La Ragazza del vagone letto / Terror Express!

All aboard the overnight sleaze express...


Where do all the other passengers go once the action gets underway?

Our passenger list includes:

A man and his wife, who is seriously, even terminally, ill.

An outwardly respectable father and husband who has incestuous desires towards his 16-year-old daughter; you may recognise the actor playing the father, Roberto Caporali, from Zombie: Nights of Terror.

A cigar-chomping businessman and his put upon minion, whose first task is buying “all the porno magazines you have” for his boss from the station kiosk.

A bickering couple, Anna and Mike, played by the suitably mismatched pairing of Zora Kerowa and Venantino Venantini.

A by-the-book policeman escorting a prisoner across the border from Italy into Germany; said prisoner is played by another Gabriele Crisanti alumnus, Gianluigi Chirizzi.

A prostitute, played by top-billed Silvia Dioniso, who works the train in exchange for paying the guard for his services as procurer.

And, last but by no means least as catalysts for this Twentieth Century meets Late Night Trains meets Assault on Precinct 13, three young thugs looking for kicks, two of them played by Werner Pochath and Carlo De Mejo.


The guard and the gang




The attraction between Kerova and De Mejo's characters is immediately apparent.

Let's sit back and enjoy the ride...

Objectively, Terror Express! / La Ragazza del vagone letto (i.e. The Girl in the Sleeping Car; a reference to Dioniso's character) is not a very good film.




As is Dioniso's effect on the other passengers

The contrast between the exterior images of the train which repeatedly punctuate the action, and the studio interior recreation of a small subsection of it is somewhat jarring: how come no-one from any of the other carriages ever steps in or wonders where the guard has got to over the course of the entire night?

Late Night Trains worked a lot better in this regard because the second train, the one on which the rape and murder occur, was established as empty save for the smaller central group of five characters who board it, whilst also generally making a more convincing use of the possibilities of the train space.

The obligatory softcore sex and nude scenes are also awkward. Not so much in the sense that they make for uncomfortable viewing – porno rape and a father's incestuous desires towards his adolescent daughter should certainly be awkward viewing – but more because this awkwardness comes through director Ferdinando Baldi's unfortunate tendency to present everything throughout in what he appears to intend as the same an arousing way, complete with dramatic angles and inappropriate music.

The issue is most apparent in the scene where Anna goes off with one of the thugs, Ernie. She's clearly attracted to what he represents in contrast with her older, clearly conservative minded or even reactionary husband. As such, it's appropriate to have that sense of illicit thrill in the mise en scène, as something which is between the two characters: as they fuck, they are also fucking with the system, the man, as represented by the likes of Anna's older husband. But when another thug, Phil, sneaks in to the compartment and joins in, the power dynamics of the encounter change: Anna did not consent to this. Unfortunately Baldi's direction doesn't successfully convey this.





Still on the consensual side of things...

Nor do the violent action scenes quite convince, although the problem here is perhaps as much to with the difficulty of believing in De Mejo and Pochath as anything more than obnoxious bullies. They don't give off the same psychopathic aura as David Hess in Hitch-Hike or House on the Edge of the Park, where you genuinely believe he can back up his threats as and when the need arises.

But, then again, perhaps this actually works in terms of Terror Express!'s own dynamics. Specifically, it might be argued that what we have are three bad boys – emphasis on the boy – out to see how far they can push things, who then don't get pushed back until it is too late and things have gone far further than they had anticipated.

Beyond this, the characterisation is often unsatisfactory and the attempts at social commentary, courtesy of writer George Eastman/Luigi Montifiore, somewhat ham-fisted.

Yet, what saves the film and makes it so interesting and worth watching despite its flaws is the inclusion of this selfsame material, disregarding the way it slows down and complicates the narrative as you try to keep track of everyone, their relationships with one another and, most intriguing of all, to try to figure out where the filmmakers want to you stand regarding them all.

Rather than just class, it's also about gender, generation, political leaning and appearances against reality.

Thus, for example, when first confronted with the gang, the father asks his daughter if her current boyfriend is like that, a “social degenerate” before playing the “I only want what's best for you” card in his defence; a decidedly creepy remark in the light of later revelations.

Likewise, Anna, who had earlier welcomed the gang playing their radio loudly, responds to the quiet arrival of the prisoner and his guard in the dining wagon with the remark that their presence “shows a complete lack of consideration.”

Her husband's equally telling riposte: “Look who's talking, when you condone the outrageous actions of those three punks back there! God, it pisses me off!”


Father: “It's really hot in here”
Daughter: “I wish I could turn off the heating”
Father: “Why don't you take off your nightgown?”

Cinecocktail Calibro 3 / Cinecocktail 4: The Italian Horror Show

These two new releases from Italy's BEAT Records present an interesting take on the Italian film music compilation CD idea by also including a bonus documentary DVDs.

The selections of tracks on the two CD's are a mixed bag, with the poliziotto disc probably shading it on account of not including the kind of late 80s and 90s electronic and rock guitar driven cues found on the horror one. A case could, however, be made for the poliziotto compilation inherently being the easier to make coherent anyway on account of the filone's shorter lifespan, as primarily a 1970s phenomenon, and the narrower range of styles characteristically utilised by its composers.



Both discs feature a number of previously unreleased tracks, like Lalo Gori's infectious theme for Calling All Police Cars and a different take of Francesco De Masi's 'Fay' from The New York Ripper, along with much-compiled favourites like Franco Micalizzi's 'Folk and Violence' from Violent Naples and Ennio Morricone's 'Lizard in a Woman's Skin' theme from the film of the same name.



Unfortunately while the DVDs while they are certainly a good idea – the more we get to hear the people behind these films speaking for themselves the better, as far as I am concerned – their execution leaves a bit to be desired.

The horror documentary, Hanging Shadows, features interview clips with the likes of Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava, Michele Soavi and Roger Fratter, discussing their theories and practice, and presents a good overview of the genre's rise and fall and place in the wider history of cinema, with other contributors including critics, writers and producers.

The one major omission, however, is that there's not really anything about the role of music in the Italian horror film, nor anything from the composers whose music is featured on the CD.

The disc is also marred by some unnecessarily gimmicky direction and the inclusion of decontextualised clips from recent low-budget straight to video type productions by the likes of Fratter that don't really add terribly much to the experience or our understanding. Though a similar criticism might be made of the extra, a music video featuring Menti Criminali and Acid One, the sheer coolness of hearing three guys rapping in Italian about Fulci, Bava and so on proves highly endearing.

Similar post-production trickery also afflicts the documentary on the poliziotto disc, Il Genere. It's different in that it discusses the filone cinema more generally and has more emphasis on the music, with the interviewees including Alessandro Alessandroni, Francesco De Masi and Edda Dell'Orso alongside directors such as Mario Caiano and Umberto Lenzi, both of whom emphasise how much things have changed for the worse in the Italian cinema along with the fact that the B-films they and others made are now better received than they were on their original releases. These interviews, some taking place in the individuals homes or studios, others in what appears to be the context of a festival or awards ceremony, are intercut with footage of Franco Micalizzi and his Big Bubbling Band performing live.

Another problem is that the interviewees aren't identified on screen, meaning that if you don't already know De Masi as the man with the harmonica, Alessandroni as the whistler or Dell'Orso as the voice you may find it difficult knowing quite where to place them and their contributions at first.

Ed ora... raccomanda l'anima a Dio! / And Now... make your peace with God!

This was my first exposure to Demofilo Fidani's western work and on this showing it may well be the last.

The first clue to what we're in for is in the credits. Rather than being produced with one eye on undemanding third world audiences – as distinct from undemanding southern Italian audiences – the film is actually an Italian-Iranian co-production. Co-star Mohamad Ali Fardin was a popular Iranian actor of the time (he subsequently became persona non grata after the 1979 revolution).

The net consequence is a disarming naïvete to the proceedings, whereby everything plays out exactly as you would expect it to, plot point by plot point, with shoot outs and brawls at regular intervals to prevent the target audiences from getting bored.

The story starts with Sanders (Jeff Cameron) and Steven Cooper (Fabio Testi) among those boarding the stage (“Thomy's Western Express”) for Denver City. En route it is held up by bandits, allowing Stanley (Fardin) to make a decisive intervention and Sanders and Cooper to demonstrate their own prowess with their six-shooters. They bond and swap backstories: Sanders is going to Denver to find the man who stole his gold, Cooper those who killed his family. On arrival, they find the town in the midst of an election, with town boss and mayor-to-be Corbett (Amerigo Leoni / Custer Gail!) and his heavy Johnson (Calilsto Calisti / Anthony Stewens) the men they are after...

The predictability of it all wouldn't matter if Fidani had more than a rudimentary grasp of character, pacing, storytelling or direction. But he doesn't, or at least not at this point in his short, if prolific, directorial career.

With this being his second western, I suspect the best strategy for anyone wanting to investigate the remainder may be to watch his first, 1967's Straniero... fatto il segno della croce! (Stranger... Make the Sign of the Cross!; Fidani clearly liked religious references in his titles, even if this one probably didn't work too well for the Iranian market), and last, 1973's Amico mio, frega tu... che frego io! (Anything for a Friend) and see if there's any improvement discernible between them.

Latest acquisition

I don't have it yet, but here is it: an original US poster for Blood and Black Lace



I generally prefer the Italian posters, but liked the sheer luridness of this one, its sleazy paperback / pulp ambience, with the artistic license for the spiked glove being held by a skeletal hand etc.

Placing Kill Baby Kill

Where, generically, would you place Kill Baby Kill?

Though it gets discussed in Mikel Koven's La Dolce Morte within the context of the small sub-filone of the giallo-fantastico, I'm not convinced by that reading. Though it has an investigative murder-mystery element, the recourse to a fantastical / supernatural explanation combined with the setting makes it seem fundamentally more like a Gothic horror in my opinion. It comes across as being like a Hound of the Baskervilles in which the phantom hound is ultimately proven to be real, where the impossible cannot be eliminated.

I'd say that The Ghost and Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye - which Koven, unfortunately, doesn't discuss - are closer to being Gothic type gialli, in that they go from the fantastical to the mundane in their explanations.

Thoughts?

Fenomenal e il tesoro di Tutankamen / Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankamen

This early outing from Ruggero Deodato is quite frankly a bit of a mess, albeit a sporadically entertaining one.

Inspired by the fumetti neri, especially Diabolik, the first problem is that we're pretty much in the dark about who our titular protagonist, hero and point of identification actually is. We know he's one of the good guys thanks to the opening sequence in which he takes out a boat full of heroin smugglers, but after this he actually drops out of the narrative, such as it is, for close on half an hour; after watching the film I found I wanted to check if the film was actually a sequel and that the audience was expected to know Fenomenal's alter-ego, even if it isn't terribly difficult to guess.

The second is that the film as a whole really isn't that good, with little of the comic book vibe apparent in the general style and mediocre action and set piece sequences. While it was Deodato's official debut, he'd picked up a lot of credits as assistant and second unit director, so couldn't exactly be described as inexperienced.

On the plus side Lucretia Love and Carla Romanelli are easy on the eyes and Bruno Nicolai's catchy score easy on the ears.

The story sees the Mask of Tutankhamun exhibited in a Paris museum; cue lots of location shots of the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysee etc.

Various criminal masterminds played by the likes of John Karlsen and Gordon Mitchell want the mask, with a complication provided by the fact that there are not just one but two replicas of it floating around. (Seeing that Karlsen is after the mask because it contains a secret code that reveals the location of an even greater treasure, presumably he would actually have been satisfied with an exact copy, however.)

The action then shifts to Tunisia; cue more location shots with various bewildered inhabitants wondering what's going on.

Fenomenal shows up once more and saves the day.

Reazione a catena / A Bay of Blood

Discounting the more fantastical Shock, A Bay of Blood was to be Bava's final contribution to the giallo. Having established the filone in the early 1960s with The Girl Who Knew too Much (1963), Blood and Black Lace (1964) and 'The Telephone' segment of the Black Sabbath (1963), he had spent the remainder of that decade working in other popular filone.

Though he had scripted Schoolgirl Killer (1968) as a return to the it, the project left his hands and was eventually directed by Antonio Margheriti, this loss of control perhaps especially galling given the professional rivalry between the two men. (This information comes from Tim Lucas's indespensible study of the director, All the Colors of the Dark, to which all subsequent commentary can only be a mere footnote.)

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Bava made three gialli. A Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1969) represents a natural Hitchcockian companion piece to The Girl Who Knew too Much, neatly inverting Psycho by having its schizophrenic killer introduce himself as such while also demonstrating that he would “hurt a fly” and featuring dreamlike waltzes that seem inspired by Shadow of a Doubt.












The opening double murder

Five Dolls for an August Moon and this film meanwhile conclude the so-called “greed trillogy” inaugurated by Blood and Black Lace.

These are high bodycount murder-mysteries in which the crimes are motivated not by psychopathology but by greed, the raw desire to possess. To be sure, a more sophisticated theory could not doubt connect the two, pointing to the psychotic logic of capital accumulation or suchlike – especially given that in Blood and Black Lace the police investigation is fatally led astray by their presumption of psychosexual motivation and aetiology for the crimes.

The second and third films of the trilogy, however, see Bava in increasingly ironic, deconstructive mood.

The keys to both film, I would argue, lie in their opening sequences.

In Five Dolls, we slowly move in on the modernist villa on an isolated island before the mise-en-scene breaks down into a series of shock zooms and fragmented close ups all but guaranteed to offend the aesthetic sensibilites of just about anyone as the idle rich protagonists are introduced. One of their number, mockingly identified as the “virgin of the tribe” is then sacrified to the god Kraal, the playful scene momentarily turning serious as the lights go out and it seems someone has taken the game of murder in the dark too far. Then, however, the fake blood is washed off with a few sprays from the soda siphon and everyone laughs.

Like Marcus Daly's remarks to his student in the opening of Deep Red, as he tells them that their playing is “too formal, too precise; it needs to be more trashy,” Bava is telling his audience to watch out, but unlike Argento he is also telling them that his film is essentially one big joke, not to be taken terribly seriously. (Here we might note the slapstick connotations of the soda siphon.)

The biggest part of this joke is the absence of the traditional murder set-pieces. In this regard the film is like an inverted Blood and Black Lace: we never see the murders, only the discoveries of the victims' bodies, most of which end up being stored in the meat locker to the strains of the same carrilon.

Here, we begin with the flight of a fly over the titular bay and its fatal plunge into the water. Though the bay is later identified by one of those opposing its development as a haven for insects, the ironic message seems to be that this place this is a place which is fundamentally inimical to all life.






The gaze and its objects

Following this, we enter the villa of the wheelchair-bound Countess Federica as, to the romantic-bordering-on-kitsch strains of Stelvio Cipriani's swelling piano and string based theme, she looks longingly over the bay towards her illegimate son Simone's hut.

Suddenly, the moment accompanied by a musical sting slighly reminiscent of Friday the 13th's ka-ka-cha the obligatory black gloved killer strikes, throwing a noose around the Countess's neck and kicking her wheelchair away. Something is immediately wrong, however, as once the Countess has breathed her last the camera pans up her killer as he removes his black gloves, revealing his identity, soon to be confirmed as that of Count Donati, Federica's husband.

A giallo, a murder-mystery, is not supposed to do this.

What is going on, what are the rules Bava is playing by?
The Count deposits a faked suicide note, and, a few moments later is them himself unceremoniously stabbed to death by an unseen assailant. This time, at least, we don't see the murderer. Yet, as the narrative itself starts it soon becomes apparent that no-one is particularly interested in finding out whodunnit compared to taking advantage of the Countess's death.

A week passes. The Countess's death has been adjudged a suicide, while the Count has disappeared.

Architect Franco Ventura (Chris Avram) heads out to the bay expecting to seal the deal that will allow him and his partners to further develop it into a holiday resort. On the way he is passed by four youngsters, two couples, looking for some fun at the bay.

Meanwhile, Renata (Claudine Auger) and her husband Alberto (Luigi Pistilli) and have already arrived. They observe Simone (Claudio Camaso / Volonte) and Signor Fossati (Leopoldo Trieste) from the undergrowth as the two men discuss the Countess's demise, Fossati also making veiled references to murder.

Though their attitudes to life differ, it is also clear that the semi-feral Simone and the harmlessly eccentric insect-obsessed Fossati are alike in one respect: both regard the bay as their home and would be hostile to any more changes.

Renata is more concerned with finding her father, her 'masculine' control over her weak-willed husband evident from the way she takes the binoculars (i.e. the gaze, the phallus) off him.

The four youngsters arrive, break into the night club and apartment, drink, dance, make love and generally behave like their Friday the 13th descendants.

One very giallo difference, however, is that none is marked out as a “final girl” type. Instead, all four are quickly killed off. Though again we could no doubt read something sexual into the death spasms of skinny dipper Brunhilda (Brigitte Skay) and the couple who are impaled by a spear mid-coitus were we so inclined, their deaths are really more the result of territorial transgression than anything moral or sexual: Brunhilda discovers the hitherto submerged body of the Count and thus threatens someone's scheme, so she must die; Brunhilda's friends will soon notice her absence, so they too must die.




Sex and violence, and double penetration splatter style

By this point, the structure of the film has also become clear: an alternation of scenes focusing on violent set-pieces and on narrative and character development. (For the record the murders occur at 5, 7, 32, 34, 36, 56, 58, 68, 73, 77 and 80 minutes, somewhat belying Mikel Koven's 20 / 40 / 20 breakdown of murders / development / murders.)

Despite the duration and number of the former – there are no fewer than seven more murders still to come, the body count totalling more than those of the two previous films in the trilogy combined and surely setting some kind of record for the giallo – each of the main characters is reasonably well defined and personified, albeit with some not quite escaping from the realm of the 'type'; in addition to those already mentioned, we also have the likes of Ventura's opportunistic secretary and lover Laura (Anna Maria Rosati) and Fossati's boozy, tarot-card reading wife Anna (Laura Betti).




We cut from an extreme close up of a victim to the mirror image in the hub cap

The dialogue is also better than might be expected, with some amusing references thrown into the mix. One of the red-blooded Italian males tells the Nordic Brunhilda “hold the culture” as she makes a passing reference to Sibelius, for example, while it the Countess's own reluctance to 'convert' to “modernism” in consenting to her husband and his erstwhile associates' plan to concrete over and develop the bay that precipitates the whole chain of murders.




Bava cuts from the bloody stump of a severed head to a dropped pottery head

Similarly though Bava's direction again foregrounds many of the 'wrong' kind of techniques, most prominently the zoom, its also clear that this is part and parcel of his own modernist formal experimentation, insofar as he also often transitions from one scene to another with a matched cut on a zoom in or a zoom out or pulls focus to create dissolve type effects.

In sum, a film that there is a lot more to than meets the eye.