Death Carries a Cane / Passi di danza su una lama di rasoio

While waiting for her boyfriend Alberto to arrive, Kitty (Susan Scott) witnesses a traditionally attired giallo killer attacking a woman. Unfortunately just as the assailant leaves the building the telescope she was using needs more money and by the time she has fed another coin in the killer has fled. Nevertheless Kitty manages to identify the number of house where the crime occurred – 57 – and other witnesses in the form of a chestnut vendor and a girl.








Typical giallo self-reflexive voyeurism

En route to see inspector Merughi (George / Jorge Martin) Alberto (Robert Hoffmann) starts asking questions – did she see the man's face? can she identify the street? – and acting suspiciously.

This, coupled with other circumstantial evidence – an unexplained limp, just like the killer; a penchant for bizarre performance art involving stabbing mannequins (cf. Spasmo); and Hoffmann's sheer shiftiness – sets him up as obvious suspect as the killer starts covering their tracks, leading to a succession of investigative and murder scenes.

Equally however, this is a giallo. Thus, we also have the sexually impotent Marco (Simon Andreu), partner of scoop seeking Paese Sera journalist Lydia, whose sister Silvia (both played by Anuska Borova) also has a limp and is partner of Luciano Rossi; I did not catch the name of his character, but it is not really important given his sheer presence, look and inter-textual associations.




The De Chirico-esque mannequins

The moment where Death Carries a Cane begins to really lose it can perhaps be pinpointed as the point when Kitty agrees to pose as a prostitute to entrap the killer but instead almost gets picked up by the chief of police, as suspense – we know the killer is there, while the police chief has a cane – dissipates into awkward comedy without developing into the kind of critique of police corruption (cf. What Have You Done to Your Daughters) that might otherwise have compensated.

Fortunately the craftsman who made the distinctive bag – can we say McGuffin – that Kitty was using to identify herself recognises it and calls in at the offices of Paesa Sera. This providing a new avenue of investigation that leads Lydia to arrange a meeting with the only remaning eyewitness. But when the woman arrives, the sight of a photograph causes her to flee in terror – might the killer be among those pictured?












Classic giallo imagery and iconography

Worse the killer is in fact waiting. Again, Predeaux shows a flair for suspense and the set-piece, making a Psycho-style association between the assassin's straight razor and the blade of the windscreen wiper, ironically useless against the spatter of blood left on the inside of the car.

Happily yet another plot contrivance, the realisation that three of the female victims were all dancers or dance students, means that the investigation can continue. This in turn leads to a protracted old dark house showdown in a dance academy – or “school at night,” to cite the title of one of Deep Red's musical themes – that again juxtaposes the effective establishment of mood with its puncturing as Kitty develops the need “to go pee-pee” at the crucial moment.

It is not that comedy and giallo are inherently inimical, as is demonstrated by the Commedia dell'arte supporting characters of the Animal Trilogy and the screwball battle of the sexes in Deep Red. Rather it is that the filmmakers here lack Argento's sense of judgement (and even there many Anglophone viewers may well find the laughing / screaming dynamic a touch strange i.e. unfamiliar). Predeaux and company just do not know when to keep things serious – searching through old records and photo albums for clues to the murderer's identity Kitty even finds the time to take pictures of some “absolutely adorable” costumes!

Looking at things the other way round, it this selfsame Argento-style reflexivity, with lines like “you know Kitty, I think you read too many detective novels” or “The investigation is at a standstill, to use an old cliche” everywhere, supplement the artistic protagonists and recurring themes of mediation and voyeurism, and general sense of psychosexual edginess that prevents Death Carries a Cane from succeeding as trashy fun giallo in the vein of Ercoli's otherwise comparable vehicles for the ever-watchable Scott.




Anuska Borova displays her charms

If the reasons for the film's awkwardness are thus fairly self-evident, the biggest mystery is what happened to Anuska Borova, whose only credit(s) this would appear to be, as on this evidence she had both the goods and the willingess to display them to have made a career in this kind of cinema.

So Sweet, So Dead / Rivelazioni di un maniaco sessuale al capo della squadra mobile

A maniac is murdering the unfaithful wives of prominent citizens. He leaves incriminating photographs of the women and their lovers, but removes the men's faces to protect / conceal their identities.


Being naked playing dead - the maniac's first victim

Inspector Capuano (a dubbed Farley Granger) is assigned the case. While pathologist Professor Casali (Chris Avram) offers useful information as to the killer's modus operandi and motivation, Capuano finds his investigations otherwise stalled at every turn by his superiors' insistence that he focus on the usual suspects and take a softly-softly approach in dealing with the lovers and husbands of the victims.




Prof. Casali offers his expert opinion as to the killer's method and motive; note the mirror / distortion

As the killer's depredations continue a number of suspects come to the fore, including a morgue attendant with an unhealthy enthusiasm for his work (Luciano Rossi) and lawyer Paolo Santangeli (Silvano Tranquilli).


A parade of the usual suspects; Capuano knows he is looking in the wrong place with them


“No woman is going to marry a man who works at my job, you see. Sooner or later they find out about the corpses, and it's finished before I can get started. ”


“Poor Serena. She may have lacked discretion but she certainly didn't warrant her awful end.”


“Why should we react like you? He only kills unfaithful wives.”

Though losing its way somewhat as it enters its second act, as Capuano's investigation is temporarily sidelined in favour of that undertaken by Santangeli's teenage daughter Bettina, this 1972 giallo redeems itself somewhat with a memorable final act; unfortunately this also makes it difficult to review without spoiling it for the first-time viewer.

What can be said is that the film as a whole operates at the sleazier and trashier end of the giallo spectrum, with the majority of the female roles, including those of Susan Scott and Femi Benussi, pretty much of the thankless get-naked-then-die variety.

Whether the film is actually misogynistic as often claimed is however debatable. I would tend to argue that, like many of its type, it is really more misanthropic, declining to present anyone in a particularly flattering light.

True, this is unlikely to satisfy anyone who feels that the female is more moral than the male, or that by merely reporting on the existence of a sexual double standard but not overtly critiquing it the film-makers were contributing in their own small way to its continuance.

Here, we have to remember that the social / cultural norm in Italy circa 1972 would have been that a man in a prominent position should have both wife and a mistress, and that if he did not then there was quite possibly something wrong with or suspect about him. The reverse of this, meanwhile, was that the the man could not admit to being cuckolded by his wife being another man's mistress.

Though the most obvious example of this within the film is Susan Scott's husband, a failed suicide who succeeded only in crippling himself instead – a symbolic castration if ever there was one – it also seems worth considering whether the fact that the Capuano's marriage is without issue says something about the Inspector's masculine potency – or lack thereof – and / or if his apparent fidelity marks him out as someone too idealistic for his chosen career. Indeed, by extension, we might question whether he is thus being positioned as someone who has more in common with the moralistic avenger than he might care to acknowledge.












Tellingly both the maniac and the police use the same technologies of surveillance

Besides the killer's archetypal garb, a number of other motifs provide points of interest for students of the genre. At one point, for example, the wives / mistresses of some of the local notables discuss the case at their regular visit to the beauty salon, reminding one of the role played by the same location in The Black Belly of the Tarantula and indeed suggesting an alternate blackmail based version of the same “forbidden photos” type scenario. At another Capuano has one of the victims' funerals caught on camera in the hope that catching some detail that will break the case open. Unlike the ill-educated and naïve populace of the southern village in Don't Torture a Duckling, however, these northern urban sophisticates are too clever – or blasé – to reveal themselves in this way.

Roberto Bianchi Montero's direction is the kind of hit-and-miss thing that might be expected from a 60-something film-maker whose undistinguished career had seen him dabble in a succession of filone over the decades, his suspenseful and stylish handling of a murder on the train negated by the laughably inappropriate use of slow-motion in the murder on the beach.


The black-clad moral avenger


The film's titles foreground archetypal giallo imagery and technology – the black gloves, the knife, the telephone etc.

Giorgio Gaslini's score comprises two repeated cues, one playing over the main titles and emotional high points like the funeral aforementioned funeral sequence thereafter and the other accompanying the killer's appearances. While the latter cue uses something similar to the “make a jazz noise here” approach of many of Morricone's contributions to the genre, it arguably functions in a fundamentally different way otherwise, more a leitmotif and less a tension-raising device, precisely because the pervading sense of cynicism prevents us from really caring about the next beautiful woman about to die.

All told, So Sweet, So Dead is a dubiously entertaining giallo whose view of the world might be summed up as through urine-coloured lenses at a half-empty J&B glass.

Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion / Foto proibite di una signora per bene

Minou is beautiful and devoted to her husband Peter. Yet her tendency to drink too much and a tranquilliser habit suggest some underlying malaise even before, walking along the seafront one night, she is confronted by a mysterious sword-cane wielding sadist.

All but threatening Minou with rape – the phallic symbolism of his weapon hardly needs discussing, with the film as a whole likewise offering (almost too) easy pickings for the psychoanalytically minded – the man calmly informs her that Peter is a fraud and a murderer, then inexplicably departs, allowing Minou to make her way to a nearby bar, call for help and have a few drinks to calm her nerves while awaiting her husband.




The mirror lets the man gaze at the woman gazing at herself

A few days later Minou gets talking with her friend Dominique at a nightclub. In the course of conversation Dominique comments on how one of Peter's creditors was recently found dead, with nitrogen in his bloodstream.

Meeting again the next day, Dominique shows Minou some of the candid photographs she brought back from her recent visit to Copenhagen. (“Are they pornographic photographs?” “Yes, but good ones. Quality is important in every profession.”) One features the man.

A further shock comes from Minou's visit to Peter's business, where one of his colleagues shows her the new decompression chamber, used to simulate different pressure conditions for testing deep-sea diving equipment.

Putting the details together, Minou realises that Peter had motive, method and opportunity to kill the man and make it look like an accident.

In the middle of the night the telephone rings. It is the stranger. He plays Minou a taped conversation implicating Peter in murder and demands a meeting with her the next day.


The Frightened Woman

Hoping to buy the man off, Minou offers him money. He laughs at this, telling Minou that it is her that he wants. Desperate to obtain the tape and save her husband, Minou accedes to his demands.

Unfortunately her situation then gets worse instead of better as the man then starts blackmailing Minou with the photographs he surreptitiously took of their encounter. Worse, he says that Peter did not murder anyone, with the whole story being fabricated as a means of ensnaring Minou herself.

Not sure what do to on her return home, Minou tells Peter that she has been out with Dominique all afternoon – a claim that backfires when Dominique turns out to be there as well...




Interior design by the House of Bava?

Although showcasing the talents of the same team who would later make
Death Walks on High Heels and Death Walks at Midnight – director Luciano Ercoli, screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi and actors Susan Scott / Nieves
Navarro and Simon Andreu – this 1970 giallo from Luciano Ercoli differs
from its successors in one key respect. With Dagmar Lassander taking
the female lead as the “Lady Above Suspicion” of the title, Minou, Scott is
relegated to a supporting role, that of her decidedly more suspect friend, Dominique.

The change has a vital effect on the dynamics of the piece as a whole,
as can be seen if we apply the semiotic “commutation test” and imagine what the film might have been like with Scott in the lead.

The picture that emerges is very different, the no-nonsense persona that Scott conveys in the two Death films (and their companion piece, Predeaux's Death Carries a Cane) being entirely at odds with the neurotic Minou, as someone who is about internalisation and introspection rather than externalisation and action.

Equally, however, it is important to recognise that Scott is in no way miscast. Rather, as with All the Colours of the Dark, she seems to enjoy the opportunity to play a more ambiguous character – a role not too distant, for that matter, those essayed by Simon Andreu opposite her in the other two films, albeit obviously with a more overt masculine danger.

Here Andreu is a more straightforward villain, leaving ambiguity up to Pier Paolo Capponi's Peter. While a relatively bland figure by comparison, one suspects this was something consciously sought by the film-makers, his sheer inoffensiveness providing additional reasons why Minou might have subconsciously sought to get into her predicament as a means of compelling Peter to do / say something. (Undoing the top of her dress at the start of the film - “ Dominique is right. I dress too much like a housewife” – Minou fantasises about telling Peter she has been having an affair to see what his reaction might be.)

Of the four leads, it is Lassander who has the most difficult role but who also, unfortunately, comes across as the least able to meet its demands, as perhaps signalled by the way in which Minou's inner state emerges as much through voice-over; a mise-en-scene that repeatedly emphasises mirrored and other doubled compositions; and thoughtful editing, most notably when a sequence of her making love to Peter is seamlessly intercut with her more S&M tinged encounter with the stranger, making it is difficult to tell who and what she is responding most passionately to.

Elsewhere the director throws in the odd nod to Cocteau and I Vampiri as the strangers' apartment, formerly festooned with plaster hands, is mysteriously devoid of signs of recent habitation when revisited by Minou with others in tow.

Morricone's score, with the exception of the odd party music cue that is just too far towards kitsch, is another asset, with its beautiful main theme and effective suspense cues.

The most unsatisfying aspect of the film for me was its last minute “surprise” ending. Though not completely deus ex machina, the very fact that it had to be summarised and explained within the diegesis seemed to indicate that the film-makers were really more interested with exploring Minou as a character than in crafting a more routine conspiracy thriller / mystery.

Indeed, in this regard while the film certainly recalls the kind of risqué gialli Lenzi and Baker were making around the same time, it also seems to suggest affinities with 1940s female noirs such as Mildred Pierce and, especially, The Reckless Moment at times.

While certainly willing to put herself in a compromising position to protect her husband (rather than daughter, as is the two 40s films) the thing Minou never contemplates is conspiring with or against her husband; in this respect those conspiring against her, whoever they may be, know her only too well that she is truly a signora per bene.

Yet – and this is perhaps the film's ultimate strength – while Minou may not be a murderous figure akin to Blood and Black Lace's Countess Cristina or A Bay of Blood's Renata, she is thereby also one that viewers can more readily identify and engage with, perversions and all.

The question the film then raises, consciously or otherwise, is what perverse actually means in a context where perversion – or at least specific manifestations of perversity, i.e. Minou's implicit masochism but not Dominique's confident bisexuality – is the social norm.

Tutti i colori del buio / All the Colours of the Dark

Following a traumatic car accident in which she lost her unborn child, Jane (Edwige Fenech) and has been plagued by exceptionally vivid – read cinematic – nightmares, invariably featuring a stalker with piercing blue eyes.












Images from the nightmare sequence; note the mechanical doll like qualities of the figure in the third image and the use of "any-space whatevers" without the anchoring points of classical-era / movement-image cinema.

Jane's partner Richard (George Hilton) and sister Barbara (Susan Scott / Nieves Navarro) offer alternative therapies. Barbara favours a therapy and arranges for Jane to see Dr Burton (Jorge Rigaud). Richard, who was driving the car at the time of the accident and thus may have his own issues to contend with, dismisses the psychiatrist as a “quack” and offers Jane medication instead, with Barbara in turn countering by reminding him that he is only a sales representative for a pharmaceutical company and not in any way a qualified professional.




A Suspicion or Notorious style drink?


The Woman in the Window


The sisters; I like the way how Fenech is later done up to look more like Navarro as she decides to visit the sabbat:



On her way home from a visit to Dr Burton, Jane encounters the blue eyed man of her nightmares in the street. Panicked, she bumps into her new next-door neighbour, Mary (Marina Malfatti) and is invited in for a calming cup of tea – a nice touch in terms in making the characters seem as English as the locales – and chat. Jane, however, is keen to get back to prepare Richard's dinner, but does agree to meet up with Mary the next morning.

Jane then receives a phone call from a lawyer, Clay (Luciano Pigozzi), who wishes to see her the following afternoon but fails to provide any other information. Then, glancing outside, Jane thinks she sees her stalker. Cautiously venturing into the stairwell, Jane finds herself locked out, with someone advancing. Thankfully – or suspiciously, depending on your perception of how events are proceeding thus far – Richard emerges from the elevator at just the right moment.

The following morning Jane confides in Mary, who proposed a third, decidedly more unorthodox solution, that Jane should visit a witches sabbat. Despite not knowing what one is nor what it will entail, beyond Mary's explanation that “it's a certain kind of black magic ritual,” Jane is by now desperate enough to try anything and thus agrees to rendezvous with Mary following her visit to the lawyers.

As it turns out, Jane doesn't get very far there anyway: the blue eyed man is there, waiting, and attacks her with an axe. This encounter and the ensuing chase does not, however, prevent Jane meeting Mary (albeit an hour late; “it's not like a cinema when one can walk in any time,” admonishes Mary in a neat little self-reflexive remark) and attending the sabbat thereafter. There is she is disturbed by the animal sacrifice, but nevertheless participates in drinking its blood and in the orgy that ensues as the cultists welcome their new member.







Seamlessly the action shifts back to home, with Jane and Richard in bed:

Darling, no more bad dreams.
Everything's back to normal, isn't it Jane?
Yes, but I feel strange, Richard. I don't feel real

It seems that Mary's cure has indeed worked – after a fashion. But with the neighbour soon thereafter admitting to her own motives for involving Jane with the cult; a book about black magic appearing among Richard's possessions, and an apparent conspiracy between Richard and the blue eyed man, it quickly becomes clear that things are about to get a whole lot worse before they get better.






Note the way the fragmentation of Fenech's image signifies that all is decidedly not well, even immediately after her visit to the sabbat seems to have done its job.

True, the old adage says that it is always darkest before the dawn, but in a context where the dark itself has colours – all of them – that might well be devoid of assurance...

Reuniting the main cast and crew of The Strange Vice of Signora Wardh and Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, this 1972 giallo blends typical filone themes – a traumatic past event; conspiracy; female neurosis etc. – with more overtly supernatural horror themed Rosemary's Baby styled material, to good overall effect.

The screenplay, co-authored by Ernesto Gastaldi and Sauro Scavolini from a story by Santiago Moncada, provides a solid starting point, keeping the viewer guessing as to the nature of the conspiracy throughout and giving director Sergio Martino and his all-star ensemble enough to work with.

Martino handles the suspense and action sequences with typical aplomb, while the assorted nightmare scenes afford him and his team the chance to experiment with unusual angles, kaleidoscopic lenses and jarring edits. It may not be particularly subtle – there is little ambiguity in what the components of the nightmares mean, for instance, especially in comparison with something like Lucio Fulci's not too dissimilar Lizard in a Woman's Skin – but it is effective and appropriate in the context of Mikel Koven's “vernacular cinema”.

Hilton plays Richard with the right level of creepiness, not sufficient to make him an obvious villain, but enough to induce a degree of uncertainty; as when he and Scott are discussing Jane's condition and apportioning blame to one another.

As was often the case, Rassimov has an inherently less interesting role, though never fails to impart the required aura of menace to his appearances.

Of all the performers, however, this is Fenech's film. Though undoubtedly cast primarily on account of family connections as the then-partner of Sergio Martino's producer brother Luciano and for being a stunning beauty with a willingness to display her assets, her dramatic abilities really shine through as the increasingly paranoid and unstable Jane. Indeed, again one feels sorry for the actress and others like her in the Euro-cult world for never being recognised for anything other than their looks; personally I find her performance here more than equal to that of Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby. (Again, before we dismiss the film as simply ripping-off an – admittedly excellent – original, it is worth remembering that the filmmakers have, as with much filone cinema, introduced their own twists, in that Jane lost her baby before any worries about what it might turn out to be, Rosemary's Baby style, could ever arise.)

Elsewhere, Bruno Nicolai's score is another plus. Suggesting Rosemary's Baby early on via a lullaby theme, he elsewhere offers a winning combination of suspenseful and psychedelic themes, the latter again somewhat reminiscent of his work for Jess Franco at times. Whatever the mood to be set, he gets it; a seemingly incongruous lounge piece immediately after Jane's initial visit to the sabbat explicable in relation to Jane's momentarily lighter mood.

Not, however, that All the Colours of the Dark is an unqualified masterpiece.

For starters, the coven plot fails to really convince. Though Jane is presented as desperate, the ease with which she goes off to a sabbat with a neighbour she's only just met is too convenient, as is the timing of that sabbat the vert next afternoon – no waiting until the stars are right for these cultists!

Martino also fails to play fair with the viewer on one important occasion. Whereas the second time viewer can notice the vital detail protagonist Marc Daly does not in Dario Argento's Deep Red, the director having sufficient confidence in his abilities to misdirect the first time viewer by sleight of hand, here a key signifier is simply concealed from our eyes. Then again, it is worth remembering that neither The Bird with the Crystal Plumage nor Four Flies on Grey Velvet exactly plays a fair game – if Martino was not ahead of his rival cineaste at this time, he was not appreciably far behind either.

Another thing that hurts the film, albeit to a lesser extent, are the voices given some of the supporting characters, which come straight from the Dick Van Dyke / Eliza Doolittle school of Cockney elocution and thus serve to break the otherwise convincing sense of Londonicity – to pretentiously appropriate a concept from Roland Barthes – accomplished elsewhere.


Kenilworth Court, SW15 as it appears in the film


... and today

Still, in the final analysis these are relatively minor issues in what otherwise emerges as an enjoyable, effective blend of giallo and horror that sees everyone concerned – Fenech above all – at or near the top of their respective games.