Sfida al diavolo / Challenge the Devil / Katarsis

One of the things about watching lots of Italian genre films from the late 50s through 80s is that you get used to certain names cropping up, like wig makers Rocchetti and Carboni or CSC graduate Carla Mancini.

This, by contrast, is one of those films where most of the names in the credits don’t mean much – including director Guiseppe Veggezzi / Joseph Vegh whose sole IMDB credit this is.

The two important names in the cast are Christopher Lee and Giorgio Ardisson, the former spelled as Cristopher in the credits and the latter’s forename Anglicised to George.

The film opens at an airport and looks like it’s going to be a crime thriller as two hitmen prepare to go into action against Carlo, for his refusal to hand over some documents.

Although wounded, Carlo escapes – it isn’t completely clear how – to a monastery where he asks to see one of the order, Pejo, an old friend. Carlo explains he hasn’t got the documents because Alma took them.

We then cut to a nightclub and are presented with a succession of song and dance numbers. Their relationship to the previous scenes only becomes evident when Pejo goes to visit Alma, a dancer at the club, backstage. Alma is reluctant to give up the documents – at least not for a considerable sum of money.

Pejo then recounts the story of how he became a monk – we’re now 20 minutes into the 75 minute film – and we segue into an extended flashback.

He and the rest of the gang – including the particularly out of control Ugo, played by Ardisson – were out looking for kicks, entailing forcing other cars off the road and then beating the occupant of one such vehicle after he has crashed.

Continuing on, the gang leave the road and, as night falls, end up at an old and apparently uninhabited castle. They decide to break in and explore the place, soon finding a banquet table laid out with food and drink which, needless to say, they gorge themselves on, before having a remarkably chaste “orgy” entailing dancing around and playing bongos for several minutes.

At this point Lee makes his appearance as the old man of the house and talks about his dead beloved and sold his soul to the Devil in order to bring her back. He hears her voice, but can never find her, and thus offers the gang all the riches in the castle if they can find her for him. After they have gone, the clock chimes midnight and the man is either replaced by or transforms into the Devil himself.

Round about this point the gang, who have gone in search of the treasure, start to feel a little less brave, and we get some reasonably decent Gothic/Fantastique atmospheres along with the woman making her appearance, leading the gang onto a seemingly endless spiral staircase ending in a crystal/mirror image filled room, traps each of them such that they can see the others but not reach or touch them.

The existential dread of the scene is effectively conveyed, recalling the likes of Sam Dalmas’s entrapment in the gallery sequence of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage; the infinite plane that Liza and John find themselves in at the end of The Beyond; Eswai’s pursuit of himself in Kill Baby Kill and – perhaps ultimately most revealing – the doubled characters in Nude for Satan.

Having been trapped for a while and now on their last legs, the gang follow one of the spiders inhabiting the place to find an equally long descending staircase that in turn leads onto a long passage. They have only just entered it, however, when they fall into a pit and encounter the Devil and/or the old man again. Suitably chastened and transformed by their experiences, they flee the castle.

At this point we cut back to the framing narrative as Pejo provides the moral of the story before, back in the past, the lady of the castle appears to them once more, coming out of a clock in a somewhat Rollin-esque manner.



At this point we cut back to the framing narrative as Pejo provides the moral of the story before, back in the past, the lady of the castle appears to them once more, coming out of a clock in a somewhat Rollin-esque manner. They take her out of the castle, into the light, and give her a proper burial. Significantly here we’re given a semi-subjective shot from inside the grave, looking up to the heavens.



As the contrite gang members pass the man they had earlier beaten, they tend to his injuries. “Strangely, his face resembled the old man from the castle.”

Alma, reduced to tears by Pejo’s tale, gives him the documents; that her name means soul hardly seems coincidental insofar as she too has been saved.

While this can in no way be considered a good film, it is certainly an interesting one for its combination of the inept and the poetic, or that “sublime” which Ado Kyrou famously identified as a reason for watching bad films.

Thanks must again go out to the badfilm community for recording this obscurity off Italian TV;  converting it to an AVI and torrent, and providing fansubs.

L'assassino... è al telefono / The Killer is on the Phone

Whilst preparing for  the murder of his current target hitman Ranko Dragovic (Telly Savalas) has a chance encounter with Eleanor (Anne Heywood), the wife of one of Dragovic's previous victims from five years earlier. She had been suffering from amnesia about this traumatic event, but now begins to recall details of it, thus making herself a threat to the killer.

I'd previously seen this 1972 giallo by Alberto De Martino from an old VHS source, and dubbed into English, so it was a welcome opportunity to see it again for the first time in a clean, widescreen, Italian dub with English fansubs.

Savalas is a suitably menacing, near-silent presence, recalling his role in Bava's Lisa and the Devil, while Heywood passes muster in the Frightened Woman role more usually assigned to an Edwige Fenech, Florinda Bolkan, Carroll Baker or Dagmar Lassander.

The theme of the unreliability of memory is, of course, a staple of the filone -- one thinks of The Girl Who Knew too Much, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Lizard in a Woman's Skin before this, and of Footprints on the Moon and The Man Without Memory a couple of years afterwards.

While not reaching the heights of these points of comparison, The Killer on the Phone is nevertheless a solidly put together production, benefiting in particular from a lush Stelvio Cipriani score and attractive cinematography from Aristide Massaccessi.

De Martino tries to inject a bit of style into proceedings, but his contributions are more hit and miss. The slow-motion lyrical flashback scenes as Eleanor recovers her previously repressed memories whilst under the influence of a truth drug are a bit over the top in that post Elvira Madigan way. The director is on surer footing when it comes to such staples of the form as the fetishisation of weaponry and black gloves; the close-ups of eyes; the shock zooms and, yes, plenty of product placement for Justerini & Brooks.

The use of the theatrical milieu is also worth noting, Eleanor being an actress by profession. This allows for some confusion over reality versus role-play, as the boundaries between her dramatic work and her traumatic psychodrama become blurred; despite currently being in preparation for a production of Lady Godiva she recites Lady MacBeth's famous murder speech, potentially hinting that she's not as innocent in the affair as appears on the surface.

The theatre space provides the location for an effective finale that sees 'the curtain descend, everything end' or 'bring the house down' in an almost literal way for at least one of the dramatis personae; to say more would spoil things.

The release of the Alien prequel Prometheus got me thinking about Mario Bava, and how the endings of both Planet of the Vampires and Rabid Dogs are predicated on shock/surprise.

I think Rabid Dogs works better, because it's set in this world and the actions of Riccardo Cucciolla's character are consistent throughout, so that watching it a second time you see new resonances in the performance and the direction. In Planet of the Vampires, by contrast, the these are humans - oh no, they're not, despite their names - moment only works the first time.

Thoughts upon an essay/paper title

Written with the catchy/punning bit, then the colon, then what it's really about.

The Sound of Violence: Audio/Visual combination and disjunction in Dario Argento's Films

An Italian krimi poster

For the Edgar Wallace krimi The Hexer:

Note the identification of the film as a giallo and the use of the colour yellow to strengthen this association.

Also note the retitling of the film as a body count movie: Five Victims for the Killer. This contrasts with the more literal translations used in most other territories, as The Sorceror or The Wizard.

The obvious reference point here is, of course, Six Women for the Killer, better known as Blood and Black Lace.

According to the IMDB the Italian film had its domestic release on 14th March 1964 and its West German release on 27 November of that year, while The Hexer had its domestic release on 21 August 1964; Unfortunately the IMDB doesn't have an Italian release date for Bava's film.

Because of Eve

We begin with Bob and Sally, who are engaged to be married, going to their doctor. He reveals two shocking facts: Bob was previously treated for VD. Sally had previously been pregnant. These revelations lead to accusations and recriminations from the couple. Fortunately the doctor is able to make them see sense through showing two educational newsreels.

Bob’s is about syphilis and gonorrhoea, identifying the symptoms of the diseases and their consequences if left unchecked. Meaning we get some documentary shots of diseased genitals, infants born with congenital syphilis and the like. Interestingly this footage is intercut with flashbacks to how Bob became infected, via a prostitute that his friend brought back to their lodgings prior to his leaving for the army.

Sally’s is somewhat tamer and places a greater emphasis upon her own back story: She was with a guy who unwittingly impregnated her before he also leaving for the army, where he was killed in combat.

The surprise coincidence is, of course, that the third party in both narratives is the same person, leading to the couple’s reconciliation.

Following this, which takes around a third of the running time, the subsequent narrative splits into three. First there is more documentary material explaining pregnancy. Then there is a newly recorded colour segment in which David Friedman recites the speech that internationally renowned expert ‘Mr Alexander Leeds’ would give, extolling the audience to buy the ‘invaluable’ yet priced at $1 volumes ‘Father and Son’ and ‘Mother and Daughter’. Friedman performed this task in real life while working with established exploitationeers of the time.

Finally there is birth of a baby footage, both normal and caesarean.

Throughout there’s an emphasis upon voice-over rather than synchronised sound. This was obviously due to economics, as also evinced by the straightforward, no-nonsense approach taken by the filmmakers.

Away from its shockumentary value Because of Eve is worth looking at for what it inadvertently says about US society at the time: In addressing where to get treatment for VD two alternatives are identified: The regular doctor, if one can afford this, or a public health clinic. There is no commentary or critique on this dichotomy. In a similar manner the discussion of illegitimacy seems to endorse carrying the foetus to term and then having the infant adopted, largely avoiding discussion of contraception and abortion. This was perhaps why the Catholic Legion of Decency did not condemn the film, as might have been expected.

Fact and Fiction

One important aspect of Harry Grey's The Hoods, the inspiration for Leone's Once Upon a Time in America, is how fact and fiction merge within it. Given this, it was interesting to read a description of how two real-life gangsters, Lepke and Shapiro, met and elements of similarity with Noodles and Max in Leone's film; in Grey's book the two are already friends, whereas in Leone's film they are rivals when they first meet:

"Lepke took to stealing pushcarts, and one day, he tried to rob a pushcart that was already being robbed by another street tough named Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro. The two became fast friends, and started a relationship that would last the rest of their natural lives.

Lepke and Shapiro teamed up, and became a menace to the downtown pushcart owners. They
tried to climb the ladder to bigger scores, but in 1918, Lepke was caught robbing a downtown loft, and as a result, he was sent to Sing Sing Prison for a five-year stretch.

Lepke's time in prison was the equivalent to a college education for criminals. When Lepke, at the age of 25, was released in 1923, he was now a hardened thug, with the knowledge to make it big in a life of crime.  Lepke teamed up again with his old pal Shapiro, and they decided they could make a mint selling “protection,” to bakeries all throughout New York City." -- Joe Bruno Mobsters, Gangs and Other Creeps