Over at Daily Tourniquet, http://www.dailytourniquet.com/?p=130, is the first of an on-going series looking at the Ladies of Giallo with a profile of the talented Rosella Falk of Seven Bloodstained Orchids, Sleepless and more.
Enjoy!
Showing posts with label caper giallo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label caper giallo. Show all posts
Monday, 8 June 2009
Thursday, 7 May 2009
Due gattoni a nove code... e mezza ad Amsterdam
In its own way this 1972 Franco and Ciccio vehicle is an important film. For regardless of what you think of its merits as a film it indicates a major difference between the 1960s and 1970s gialli epitomised by Bava and Argento respectively.
This is that the latter was sufficiently popular at the box-office to inspire the two comedians to consider it worth spoofing in the same way as the spaghetti western, with the likes of For a Fist in the Eye and The Two Sergeants of General Custer.
If Custer was intriguingly also known by the Bava-esque alternate title Two Idiots at Fort Alamo in Spain, the difference is further indicated by the presence of Luciano Pigozzi / Alan Collins, the designer Cesare in Blood and Black Lace, as a hit-man in Due gattoni a nove code... e mezza ad Amsterdam.
Yet, despite this Animal Trilogy referencing title, the giallo that the film most resembles is another by director Osvaldo Civriani, namely the same year’s The Devil Has Seven Faces. Both films are set in the Netherlands, have plots involving stolen jewels and a showdown in a windmill, although the convoluted plot of Argento’s film seems alluded to in the final summing up that leaves our two amateur investigators no wiser than before.
Other giallo elements that feature include the photographic clue, with the two men, aspiring paparazzi, happening to thereby also witness a murder; a warehouse replete with dummies; prominent uses of the colour yellow, such as Franco’s jumper, and the two men’s return home by jumbo jet at the end.
It could also be said, however, Franco and Ciccio really represented a filone in their own right. In this regard everything we’d expect is there, with that distinctive mix of comedy styles that you either get or don’t and, if so, then either acknowledge that this is because you are not the intended audience for it, or take an snobbish, elitist position towards another’s cultural practices as having no value.
This is that the latter was sufficiently popular at the box-office to inspire the two comedians to consider it worth spoofing in the same way as the spaghetti western, with the likes of For a Fist in the Eye and The Two Sergeants of General Custer.
If Custer was intriguingly also known by the Bava-esque alternate title Two Idiots at Fort Alamo in Spain, the difference is further indicated by the presence of Luciano Pigozzi / Alan Collins, the designer Cesare in Blood and Black Lace, as a hit-man in Due gattoni a nove code... e mezza ad Amsterdam.
Yet, despite this Animal Trilogy referencing title, the giallo that the film most resembles is another by director Osvaldo Civriani, namely the same year’s The Devil Has Seven Faces. Both films are set in the Netherlands, have plots involving stolen jewels and a showdown in a windmill, although the convoluted plot of Argento’s film seems alluded to in the final summing up that leaves our two amateur investigators no wiser than before.
Other giallo elements that feature include the photographic clue, with the two men, aspiring paparazzi, happening to thereby also witness a murder; a warehouse replete with dummies; prominent uses of the colour yellow, such as Franco’s jumper, and the two men’s return home by jumbo jet at the end.
It could also be said, however, Franco and Ciccio really represented a filone in their own right. In this regard everything we’d expect is there, with that distinctive mix of comedy styles that you either get or don’t and, if so, then either acknowledge that this is because you are not the intended audience for it, or take an snobbish, elitist position towards another’s cultural practices as having no value.
Saturday, 14 March 2009
Si può fare molto con sette donne / You can do a lot with Seven Women
You may be able to do a lot with seven women, but making a decent film out of them is not one of those things.
The groovy titles
It’s difficult to know where to apportion the blame, for while director Fabio Piccioni / F A King [sic] hardly come across as the most imaginative of filmmakers, the mark of writer-producer Frank / Farouk Agrama is all over the piece.
There’s the Egyptian setting, with lots of travelogue material and a models by the pyramids routine that seems to prefigure his later Dawn of the Mummy, and his lyrical contributions to the theme song, sung by one Melody:
What is this love
That burns me so
That has me in its spell
Is it the hope
Is it some dope
Or just a binding rose
Is it chinchilla
A seaside villa
Or a delicious ice cream
La, la...
The story begins in comparatively serious Blood and Black Lace territory as model Maggie discovers her employers to be involved in drugs smuggling and is consequently murdered.
The obligatory darkroom scene
This continues as her Interpol agent boyfriend Mike, played with typical seriousness by Richard Harrison, takes it upon himself to solve the case: “I’m going to get those bastards!”
But as Mike goes to see his woman-obsessed photographer friend Tiger for assistance in going undercover as a photographer, the tone quickly changes to more of a crime caper comedy where no-one really seems to be playing for keeps.
The problem is that it isn’t really all that funny in itself, with most of the smiles being raised through the general datedness of the early 70s styles on display; some rather stereotypical depictions of the Egyptians, albeit perhaps with a hint of detournement, of Agrama ironically playing upon Italian / western expectations to subvert them (“Once again, the Oriental motif has been our inspiration,” as one of the designers / smugglers remarks); Harrison’s macho bluster; or the extensive product placement for airlines and messrs Justerini and Brooks’ finest.
The fashion show by some pyramids
Elsewhere we get a spot of Blow-Up style play with photographs, though the detail is less hidden than obvious in line with the general style of the direction and narrative, an extended fistfight in a bakery and a perfunctory car chase.
Harrison enjoys the breakfast of champions
If nothing else, it’s all accompanied by some delightfully catchy caper cues that, if I didn’t have them already via the first Beat at Cinecitta compilation, I would have surely tracked down.
The groovy titles
It’s difficult to know where to apportion the blame, for while director Fabio Piccioni / F A King [sic] hardly come across as the most imaginative of filmmakers, the mark of writer-producer Frank / Farouk Agrama is all over the piece.
There’s the Egyptian setting, with lots of travelogue material and a models by the pyramids routine that seems to prefigure his later Dawn of the Mummy, and his lyrical contributions to the theme song, sung by one Melody:
What is this love
That burns me so
That has me in its spell
Is it the hope
Is it some dope
Or just a binding rose
Is it chinchilla
A seaside villa
Or a delicious ice cream
La, la...
The story begins in comparatively serious Blood and Black Lace territory as model Maggie discovers her employers to be involved in drugs smuggling and is consequently murdered.
The obligatory darkroom scene
This continues as her Interpol agent boyfriend Mike, played with typical seriousness by Richard Harrison, takes it upon himself to solve the case: “I’m going to get those bastards!”
But as Mike goes to see his woman-obsessed photographer friend Tiger for assistance in going undercover as a photographer, the tone quickly changes to more of a crime caper comedy where no-one really seems to be playing for keeps.
The problem is that it isn’t really all that funny in itself, with most of the smiles being raised through the general datedness of the early 70s styles on display; some rather stereotypical depictions of the Egyptians, albeit perhaps with a hint of detournement, of Agrama ironically playing upon Italian / western expectations to subvert them (“Once again, the Oriental motif has been our inspiration,” as one of the designers / smugglers remarks); Harrison’s macho bluster; or the extensive product placement for airlines and messrs Justerini and Brooks’ finest.
The fashion show by some pyramids
Elsewhere we get a spot of Blow-Up style play with photographs, though the detail is less hidden than obvious in line with the general style of the direction and narrative, an extended fistfight in a bakery and a perfunctory car chase.
Harrison enjoys the breakfast of champions
If nothing else, it’s all accompanied by some delightfully catchy caper cues that, if I didn’t have them already via the first Beat at Cinecitta compilation, I would have surely tracked down.
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