As an introduction to the zombie film this documentary is a disappointment. There are two major reasons for this.
First, while the inaugural zombie film, White Zombie (1932) is referenced, the history presented is very much from Night of the Living Dead (1968) onwards. Certainly, George A. Romero’s film inaugurated a paradigm shift in the nature of the zombie, from labourer-producer to flesh eater consumer, but this point could have been made clearer by referencing, for example, Plague of the Zombies (1966) as a point of contrast.
Second, all the films mentioned – others include Return of the Living Dead (1985), Shaun of the Dead (2003), and 28 Days Later (2002) – are Anglo-American. The contributions of continental European film-makers are entirely absent. This is a problem when you remember that Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) was a co-production with Dario Argento and that the film’s success at the Italian box-office led to several tribute productions. Two of particular note here are Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (1979), for its fusion of old school voodoo zombie and new school flesh-eater, and Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City (1980), for featuring running zombies more than 20 years before 28 Days Later or the remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004).
With the film running only 82 minutes and feeling padded out even these these omissions are all the more striking.
And, finally, if you are going to feature Joanna Angel talking about her zombie-porn crossover shouldn’t you also mention that Joe D’Amato, was there first?
Showing posts with label Umberto Lenzi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Umberto Lenzi. Show all posts
Sunday, 22 June 2014
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
Incontro nell'ultimo paradiso
Here's the pitch: An Umberto Lenzi movie with contributions from some of his other Cannibal Ferox collaborators including John Morghen (co-script) and Budy-Maglione (music). It sees two students holidaying in the Third World run afoul of gangsters, head into the wilderness, have their boat overturn at some rapids, and thus become lost in the jungle and at the mercy of the natives.
It sounds like something a gorehound / sicko would want to watch, particularly if they get off on – or don't mind – some real life animal snuff amongst the faked human on human stuff.
But, as it turns out, there is absolutely no real violence of either a human or animal nature, with the closest we get being a chimpanzee throwing coconuts at the bad guys.
What we get is a film that plays much like a self-conscious spoof of a cannibal film crossed with a female version of Tarzan of the Apes, not an original concept in itself, considering the likes of 1968's Samoa Queen of the Jungle, with none less than Edwige Fenech in the title role.
The scenes for the former are certainly there, but they just don't play out that way: There's stock footage of animals, but none of nature red in tooth and claw (or being set up to act that way by the filmmaker). There are threatening natives but they are never wronged enough to start extracting revenge, nor real cannibals.
Accordingly it is the latter aspect that dominates, with Sabrina Siana playing the jungle-raised young woman and providing the film's main attraction in (and out of) her skimpy costumes.
As a Lenzi film this is almost up there with the same year's Cicciabomba in terms of anonymity and lack of engagement.
Unlike that film there are at least some nice in jokes, like the students offering the natives a credit card which, of course, means nothing to them, in apparent reference to Cannibal Ferox.
And , again, there is Siani, rather than Rettore in a fat suit...
Still, this film can only be recommended to those who have already seen Lenzi's cannibal films and his gialli and poliziotteschi and war movies and Kriminal and Sandokan entries.
You get the idea and undoubtedly know who you are, if this is for you or (more likely) not...
It sounds like something a gorehound / sicko would want to watch, particularly if they get off on – or don't mind – some real life animal snuff amongst the faked human on human stuff.
But, as it turns out, there is absolutely no real violence of either a human or animal nature, with the closest we get being a chimpanzee throwing coconuts at the bad guys.
What we get is a film that plays much like a self-conscious spoof of a cannibal film crossed with a female version of Tarzan of the Apes, not an original concept in itself, considering the likes of 1968's Samoa Queen of the Jungle, with none less than Edwige Fenech in the title role.
The scenes for the former are certainly there, but they just don't play out that way: There's stock footage of animals, but none of nature red in tooth and claw (or being set up to act that way by the filmmaker). There are threatening natives but they are never wronged enough to start extracting revenge, nor real cannibals.
Accordingly it is the latter aspect that dominates, with Sabrina Siana playing the jungle-raised young woman and providing the film's main attraction in (and out of) her skimpy costumes.
As a Lenzi film this is almost up there with the same year's Cicciabomba in terms of anonymity and lack of engagement.
Unlike that film there are at least some nice in jokes, like the students offering the natives a credit card which, of course, means nothing to them, in apparent reference to Cannibal Ferox.
And , again, there is Siani, rather than Rettore in a fat suit...
Still, this film can only be recommended to those who have already seen Lenzi's cannibal films and his gialli and poliziotteschi and war movies and Kriminal and Sandokan entries.
You get the idea and undoubtedly know who you are, if this is for you or (more likely) not...
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
La guerra del ferro / Ironmaster
Though made possible by the post-Conan fantasy boom, and marketed as such, this 1983 entry from Umberto Lenzi is really more a pre-historic adventure.
For the film eschews overt manifestations of magic and the supernatural, as seen in the otherwise comparable likes of Ator and Conquest, in favour of a more naturalistic, quasi-anthropological approach in which the only monsters present are less-evolved Neanderthal and ape-man tribes.
A decidedly misleading, if audience-attracting, poster for the French release of the film
At the heart of the story is the rivalry between two stone-age tribesmen, Vood and Ela, who might be summarised as the Cain and Abel or Shiva and Vishnu of the piece.
Vood’s father is chief of the tribe, but surmises, correctly as it turns out, that his son is more concerned with his own glory than the well-being of the tribe as a whole. Accordingly he expresses his preference that Ela should succeed him.
This prompts Vood to murder his father and proclaim himself chief. But Ela, who was witness to the murder but powerless to prevent it, refuses to accept this and challenges Vood to ritual combat for the leadership of the tribe. He wins, assumes the mantle of chief and duly banishes Vood into exile.
While wandering in the volcanic mountains – not, perhaps, the kind of thing a normal person would do, but something that makes sense in this context, along with allowing for some suitable Promethean connotations – Vood then happens upon a natural furnace and a piece of iron in the shape of a sword.
The value of this new weapon is demonstrated as he kills a lion, whose skin he fashions into a headdress, and is persuaded by Lith, who had watched the battle with the beast, to accompany her back to her tribe to take power.
Vood with sword and headdress
With this duly accomplished, Vood equips his warriors with iron swords and turns his attention towards the other tribes in the area, including his own former one...
As might be Lenzi does not shy away from gore in Ironmaster. In the case of the human on human violence this is perfectly justifiable given the 2001-esque black monolith qualities of the furnace and sword: Progress comes from violence and killing rather than peace, as is most forcefully made when a pacifist agrarian tribe is compelled to change its ways in order to survive the onslaught of Vood’s armies.
The inclusion of a boar being speared and gutted cannot however be justified. A quasi-anthropological excuse, that this is what these people would have done for food, is effectively negated by the decidedly unrealistic fright wigs and fur bikinis worn by the cast.
With the film having been shot in the Custer State Park in Dakota it is also noticeable that no buffalo are subjected to a similar fate. One presumes this was either because they were protected or simply too expensive to make for a cheap special effect.
Cast-wise, George Eastman has a suitably imposing villainous presence as Vood, whilst William Berger’s hippie associations are also useful in relation to his casting as leader of the pacifist, vegetarian tribe. Female leads Pamela Prati as Lith and Elvire Audray are attractive, if decidedly unconvincing as authentic tribeswomen. Unfortunately, with the exception of a bit of nipple slippage from Prati’s fur bikini, neither gets their kit off. Sam Pasco, who plays Ela, was a bodybuilder type. That this was to be his only film role tells you all you need to know.
Pasco and Audray, plus Prati's back
The De Angelis brothers provide a decent, if not terribly memorable, primitive score.
For the film eschews overt manifestations of magic and the supernatural, as seen in the otherwise comparable likes of Ator and Conquest, in favour of a more naturalistic, quasi-anthropological approach in which the only monsters present are less-evolved Neanderthal and ape-man tribes.
A decidedly misleading, if audience-attracting, poster for the French release of the film
At the heart of the story is the rivalry between two stone-age tribesmen, Vood and Ela, who might be summarised as the Cain and Abel or Shiva and Vishnu of the piece.
Vood’s father is chief of the tribe, but surmises, correctly as it turns out, that his son is more concerned with his own glory than the well-being of the tribe as a whole. Accordingly he expresses his preference that Ela should succeed him.
This prompts Vood to murder his father and proclaim himself chief. But Ela, who was witness to the murder but powerless to prevent it, refuses to accept this and challenges Vood to ritual combat for the leadership of the tribe. He wins, assumes the mantle of chief and duly banishes Vood into exile.
While wandering in the volcanic mountains – not, perhaps, the kind of thing a normal person would do, but something that makes sense in this context, along with allowing for some suitable Promethean connotations – Vood then happens upon a natural furnace and a piece of iron in the shape of a sword.
The value of this new weapon is demonstrated as he kills a lion, whose skin he fashions into a headdress, and is persuaded by Lith, who had watched the battle with the beast, to accompany her back to her tribe to take power.
Vood with sword and headdress
With this duly accomplished, Vood equips his warriors with iron swords and turns his attention towards the other tribes in the area, including his own former one...
As might be Lenzi does not shy away from gore in Ironmaster. In the case of the human on human violence this is perfectly justifiable given the 2001-esque black monolith qualities of the furnace and sword: Progress comes from violence and killing rather than peace, as is most forcefully made when a pacifist agrarian tribe is compelled to change its ways in order to survive the onslaught of Vood’s armies.
The inclusion of a boar being speared and gutted cannot however be justified. A quasi-anthropological excuse, that this is what these people would have done for food, is effectively negated by the decidedly unrealistic fright wigs and fur bikinis worn by the cast.
With the film having been shot in the Custer State Park in Dakota it is also noticeable that no buffalo are subjected to a similar fate. One presumes this was either because they were protected or simply too expensive to make for a cheap special effect.
Cast-wise, George Eastman has a suitably imposing villainous presence as Vood, whilst William Berger’s hippie associations are also useful in relation to his casting as leader of the pacifist, vegetarian tribe. Female leads Pamela Prati as Lith and Elvire Audray are attractive, if decidedly unconvincing as authentic tribeswomen. Unfortunately, with the exception of a bit of nipple slippage from Prati’s fur bikini, neither gets their kit off. Sam Pasco, who plays Ela, was a bodybuilder type. That this was to be his only film role tells you all you need to know.
Pasco and Audray, plus Prati's back
The De Angelis brothers provide a decent, if not terribly memorable, primitive score.
Sunday, 16 August 2009
Cicciabomba / Fatty Girl Goes to New York
Following on from my previous piece, this 1982 comedy from Umberto Lenzi can be best summarised as one of those "I've got to eat" projects.
The star of the show is pop singer Donatella Rettore, billed under her last name in accord with her wishes: "Non chiamatemi Donatella! Il mio nome è Rettore!" / "Don't call me Donatella! My name is Rettore!"
She plays teenager Miris Bigolin, an aspiring disc jockey - albeit on church radio - in a provincial northern Italian town, whose large size prevents her from declaring her love for altar-boy Mirko, who then plays a nasty practical joke upon her.
Depressed, Miris is about to commit suicide when she learns that she has won a competition she had entered some time before. The prize is a trip to New York. There Miris meets Baronessa Judith von Kemp (Anita Ekberg, looking well past her best as far as glamourous star attractions go) who chooses her to test a new slimming treatment.
Miris loses her excess weight and undergoes an extensive makeover, thereby giving Rettore fans the opportunity to see their idol as herself, or at least without the fat suit.
Note how the poster emphasises Rettore as star, with Lenzi and Ekberg getting second billing.
The new Miris-Rettore returns home to learn that Mirko has seduced and abandoned her younger sister Deborah, who is now pregnant by him. She thus proceeds to extract her revenge...
While intermittently funny, Cicciabomba is best described as being for Rettore's fans - there must be some out there - and Lenzi completists, such as myself, but very much in that order.
For Lenzi fans, the issue is that the film is utterly impersonal and could have been made to the same standard by any of a dozen other directors.
Admittedly, comedy can be a difficult genre for the non-specialist to make their mark within, all the more so when working with a star whose name undoubtedly represents the film's main selling point.
Nonetheless, as Lucio Fulci's collaborations with Lando Buzzanca demonstrate, it is also possible for the director to impart something more personal into the proceedings: Dracula in the Provinces and The Senator Likes Women are comedies whose incorporation of elements of surrealism, anti-clericalism and class conflict marks them as of a piece with Fulci's better-known horror and giallo entries.
They may be marginal compared to these films, or a Beatrice Cenci, but they nevertheless confirm the impression that a genuine auteur, someone whose work is marked by the same obsessions, is behind them.
Indeed, by commutating Fulci into Lenzi's place here, we can well imagine what he might have done to make it his own in playing up the anti-clerical angle Lenzi only hints at, or featuring surrealistic food nightmares...
The star of the show is pop singer Donatella Rettore, billed under her last name in accord with her wishes: "Non chiamatemi Donatella! Il mio nome è Rettore!" / "Don't call me Donatella! My name is Rettore!"
She plays teenager Miris Bigolin, an aspiring disc jockey - albeit on church radio - in a provincial northern Italian town, whose large size prevents her from declaring her love for altar-boy Mirko, who then plays a nasty practical joke upon her.
Depressed, Miris is about to commit suicide when she learns that she has won a competition she had entered some time before. The prize is a trip to New York. There Miris meets Baronessa Judith von Kemp (Anita Ekberg, looking well past her best as far as glamourous star attractions go) who chooses her to test a new slimming treatment.
Miris loses her excess weight and undergoes an extensive makeover, thereby giving Rettore fans the opportunity to see their idol as herself, or at least without the fat suit.
Note how the poster emphasises Rettore as star, with Lenzi and Ekberg getting second billing.
The new Miris-Rettore returns home to learn that Mirko has seduced and abandoned her younger sister Deborah, who is now pregnant by him. She thus proceeds to extract her revenge...
While intermittently funny, Cicciabomba is best described as being for Rettore's fans - there must be some out there - and Lenzi completists, such as myself, but very much in that order.
For Lenzi fans, the issue is that the film is utterly impersonal and could have been made to the same standard by any of a dozen other directors.
Admittedly, comedy can be a difficult genre for the non-specialist to make their mark within, all the more so when working with a star whose name undoubtedly represents the film's main selling point.
Nonetheless, as Lucio Fulci's collaborations with Lando Buzzanca demonstrate, it is also possible for the director to impart something more personal into the proceedings: Dracula in the Provinces and The Senator Likes Women are comedies whose incorporation of elements of surrealism, anti-clericalism and class conflict marks them as of a piece with Fulci's better-known horror and giallo entries.
They may be marginal compared to these films, or a Beatrice Cenci, but they nevertheless confirm the impression that a genuine auteur, someone whose work is marked by the same obsessions, is behind them.
Indeed, by commutating Fulci into Lenzi's place here, we can well imagine what he might have done to make it his own in playing up the anti-clerical angle Lenzi only hints at, or featuring surrealistic food nightmares...
La legione dei dannati / Battle of the Commandos
At the end of the 1960s, the editorial collective of Cahiers du cinema proposed that films could be positioned as politically radical or reactionary depending on where they sat on the axes of form and content.
For a film to be genuinely radical it had to have radical content and radical form. This was a combination which meant that 99% or more of films could be condemned as reactionary, including that five or ten per cent which aspired to be politically progressive.
A key influence here was Berthold Brecht’s theories of epic theatre, with their emphasis upon constantly distancing the audience from the action on stage by making them aware that they were watching a constructed fiction.
Crucially, however, the Cahiers writers also provided a get out clause for their own favourites by suggesting the existence of the famous category E film, the one that seemed to initially be formally and ideologically complicit with the status quo, but which could conveniently be recuperated for radicals like themselves to watch without feeling bad, through various strategies of deconstruction and detournement. The classic case was John Ford’s Young Mr Lincoln.
So, what does this have to do with Battle of the Commandos, a 1969 Euro-war entry directed by Umberto Lenzi from a script co-authored by Dario Argento?
Well, on the surface not a lot, given that the film sees yet another post-Dirty Dozen special squad of the condemned sent on a suicide mission, is replete with anachronisms and sees the reduction of complex material forces to simple battles between individual characters – including, of course, the obligatory evil Nazis.
Yet what I would argue is that if we look a bit further and consider the film in the light of its director’s avowed anarchism and similar tendencies in its co-author, we might begin to see it as a commentary – now more intentional, now more unconscious – on the awkward interface between popular film and politics, as a kind of Category E film for the Euro-trash enthusiast.
Palance was also in Godard's Contempt, where Brecht is quoted. Coincidence? Maybe...
We begin with Jack Palance’s Colonel Charlie MacPherson marching into his CO’s office to the strains of Marcello Giombini’s appropriately stirring, martial music.
MacPherson has just returned from his latest mission, unlike the 20-odd men serving under him. For MacPherson their deaths are what matters. For his CO it is that the goal of the mission was accomplished: Yes, 20 men died, but their sacrifice achieved the destruction of 75 enemy panzers.
It’s a basic difference in accounting strategies, nicely summarised by Brecht’s poem “General, your tank is a powerful vehicle”:
“General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.”
The general knows this, however, and plays upon it to entice MacPherson into a new mission, one that gives him the opportunity to go up against his old enemy Colonel Ackerman.
MacPherson swallows the bait and hastily assembles a team of military prisoners for the mission. While the usual mismatched group, they’re better characterised than some of their counterparts elsewhere and are used by the filmmakers to make further points.
Claudio Undari’s Private Stone is the profiteering individualist, a Mother Courage type who doesn’t care whether the Axis or the Allies win the war.
He’s contrasted with Helmuth Schneider’s Sam Schrier, a German-Jewish anarchist who fought in the Spanish Civil War and bears a concentration camp tattoo. (One here wonders if the film has exerted any influence on Tarantino's forthcoming Inglorious Basterds, with its all-Jewish hit squad.)
In the middle are the likes of Bruno Corrazzini’s Frank Madigan, who invariably compares anything he eats or drinks to the menu of a luxury hotel, which he apparently visited every day in civilian life; the deliciously revealed punch-line is that this was in the capacity of working as a waiter rather than as a customer.
Rounding out the team are Thomas Hunter’s demolitions expert Captain Burke, a happy-go-lucky type from the USA whose womanising marks him out as less professional than the disapproving – but possibly envious – MacPherson, and the Colonel’s sidekick Sgt. Habinda.
Habinda is one of the film’s most awkward characters, his loyalty to MacPherson and, through him, the British Empire implicitly marking him out as a traitor to his own people in India.
This issue is one that Brecht addressed in his own discussions of the Hollywood film of Rudyard Kipling’s poem Gunga Din: Despite his politics, Brecht found himself being drawn into agreeing with the film’s racist, imperialist sentiments and needing to constantly re-assert his critical distance. If it might be argued that this was a testament to the power of classical Hollywood mise en scene, the point I would make is that neither Gunga Din’s form nor its content proved able to successfully interpellate the viewer.
If Brecht was an exceptional viewer in some regards, his freedom to read the text against the grain is not in itself exceptional.
As it so happens, Habinda is played by Aldo Sambrell. This in turn sets up some questions around performance styles and political correctness: As someone who really gets into his characters Sambrell is akin to a method actor, the antithesis of Brecht’s gestural approach. Although there’s a hint of boot-polish to his make up and an awkward incongruity to the removal of his turban revealing short, thinning hair rather than flowing Sikh locks, he’s a reasonably convincing Indian. Yet these same elements also make for a degree of distancing, that he’s a Spaniard playing at being an Indian.
In one way Sambrell is showing the artificiality of identity but in another he’s being politically incorrect, precisely because these selfsame theoretical identity politics often assume only those who are ‘really’ X should play or depict, X without questioning the reality of X when it pertains to the non-dominant other. (Let’s see who can be more anti-essentialist; you go first.)
Similar productive, thought-provoking contradictions emerge as the mission gets underway. MacPherson and his men successfully establish a beach-head, but the boats following them are spotted and destroyed, leaving them stuck behind enemy lines.
While the SS man, played by the inevitable and inimitable Gerard Herter, is confident that the attack has been repulsed, Ackerman, played by Wolfgang Preiss, is less sure. What’s in play here is not just the conventional contrast between the good German and the bad Nazi – as also seen in another Argento-scripted Dirty Dozen copy, Probability Zero – but also the contrast between the SS ideologue and the Wehrmacht professional.
Viewing the war as all but lost, Ackerman’s goal is the best possible, honourable peace. Having no faith in the Fuhrer nor the master race like his SS counterpart, he’s the kind of soldier who would have supported the July 1944 plot and, had it succeeded, possibly have given the Allies a harder time of things militarily by, for example, not devoting much needed resources to wasteful campaigns of genocide. (Co-incidentally or otherwise, Dirty Dozen II sees the commandos presented with an opportunity to kill Hitler, which they don’t take.)
A game of move and counter-move, bluff and double-bluff between MacPherson and Ackermann thus ensues.
If this gives scope for plenty of battle scenes and set pieces, we can again emphasise their latent contradictions. Clearly dealing with relatively limited resources – albeit still more considerable than he and other filone directors would have to deal with ten or fifteen years later, as evinced by the train-mounted gun that becomes the McGuffin around which MacPherson and Ackerman converge – Lenzi makes extensive use of the zoom lens as an alternative to cutting and, when doing so, frequently presents rapid montages of shots that show little regard for continuity.
While this approach makes it harder to notice the ill-fitting uniforms worn by the extras or the fact that they are wielding Italian manufactured submachine guns not used by the Germans in WWII, it also makes the action sequences that bit harder to engage with for the average viewer. Insofar as this viewer was more likely troubled by difficulties in following the action than with the props – see, for example, some of the comments on the film on the IMDB, this again comes across as something of a distanciating element.
Finally, the theme of food resurfaces again through the ambiguous character of Diana Lorys’s Janine, the erstwhile lover of a collaborationist mayor, who is then taken by MacPherson to be a guide, and is then captured and interrogated by the Wehrmacht and SS in turn. Throughout all this, her motivations are about survival and pain avoidance rather than ideology.
Or, as Ludwig Feuerbach famously put it, “Der Mensch ist was er isst”: “man is what he eats”.
"Food first, then morality."...
For a film to be genuinely radical it had to have radical content and radical form. This was a combination which meant that 99% or more of films could be condemned as reactionary, including that five or ten per cent which aspired to be politically progressive.
A key influence here was Berthold Brecht’s theories of epic theatre, with their emphasis upon constantly distancing the audience from the action on stage by making them aware that they were watching a constructed fiction.
Crucially, however, the Cahiers writers also provided a get out clause for their own favourites by suggesting the existence of the famous category E film, the one that seemed to initially be formally and ideologically complicit with the status quo, but which could conveniently be recuperated for radicals like themselves to watch without feeling bad, through various strategies of deconstruction and detournement. The classic case was John Ford’s Young Mr Lincoln.
So, what does this have to do with Battle of the Commandos, a 1969 Euro-war entry directed by Umberto Lenzi from a script co-authored by Dario Argento?
Well, on the surface not a lot, given that the film sees yet another post-Dirty Dozen special squad of the condemned sent on a suicide mission, is replete with anachronisms and sees the reduction of complex material forces to simple battles between individual characters – including, of course, the obligatory evil Nazis.
Yet what I would argue is that if we look a bit further and consider the film in the light of its director’s avowed anarchism and similar tendencies in its co-author, we might begin to see it as a commentary – now more intentional, now more unconscious – on the awkward interface between popular film and politics, as a kind of Category E film for the Euro-trash enthusiast.
Palance was also in Godard's Contempt, where Brecht is quoted. Coincidence? Maybe...
We begin with Jack Palance’s Colonel Charlie MacPherson marching into his CO’s office to the strains of Marcello Giombini’s appropriately stirring, martial music.
MacPherson has just returned from his latest mission, unlike the 20-odd men serving under him. For MacPherson their deaths are what matters. For his CO it is that the goal of the mission was accomplished: Yes, 20 men died, but their sacrifice achieved the destruction of 75 enemy panzers.
It’s a basic difference in accounting strategies, nicely summarised by Brecht’s poem “General, your tank is a powerful vehicle”:
“General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.”
The general knows this, however, and plays upon it to entice MacPherson into a new mission, one that gives him the opportunity to go up against his old enemy Colonel Ackerman.
MacPherson swallows the bait and hastily assembles a team of military prisoners for the mission. While the usual mismatched group, they’re better characterised than some of their counterparts elsewhere and are used by the filmmakers to make further points.
Claudio Undari’s Private Stone is the profiteering individualist, a Mother Courage type who doesn’t care whether the Axis or the Allies win the war.
He’s contrasted with Helmuth Schneider’s Sam Schrier, a German-Jewish anarchist who fought in the Spanish Civil War and bears a concentration camp tattoo. (One here wonders if the film has exerted any influence on Tarantino's forthcoming Inglorious Basterds, with its all-Jewish hit squad.)
In the middle are the likes of Bruno Corrazzini’s Frank Madigan, who invariably compares anything he eats or drinks to the menu of a luxury hotel, which he apparently visited every day in civilian life; the deliciously revealed punch-line is that this was in the capacity of working as a waiter rather than as a customer.
Rounding out the team are Thomas Hunter’s demolitions expert Captain Burke, a happy-go-lucky type from the USA whose womanising marks him out as less professional than the disapproving – but possibly envious – MacPherson, and the Colonel’s sidekick Sgt. Habinda.
Habinda is one of the film’s most awkward characters, his loyalty to MacPherson and, through him, the British Empire implicitly marking him out as a traitor to his own people in India.
This issue is one that Brecht addressed in his own discussions of the Hollywood film of Rudyard Kipling’s poem Gunga Din: Despite his politics, Brecht found himself being drawn into agreeing with the film’s racist, imperialist sentiments and needing to constantly re-assert his critical distance. If it might be argued that this was a testament to the power of classical Hollywood mise en scene, the point I would make is that neither Gunga Din’s form nor its content proved able to successfully interpellate the viewer.
If Brecht was an exceptional viewer in some regards, his freedom to read the text against the grain is not in itself exceptional.
As it so happens, Habinda is played by Aldo Sambrell. This in turn sets up some questions around performance styles and political correctness: As someone who really gets into his characters Sambrell is akin to a method actor, the antithesis of Brecht’s gestural approach. Although there’s a hint of boot-polish to his make up and an awkward incongruity to the removal of his turban revealing short, thinning hair rather than flowing Sikh locks, he’s a reasonably convincing Indian. Yet these same elements also make for a degree of distancing, that he’s a Spaniard playing at being an Indian.
In one way Sambrell is showing the artificiality of identity but in another he’s being politically incorrect, precisely because these selfsame theoretical identity politics often assume only those who are ‘really’ X should play or depict, X without questioning the reality of X when it pertains to the non-dominant other. (Let’s see who can be more anti-essentialist; you go first.)
Similar productive, thought-provoking contradictions emerge as the mission gets underway. MacPherson and his men successfully establish a beach-head, but the boats following them are spotted and destroyed, leaving them stuck behind enemy lines.
While the SS man, played by the inevitable and inimitable Gerard Herter, is confident that the attack has been repulsed, Ackerman, played by Wolfgang Preiss, is less sure. What’s in play here is not just the conventional contrast between the good German and the bad Nazi – as also seen in another Argento-scripted Dirty Dozen copy, Probability Zero – but also the contrast between the SS ideologue and the Wehrmacht professional.
Viewing the war as all but lost, Ackerman’s goal is the best possible, honourable peace. Having no faith in the Fuhrer nor the master race like his SS counterpart, he’s the kind of soldier who would have supported the July 1944 plot and, had it succeeded, possibly have given the Allies a harder time of things militarily by, for example, not devoting much needed resources to wasteful campaigns of genocide. (Co-incidentally or otherwise, Dirty Dozen II sees the commandos presented with an opportunity to kill Hitler, which they don’t take.)
A game of move and counter-move, bluff and double-bluff between MacPherson and Ackermann thus ensues.
If this gives scope for plenty of battle scenes and set pieces, we can again emphasise their latent contradictions. Clearly dealing with relatively limited resources – albeit still more considerable than he and other filone directors would have to deal with ten or fifteen years later, as evinced by the train-mounted gun that becomes the McGuffin around which MacPherson and Ackerman converge – Lenzi makes extensive use of the zoom lens as an alternative to cutting and, when doing so, frequently presents rapid montages of shots that show little regard for continuity.
While this approach makes it harder to notice the ill-fitting uniforms worn by the extras or the fact that they are wielding Italian manufactured submachine guns not used by the Germans in WWII, it also makes the action sequences that bit harder to engage with for the average viewer. Insofar as this viewer was more likely troubled by difficulties in following the action than with the props – see, for example, some of the comments on the film on the IMDB, this again comes across as something of a distanciating element.
Finally, the theme of food resurfaces again through the ambiguous character of Diana Lorys’s Janine, the erstwhile lover of a collaborationist mayor, who is then taken by MacPherson to be a guide, and is then captured and interrogated by the Wehrmacht and SS in turn. Throughout all this, her motivations are about survival and pain avoidance rather than ideology.
Or, as Ludwig Feuerbach famously put it, “Der Mensch ist was er isst”: “man is what he eats”.
"Food first, then morality."...
Saturday, 21 March 2009
Attentato ai tre grandi / Desert Commandos / Les Chiens verts du déser / Fünf gegen Casablanca
As I’ve said before and will no doubt say again, the tragedy of Umberto Lenzi’s career is that he’s probably doomed to be known for Cannibal Ferox rather than any of the dozens of far better non-cannibal films he made over the course of his long career.
Desert Commandos is yet another illustration of this point, being an effective entry into the Eurowar filone that works on every count to showcase Lenzi’s hyphenate abilities as writer and director.
While taking the standard commando mission scenario, the film is unusual in that it presents such a mission from the German / Nazi perspective; I use both terms because the central personal drama within the five man strong, hand-picked group is the clash of values between ‘evil’ Nazi Captain Fritz Scholler, played by Ken Clark, and ‘good’ German Lieutenant Roland Wolf, played somewhat against type by Horst Frank.
The mission, which Scholler is charged with keeping secret from his men until he can be sure of their loyalty, is one that, if successful, will surely change the course of the war: to infiltrate an Allied conference in Casablanca and assassinate three of those present there, namely Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt.
In other words, it’s like Lenzi’s version of Eagles over London – admittedly one produced before Castellari’s film – by way of extrapolating from the known history of the Second World War to present a possible story from the secret archives. The key difference, of course, is that we here see things from the perspective of the ‘bad’ guys.
Where Lenzi succeeds here is in making us identify with the men, by making them something more than stereotypes.
Thus, in addition to being a dedicated Nazi soldier, Scholler is a dedicated family man, giving an added dimension to his reasons for fighting – who wouldn’t want a better future for their children, whilst also reminding us that Nazism couldn’t have succeeded if its value system was utterly alien.
The half-American, (purportedly Jewish) Faulkner-reading Wolf’s more humanitarian approach is meanwhile sometimes exposed as a cause of greater suffering, as when he questions Scholler’s apparently unnecessary killing of all of a group of tribesmen bar one in order that they can take the men’s camels.
For, as Scholler explains, the tribesmen would surely otherwise have suffered a slow death from dehydration without their camels and supplies.
Another element worth noting here are the various Arab-type agents upon whose success the mission also depends, as figures who go beyond the conventional opportunism to also be thinking in terms of the enemy of my enemy being my friend, and thus reminding us that the British and French were hardly innocent when it came to dubious attitudes towards the other. (“What do you think of western civilisation?” “I think it would be a good idea!” to quote Ghandi.)
Lenzi makes good use of locations, emphasising the contrast between the desolate, uninhabited uniformity of the desert and the crowded, multi-layered city of Casablanca with its winding alleys and flat rooftop terraces; generates considerable tension, suspense and intrigue; and handles the action scenes comfortably.
While suffering from an awkward pan and scan treatment in the version under review, some compensation is provided by the familiar Eurocult faces present, including Howard Ross as another of the commando team and Tom Felleghy as an allied officer.
Everyone's favourite military looking type: Tom Felleghy
Students of acousmatic sound and the figure of the acousmetre, the one who is heard but not seen, may want to also note the finale to the men’s mission for the way in which Churchill is presented.
Desert Commandos is yet another illustration of this point, being an effective entry into the Eurowar filone that works on every count to showcase Lenzi’s hyphenate abilities as writer and director.
While taking the standard commando mission scenario, the film is unusual in that it presents such a mission from the German / Nazi perspective; I use both terms because the central personal drama within the five man strong, hand-picked group is the clash of values between ‘evil’ Nazi Captain Fritz Scholler, played by Ken Clark, and ‘good’ German Lieutenant Roland Wolf, played somewhat against type by Horst Frank.
The mission, which Scholler is charged with keeping secret from his men until he can be sure of their loyalty, is one that, if successful, will surely change the course of the war: to infiltrate an Allied conference in Casablanca and assassinate three of those present there, namely Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt.
In other words, it’s like Lenzi’s version of Eagles over London – admittedly one produced before Castellari’s film – by way of extrapolating from the known history of the Second World War to present a possible story from the secret archives. The key difference, of course, is that we here see things from the perspective of the ‘bad’ guys.
Where Lenzi succeeds here is in making us identify with the men, by making them something more than stereotypes.
Thus, in addition to being a dedicated Nazi soldier, Scholler is a dedicated family man, giving an added dimension to his reasons for fighting – who wouldn’t want a better future for their children, whilst also reminding us that Nazism couldn’t have succeeded if its value system was utterly alien.
The half-American, (purportedly Jewish) Faulkner-reading Wolf’s more humanitarian approach is meanwhile sometimes exposed as a cause of greater suffering, as when he questions Scholler’s apparently unnecessary killing of all of a group of tribesmen bar one in order that they can take the men’s camels.
For, as Scholler explains, the tribesmen would surely otherwise have suffered a slow death from dehydration without their camels and supplies.
Another element worth noting here are the various Arab-type agents upon whose success the mission also depends, as figures who go beyond the conventional opportunism to also be thinking in terms of the enemy of my enemy being my friend, and thus reminding us that the British and French were hardly innocent when it came to dubious attitudes towards the other. (“What do you think of western civilisation?” “I think it would be a good idea!” to quote Ghandi.)
Lenzi makes good use of locations, emphasising the contrast between the desolate, uninhabited uniformity of the desert and the crowded, multi-layered city of Casablanca with its winding alleys and flat rooftop terraces; generates considerable tension, suspense and intrigue; and handles the action scenes comfortably.
While suffering from an awkward pan and scan treatment in the version under review, some compensation is provided by the familiar Eurocult faces present, including Howard Ross as another of the commando team and Tom Felleghy as an allied officer.
Everyone's favourite military looking type: Tom Felleghy
Students of acousmatic sound and the figure of the acousmetre, the one who is heard but not seen, may want to also note the finale to the men’s mission for the way in which Churchill is presented.
Sunday, 8 March 2009
Zorro contro Maciste / Samson and the Slave Queen
What we have here is a prime example of how the Italian filone cinema, no matter how successful it might have been in meeting the needs of its target vernacular audiences, was never going to be recognised by critics.
For in combining bringing together Zorro and Maciste within a pseudo-historical context that seems neither man’s but rather more something akin to a rather ahistorical Spanish version of the world of the Three Musketeers, and in then releasing the film ‘badly’ dubbed into English – with Maciste renamed as Samson – the filmmakers were undoubtedly setting themselves up for all manner of critical derision.
Nevermind that the same critics who likely attacked the film for this combination of anachronisms likely hadn’t seen the original silent-era Maciste in Hell, where the character, still incarnated by Bartolomeo Pagano, is likewise taken out of the ancient world where he originated and placed in the 19th or even early 20th century.
Though he’s here played by Alan Steele / Sergio Ciani and looks more like a Hercules type, with a full head of hair and a neatly trimmed beard, Maciste’s otherwise still the same old figure: a good-natured, easily duped righter of wrongs.
Zorro, here incarnated by Pierre Brice, wears the same all-black outfit and is likewise still a heroic defender of the weak, but his alter ego is not that of Don Diego but rather Ramon, a loyal servant and would-be suitor of the pure and kind Isabella de Alonzon.
Our two heroes are pitted against one another when Isabella’s uncle, the reigning monarch, dies of a fever on an island part of the kingdom; the exact location of this island in relation to the rest of the kingdom remains unclear throughout, as do geographical and temporal locations generally, to thereby establish an appropriately mythical chronotope for anyone who cares about such things.
Knowing that the king will surely have chosen Isabella to succeed him, her evil rival Malva and her lover, Garcia de Higuera, a captain in the guards, charge Maciste with intercepting General Saviera, who is bearing the ex-king’s missive. Unfortunately for both our heroes bandit Rabek, gets to the general first...
True, you can pretty much guess the outcome already, that the conflict between Zorro and Maciste is an evenly matched one where neither man is ever going to strike a fatal blow; that the two men will eventually realise they are on the same side, and that good will inevitably triumph over evil, with – in true Lacanian fashion – the purloined letter eventually reaching its destination.
But this is exactly the point, the way in which the filmmakers give us exactly what the formula dictates they should. And if it’s arguably a case of no more than the formula – here noting the distinct absence of Bava-esque irony and the comparatively straight hybridisation of costume adventure and peplum modes, compared to the peplum and gothic horror of Hercules in the Haunted World – it’s also clear that a lot has gone into the production, with impressive sets, costumes and large-scale set pieces.
Whether or not it’s better than director and co-writer Umberto Lenzi’s other excursions into the filone with the likes of the Steve Reeves starring Sandokan is debatable, but Zorro contro Maciste is certainly the kind of film that you can’t help but enjoy if you’re willing to put yourself into the appropriate mindset of straightforward heroes, villains and situations.
Fans Sergio Leone may be interested to hear the Mexican-styled score from Angelo Francesco Lavagnino, as a possible example of the kind of thing he would have contributed to A Fistful of Dollars had fate not decreed that Morricone would get the job rather than Lavagnino, who had scored Leone's own peplum entry, The Colossus of Rhodes
For in combining bringing together Zorro and Maciste within a pseudo-historical context that seems neither man’s but rather more something akin to a rather ahistorical Spanish version of the world of the Three Musketeers, and in then releasing the film ‘badly’ dubbed into English – with Maciste renamed as Samson – the filmmakers were undoubtedly setting themselves up for all manner of critical derision.
Nevermind that the same critics who likely attacked the film for this combination of anachronisms likely hadn’t seen the original silent-era Maciste in Hell, where the character, still incarnated by Bartolomeo Pagano, is likewise taken out of the ancient world where he originated and placed in the 19th or even early 20th century.
Though he’s here played by Alan Steele / Sergio Ciani and looks more like a Hercules type, with a full head of hair and a neatly trimmed beard, Maciste’s otherwise still the same old figure: a good-natured, easily duped righter of wrongs.
Zorro, here incarnated by Pierre Brice, wears the same all-black outfit and is likewise still a heroic defender of the weak, but his alter ego is not that of Don Diego but rather Ramon, a loyal servant and would-be suitor of the pure and kind Isabella de Alonzon.
Our two heroes are pitted against one another when Isabella’s uncle, the reigning monarch, dies of a fever on an island part of the kingdom; the exact location of this island in relation to the rest of the kingdom remains unclear throughout, as do geographical and temporal locations generally, to thereby establish an appropriately mythical chronotope for anyone who cares about such things.
Knowing that the king will surely have chosen Isabella to succeed him, her evil rival Malva and her lover, Garcia de Higuera, a captain in the guards, charge Maciste with intercepting General Saviera, who is bearing the ex-king’s missive. Unfortunately for both our heroes bandit Rabek, gets to the general first...
True, you can pretty much guess the outcome already, that the conflict between Zorro and Maciste is an evenly matched one where neither man is ever going to strike a fatal blow; that the two men will eventually realise they are on the same side, and that good will inevitably triumph over evil, with – in true Lacanian fashion – the purloined letter eventually reaching its destination.
But this is exactly the point, the way in which the filmmakers give us exactly what the formula dictates they should. And if it’s arguably a case of no more than the formula – here noting the distinct absence of Bava-esque irony and the comparatively straight hybridisation of costume adventure and peplum modes, compared to the peplum and gothic horror of Hercules in the Haunted World – it’s also clear that a lot has gone into the production, with impressive sets, costumes and large-scale set pieces.
Whether or not it’s better than director and co-writer Umberto Lenzi’s other excursions into the filone with the likes of the Steve Reeves starring Sandokan is debatable, but Zorro contro Maciste is certainly the kind of film that you can’t help but enjoy if you’re willing to put yourself into the appropriate mindset of straightforward heroes, villains and situations.
Fans Sergio Leone may be interested to hear the Mexican-styled score from Angelo Francesco Lavagnino, as a possible example of the kind of thing he would have contributed to A Fistful of Dollars had fate not decreed that Morricone would get the job rather than Lavagnino, who had scored Leone's own peplum entry, The Colossus of Rhodes
Thursday, 13 December 2007
Corleone da Brooklyn / From Corleone to Brookyln / The Sicilian Boss
Having secretly relocated from Palermo to New York under a false identity and passport, mafia boss Michele Barresi (Mario Barola) is intent on settling old scores back in the old country.
Meanwhile, Rome cop Lieutenant Berni (Maurizio Merli) is investigating one of the resulting hits and, suspecting a Sicilian connection, has arrived in Palermo.
The two men's paths intersect in the form of another mafioso, Salvatore Scalia (Biagio Pelligra).
All Berni has to do is bring Scalia to New York so that he can testify against Baressi, so that he can be extradited back to Italy.
All that stands between him and his goal are countless other mafioso and a long journey across unfamiliar territory, along with the quesion of whether Scalia won't try to escape, seek to extract his own justice upon Barresi, or simply refuse to testify...
Men with guns
Released in 1979, Corleone da Brooklyn / From Corleone to Brooklyn / The Sicilian Boss was to prove the last of Umberto Lenzi's cop films and his final collaboration with the iconic Merli, essaying a character different from Inspector Leonardo Tanzi in name only.
While the film delivers most of what fans will expect, it's telling that a follow-up hinted at by the closing exchange, which would have charted the return journey from Brooklyn to Corleone, never materialised as Lenzi turned his attention to more horror-oriented fare.
Maurizio Merli
The Rome / Palermo / New York culture clash aspect is a good idea in principle, but tends to be negated, at least in the English dub, by the fact that everyone is speaking the same language. A discussion of the Sicilian dialect term cosche, referring to the tightly-wrapped leaves of the artichoke and representing an ironic ideal model for the relationship amongst members of a mafia family, is thus robbed of of much of its potential significance, for example.
The more familiar material - the obligatory chases, fights and shoot outs - is well enough handled as might be expected, but also tends to suffer from overfamiliarity if you've seen the any of the earlier films.
I could almost predict the moment when that driving Franco Micalizzi music - I don't know if I've actually heard it before, or if it just seemed that way - was going to kick in and a car chase ensue. This time, however, it just seemed that bit perfunctory and by the motions, such that the pedestrians stepping out of the way of the onrushing vehicles at high speed are that bit more noticeable and less forgivable than their counterparts were a few years and films back.
On the plus side, the developing relationship between Berni and Scalia is interesting and works surprisingly well given one's image of Merli as an action rather than a dramatic lead, while the tension is rarely allowed to flag, helping cover over some narrative shortcomings - wouldn't a Brooklyn gang, even of none-too-smart and somewhat desperate junkie types, know that it was probably not wise to antagonise the two heavies who just happen to be the only customers in an Italian restaurant?
Trash film heaven, circa 1979
Lenzi fans will also enjoy playing spot the cameo appearance, even if the confinement of the likes of Gianfranco Cianfriglia to these roles is a touch sad. Trash cinema enthusiasts will likewise appreciate the images of pre-clean up New York, with a theatre marquee proudly proclaming porno features Fiona on Fire and Barbara Broadcast.
Meanwhile, Rome cop Lieutenant Berni (Maurizio Merli) is investigating one of the resulting hits and, suspecting a Sicilian connection, has arrived in Palermo.
The two men's paths intersect in the form of another mafioso, Salvatore Scalia (Biagio Pelligra).
All Berni has to do is bring Scalia to New York so that he can testify against Baressi, so that he can be extradited back to Italy.
All that stands between him and his goal are countless other mafioso and a long journey across unfamiliar territory, along with the quesion of whether Scalia won't try to escape, seek to extract his own justice upon Barresi, or simply refuse to testify...
Men with guns
Released in 1979, Corleone da Brooklyn / From Corleone to Brooklyn / The Sicilian Boss was to prove the last of Umberto Lenzi's cop films and his final collaboration with the iconic Merli, essaying a character different from Inspector Leonardo Tanzi in name only.
While the film delivers most of what fans will expect, it's telling that a follow-up hinted at by the closing exchange, which would have charted the return journey from Brooklyn to Corleone, never materialised as Lenzi turned his attention to more horror-oriented fare.
Maurizio Merli
The Rome / Palermo / New York culture clash aspect is a good idea in principle, but tends to be negated, at least in the English dub, by the fact that everyone is speaking the same language. A discussion of the Sicilian dialect term cosche, referring to the tightly-wrapped leaves of the artichoke and representing an ironic ideal model for the relationship amongst members of a mafia family, is thus robbed of of much of its potential significance, for example.
The more familiar material - the obligatory chases, fights and shoot outs - is well enough handled as might be expected, but also tends to suffer from overfamiliarity if you've seen the any of the earlier films.
I could almost predict the moment when that driving Franco Micalizzi music - I don't know if I've actually heard it before, or if it just seemed that way - was going to kick in and a car chase ensue. This time, however, it just seemed that bit perfunctory and by the motions, such that the pedestrians stepping out of the way of the onrushing vehicles at high speed are that bit more noticeable and less forgivable than their counterparts were a few years and films back.
On the plus side, the developing relationship between Berni and Scalia is interesting and works surprisingly well given one's image of Merli as an action rather than a dramatic lead, while the tension is rarely allowed to flag, helping cover over some narrative shortcomings - wouldn't a Brooklyn gang, even of none-too-smart and somewhat desperate junkie types, know that it was probably not wise to antagonise the two heavies who just happen to be the only customers in an Italian restaurant?
Trash film heaven, circa 1979
Lenzi fans will also enjoy playing spot the cameo appearance, even if the confinement of the likes of Gianfranco Cianfriglia to these roles is a touch sad. Trash cinema enthusiasts will likewise appreciate the images of pre-clean up New York, with a theatre marquee proudly proclaming porno features Fiona on Fire and Barbara Broadcast.
Friday, 3 August 2007
Così dolce... così perversa / So Sweet So Perverse
Jean (Jean-Louis Tritignant) and Danielle's relationship is not what it was. While still married they lead somewhat separate lives dominated by ennui; “It keeps getting harder and harder to feel excited,” as Jean remarks prior to what proves to be a dispassionate, dissatisfying and above all thoroughly routine and businesslike affair with another of their circle, Helene Valmont (Helga Line).
One evening soon thereafter Jean is disturbed by noise coming from the apartment above. Going to investigate – (not) coincidentally he has both a dropped ear-ring to return and a key to the apartment, which Danielle was thinking of also renting – he encounters their new neighbour, Nicole (Carroll Baker) with whom he soon becomes infatuated.
Though Jean's feelings are genuine, its also perhaps the sense of excitement which the presence of her sadistic, possessive ex-boyfriend Klaus (Horst Frank) brings to the relationship and the opportunity it affords for him to play the hero, “The Victorian image of the dominant male [...] a little out of place today,” as Danielle tellingly puts it.
Mirror, mirror on the wall...
Indeed, it then transpires that Danielle (Erica Blanc) and Nicole have themselves conspired against Jean, Klaus being the hitman hired to murder him. But, after Klaus has apparently fatally stabbed Jean – crucially neither we nor the women, whilst present at the scene, actually witness this fatal blow – and pitched his car over a cliff to leave a horribly burnt corpse for Danielle to (mis)identify for the police as that of her husband, the intrigue deepens still further, with little ultimately proving to be as it seems...
Released shortly before The Bird with the Crystal Plumage changed the face of the giallo forever, Umberto Lenzi's second venture into the filone works along the same broad lines as his first, Orgasmo / Paranoia, by attempting to refashion – or sex up – the Les Diaboliques style thriller for the late 1960s audience.
It is less successful as its predecessor, however, having more of an obviously 'mechanical' feel to it, with contrivances and misdirections that work the first time round but don't stand up as well on repeat viewings, most notably a flashback that retrospectively appears false and scenes where characters externalise feelings as if to another while they are not actually “under observation” in this manner nor required to thereby “put on a show”.
Perhaps more of a problem, however, is that it's hard to see why Danielle should be conspiring against Jean in the first place. She is not desperate for money, a divorce or anything else, their tacic agreement to live separate lives apparetly a more or less mutually (dis)agreeable one.
A love that could not speak its name?
One answer, perhaps also alluded to by that suggestive title – a suggestiveness continued by the film, which is actually less explicit in what it shows than its at-the-time X-rated predecessor – is the strong intimation that she has lesbian tendencies: You wonder if she herself was infatuated with Nicole to begin with, but correctly surmised that Jean, in his masculine pride, could never accept her having a relationship with another woman, and accordingly realised he had to go, and whether the need to join the dots beyond this indicates a certain nervousness about going too far on the part of the filmmakers.
Shifts in and fun with focus
In her interview in 99 Donne, Erica Blanc indicates that she was originally slated to play Nicole and Baker Danielle, but that the American actress, perhaps wary of over(t)ly repeating her Orgasmo role, then had them switch. It is a testament to each actresses' abilities that you would likely never know otherwise. While Trintignant, Frank and Line inherently have less room to maneuvre, with each playing largely to type - i.e. Tritignant as the neurotic, shifty bourgeois, Frank as the smug sadist of Aryan demeanour, Line as the sophisticated, glamourous love interest – there is nothing to complain about in that if ain't broke don't fix it way.
Classic giallo imagery #1 – the stairwell and the lift to the scaffold
Classic giallo imagery #2 – the barely identifiable remains in the morgue
Classic giallo imagery #3 - the tape recorder
Classic giallo imagery #4 – the jet plane
Lenzi's contribution is difficult to fully appreciate on account of panning and scanning that makes a mockery of any inventive use of widescreen, but several nice touches do come through including the familiar symbolic / suggestive use of mirrors and some almost three-dimensional explorations of focus effects. A high-speed driving sequence meanwhile suggests not only his characters' search for thrills to momentarily relieve their boredom but also later poliziotteschi, whilst some unexpected discontinuity editing – note the way Jean and Helene's tryst is presented – further reminds us that the gap between the worlds of Lenzi and Antonioni and their audiences implied by Kim Newman is less absolute than relative.
Riz Ortolani's score is another asset, providing a characteristic mix of lush, sophisticated jazz-inflected easy listening and pop that further situates the film in giallo erotico territory, even as title track “Why” later cropped up in psycho-killer on the loose outing Seven Bloodstained Orchids.
One evening soon thereafter Jean is disturbed by noise coming from the apartment above. Going to investigate – (not) coincidentally he has both a dropped ear-ring to return and a key to the apartment, which Danielle was thinking of also renting – he encounters their new neighbour, Nicole (Carroll Baker) with whom he soon becomes infatuated.
Though Jean's feelings are genuine, its also perhaps the sense of excitement which the presence of her sadistic, possessive ex-boyfriend Klaus (Horst Frank) brings to the relationship and the opportunity it affords for him to play the hero, “The Victorian image of the dominant male [...] a little out of place today,” as Danielle tellingly puts it.
Mirror, mirror on the wall...
Indeed, it then transpires that Danielle (Erica Blanc) and Nicole have themselves conspired against Jean, Klaus being the hitman hired to murder him. But, after Klaus has apparently fatally stabbed Jean – crucially neither we nor the women, whilst present at the scene, actually witness this fatal blow – and pitched his car over a cliff to leave a horribly burnt corpse for Danielle to (mis)identify for the police as that of her husband, the intrigue deepens still further, with little ultimately proving to be as it seems...
Released shortly before The Bird with the Crystal Plumage changed the face of the giallo forever, Umberto Lenzi's second venture into the filone works along the same broad lines as his first, Orgasmo / Paranoia, by attempting to refashion – or sex up – the Les Diaboliques style thriller for the late 1960s audience.
It is less successful as its predecessor, however, having more of an obviously 'mechanical' feel to it, with contrivances and misdirections that work the first time round but don't stand up as well on repeat viewings, most notably a flashback that retrospectively appears false and scenes where characters externalise feelings as if to another while they are not actually “under observation” in this manner nor required to thereby “put on a show”.
Perhaps more of a problem, however, is that it's hard to see why Danielle should be conspiring against Jean in the first place. She is not desperate for money, a divorce or anything else, their tacic agreement to live separate lives apparetly a more or less mutually (dis)agreeable one.
A love that could not speak its name?
One answer, perhaps also alluded to by that suggestive title – a suggestiveness continued by the film, which is actually less explicit in what it shows than its at-the-time X-rated predecessor – is the strong intimation that she has lesbian tendencies: You wonder if she herself was infatuated with Nicole to begin with, but correctly surmised that Jean, in his masculine pride, could never accept her having a relationship with another woman, and accordingly realised he had to go, and whether the need to join the dots beyond this indicates a certain nervousness about going too far on the part of the filmmakers.
Shifts in and fun with focus
In her interview in 99 Donne, Erica Blanc indicates that she was originally slated to play Nicole and Baker Danielle, but that the American actress, perhaps wary of over(t)ly repeating her Orgasmo role, then had them switch. It is a testament to each actresses' abilities that you would likely never know otherwise. While Trintignant, Frank and Line inherently have less room to maneuvre, with each playing largely to type - i.e. Tritignant as the neurotic, shifty bourgeois, Frank as the smug sadist of Aryan demeanour, Line as the sophisticated, glamourous love interest – there is nothing to complain about in that if ain't broke don't fix it way.
Classic giallo imagery #1 – the stairwell and the lift to the scaffold
Classic giallo imagery #2 – the barely identifiable remains in the morgue
Classic giallo imagery #3 - the tape recorder
Classic giallo imagery #4 – the jet plane
Lenzi's contribution is difficult to fully appreciate on account of panning and scanning that makes a mockery of any inventive use of widescreen, but several nice touches do come through including the familiar symbolic / suggestive use of mirrors and some almost three-dimensional explorations of focus effects. A high-speed driving sequence meanwhile suggests not only his characters' search for thrills to momentarily relieve their boredom but also later poliziotteschi, whilst some unexpected discontinuity editing – note the way Jean and Helene's tryst is presented – further reminds us that the gap between the worlds of Lenzi and Antonioni and their audiences implied by Kim Newman is less absolute than relative.
Riz Ortolani's score is another asset, providing a characteristic mix of lush, sophisticated jazz-inflected easy listening and pop that further situates the film in giallo erotico territory, even as title track “Why” later cropped up in psycho-killer on the loose outing Seven Bloodstained Orchids.
Saturday, 21 July 2007
Un Posto ideale per uccidere / Dirty Pictures
Two young hippie tourists, Dick (Ray Lovelock) and Ingrid (Ornella Muti), hit upon a clever way of financing their trip to Italy: stopping off in Copenhagen, they visit a sex shop to stock up on pornographic material, which they then sell on at a considerable mark-up to Italians deprived of such product and eager to taste the fruits of “Sexual Freedom in Denmark”
Having exhausted their supply and the money it has brought in almost as quickly, Dick then decides they can make their own pictures just as easily with Ingrid as their main subject.
Things continue to go swimmingly until they are apprehended by the police and given 24 hours to get out of Italy, followed by a run-in with some similarly anti-establishment bikers who then proceed to take off in the middle of the night with the last of their money in a no honour among thieves kind of way.
Their car having run out of petrol, Dick and Ingrid are forced to stop at a large, isolated villa. Believing no-one to be at home, they go to explore and discover the garage door to be unlocked and a car with petrol therein.
But before fortune can help those who help themselves, the lady of the house, Barbara (Irene Papas) unexpectedly shows up. Even more surprising is her reaction: rather than responding like the typical representative of middle-age, middle-class society that the couple have encountered until now, she invites them in.
Or, given some of the customers for their dirty pictures, perhaps she is more typical than they realise, this being a notion characteristic of this film's ambiguities and ambivalences.
For what Dick and Ingrid do not realise is that Barbara is less interested in hearing their counter-culture arguments or the chance to indulge in a ménage a trois than in their potential value in relation to her own criminal conspiracy – one that involves rather more than the victimless crimes the young couple have engaged in thus far...
One of the little games you can play for yourself when watching golden age gialli is that of trying to guess the generation and politics of the film-makers concerned – are they left or right, counter- or traditional culture, and post- or pre-1960s in their general intellectual and cultural formations?
Sometimes it's relatively easy, as is the case with Argento and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. (Hint: look out for the Black Power posters on the wall.) Sometimes it's a bit more difficult, as with the likes of Fulci and A Lizard in a Woman's Skin or Don't Torture a Duckling, although the complexities and contradictions that emerge thereby can also at least be argued to be in accord with the contradictions and complexities of the man himself. Sometimes, as in the case of Lenzi here, it is damned difficult to tell.
At issue is that key descriptor used by both Craig Ledbetter and Adrian Luther Smith in their write-ups: cynical. More specifically the question might be phrased thus: if the attitude of Lenzi's film is a cynical one, who is (t)his cynicism addressed to and what form does it take?
For while Ledbetter suggests that Un Posto ideale per uccidere / Dirty Pictures is characterised at its core by a cynicism towards the youth audience it was likely intended for, found myself wondering whether in their desire to merely live free Dick and Ingrid aren't in fact established as more tragic / romantic characters who, to quote the introduction to Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night, “were never properly introduced to the world we live in.”
Certainly they seem to approach the world with a (conventionally) childlike innocence, playfulness – note here, for instance, the way Dick treats the pistol he finds as if it were a toy – and general guilelessness, especially when compared with Barbara. (Or “Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence and a Bad Haircut,” as the title of a book by satirist P. J O'Rourke puts it.)
Part of the difficulty in knowing for sure is that Lenzi's direction throughout is characterised by the same directorial style, which we might term – in keeping with the theme of apparent contradiction – an energetic laziness. By this I mean that while his camera is constantly doing something, there rarely seemed much sense of any real logic underlying its peregrinations, with the potential shock effect of the zoom lens being particular diluted through overuse. Had Lenzi established greater contrast between acts, interior and exterior locations, subjective and objective perceptions, or simply dramatic scales – with these all being things he managed in his previous gialli, so they were certainly not beyond him – the effect would have been more telling, the indication of whose side he was on that little bit clearer.
Ignoring these questions – admittedly not necessarily of interest to everyone – the main pleasures be had thus come from the performances by the three leads, each ideally suited to their part and all the more convincing for it, with Papas in particular again delivering the kind of performance that is all too rare – and even less rarely critically recognised – within such cinema; and the incidentals, including cameo roles from such giallo regulars as Tom Felleghy and Umberto Raho; some pleasingly modish fashions – most notably Lovelock's Austin Powers style Union Flag jacket – and an inspired departure from convention by virtue of not having the radio broadcast a vital piece of information at exactly the right moment for it to be heard by the protagonists.
Having exhausted their supply and the money it has brought in almost as quickly, Dick then decides they can make their own pictures just as easily with Ingrid as their main subject.
Things continue to go swimmingly until they are apprehended by the police and given 24 hours to get out of Italy, followed by a run-in with some similarly anti-establishment bikers who then proceed to take off in the middle of the night with the last of their money in a no honour among thieves kind of way.
Their car having run out of petrol, Dick and Ingrid are forced to stop at a large, isolated villa. Believing no-one to be at home, they go to explore and discover the garage door to be unlocked and a car with petrol therein.
But before fortune can help those who help themselves, the lady of the house, Barbara (Irene Papas) unexpectedly shows up. Even more surprising is her reaction: rather than responding like the typical representative of middle-age, middle-class society that the couple have encountered until now, she invites them in.
Or, given some of the customers for their dirty pictures, perhaps she is more typical than they realise, this being a notion characteristic of this film's ambiguities and ambivalences.
For what Dick and Ingrid do not realise is that Barbara is less interested in hearing their counter-culture arguments or the chance to indulge in a ménage a trois than in their potential value in relation to her own criminal conspiracy – one that involves rather more than the victimless crimes the young couple have engaged in thus far...
One of the little games you can play for yourself when watching golden age gialli is that of trying to guess the generation and politics of the film-makers concerned – are they left or right, counter- or traditional culture, and post- or pre-1960s in their general intellectual and cultural formations?
Sometimes it's relatively easy, as is the case with Argento and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. (Hint: look out for the Black Power posters on the wall.) Sometimes it's a bit more difficult, as with the likes of Fulci and A Lizard in a Woman's Skin or Don't Torture a Duckling, although the complexities and contradictions that emerge thereby can also at least be argued to be in accord with the contradictions and complexities of the man himself. Sometimes, as in the case of Lenzi here, it is damned difficult to tell.
At issue is that key descriptor used by both Craig Ledbetter and Adrian Luther Smith in their write-ups: cynical. More specifically the question might be phrased thus: if the attitude of Lenzi's film is a cynical one, who is (t)his cynicism addressed to and what form does it take?
For while Ledbetter suggests that Un Posto ideale per uccidere / Dirty Pictures is characterised at its core by a cynicism towards the youth audience it was likely intended for, found myself wondering whether in their desire to merely live free Dick and Ingrid aren't in fact established as more tragic / romantic characters who, to quote the introduction to Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night, “were never properly introduced to the world we live in.”
Certainly they seem to approach the world with a (conventionally) childlike innocence, playfulness – note here, for instance, the way Dick treats the pistol he finds as if it were a toy – and general guilelessness, especially when compared with Barbara. (Or “Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence and a Bad Haircut,” as the title of a book by satirist P. J O'Rourke puts it.)
Part of the difficulty in knowing for sure is that Lenzi's direction throughout is characterised by the same directorial style, which we might term – in keeping with the theme of apparent contradiction – an energetic laziness. By this I mean that while his camera is constantly doing something, there rarely seemed much sense of any real logic underlying its peregrinations, with the potential shock effect of the zoom lens being particular diluted through overuse. Had Lenzi established greater contrast between acts, interior and exterior locations, subjective and objective perceptions, or simply dramatic scales – with these all being things he managed in his previous gialli, so they were certainly not beyond him – the effect would have been more telling, the indication of whose side he was on that little bit clearer.
Ignoring these questions – admittedly not necessarily of interest to everyone – the main pleasures be had thus come from the performances by the three leads, each ideally suited to their part and all the more convincing for it, with Papas in particular again delivering the kind of performance that is all too rare – and even less rarely critically recognised – within such cinema; and the incidentals, including cameo roles from such giallo regulars as Tom Felleghy and Umberto Raho; some pleasingly modish fashions – most notably Lovelock's Austin Powers style Union Flag jacket – and an inspired departure from convention by virtue of not having the radio broadcast a vital piece of information at exactly the right moment for it to be heard by the protagonists.
Monday, 4 June 2007
Gatti rossi in un labirinto di vetro / Eyeball
Whilst holidaymaking in Spain a coach party of Americans are unfortunate to find the body of a local girl. None attaches particularly much importance to the unpleasant incident – in addition to the fatal stab wounds, one of the girl's eyes has been plucked out – until one of their own group is subsequently killed and mutilated in the same manner, forcing them to consider the possibility that the killer is among or following them.
The first murder - red gloves and ocular trauma
The coach party / suspects / victims; note John Bartha's yankee tourist in the loud shirt and Jorge Rigaud in the dog-collar at the back
There is certainly no shortage of suspects.
Is it Mark Burton, arrived on the scene at the exact right / wrong moment?
The Reverend Bronson, with his suspicious photos?
Jose, the practical joke playing tour guide?
Mark's estranged, mentally unstable wife Alma, whom we have earlier seen change her flight plans?
The cigar chomping Mr Hamilton, with his straight razor and conservative mindset? (“Safety blades – I was out of them.”)
The lesbian photographer or her girlfriend / model? (“Niaba, is it you? I want to see you in the bedroom. It's the only place to make up.”)
Someone else, whom no-one – except the giallo literate viewer, that is – would expect?
The rain capes, the lesbian couple and the second victim to be
Murder on the ghost train
Whoever and whatever the case and despite the uncomfortable similarities between the killer's modus operandi and that of a murderer in the group's home town of Burlington a year ago, no-one considers abandoning the trip until it is too late and, following some further reductions in their numbers, the group are forced to surrender their passports...
Sometimes one feels sorry for Umberto Lenzi and the way his contributions to the giallo and poliziotto filone have been overshadowed by his cannibal films.
This Italian-Spanish co-production is not, however, one of them.
Lazily directed, with almost every scene breaking down into a procession of zooms and (dis)graced by a bland and unappealing score from Bruno Nicolai that must rank as his work work within the filone, Gatti rossi in un labirinto di vetro / Eyeball throws just about every cliché imaginable into the mix to a singular lack of effect.
Just check them off:
The traumatic incident that drove the killer insane and motivates the method in their madness.
The reluctant amateur sleuth themselves a suspect and struggling to put their finger on some vital detail about the case. (“I can't put it together, it just doesn't make sense.”)
The mismatched policemen, the one an old timer who operates on the basis of hard-worn experience and is due for retirement and the other a proponent of modern, scientific methods. (“Now you're talking symbolism...”)
The vital clue hidden in an otherwise innocuous photograph.
As is often the case in the giallo the police procedural scenes show a lack of visual imagination - Tom Felleghy's coroner and Inspector Tudelo discussing the autopsy findings in shot-reverse shot style.
Yet another bull in a (Ramblas) china shop moment of zoom abuse
All of this would perhaps be tolerable had the film-makers attempts at innovating by making the killer wear a red rain cape (“like a cat, a big crimson cat”) in lieu of the traditional macintosh and slouch hat not fallen so flat, more likely to induce laughter than terror, and there not been so much co-production padding in the form of flamenco dance interludes and visits to the Ramblas or Sitges.
The first murder - red gloves and ocular trauma
The coach party / suspects / victims; note John Bartha's yankee tourist in the loud shirt and Jorge Rigaud in the dog-collar at the back
There is certainly no shortage of suspects.
Is it Mark Burton, arrived on the scene at the exact right / wrong moment?
The Reverend Bronson, with his suspicious photos?
Jose, the practical joke playing tour guide?
Mark's estranged, mentally unstable wife Alma, whom we have earlier seen change her flight plans?
The cigar chomping Mr Hamilton, with his straight razor and conservative mindset? (“Safety blades – I was out of them.”)
The lesbian photographer or her girlfriend / model? (“Niaba, is it you? I want to see you in the bedroom. It's the only place to make up.”)
Someone else, whom no-one – except the giallo literate viewer, that is – would expect?
The rain capes, the lesbian couple and the second victim to be
Murder on the ghost train
Whoever and whatever the case and despite the uncomfortable similarities between the killer's modus operandi and that of a murderer in the group's home town of Burlington a year ago, no-one considers abandoning the trip until it is too late and, following some further reductions in their numbers, the group are forced to surrender their passports...
Sometimes one feels sorry for Umberto Lenzi and the way his contributions to the giallo and poliziotto filone have been overshadowed by his cannibal films.
This Italian-Spanish co-production is not, however, one of them.
Lazily directed, with almost every scene breaking down into a procession of zooms and (dis)graced by a bland and unappealing score from Bruno Nicolai that must rank as his work work within the filone, Gatti rossi in un labirinto di vetro / Eyeball throws just about every cliché imaginable into the mix to a singular lack of effect.
Just check them off:
The traumatic incident that drove the killer insane and motivates the method in their madness.
The reluctant amateur sleuth themselves a suspect and struggling to put their finger on some vital detail about the case. (“I can't put it together, it just doesn't make sense.”)
The mismatched policemen, the one an old timer who operates on the basis of hard-worn experience and is due for retirement and the other a proponent of modern, scientific methods. (“Now you're talking symbolism...”)
The vital clue hidden in an otherwise innocuous photograph.
As is often the case in the giallo the police procedural scenes show a lack of visual imagination - Tom Felleghy's coroner and Inspector Tudelo discussing the autopsy findings in shot-reverse shot style.
Yet another bull in a (Ramblas) china shop moment of zoom abuse
All of this would perhaps be tolerable had the film-makers attempts at innovating by making the killer wear a red rain cape (“like a cat, a big crimson cat”) in lieu of the traditional macintosh and slouch hat not fallen so flat, more likely to induce laughter than terror, and there not been so much co-production padding in the form of flamenco dance interludes and visits to the Ramblas or Sitges.
Saturday, 2 June 2007
Romero's Spasmo footage
I've been reading up on George A. Romero over the past few days. In Paul Gagne's book The Zombies that Ate Pittsburgh he quotes Romero about working on Umberto Lenzi's giallo Spasmo, adding some new footage to spice up the American version:
"It was really nicely shot, and very rich looking. In the Italian version, you never saw the killer actually doing the killings, so we added about ten minutes showing the kills." (p. 68)
Has anyone out there seen this version and how well or badly does Romero's footage integrate with the film as a whole? Is this version available anywhere?
"It was really nicely shot, and very rich looking. In the Italian version, you never saw the killer actually doing the killings, so we added about ten minutes showing the kills." (p. 68)
Has anyone out there seen this version and how well or badly does Romero's footage integrate with the film as a whole? Is this version available anywhere?
Monday, 30 April 2007
Il Coltello di ghiaccio / Knife of Ice
Drawing acknowledged inspiration from Robert Siodmak's classic proto-proto-slasher The Spiral Staircase, the last of Umberto Lenzi's gialli with Carroll Baker differs from its predecessors in replacing financially motivated conspiracies to murder with an insane killer.
Though a strong entry on the whole, the film is marred by an awkward opening sequence and not entirely convincing surprise ending – not in itself necessarily a bad thing nor particularly rare within the filone, but not well enough executed to really work except as a demonstration of Chion's cathartic “screaming point” notion. (Knife of Ice is also of interest in terms of Chion's positing of the mute – the voiceless presence – as antithesis of the acousmetre – the bodiless voice – and as a companion piece / counterpoint to the likes of Cat o' Nine Tails and Crimes of the Black Cat as yet another giallo exploration of disability and its effects upon our experience of the world.)
Nice sentiment, shame about the misspelling
A reminder that Lenzi was also the man who brought you Cannibal Ferox and a neat demonstration of the attraction / repulsion dynamics of horror?
It's all about reading the signs
We begin with a series of bullfights. They're not entirely gratuitous, insofar as the different reactions of cousins Jenny (Evelyn Stewart) and Martha (Baker) to the killing of the animals – or, more positively, the skill and bravery of the toreros – seems intended to provide us with insights into their respective personalities, but do add an unpleasant element that sits somewhat uncomfortably with the more restrained approach found elsewhere in the film; treat it as a historical artefact, a demonstration of what passed for representative displays of Spanishness to tourists in the dying days of the Franco regime, and it shouldn't impact too much on the film in toto.
Following the bullfight – an incident some months in the past, as it soon turns out – we learn that Martha is mute following a traumatic incident when she was 13 years old, in which her parents died in a train crash. She has never been able to near the railway since – until today, that is, as she goes to meet her cousin at the station, who is returning to the family villa following a successful singing tour – i.e. Jenny found her voice and Martha lost hers.
The rhetoric of the close up and rack focus
On the way back home, their chauffeur Marcos (Eduardo Fajardo) is forced to stop the car as its engine is overheating. While he goes to fetch help, a strange looking man suddenly appears out of the fog and stares at the women menacingly, but disappears before Marcos returns; he did not see the man, he tells them.
At the villa we are introduced to the rest of the family and their associates. There is uncle Ralph (George Rigaud), with a dodgy heart and an interest in the occult; housekeeper Mrs Britain; Father Martin and his young ward, Christina – whose birthday it is – and Martha's physician, Dr Laurent.
That night Jenny is disturbed by a noise, goes to investigate and its then dispatched by an unidentified black-gloved knife wielder.
Before and after
The body is soon discovered – but not before a well-executed suspense sequence that also builds suspicion as to who knows what – and the police called in. Their questions establish the chauffeur, housekeeper and doctor as suspects - or red herrings, of course – whilst the fact that this is the second body to have been found in dubious circumstances in the past 24 hours points to the presence of a maniac in the locality.
Lenzi's representation of the killer's depredations is uncharacteristically restrained.
Mark of the Devil I, II and III as an occult subplot develops
At Jenny's funeral Martha is disturbed by the sight of the mystery man in the bushes, but he disappears before she can alert any of the others to his presence. There is, however, a potential clue in the form of a satanic pendant, while the man's wild-eyed stare makes the inspector think that he may also be a drug addict.
More worryingly the inspector also conjectures that the killer, whoever he or she may be – perhaps satanist equals drug addict equals killer is too neat an equation for Lenzi – has a particular interest in blondes and that Martha may well be next on his agenda...
The screaming point #1 - Martha uses the car horn to alert the others to her grim discovery of Jenny's body
The screaming point #2 - what will Martha do this time? Note that unlike the knife-wielder who dispatched Jenny this figure is not wearing black gloves
Well written, directed and performed in the main – Baker is particularly impressive in her mute role – Knife of Ice is a thoroughly professional piece of work marred primarily by that ending. This said, the journey there, the process of figuring out whodunnit amidst all the potentially meaningful exchanges – “Yes, I have an idea who might have committed these crimes – but then who doesn't? Why don't you ask Father Martin's opinion?” – is an enjoyable one.
Though perhaps relying on the zoom-in and extreme close-up a touch too often and over-indulging in flashback montages for some viewers, Lenzi elsewhere demonstrates an admirable facility for prolonged suspense sequences where something may be lurking in the shadows or the fog or not.
Little dots of yellow that didn't have to be there
Indeed, its perhaps this general excessiveness that ultimately makes the film work: when everything is so hysterical and histrionic, everyone becomes a suspect and every look, gesture, word or element of mise-en-scene overdetermined with possible significance.
Though a strong entry on the whole, the film is marred by an awkward opening sequence and not entirely convincing surprise ending – not in itself necessarily a bad thing nor particularly rare within the filone, but not well enough executed to really work except as a demonstration of Chion's cathartic “screaming point” notion. (Knife of Ice is also of interest in terms of Chion's positing of the mute – the voiceless presence – as antithesis of the acousmetre – the bodiless voice – and as a companion piece / counterpoint to the likes of Cat o' Nine Tails and Crimes of the Black Cat as yet another giallo exploration of disability and its effects upon our experience of the world.)
Nice sentiment, shame about the misspelling
A reminder that Lenzi was also the man who brought you Cannibal Ferox and a neat demonstration of the attraction / repulsion dynamics of horror?
It's all about reading the signs
We begin with a series of bullfights. They're not entirely gratuitous, insofar as the different reactions of cousins Jenny (Evelyn Stewart) and Martha (Baker) to the killing of the animals – or, more positively, the skill and bravery of the toreros – seems intended to provide us with insights into their respective personalities, but do add an unpleasant element that sits somewhat uncomfortably with the more restrained approach found elsewhere in the film; treat it as a historical artefact, a demonstration of what passed for representative displays of Spanishness to tourists in the dying days of the Franco regime, and it shouldn't impact too much on the film in toto.
Following the bullfight – an incident some months in the past, as it soon turns out – we learn that Martha is mute following a traumatic incident when she was 13 years old, in which her parents died in a train crash. She has never been able to near the railway since – until today, that is, as she goes to meet her cousin at the station, who is returning to the family villa following a successful singing tour – i.e. Jenny found her voice and Martha lost hers.
The rhetoric of the close up and rack focus
On the way back home, their chauffeur Marcos (Eduardo Fajardo) is forced to stop the car as its engine is overheating. While he goes to fetch help, a strange looking man suddenly appears out of the fog and stares at the women menacingly, but disappears before Marcos returns; he did not see the man, he tells them.
At the villa we are introduced to the rest of the family and their associates. There is uncle Ralph (George Rigaud), with a dodgy heart and an interest in the occult; housekeeper Mrs Britain; Father Martin and his young ward, Christina – whose birthday it is – and Martha's physician, Dr Laurent.
That night Jenny is disturbed by a noise, goes to investigate and its then dispatched by an unidentified black-gloved knife wielder.
Before and after
The body is soon discovered – but not before a well-executed suspense sequence that also builds suspicion as to who knows what – and the police called in. Their questions establish the chauffeur, housekeeper and doctor as suspects - or red herrings, of course – whilst the fact that this is the second body to have been found in dubious circumstances in the past 24 hours points to the presence of a maniac in the locality.
Lenzi's representation of the killer's depredations is uncharacteristically restrained.
Mark of the Devil I, II and III as an occult subplot develops
At Jenny's funeral Martha is disturbed by the sight of the mystery man in the bushes, but he disappears before she can alert any of the others to his presence. There is, however, a potential clue in the form of a satanic pendant, while the man's wild-eyed stare makes the inspector think that he may also be a drug addict.
More worryingly the inspector also conjectures that the killer, whoever he or she may be – perhaps satanist equals drug addict equals killer is too neat an equation for Lenzi – has a particular interest in blondes and that Martha may well be next on his agenda...
The screaming point #1 - Martha uses the car horn to alert the others to her grim discovery of Jenny's body
The screaming point #2 - what will Martha do this time? Note that unlike the knife-wielder who dispatched Jenny this figure is not wearing black gloves
Well written, directed and performed in the main – Baker is particularly impressive in her mute role – Knife of Ice is a thoroughly professional piece of work marred primarily by that ending. This said, the journey there, the process of figuring out whodunnit amidst all the potentially meaningful exchanges – “Yes, I have an idea who might have committed these crimes – but then who doesn't? Why don't you ask Father Martin's opinion?” – is an enjoyable one.
Though perhaps relying on the zoom-in and extreme close-up a touch too often and over-indulging in flashback montages for some viewers, Lenzi elsewhere demonstrates an admirable facility for prolonged suspense sequences where something may be lurking in the shadows or the fog or not.
Little dots of yellow that didn't have to be there
Indeed, its perhaps this general excessiveness that ultimately makes the film work: when everything is so hysterical and histrionic, everyone becomes a suspect and every look, gesture, word or element of mise-en-scene overdetermined with possible significance.
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