Das Geheimnis der gelben Narzissen / The Devil's Daffodil / The Daffodil Killer

With newspaper hoardings announcing a second daffodil murder a young woman goes to make a call to Scotland Yard, but is herself murdered by a black clad masked figure before she can can be put through to them.






The daffodil killer strikes again in a scene full of giallo-style iconography but comparatively lacking in style

After leaving a daffodil on the body the killer then goes after Global Airlines investigator Jack Tarling, played by archetypal krimi detective hero Joachim Fuchsberger, finding him with a cargo of fake daffodils containing heroin intercepted by customs officials as part of a cargo from Hong Kong.

While successful in blowing up the customs officials the daffodil killer fails to kill Tarling, who then meets with his Hong Kong counterpart, Ling Chu, played by the unlikely seeming figure of Christopher Lee, as planned.


Fuchsberger and Lee

After announcing their presence to Scotland Yard the two men then investigate the convoluted mystery, beginning with the daffodils' importer, Lyons, before moving on the Soho nightclub where the first three murder victims all worked, the Cosmos...


Yet more daffodils and a characteristic mirror shot

With the subsequent proceedings continuing very much in the conventional krimi vein – Klaus Kinski is also on hand in characteristically twitchy mood, though Eddi Arent's comic relief is absent – the most interesting aspect of The Mystery of the Yellow Daffodil is arguably its production context, as one of the few collaborations between German and British filmmakers on an Edgar Wallace adaptation.

From the point of view of the krimi productions, the chief benefit of the co-production emerges as its affording more location shooting and less stock footage than usual. Even here, however, while Picadilly Circus is effectively used as the backdrop for one assassination – the victim ironically falling into a flower-seller's basket after being shot – Scotland Yard is still represented by a plaque on some random building elsewhere over which, inevitably, Big Ben chimes.


On location in exotic Soho

Insofar as the German audience would happily accept this attempt at conveying London-ness, what really hurts the film is the blandness of the Shepperton Studio interiors, which generally have a somewhat flatter and anonymous look to their lighting and lack the kind of production details that are so much a part of the charm of their German counterparts.

In fairness Terence Fisher's Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace suffered from a similar aesthetic discomfort when moving geographically in the other direction, suggesting that both British and German filmmakers of this type were perhaps somewhat set in their own comfortable ways of working at home.

Certainly if the later example of Cave of the Vampires is taken into account director Akos Rathony gives the impression of being a competent veteran but one who never found his particular niche, the first signalling his similarity with Fisher and the second his difference.

Ultimately one thus feels that it is the film's very title that indicates what it most lacks: an expressive use of colour.

If it is Blood and Black Lace rather than Hammer that would prove the catalyst here, The Mystery of the Yellow Daffodils' intersection of a drug smuggling plot with a masked killer working his way through a number of glamorous women, all from a particular place, and the prominence given elegant yet sleazy sounding bongo rhythm heavy music combine to suggest that some influences may conceivably have gone in the other direction.

It's as if, having seen what the British could bring to the krimi the Germans then sought to see whether the Italians could do any better, with the colour flooding into the antique shop from the adjacent dance hall and the more surreal look given the masked killer in Bava's film indicating that they most certainly could. (Not that this prevented future German-British krimi collaborations, as Circus of Fear demonstrates, but the results were decidedly uninspired.)

With Fuchsberger's investigator operating in the same respectable, s(t)olid manner as his more usual Scotland Yard men, it is Lee's character who is given responsibility for the more ruthless aspects of the investigation, including a spot of torture where he drowns out the victim's screams by turning up the radio.

Much like the notion of having a white actor playing a non-white this is a piece of stereotyping whose implications – these sadistic Orientals with their history of fiendish tortures as per Fu Manchu etc. – are decidedly awkward today.

This is however partly offset by Lee's always respectful performance, alongside the simple fact that at the time the ability to perform the role would have likely appeared a positive sign of his versatility as an actor rather than as negative display of potential cultural insensitivity; here it must be remembered that Lee also appeared in all manner of European productions with no-one ever really seeming to complain that his portrayal of, say, a WWII veteran German officer in The Virgin of Nuremberg was offensive or taking away work from indigenous actors.

More important than this, however, is that within the context of The Mystery of the Yellow Daffodils itself the filmmakers actually make an oblique comment on the performative rather than essentialised nature of identity by having Ling Chu have a habit for quoting Confucian proverbs and epigrams in a Charlie Chan manner only to eventually reveal that he has been making them up as he went along.

Finally, it should be noted that the film was shot in both German and English language versions, with some differences in the casting of the smaller roles. That the German version is the only one available, complete with a commentary track but no English subtitle option, presents a clear indication of the differing popularity of Wallace in the two territories today.

Another review of the film: http://dantenet.com/er/ERchives/reviews/d_reviews/daffodil.html

Biancaneve e i sette nani / Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Such an innocent title for what is, in fact, a hardcore porn film from Joe D'Amato associate Luca Damiano / Franco Lo Cascio.

The opening sequence intercuts serving girl Snow White's comparatively exploration of her own body with the wicked queen having one of her regular sessions with her servants.

These sexual numbers, the first with two women and the second with four men, take us to the 15 minute mark.


Snow White's sexual awakening

At this point then wicked queen discovers from the magic mirror that she is no longer the most beautiful in the land and thus sends her assassin to kill Snow White.


The wicked queen

Smitten by her beauty and casually exposed pudenda, he finds himself unable to complete the task and thus lets her flee into the woods, where she finds the seven dwarves' cottage.

Some hours pass and eventually Snow White goes to bed, whereupon she masturbates and falls asleep.

Next we're introduced to the Prince, who is under pressure from his father to take a wife and produce a heir for the throne. While he and his cousin happily have sex, she's relucant to have a child, leaving the Price to search elsewhere...

Next the seven dwarves make their appearance and, after a brief discussion, decide to let Snow White stay.

“I don't know if I'll be able to repay you for your kindness,” she says.

“Yes, yes,” they reply, with their lascivious grins spelling out what's coming soon...

For a porn film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs features surprisingly decent direction, performances and production values, with the bright colours and Disney-style costume worn by Snow White giving the whole film something of a playful, live-action cartoon feel, and the odd unexpected touch like some Evil Dead style camera work when Snow White is lost in the woods alongside all the more routine moan, groan and grind action.

But perhaps this shouldn't really be such a surprise. After all, Damiano started his career as a regular filmmaker, including a long period as assistant to no less than Fernando Di Leo, and seems, much like the better-known D'Amato to have made the shift into porn production very much as a business decision whilst retaining a commitment to producing as high quality a product as he could. (While he and Damiano often co-directed, D'Amato shot second unit on the film.)

A glance at his filmography also reveals that Damiano was something of a specialist in producing porn versions of well-known characters and (hi)stories, with his other 1995 entries including Hamlet X, The Erotic Adventures of Marco Polo and Decameron Tales I and II.

The last two titles are particularly significant insofar as they indicate a longer and more continuous history that goes back to the 1970s decamerotics – including D'Amato's Canterbury No. 2 - nuove storie d'amore del '300 – and saw the fragmentation of the market into soft- and hardcore forms, the increasing dominance of the latter and the corresponding emergence of more specialised filmmakers, performers and audiences.

It's the last factor, that the film would have been watched by its target audience in the home rather than the movie theatre, that perhaps also accounts for another of its differences from earlier filone forms.

While spaghetti westerns, gialli and so on also combined narrative with spectacle, with the shootout or stalk and slash scene performing a function analogous to the sexual number, these set pieces were usually shorter in duration, with the films themselves running a tighter, more commercial 80 to 95 minutes. Here by contrast there's the understanding that no one is really interested in anything except the sex scenes – no-one except the odd weirdo like yours truly, that is – with the result that more such material is inherently better. (D'Amato: “Unfortunately hardcore doesn't have room for a plot, they're just a series of fuckings.”)






Three faces of Snow White, with my deliberately avoiding shots of further down her body that would otherwise provide more context.

The emergence of the porn ghetto also seems to have unfortunately led Ludmilla Antonova, who plays Snow White with a winning combination of fresh-faced innocence and enthusiastic sexiness, absolutely nowhere except a few appearances in the likes of World Sex Tour 4: Budapest.

Two decades earlier its easy to imagine that simply by undressing she could have been an Edwige Fenech level star or even a decade earlier at least have had a mainstream career in the manner of Michela Miti in the earlier, fumetti-inspired sex comedy all'italiana version of the story, Biancaneve.

Another film that comes to mind here is the porn / musical version of Alice in Wonderland from 1976. Made at a post-porno chic point where the division between the porn and mainstream film industries was not completely entrenched, its female lead, Kristine DeBell, found her mainstream career suffering as a consequence of her X-rated debut.

One area where Snow White suffers by comparison with Alice and Biancaneve its relative lack of subtext. Simply put, the suck and fuck action leaves little room for much else and, indeed, arguably renders any notion of the what the original story is 'really' about in psychosexual terms pretty much redundant, inasmuch as Snow White's sexual initiation is explicit rather than implicit.

While Alice in Wonderland is somewhat similar – a hardcore film without sex scenes is something of an oxymoron, after all, unless we split hairs and define it as mediumcore – the progression in Alice's character is clearer along with their mythological and psychoanalytic functions.

Two areas where Snow White's limited budget are apparent are the special effects, which are none too special, and its soundtrack, which consists of a number of repetetive synthesised themes in which the limitations of the instrument and / or its performers in sounding like actual strings, brass and so forth are particularly evident. (D'Amato fans may also think of the surreal looped dialogue snippet in Caligula II that plays over the orgy scene, again and again.)

Finally it should be noted that, somewhat contrary to my deliberate obfuscation and evasion above, there is not the expected dwarf orgy, with only one of the sex scenes featuring a single dwarf performer. If this provides a further indication that the film was aiming at a mainstream audience rather than a specialist fetish one, it also indicates something of the filmmakers' hard-headed business sense if we consider that 15 years earlier D'Amato was experimenting with trangressive sex and horror combinations. The potential was undoubtedly there, all the more so since some of the seven dwarves were actually played by women but, for better or worse depending on your own position on such exploitative / subversive possibilities, it was not used to the fullest.

To sum up, not a film I could ever see myself watching particularly often nor recommend except for curiosity value, but nevertheless interesting and thought-provoking enough, almost in spite of itself.

[This was another Cinemageddon acquisition; there's another review of the film at http://www.bloodandsleaze.com/snowwhite.html]

Il Conto è chiuso / The Last Round

A mysterious stranger enters a town controlled by two criminal factions. After proving his abilities and learning who's who in the process, he plays them off against each other, before cleaning up those who are still left...


The drifter on the road

If The Last Round's scenario sounds familiar, it should. For the film is a contemporary update of A Fistful of Dollars set in a northern Italian town, with a revenge subplot involving a music box clearly derived of For a Few Dollars More – even as the protagonist's skill with a knife, which he prefers over the gun if he is forced to use something other than his fists for reasons of range, is more reminiscent of Yojimbo.


The music box and photographic memory

The stranger, Marco Russo, is played by Argentinean middleweight boxing champion Carlos Monzon, who understandably makes up for in physical presence what he may have lacked in acting ability.

The leader of one faction, Rico Manzetti, is played by poliziotti regular Luc Merenda, with his brothers and gang including such familiar filone faces as Gianni Dei and Gianfranco Cianfriglia.




Merenda shows his prowess with a gun, aiming not for the heart but a range of targets, including the left and right eyes.

The leader of the other faction, Belmondo (sic), is played by Leone regular Mario Brega. His faction is not as like the Baxters as Merenda's are the Rojos, in that he's neither the law in the town nor dominated by his wife – indeed, we never actually see his family.


Monzon demonstrates his skills

In the middle of all this are a blind girl and her adoptive father who live in a shack near a run down factory and provide Russo with information and assistance, and a second girl and her mother who kept prisoner by Rico Manzetti. They are played by Giampiero Albertini, Eleonora Fani, Annaluisa Pesce and Mariangela Giordano, the last of whose presence serves to also highlights the involvement of Gabriele Crisanti as executive producer and of his frequent screenwriting collaborator, the prolific Piero Regnoli.


I know the face, but not the name

While Luis Enrique Bacalov's imaginative and varied score also highlights the spaghetti western connection, the actual representation of the town and its two gangs has more in common with the poliziotto and Dashiell Hammett's 1929 novel Red Harvest, itself a largely unacknowledged reference point for Kurosawa and Leone's film alike.

Although we are told that the police have been bought off they never appear as an obstacle to Marco, a plot point which would perhaps have better emphasised the gangsters' power, although against this a magistrate who does make a public stand against them is almost immediately gunned down.

More generally the references to the running down of the city's industry, labour unrest and its heavily polluted atmosphere suggest a wider context not too far removed from that of Hammett's Poisonville.

Though certainly entertaining – the main issue, it must always be remembered – and stimulating – the secondary issue – I was not convinced that The Last Round's relocation of the Leone spaghetti to 1970s Italy really worked.


A nice re-imagining of the Leone corrida in a present-day setting – the two gangs in a sports arena, with Russo watching from above in the middle

The issue isn't so much with corrupt town, which one can easily believe in as an exaggerated version of an actual city in northern Italy at the time – though the selection of this is somewhat unexpected, given that the specific cultural framework of the spaghetti has been convincingly argued to be a southern Italian one by critics like Christopher Frayling – as the juxtaposition of two fundamentally different approaches to place, time and action or, to use Bakhtin's notion, chronotopes.

Marco belongs to the 'mythic' realm, where the single heroic individual can triumph through strength (the peplum film) and / or skill and guile (the spaghetti western) over seemingly impossible odds. These same impossible odds, as they are presented in the poliziotto context of The Last Round, however belong far more to the 'real' world (more so than the superspy films of the previous decade, as a form that cross-fertilised with the spaghetti western in certain ways), where they either cannot be surmounted or the hero's triumph is necessarily 'imaginary'.

This division is apparent in some other poliziotteschi, being highlighted by the traditional maverick cop on a one-man crusade as incarnated by Maurizio Merli, but it is also less pronounced because he is embedded in this same world. To put it crudely, he uses guns versus guns, not a knife or his fists. He can also be defeated, die, or achieve a victory that is partial or pyhrric.

It could also be said, however, that the distinctive combination of character and environment in The Last Round serves to make the imaginary aspect of its solutions to real problems more prominent than in 90 per cent or more of mainstream films, including most other poliziotteschi.


Mario Brega, looking a little like Lucio Fulci here

In real life, that is, the individual is arguably fundamentally powerless, or at least tends to have his or her capabilities overstated by the (non)powers that be for various reasons. (Just try to imagine a politician or party whose message was that they really had little or no control in the grand scheme of things.)

Stelvio Massi's direction is brisk and efficient, presenting a one-two combination of surprisingly elegant camera movements, especially in the studio-bound and interior sequences, and crash zooms. He also throws in some tricksy mirror shots as Russo and Belmondo meet for the first time, an approach which seems less showing off for its own sake as a externalisation of the duplicities inherent in the set up and Russo's character as a trickster hero.

The fight sequences sometimes make use of slow motion to highlight Monzon's pugilistic abilities, although the blows still sound like car doors slamming – realism, that is, is again limited by the higher priority of entertainment...

[The film is on Region 1 DVD from Noshame. The package also includes a CD of contemporary interpretations of 70s poliziotto music and a somewhat surreal extra in the form of a tour of Luc Merenda's antique shop]

The House of Weeping Mirrors

Found on the Morte ha no sesso blog: a rather cool soundtrack for an imaginary giallo. Terska there also did the cover art and is clearly a man of many talents :-)

I Cacciatori del cobra d'oro / Hunters of the Golden Cobra

In his essay on the Italian filone cinema of the late 50s through to the early 1980s in the Monthly Film Bulletin, critic Kim Newman makes the point that if this cinema could be for ripping-off Hollywood, it could also be praised for the energy and audacity of many of these rip-offs.

Hunters of the Golden Cobra is an case in point. Though clearly derivative of Raiders of the Lost Ark and, before it, the adventure serial – in turn a reminder that the only thing that was really new about Spielberg and Lucas's film were the resources and talent behind it – it showcases all that was best about this cinema in making the most of its comparatively limited resources with ingenuity and its sheer coglioni.

The story begins in 1944, as two British and American commandos, Bob Jackson and David Franks, played by the inimitable David Warbeck and John Steiner, launch a daring raid on a Japanese base somewhere in the Philippines; coveniently, these same islands also serve, post Apocalyse Now, as the actual locations for the film.

Their misson is to abduct Japanese officer Yamato, apparently an agent and counter agent.

Yamato has something else on his mind, however: The Golden Cobra. Recalling the likes of the golden snake of the Edgar Wallace novel and krimi film as much as Raider's Lost Ark – and thus as further reminders that in this day and age everything has some antecedent – this McGuffin is valuable in more ways than one, as we shall soon learn.

As Yamato flees the base after calmly gunning down the Japanese soldier who had discovered his treachery, Jackson and Franks embark on a desperate pursuit via jeep and then plane, bombs and buildings exploding all around them. (“You know, I've never driven one of these before” “Now you tell me.” “It's going to be quite an experience, I can assure you.”)

Yamato's plane crash lands on an island, so Jackson parachutes out after him while Franks returns to base with the promise of returning with reinforcements.

Jackson soon catches up with Yamato but both men are then shot with poisoned darts by the natives. Whereas Yamato is slain, Jackson is placed on a makeshift raft and floated downstream, unsure whether he has really seen a white woman at the head of the tribe or just hallucinated her presence...

A year or so passes, during which time the Japanese are defeated. Franks, still an officer in the British army, tracks down Jackson in a seedy bar, hitting the bottle hard and down on his luck to the extent that he's willing to trade his campaign medal for a couple of dollars.

With Jackson responding to Franks' hello with a right hook, a fistfight and then mass brawl breaks out before Franks finally gets the chance to explain himself. He did search for his colleague, but was delayed as his plane had ditched in the ocean some 200 miles from land.

Franks is not here about past history, however. Rather, he has been ordered to offer Jackson $20,000 to go back into the jungle with him and find the golden cobra. For, as Franks' superior in the briefing room explains, “If this priceless object should fall into the wrong hands, all of south east Asia could be destabilised [...] Call it superstition, but millions of people in Asia believe this golden cobra possesses some sort of supernatural power, a destructive force that we can't even imagine.”

Jackson remains cynical and reluctant until the high priestess of the cult appears on the screen wreathed in flames and a native waiter, evidently a member of the cult from his cobra tattoo, attacks him with a machette. He thus accepts the mission – but for $40,000, paid in advance.

By the time the expedition is ready to leave – during which time more cultists come out of the woodwork at every opportunity – it has gained two more people: a wealthy adventurer and archaeologist by the name of Greenwater (Alan Collins) and his niece Julie (Almanta Suska), who looks exactly like the woman from the island.

And so she should, for they are in fact sisters...

“I see no reason why we shouldn't all go” surmises Franks, and thus the adventure really begins...




The hunters and their quarry

Director Antonio Margheriti was quite simply the man for this kind of film, knowing not only how to deliver no-nonsense, testosterone-fuelled action scenes with the best of them but also a whole range of more subtle trick effects, ranging from model work with aeroplanes and lava-filled chasms to convincingly placing two his leading ladies in shot simultaneously

The implicit racism of the material with its backwards cultists and the white goddess figure of Suska is made slightly more palatable by the fact that Franks is just as much of a caricature; the base motives accorded most of the western characters, and, most interestingly, the space given one of the natives who opposes the cobra cultists for their backwardness and dreams of a progressive future for his country as one “with many friends and no masters – and that includes you westerners too.” (On this subject, it's also worth remembering that Jackie Chan's Armour of God isn't exactly politically correct either, with its 'comedy' tribesmen.)





The natives bowing down before the white goddess, as per usual

Warbeck is reliable as ever as the tough, no-nonsense action hero, making one lament that he was never given the opportunity to play James Bond, while Steiner's unflappable British officer with his Terry-Thomas style upper class twit voice is amusing without becoming tiresome.

The talismanic Collins, whom Margheriti would always cast if he got the chance is suitably shifty, his character's name recalling Sidney Greenstreet, his mannerisms that actor's Maltese Falcon co-star, Peter Lorre; on the Bond angle Jackson amusingly calls Greenriver Greenfinger at one point.

If the final couple of minutes, featuring an awful theme song performed by someone with a somewhat flexible sense of pitch, are painful, the preceding 90 odd are compensation enough.

[I watched the film on a English-dubbed, Japanese (?) subtitled AVI, again found via Cinemageddon]

Peter Bark has a posse

Or, if he doesn't then he, as everyone's favourite creepy incestuous dwarf, should damn well have!

What height and weight was he anyway, for the stickers?

Il Corpo / The Body

The presence of Carroll Baker in this 1975 film from Luigi Scattini neatly makes its claims to be a giallo that bit clearer. For, if featuring no black gloved killers nor traumatic incidents in a characters past now erupting into the present, it does include a noir style conspiracy in which the participants are motivated by passion and / or prospective financial advantage.

But unlike the various films she made with Umberto Lenzi a few years earlier, Baker is here cast in a supporting role rather than as a conspirator or victim, with the majority of the drama instead revolving around the triangle of Enrico Maria Salerno, Zeudi Araya and Leonard Mann.

Salerno plays Antoine, a New York cabbie who won the lottery and left the rat race behind to go live in the tropical paradise of Trinidad.

That, at least, was the theory.

The practice has thus far proven somewhat different, entailing little more than a change of scenery, more mosquitoes, and a shift from driving a cab to piloting a boat.

Indeed, given that the story actually starts with two locals attacking Antoine because he apparently owes them money it's possible that his life could even be considered to have gotten worse, were it not for one major compensation.


Antoine and Alan

That is Araya. She plays Princess, a beautiful islander who serves as Antoine's lover and housekeeper.

Mann plays Alan, the drifter who rescues Antoine. With Alan soon proving as handy with boats as with his fists, Antoine offers him work and a place to stay.


Images of the characters behind symbolic bars recur throughout the film to convey their senses of entrapment

Though Princess initially gives Alan a frosty reception, this facade soon melts as they spend some time together away from Antoine's watchful eye.


Princess tries on the yellow rather than black dress as she prepares to make her move

Then, however, Princess turns cold again, although this only proves to be a test of Alan's commitment to their relationship and how far he is willing to go to be with her:



“Alan, do you really love me?”

“You know I love you.”

“Do you really love me very much? Do you love me enough to do anything at all for me?”

“Yes”

“Then, darling, I want you to kill him.”

But, as with Ossessione – a possible model given its own noir origins, comparable triangle of two men and one woman, and oppressive setting that the woman wants to get away from – the question is first whether words are one thing and deeds another and then, once the deed is done, whether the conspirators will get away with it...

Scattini's direction is simple but effective, juxtaposing a direct handheld camera style that gives a raw documentary feel with more carefully composed touristic imagery and some generally judicously used shock zooms.

The performances from Baker, Salerno and Mann are pleasing, benefitting from their willingness to engage with their characters, warts and all.


Unusually Antoine drinks rum rather than J&B whisky

One moment that particularly stands out in this regard is the first encounter between Baker and Salerno, in which we also learn of their past history together:

Madeleine's latest love has left her, as Antoine foretold he would. Having hit the bottle hard she is torn between being her desire not to be seen by her former husband in such a dissolute state and her momentary craving for his attention and affection, as those selfsame things that he is unable and unwilling to give.


The deglamourised Baker

If this scene would pose no threat to Baker in the context of a stage production of some respectable play about a middle-aged, alcoholic racist, commutated to the screen in the form of a popular film it carried more of a risk of typecasting for the 40-something star, as someone only suitable for portraying faded and tarnished glamour. (“You don't want that black bitch. Don't you understand – you don't own her, you're the slave, the slave of a black body!”)

As The Body of the title, Araya's role necessarily provides less to work with. Though perhaps not managing to transcend its limitations, her performance is nevertheless credible and belies her history as a beauty queen and model in a way that makes it clear Scattini was justified in casting her in a number of his films. (It also left me wondering what she might have brought to the Black Emanuelle franchise, in that disregarding Laura Gemser's beauty the Dutch-Indonesian actress does tend towards a certain inexpressiveness that sometimes detracts when her character presents the same blasé indifference to each and every encounter, no matter how outre.)






The body – Araya displaying her charms


Not Tinti and Gemser, but Mann and Araya

Scattini, Massimo Felisatti and Fabio Pittorru's writing is also better than average. Though they throw a number of twists into the tale, some of which are also pleasingly ironic, there is nothing that emerges as contrived either whilst watching the story unfold or reconstructing it retrospectively.

Instead, seemingly incidental aspects come to attain a greater significance. Note, for example, Antoine's drunken remarks to Alan that drifters and thieves are one and the same after they have failed to catch some apparent intruders one night, as an indication of suspicions of his new friend and that he's more on the ball than his habitually dishevelled, drunken state suggests. Or note Princess's request that Antoine get her a pair of shoes when he is in town, having hitherto declined to wear them.

Piero Umiliani contributes a beautifully evocative score that is by turns soothing, melancholy, romantic and impassioned, with Hammond organ grooves, lush vocalism and all the his trademark ingredients present; more generally, looking at the list of Umiliani and Scattini's collaborations, it's clear that they were very much in tune with one another, resulting in a series of scores that work beyond the images they support and which, like the film, can be enthusiastically recommended to those willing to go beyond the more familiar Argento / Martino / Morricone / Nicolai giallo idioms of the time.

[I watched the film through an English dubbed AVI from Cinemageddon]