goes, never really seems to work in these films, precisely because it represents something of a challenge to their essentially manichean moral dualism, of good cops and bad criminals.)




Would you trust this man?

In this regard, it's worth noting that, if Merli transcended his initial positioning as poor man's Franco Nero, having gained his big break on account of being something of a look-alike, he always remained a more limited performer in terms of his range. Try for instance to place Merli in Castellari's Street Law, as the ordinary citizen who feels compelled to turn vigilante and ultimately realises the problems with this attractive-seeming course of action: it's difficult, perhaps even impossible.

As ever, however, such issues matter little when all involved deliver the goods, Merli's belief in his character is self-evident, the implications either a touch frightening or heartening, depending on whether you agree with the character and the film's implicit right-wing politics; Saxon suitably sleazy even as he likely just went through the motions to collect the paycheque; and director Franco Martinelli serving up plenty of car and other chases, shoot outs, stunts, fights and beatings, all accompanied by a propulsive Franco Micalizzi score, to give the film's target audience almost exactly what they wanted.

[spoiler follows]














... and Action!!

I say almost because of that ending, in which Betti is unceremoniously gunned down as he approaches his potential new love interest, Luisa (Mirella D'Angelo), the sister of the dead kidnapped child from earlier.

On the one hand, it's the logical apotheosis of a mythic character; one who fundamentally could not be permitted to change into a real-world figure. On the other, it put paid to the prospect of further entries in the franchise and, through this, perhaps tolled the first peals of the death knell for Merli's own career and the filone with which his fame and fortune were so closely intertwined.

La Banda del trudico / Destruction Force

Recently promoted following the murder of his predecessor, Taddei, Commissario Ghini (Luc Merenda) faces an unenviable situation. Crime, petty and serious, is spiralling out of control and three notorious underworld figures, Lanza (Franco Citti), Belli and Tocci, have congregated on Rome, clearly with nefarious deeds in mind...


Note Milian's extra credit

Meanwhile 'married' and with a son, Monnezza Jr, Monnezza (Tomas Milian) is running a restaurant – its speciality is abusing customers alongside their meal – and trying to stay out of trouble. This doesn't mean giving up a life of crime per se, more working according to an honourable, old-time credo of “no guns, only balls” and teaching a gang of apprentices the tricks of the trade...


Monnezza's trattoria

While Ghini pursues Lanza, whom he suspects of being behind Taddei's murder – a hit which has clearly been sanctioned by someone high up in the underworld, and for which Lanza has likely gained permission to return to the city following an exile in Sardinia – Monnezza is visited by an old associate, Gianni, who offers him the job of getaway driver on an upcoming score. Though Monnezza declines, wary that Gianni's methods are not always in accord with his own ethos, he suggests that his friend Frog might be a suitable replacement, little realising that the decidedly trigger happy Belli and Tocci are the ones behind the job...


Guns and flipper; there's also the obligatory pool tables there as well...

Predictably their raid on a jewellery wholesalers goes somewhat Reservoir Dogs, leading Belli to cover his tracks and putting him on collision course with Monnezza and Ghini, who has by this time dealt with Lanza...

As this synopsis perhaps suggests, La Banda del trudico / Destruction Force is the kind of film which works more in terms of individual (action) set pieces and (comedy) routines than as a coherent whole, with the Merenda and Milian halves not quite coming together nor being deployed to any particular evident end besides that of crossing off extra checkboxes in the hope of appealing to a wider audience.


Another Jimmy il fenomeno sighting?

It's the way in which – to use a succession of sequences from the midway point – an extended chase and shoot-out between Ghini and Lanza is followed by Monnezza explaining his philosophy of life to his infant son as he prepares a meal, with this in turn succeeded by Lanza's invasion of Ghini's home in search of revenge, followed by yet more ineptitude from Monnezza's apprentices.

There's no real relationship between the four sequences nor any indication of the passage of time between them – Lanza was shot in the shoot out, and has had the wound patched up by the time he enters Ghini's home, the latter sequence also beginning in media res as Ghini receives a phone call from his girlfriend / wife – with a strong impression thus that the Monezza material, credited to Milian, was been inserted more or less at random into the main script, credited to Massi and the Elisa Briganti / Dardano Sacchetti combo. (As an aside, are there any interviews with Briganti out there? Given her work on Zombie and others, one would think she's an ideal subject for further research, particularly around the nature of her collabrations / co-credits with Sacchetti.)






Roma a mano armata

Again, however, none of this necessarily mattered as far as the filone audience was concerned, forty-five minutes of Milian being better than zero, but it does also impart that sense of trying to please everyone and thus failing to completely satisfy anyone when compared with the more consistent and focussed approach one finds in a Milian / Monnezza vehicle or, indeed, Massi's Marc trilogy.


This is about as close to a De Niro / Pacino moment between Milian and Merenda as we get

Likewise, one does wonder what the moral of the tale is when Monnezza's apprentices repeatedly meet with failure in their attempts to be 'honest', old-style criminals and the more direct route of the modern armed robber appears the one more likely to get results, even if the issue is then that of holding on to this loot for long enough to convert it to ready cash...


Milian / Monnezza in full effect

Massi's direction is a touch zoom happy but he counters this with some energetic circling handheld camera, effective handling of the all-important action scenes and inventive set-ups. Again, something seems to be lacking at times, however, as when Monnezza's demonstrations of sleight of hand are broken down in a way that you don't see what Milian is doing when he lifts a wristwatch with his finger or that it's actually his hands doing three card monte. (One here thinks of the way the action and comedy are successfully integrated in the likes of the Police Story films, and the necessity of showing the reality of certain stunts and tricks.)


A show off composition, but what is being shown off to best effect ;-)

Bruno Canfora's score, while pushing the right funky buttons, sounds suspiciously more like pre-existing pieces than tailor-made cues, with some of the action pieces perhaps not as well integrated as they might be; certainly there's no Ghini signature theme along the lines of Marc's “my name is Marc” disco theme. More positively, a spaghetti western cue gives the right mock-serious drama to a sequence in which two of Monnezza's bungling apprentices attempt to snatch fur coats from a hairdressers only to find their getaway car has in turn been stolen; later on there's also a moment where Monnezza strikes a match on his skinhead apprentice's head, reminiscent of the Lee Van Cleef / Klaus Kinski exchange in For a Few Dollars More.

Though Luc Merenda is billed first, there appears little question that it is Tomas Milian who was really running the show, as indicated by the aforementioned dialogue credit and that of his dubbing voice, Ferrucio Amendola. (At this time Milian didn't feel sufficiently comfortable in delivering Monnezza's highly idiomatic dialogue convincingly with his own voice.) This isn't in itself a bad thing, insofar as Milian is clearly having a ball with the character and infects the viewer with his unbridled enthusiasm, but equally there is again that impression of two different half-films passing one another.

Perhaps the emblematic moment here stems from one of the blink-and-you'll miss them scenes of Ghini's domestic life, as he asks his girlfriend / wife whether she would prefer to go see a movie and then have dinner, or to have dinner and then see a movie. Recently recovered from a near rape, she says that if they go to cinema it would have to be for “a funny movie, not a horrible Italian [cop] thriller”

I wonder what she would have made of Destruction Force itself in this regard...

La Polizia chiede aiuto / What Have You Done to Your Daughters?

Acting on an anonymous tip off, the police discover the naked body of a schoolgirl, soon identified as Silvia Solvesi, hanging in a locked loft.


Sincerity or sensationalism?

The autopsy reveals that she had had sex just prior to death, with “traces of sperm in the vagina, the anus and the stomach,” and was two months pregnant; other details also point to murder rather than suicide....




The discovery of the body

The dead girl's boyfriend Marcello is an obvious point of call, but has a rock-solid alibi, having been spelunking at the time of her death. He reveals that she sexual partners before him and was surprisingly wealthy for a 15-year-old schoolgirl, even one with rich – if predominantly absent – parents.


The projector keeps rolling as the image is freeze-framed and enlarged, but we can forgive them this...

Going to the apartment Silvia secretly rented, Inspector Silvestri (Claudio Cassinelli) and new public prosecutor Vittoria Stori (Giovanna Ralli) find enough blood to indicate a second murder and prompting a feeding frenzy amongst the press.

Their investigation soon leads to another body, that of the private investigator who had briefly been employed by Silvia's mother to tail her after she caught the underage girl daughter with contraceptive pills, with this in turn leading to the discovery that Silvia was one of a number of girls involved in a schoolgirl prostitution ring.

Its masterminds remain elusive, however. Worse, a seemingly unstoppable machete-wielding assassin in motorbike leathers is intent on killing off anyone who might aid the investigators in their quest...






Cassinelli and Ralli impress in their roles

Released in 1974 at the point when the poliziotto was taking over from the giallo at the Italian box office, Massimo Dallamano's La Polizia chiede aiuto / What Have You Done to Your Daughters? may hedge its bets by including elements of both filone – note, for instance, how the killer in the leathers is unambiguously identified as male by his voice, although he remains nameless and faceless until later – but ultimately succeeds on its own terms as a worthwhile continuation of the unofficial schoolgirls peril trilogy inaugurated by What Have They done to Solange? two years earlier.


A touching moment

Unlike that film there we are not presented with a parade of suspects and red herrings and invited to sift through the evidence and attempt to solve the mystery for ourselves. Rather, we follow Silvestri, Stori and their colleagues more or less in lock step with few if any digressions without a direct bearing on their investigations, resulting in a faster pace and more consistent if decidedly downbeat and sordid tone compared to its predecessor.


An exploitative image, an image of exploitation, or both?

This also helps us in knowing how we are supposed to respond to the sight of the naked Silvia / Cheryl Lee Buchanan, for instance, as equally or more an images of exploitation than an exploitative image, marking something of a contrast with the often confused stance of Solange in the likes of its shower sequences.

On the other hand, Solange is perhaps the more successful of the two films as far as using music is concerned. While Stelvio Cipriani's driving score certainly matches the pace of the film and ratchets up the tension as and when required, it is less diverse and feels less integrated into the whole; I tend to find Cipriani's cues, while certainly effective and memorable enough as pieces of music somewhat interchangable between films, in that I hearing yet another signature ostinato but can never quite place it as the leitmotif for a specific character / film.






An effective shock moment

As with the poliziotto there is a strong element of political critique to the film with an interesting balance insofar as both post-1968 radicals and the establishment are commented on, the former for the ease with which they seem to be able to accommodate previously apolitical violent elements (we're told that one of the rioters captured on the film went from convictions for assault to political extremism) and the latter for their endemic, systematic corruption. Unlike the more typical entry within that filone, however, there is a curious lack of resolution. No-one steps outside the boundaries of the law to deliver vigilante justice nor resigns their post in disgust and / or despair; there is no “free hand for a tough cop” to be found here.


A new alliance?

Paradoxically, this also gives the ending to an otherwise grim film a curiously upbeat quality. One gets the sense of new alliances being formed and a determination to get it right the next time, Silvestri and Stori having realised that their differences in attitude and approach pertain to means rather than ends, with the former's masculine directness and the latter's feminine touch each having their role to play. (“You've proved yourself as capable as any man,” as Silvestri tells Stori in response to her “fishing” for insights – and, crucially, getting them where he is not always able.)


He knows...


and she knows he knows...

This impression is also sustained by the closing title. Although compromised by overstating its message – while I can't claim to be an expert, do the majority of runaways really just disappear, never to be seen again as title implies? – and being ironically juxtaposed with the disclaimer that the film is not intended to refer to any real persons or situations, I found the effect curiously reminiscent of Fritz Lang's M, the message that it is now up to the audience; that we are the ones who can effect a change and who should be watch out for our own daughters.

Cassinelli and Ralli themselves well, even allowing for the effects of dubbing, bringing intelligence and sensitivity to their performances, while Mario Adorf again impresses with his range in a smaller role as Valentini.

Dallamano does likewise, utilising a wide variety of techniques, including frenetic first person handheld camera, dramatic angles and compositions and distorting lenses, but without indulging in style-for-styles sake type grandstanding .

Though the suspense and action sequences are well handled – excepting a lapse in continuity when the killer's nighttime attempt on Rita's life at the hospital segues into a daytime chase – the most accomplished and powerful moments are in many respects also the simplest in their construction.

One thinks here of the private detective's ex-wife coming to identify her husband's remains and indicating, despite Casinelli's stating that it is not necessary, she wants to see them all, “the whole thing, how the bastard ended up,” to then break down as the reality underlying this tough talking, the mess of pieces, hits her; or of the exchange of looks between Valentini and his daughter Patricia, their changes in expression proving far more powerful than the dramatic zoom or intensifying close-ups a less thoughtful film-maker would likely have employed as an indication that he now knows her secret...

Above all, however, it is the sequence where Silvestri, Stori and audience listen, with mounting horror to the tape capturing exchanges between the schoolgirls and their clients. Running just short of three minutes, Dallamano constructs the sequence with only three shots, with minimal camera movement.


A masterclass in the minimal producing the maximum effect

It is a “poetic” instance that seems to confirm the underlying sincerity of the piece, confounding the expectations of those after easy entertainment by doing the kind of thing more expected of Antonioni – as per the famous end sequences of L'Eclisse and L'Avventura – than filone.


As with Don't Torture a Duckling the filming of a funeral provides a clue

It also provides a salutory reminder that it is easy to over-emphasise the visual element to the detriment of all else, the clue that ultimately leads to the identification of those behind the prostitution ring proving, as with many gialli, to be aural rather than visual.

Beyond this, meanwhile, one wonders whether we could speak of aural displeasure as a counterpart / counterpoint to the famous Mulveyean notion of visual pleasure – a pleasure, of course, that Dallamano is also keen to make us aware of and throw into question by the relentless self-referentiality of his images (“damn peeping tom; still, maybe we should thank him for the lead,” remarks Silvestri at one point) and auto-critique of media sensationalism.


Sincerity or sensationalism?, once more


I Bambini ci guardano

That the killer – in truth little more than a minion doing the dirty work – is brought to book through the intervention of a young girl leads nicely into the third part of the triad, Enigma Rosso / Rings of Fear, where her counterpart takes a rather more active and involved role...

Kidnapped / Rabid Dogs / Rabid Dogs question

I got the new-ish Anchor Bay DVD of Mario Bava's formerly lost film Kidnapped today and, having watched that version and the Rabid Dogs one included as extras have a question: is there also a third reconstruction of the film, in the form of the one on the Lucertola DVD released way back in 1997?

If I remember correctly the Lucertola version bookends the action with two silhouetted sequences of the mother on the phone; this subplot is absent from the Anchor Bay Rabid Dogs and in kidnapped the first insert of the mother on the phone is positioned later in the narrative, after the point at which the gang has commandeered Riccardo's car, and stylistically more consistent.

While I think the positioning of this sequence in Kidnapped works better, I have to say that I don't find any of the versions entirely satisfactory. I found I preferred the solarised type titles on the Anchor Bay Rabid Dogs version because they reminded me of one of the trailers for A Bay of Blood and thus seemed to strengthen the thematic connection with that film, along with the parallel introduction of both Riccardo and the gang, including a nice match cut between Riccardo and Doc's wristwatches, which I found reminiscent of the opening / closing images of the story sequence in the original Tre volte della paura as a way of establishing an almost subconscious link between the two men ahead of their meeting.

Insofar as it's difficult to say much more about the film without spoiling it, I'll leave it at that and ask for your thoughts...

New DVD label

I'm sure many of you know this already, but I'll mention it anyway. A new DVD label, Shameless Screen Entertainment, is bringing out some Italian horror and giallo type titles on UK DVD. Their first releases are Fulci's The New York Ripper and The Black Cat, Deodato's Phantom of Death, Martino's Torso and Berutti's Killer Nun.

While more Italian cult releases are always welcome and I wish them all the best, I do wonder about the value of a cut version of The New York Ripper in particular, presumably missing the eyeball and nipple slicing shots. Isn't anybody in the UK interested in the film going to have the full, unexpurgated version(s) on the Anchor Bay and / or Another World Entertainment discs already?

Still, I can see myself upgrading Phantom of Death at long last...

J&B in the movies

Seen on Groovy Age of Horror, and well worth spreading the word about: The J&B in the movies site

http://atrocitynights.com/JnB/JnB.htm

Il Fiore dai petali d'acciaio / The Flower with Petals of Steel

Surgeon Andrea Valenti (Gianni Garko) has a problem: he has just accidentally killed his latest girlfriend, Daniella (Paola Senatore), after she somehow contrived to impale herself on a jagged metal sculpture, presumably the flower with the petals of steel of the characteristically enigmatic title.

Andrea takes stock of the situtation. He wanted rid of her anyway and there is no-one to suspect that she is here. Accordingly he makes use of his skills, dismembers her body, disposes of it in a vat and generally plans to act as if nothing had happened.

Needless to say, there is quickly a complication. Daniella's half-sister Evelyne (Carroll Baker), who was once also Andrea's lover, wonders where she has disappeared to and, convinced that he knows more than he is letting on, goes to the police.




Mandatory Carroll Baker shower moment

While Ispettore Garrano's investigation finds nothing to directly implicate Andrea in the crime – if indeed it is a crime, seeing as there is no body nor trace of one to substantiate Evelyne's suspicions – the circumstantial evidence mounts when it is revealed, again via Evelyne's intervention, that the womanising doctor owes his position to an advantageous marriage. Or, rather, a marriage which was advantageous to him, insofar as his wife has long been institutionalised in the asylum...


The flower

Meanwhile, Andrea receives mysterious telephone calls and incriminating photographs of the incident with Daniella...

This Italian-Spanish co-production has one major problem. It just doesn't work, being the kind of film whose surprise ending – itself a somewhat ironic and ambiguous one, the conspirators on their boat thinking themselves to have gotten away with it all whilst the authorities are at the quayside; the kind of crime does (not) pay ending that one could well imagine being reworked for different territories, moralities and censorship regimes – produces a profound sense of dissatisfaction.


Iconic image #1


Iconic image #2


Iconic image #3 (that's a black gloved hand with a blade)


Iconic image #4

Part of the issue is that neither Garko nor Baker has a character we can particularly identify with and, more importantly, that we do not really know what positions we are supposed to take towards them and the situations presented within the narrative. It is not, of course, that a giallo needs to have a single strong, positive protagonist. Four Flies on Grey Velvet's Roberto Tobias is also responsible for an accidental death after all, but at least we know that his predicament is central to the unfolding narrative. Likewise, if Death Laid an Egg encourages us to take a detached view of its quartet of conspiring bourgeois, we understand that this is what director Questi wants us to do, the rules of his particular game.

Here, by contrast, we don't know if Evelyne, who clearly knows Andrea all too well, is conspiring against him or genuinely concerned for her sister, while the simple fact of the philandering Andrea's dismembering and disposing of Daniella's body makes somewhat difficult to have any positive feelings towards whatsoever. Again, however, we don't really understand his actions from what is presented before us.

Building on these reference points, it's also the sense that writer-director Gianfranco Piccioli doesn't really have anything to say and is just going through the motions, whether it be Baker's seemingly contractual shower sequence; Garko hitting the J&B; the detective / analyst comparisons as the police inspector pays a visit to the asylum and its head, played by Umberto Raho, or the inevitable point-of-view razor slashing and pseudo-lesbian sequences.


Effective compositions highlight the ambiguity of the characters, but leave the viewer without an obvious point of reference


Are we supposed to be on the left or the right, with Baker or Garko?

You accept the directorial sleights-of-hand and plot contrivances in Argento and Questi's films because they are themselves part of these films' problematics, the way in which, for instance, if Roberto fails to realise the identity of his persecutor until it is almost too late then this is precisely because he's never really thought about this individual and their relationship until this point; or the way that his deus ex machina salvation actually comes through the hand of God(frey).

Here, however, you watch the build up to the pivotal sequence a second time and note all the false connections and misdirections but conclude that they have no purpose beyond setting up a no longer susprising surprise ending.