Un Omicidio perfetto a termine di legge / Cross Current / Homicidio al límite de la ley

Following a powerboat accident, businessman Marco Breda (Philippe Leroy) is left with a blood clot on the brain and a decidedly negative prognosis, with perhaps a ten per cent chance of a successful operation.

Miraculously, however, Marco pulls through, only to then be diagnosed as suffering from amnesia.

Told that Marco needs peace and quiet to have any hope of recovering his memory Marco’s family and friends gather round him – wife Monica (Elga Andersen), business partner Burt (Ivan Rassimov), rival racer Tommy (Franco Ressel) and typical representative of haute bourgeois beauty Terry (Rosanna Yanni).

Soon, however, it seems that at least some of them have ulterior motives – but really do you expect anything else from the likes of Rassimov and Ressel – and quite possibly less than his best interests at heart.

Unless, that is, the murder of former gardener Foschi after he had sought a meeting with Marco in order to discuss something was in fact for the amnesiac man's own good; in the convoluted world of the giallo stranger things having happened...


Philippe Leroy, outfitted in stylish polo neck, tries to remember – or to forget...

The biggest difficulty most are likely to have with this 1971 giallo – besides a fuzzy, panned and scanned image – lies in getting past the truly awful title theme and the interminable powerboat racing footage that follows shortly thereafter.


The landscape of the mind, via a paradoxical combination of real and expressive / expressionist architecture and design

Happily, once we’re plunged into the convoluted plot, replete with double-crosses and potentially telling exchanges of dialogue and glances – the difficulty coming, as ever, in sorting out that which is significant from that which we’re meant to believe to be such by generic expectation and / or directorial manipulations – these are easily forgotten.




A blade in the dark and its effect; the gore effect feels out of place, however, and doesn't really convince, especially as one blow from this blade is supposed to have caused it.

Unfortunately, however, so is the enigmatic fragment that is inserted between them, in which an unidentified figure stalks, gun in hand. For, as eventually becomes apparent, this is the beginning that’s supposed to be answered by the end. Unfortunately seeing as the figure in the opening sequence is not wearing gloves and the figure in the closing one is (and black leather ones at that), the connection is somewhat undone by carelessness, failing to have quite the desired impact. (See Bava’s Rabid Dogs for an example of how it should be done, with an ending that throws everything preceding it into an entirely new light and, more importantly, does so in a way that makes sense.)


Classic mirror use – intimations of narcissism and duplicity

More importantly, the ending also evinces an awkwardly handled combination of irony and morality, the former presumably for the Italian side of the co-production in that let’s enjoy these rich, beautiful people doing nasty things to one another sort of way and the latter certainly more in line with the dictates of the Spanish censors of the time.

It’s a particular shame because almost everything in between works well, keeping the viewer engaged with the mystery and wondering what will happen next, stretching credulity – why did the police inspector wait until Marco has arrived home before mentioning the possibility of sabotage; how did the surgeons manage to operate on Marco’s brain without needing to shave his head to give but two – but never breaking it, nor the implicit contract with us, whereby we’re not supposed to question such things. This is, after all, a universe of heightened realism, wherein a stormy night can be relied upon to arrive on cue to add dramatic weight to an already suspenseful (mise en) scene.




An ocular design and what it looks down upon...


and another example of the striking production design, this time let down by the pan and scan

Given director Tonino Ricci’s less than stellar reputation – a reputation which, I must admit, has inhibited me from seeking out more of his work, and so could be unfounded, like that of Umberto Lenzi, whose gialli Cross Current perhaps most resembles in its approach – it seems fair to put the film’s success, such as it is, mainly down to the contributions of his collaborators.


Could you get much more iconic than this? Black gloves and a yellow phone...

Flavio Mogherini’s production designs for the modernist villa are especially outstanding and allow for some striking compositions which veteran cinematographer Cecilio Paniagua makes the most of, while – away from that theme tune, which one would be pleased to hear was in fact the work of another – Giorgio Gaslini’s avant-jazz score, heavy on vocalism and discordance, recalls Morricone’s work on The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and his own on So Sweet So Dead to good effect. (Curiously by way of another Argento connection, this time to Four Flies on Grey Velvet, the film also sees one character meet their demise in slow-motion to a lullaby type theme.)

The cast play their roles as to the manner born. Maybe Ivan Rassimov didn’t have a great range, or at least didn’t get much opportunity to demonstrate it, but he was a master of sinister villainy. Likewise, if Rosanna Yanni was rarely required to be much more than decorative in films of this type, she decorated so beautifully.

Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key

Oliviero Ruvigny (Luigi Pistilli) is a burnt-out, alcoholic, mother-fixated writer who has not written a line in three years and survives by selling off the furniture from the crumbling family mansion. His main pleasure in life is taunting his beautiful wife Irina (Anita Strindberg) who also attentions of her dead mother-in-law' cat, a malevolent creature that more than live up to its name, Satan, as far as she is concerned.






Yet another picture that holds a power


An early appearance by Dalila Di Lazzaro, later the lead in Flavio Mogherini's The Pyjama Girl Case

Visiting the village for much-needed supplies after hosting another party for the hippies at the nearby commune, Oliviero arranges a rendezvous with the girl from the bookstore, Fausta (Daniela Giordano). But while waiting for him to arrive, she is murdered by a sickle-wielding, black-gloved figure.




Daniela Giordano in a particularly thankless role.

When the police call at the villa the next day Oliviero claims that he was with Irina all evening. This satisfies the police but leaves Irina – seemingly too frightened to tell them the truth – ever more worried.


Ruvigny hits the J&B

Then the Ruvigny's maid (Carla Brait) is killed. Again proclaiming his innocence, Oliviero convinces Irina that the best thing to do is wall up the body in the cellar and, if anyone asks, say that she left their service; to go to the authorities "would be like putting a noose around my neck" he explains.


The maid dons Oliviero's mother's dress and suffers the consequences


Ivan Rassimov, looking shifty as ever

The last thing either of them needs, then, is the unexpected arrival of Olivieri's niece Floriana (Edwige Fenech), although Irina warms to her as she stands up to Oliviero and offers her aunt more than a shoulder to cry on.


I love the abstract, gestalt figure qualities of this composition





Unfortunately at this point, the film loses its way somewhat.

Fausta's killer is unmasked as an escaped lunatic, thereby removing the burden of suspicion from Oliviero but also making his and Irina's subsequent actions less believable.

More damaging, however, is the dirt bike sequence that follows, which effectively puts a brake on the narrative for the better part of five minutes.

Happily things pick up after this as the various plots come together, though never quite recapturing the lost momentum of the first half.


All work and no play makes Oliviero a dull boy?

Combining familiar generic themes and motifs with more overtly Gothic elements drawn from Edgar Allen Poe's short story The Black Cat – itself later adapted by Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento in giallo / horror style – this 1972 entry boasts one of the most extravagant titles in the entire giallo filone, itself stemming from a line in the filmmakers' earlier The Strange Vice of Signora Wardh.

At the helm, Sergio Martino again demonstrates his undoubted technical abilities, although some of his choices also feel a touch over-emphatic. It is not that an extreme close-up, shock zoom or sudden cut-in has no place here – that would be an absurd suggestion to make – more that they feel somewhat redundant when the point has already been made through dialogue, performance or other, more subtle, aspects of mise-en-scene. Sometimes more is less.

Against this, however, there are some beautifully realised moments. A love scene between Floriana and Irina, for instance, may use all the slow-dissolve, hands-clasping-in-ecstasy cliches, but in doing so it perhaps indicates not only their pleasure as immediate meaning but also a retrospectively element of falseness when it becomes evident that both participants are playing particular roles.

Bruno Nicolai's score lacks variety compared to his work for Martino elsewhere, with an absence of suspense and lounge themes in favour of numerous minor variations on the same gentle, romantic harpsichord and string led theme. This also, however, perhaps allows for a better fit with the overall tone of the film, insofar as the emphasis is more upon the relationships between the characters than the woman-in-peril scenario.

While Strindberg is perhaps the designated victim, she is more the victim of systematic abuse than a clear cut conspiracy of the sort experienced by Edwige Fenech in The Strange Vice of Signora Wardh or All the Colours of the Dark.

Fenech herself is intriguingly cast against type as a conniving bitch with her own agenda, leaving Rassimov with the short end of the stick once more as yet another sinister presence; while his exact allegiance and part in the various plots and counter-plots remains a mystery until late on, it is evident from his very first appearance that can be up to no good.

To an extent Luigi Pistilli might also appear typecast, insofar as he is again given the role of someone troubled, haunted and compromised following his reluctant co-conspirator of a forceful Lady Macbeth type wife in Bay of Blood and his policeman traumatised by a suspect's death in The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire. Again, however, what matters is the way he differentiates each such figure from the others, with his alcoholic Oliviero also giving an ironic twist to the omnipresent J&B bottle as more a signifier of failure ("It's all poison", as the character remarks at one point) than la dolce vita.


Leering local layabouts


The Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll?


La Chute, again

It is also worth noting that the film features both dummy and doll action. There is also a scene repeated in Torso, as a gang of locals leer at and make crude remarks as to what they would like to do to Irina: if Martino gives the (implied) male spectator his “visual pleasures” he also likes to explicitly problematise them on occasion. I also find these moments curiously reminiscent of those in Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura where Monica Vitti's character similarly finds herself being eyed up and objectivised; whether the allusion is conscious or not is if course another matter entirely...

Tutti i colori del buio / All the Colours of the Dark

Following a traumatic car accident in which she lost her unborn child, Jane (Edwige Fenech) and has been plagued by exceptionally vivid – read cinematic – nightmares, invariably featuring a stalker with piercing blue eyes.












Images from the nightmare sequence; note the mechanical doll like qualities of the figure in the third image and the use of "any-space whatevers" without the anchoring points of classical-era / movement-image cinema.

Jane's partner Richard (George Hilton) and sister Barbara (Susan Scott / Nieves Navarro) offer alternative therapies. Barbara favours a therapy and arranges for Jane to see Dr Burton (Jorge Rigaud). Richard, who was driving the car at the time of the accident and thus may have his own issues to contend with, dismisses the psychiatrist as a “quack” and offers Jane medication instead, with Barbara in turn countering by reminding him that he is only a sales representative for a pharmaceutical company and not in any way a qualified professional.




A Suspicion or Notorious style drink?


The Woman in the Window


The sisters; I like the way how Fenech is later done up to look more like Navarro as she decides to visit the sabbat:



On her way home from a visit to Dr Burton, Jane encounters the blue eyed man of her nightmares in the street. Panicked, she bumps into her new next-door neighbour, Mary (Marina Malfatti) and is invited in for a calming cup of tea – a nice touch in terms in making the characters seem as English as the locales – and chat. Jane, however, is keen to get back to prepare Richard's dinner, but does agree to meet up with Mary the next morning.

Jane then receives a phone call from a lawyer, Clay (Luciano Pigozzi), who wishes to see her the following afternoon but fails to provide any other information. Then, glancing outside, Jane thinks she sees her stalker. Cautiously venturing into the stairwell, Jane finds herself locked out, with someone advancing. Thankfully – or suspiciously, depending on your perception of how events are proceeding thus far – Richard emerges from the elevator at just the right moment.

The following morning Jane confides in Mary, who proposed a third, decidedly more unorthodox solution, that Jane should visit a witches sabbat. Despite not knowing what one is nor what it will entail, beyond Mary's explanation that “it's a certain kind of black magic ritual,” Jane is by now desperate enough to try anything and thus agrees to rendezvous with Mary following her visit to the lawyers.

As it turns out, Jane doesn't get very far there anyway: the blue eyed man is there, waiting, and attacks her with an axe. This encounter and the ensuing chase does not, however, prevent Jane meeting Mary (albeit an hour late; “it's not like a cinema when one can walk in any time,” admonishes Mary in a neat little self-reflexive remark) and attending the sabbat thereafter. There is she is disturbed by the animal sacrifice, but nevertheless participates in drinking its blood and in the orgy that ensues as the cultists welcome their new member.







Seamlessly the action shifts back to home, with Jane and Richard in bed:

Darling, no more bad dreams.
Everything's back to normal, isn't it Jane?
Yes, but I feel strange, Richard. I don't feel real

It seems that Mary's cure has indeed worked – after a fashion. But with the neighbour soon thereafter admitting to her own motives for involving Jane with the cult; a book about black magic appearing among Richard's possessions, and an apparent conspiracy between Richard and the blue eyed man, it quickly becomes clear that things are about to get a whole lot worse before they get better.






Note the way the fragmentation of Fenech's image signifies that all is decidedly not well, even immediately after her visit to the sabbat seems to have done its job.

True, the old adage says that it is always darkest before the dawn, but in a context where the dark itself has colours – all of them – that might well be devoid of assurance...

Reuniting the main cast and crew of The Strange Vice of Signora Wardh and Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, this 1972 giallo blends typical filone themes – a traumatic past event; conspiracy; female neurosis etc. – with more overtly supernatural horror themed Rosemary's Baby styled material, to good overall effect.

The screenplay, co-authored by Ernesto Gastaldi and Sauro Scavolini from a story by Santiago Moncada, provides a solid starting point, keeping the viewer guessing as to the nature of the conspiracy throughout and giving director Sergio Martino and his all-star ensemble enough to work with.

Martino handles the suspense and action sequences with typical aplomb, while the assorted nightmare scenes afford him and his team the chance to experiment with unusual angles, kaleidoscopic lenses and jarring edits. It may not be particularly subtle – there is little ambiguity in what the components of the nightmares mean, for instance, especially in comparison with something like Lucio Fulci's not too dissimilar Lizard in a Woman's Skin – but it is effective and appropriate in the context of Mikel Koven's “vernacular cinema”.

Hilton plays Richard with the right level of creepiness, not sufficient to make him an obvious villain, but enough to induce a degree of uncertainty; as when he and Scott are discussing Jane's condition and apportioning blame to one another.

As was often the case, Rassimov has an inherently less interesting role, though never fails to impart the required aura of menace to his appearances.

Of all the performers, however, this is Fenech's film. Though undoubtedly cast primarily on account of family connections as the then-partner of Sergio Martino's producer brother Luciano and for being a stunning beauty with a willingness to display her assets, her dramatic abilities really shine through as the increasingly paranoid and unstable Jane. Indeed, again one feels sorry for the actress and others like her in the Euro-cult world for never being recognised for anything other than their looks; personally I find her performance here more than equal to that of Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby. (Again, before we dismiss the film as simply ripping-off an – admittedly excellent – original, it is worth remembering that the filmmakers have, as with much filone cinema, introduced their own twists, in that Jane lost her baby before any worries about what it might turn out to be, Rosemary's Baby style, could ever arise.)

Elsewhere, Bruno Nicolai's score is another plus. Suggesting Rosemary's Baby early on via a lullaby theme, he elsewhere offers a winning combination of suspenseful and psychedelic themes, the latter again somewhat reminiscent of his work for Jess Franco at times. Whatever the mood to be set, he gets it; a seemingly incongruous lounge piece immediately after Jane's initial visit to the sabbat explicable in relation to Jane's momentarily lighter mood.

Not, however, that All the Colours of the Dark is an unqualified masterpiece.

For starters, the coven plot fails to really convince. Though Jane is presented as desperate, the ease with which she goes off to a sabbat with a neighbour she's only just met is too convenient, as is the timing of that sabbat the vert next afternoon – no waiting until the stars are right for these cultists!

Martino also fails to play fair with the viewer on one important occasion. Whereas the second time viewer can notice the vital detail protagonist Marc Daly does not in Dario Argento's Deep Red, the director having sufficient confidence in his abilities to misdirect the first time viewer by sleight of hand, here a key signifier is simply concealed from our eyes. Then again, it is worth remembering that neither The Bird with the Crystal Plumage nor Four Flies on Grey Velvet exactly plays a fair game – if Martino was not ahead of his rival cineaste at this time, he was not appreciably far behind either.

Another thing that hurts the film, albeit to a lesser extent, are the voices given some of the supporting characters, which come straight from the Dick Van Dyke / Eliza Doolittle school of Cockney elocution and thus serve to break the otherwise convincing sense of Londonicity – to pretentiously appropriate a concept from Roland Barthes – accomplished elsewhere.


Kenilworth Court, SW15 as it appears in the film


... and today

Still, in the final analysis these are relatively minor issues in what otherwise emerges as an enjoyable, effective blend of giallo and horror that sees everyone concerned – Fenech above all – at or near the top of their respective games.