Having made a number of entertaining and effective gialli earlier in the 1970s Luciano Ercoli responded to the rise in popularity of the poliziotto in the middle of the decade and the political situation of the "Years of Lead" by turning his hand to the filone with the giallo-poliziotto crossover Troppo rischio per un uomo solo, this film and the once-believed-lost kidnap drama La Bidonata.
The story is straightforward, the narrative somewhat convoluted: A terrorist gang plant a bomb at an international conference in a hotel, killing and wounding various innocents. One of the investigating officers, the accident-prone but ambitious Balsamo, then happens upon one of the terrorists as he is leaving an apology for the atrocity, but is prevented from pursuing further when the man pulls a pistol. Balsamo is then put into police protection by Armando di Federico, played with typical gusto by the no-nonsense Arthur Kennedy, who has been assigned to head the investigation, until the time comes to give his testimone oculare. Unfortunately Balsamo then contrives to get himself assassinated, the assassin being played by the always welcome Gianfranco Cianfriglia. It's then up to Balsamo's friend and colleague Commissario Matteo Rolani, essayed by the invariably committed and convincing Claudio Cassinelli, to work out what is going on, bring everything together and generally save the day...
Though somewhat light in the flesh department, with the director's wife and muse Nieves Navarro / Susan Scott conspicious in her absence, Killer Cop - a retitling which gives a different slant on the proceedings than the original with its translation of The Police Have Their Hands Tied, or the alternative of Portrait of a 60% Perfect Man - otherwise delivers the goods, with strong characterisations and performances, as with Kennedy's character being known for his tendency to suck on mints when tense; necessary and sufficient levels of action, suspense and intrigue; and a soupcon of politics.
Ercoli and his screenwriters raise the subject of false flag terrorism and the apparent inability of the state in finding a solution, with a particularly interesting discussion amongst the passengers on a bus over whether the bombing was the work of reds or anarchists; whether they were acting on their own initiative or not, and the issue of strong versus weak government in relation to the Fascist past.
While probably purely co-incidental it all came across as a vernacular version of a similar public transport conversation in Slatan Dudow and Berthold Brecht's 1931 Kuhle Wampe - a film made in a similar crisis situation.
Issues of seeing correctly are also expressed by the fact that one of the terrorists, the one whom Balsamo could have identified, has actually lost his glasses and suffers from extremely poor vision. In addition to coincidentally or otherwise prefiguring a similar motif in Sergio Martino's Suspicious Death of a Minor, in which Cassinelli's investigator is continually breaking his glasses, this also seems to foreground a distinction between different types of poliziotto films.
To explain, by way of a bit of theory: In Cinema 1 Gilles Deleuze talks about two distinct forms of Hollywood genre cinema, those of the the large and the small form. Within the large form, within which Deleuze includes the gangster film, the basic structure is SAS'. Reading the situation, S, the protagonist acts, A, resulting in a new, usually improved situation, S'; the classical gangster film is actually different here, in that its trajectory is invariably a downwards one for the gangster protagonist, if thereby an upwards one for non-criminal society. Within the small form, within which Deleuze includes the mystery film, the basic structure is ASA'. Here the situation is initially unclear, only being revealed through the character's actions.
Transposing these ideas to the Italian filone cinema, I would argue that the more ostensibly apolitical poliziotto of the Umberto Lenzi sort, which characteristically takes the form of a succession of "binominal" duels between the cop and the criminals, is usually of the SAS' form. The protagonist knows who his antagonists are and that something is afoot. By contrast the more overtly political poliziotto of the Sergio Martino sort is usually of the ASA' form. The protagonist does not initially know who his antagonists are and thus proceeds blindly at first, acting to see what the situational consequences are and what "indices" are revealed.
Much like Ercoli's gialli, Killer Cop has a somewhat uneven tone. This is something that some may object to, that innocent people getting blown up should not be juxtaposed with slapstick comedy. In Ercoli's defence I would argue that the dose of comic relief supplied by Balsamo in particular was necessary to make the film palatable to its target audience within Italy.
Who would want to brave the mean streets of the time in going to the cinema to then see a film which dwelt on the aftermath of a terrorist bombing and offered only the scant relief that certain mavericks within the system might be capable of finding and dealing with those behind such crimes, albeit only after the (f)act?
It would have been too much, too depressing and despairing a conclusion. In such a popular / vernacular context, Ercoli's gallows humour has its reassuring function, that the good guys will prevail and the ordinary citizens be (mostly) saved.
He also has a knack for switching the tone from comic to tragic in an instant, as with the assassination of Balsamo when he foolishly goes shopping. One moment Balsamo is arguing with the stall-holder over his right to test the merchandise and accidentally disturbing the displays of fruit, the next he is knocking them over wholesale as a result of being shot.
The stall-holder's response is also telling and reassuring as he then concentrates his attention on the dying Balsamo rather than his spilled merchandise. An automatic response, perhaps, but one which also tells the viewer that there is a shared community of values that still prevail, even amongst the petty bourgeoisie.
Stelvio Cipriani provides another one of those same-sounding yet undeniably effective driving soundtracks.
In sum, another film that delivers everything required of it and a bit more...
Showing posts with label Luciano Ercoli. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Luciano Ercoli. Show all posts
Friday, 16 January 2009
Sunday, 15 June 2008
Un Par de zapatos del '32 / Qualcuno l'ha visto uccidere (Unica traccia: un paio di scarpe n.32 / The Student Connection / Witness to Murder
The opening gambit of this Spanish-Italian co-production recalls The Case of the Scorpion's Tail as a heavily disguised man – indeed, some might almost say too heavily disguised, with a neck-brace and a curiously Asian name for a European that one suspects would draw unwanted attention to him today as fitting the terrorist profile – plants a bomb on board a passenger plane, killing his target and another 139 people.
The assassin's reasoning makes sense, in its own perverted, psychopathic way: it's safer than taking a more director, personal approach to his target and, with this number of casualities, its highly probable that the a political motivation will be presented or imputed for the terrorist-seeming act.
Unlike his counterpart in Sergio Martino's film, however, his co-conspirator, doctor and headteacher Roger Mell (Ray Milland) isn't too pleased to learn that he's now indirectly responsible for a mass murder and proceeds to react by killing the assassin, whom he then buries in the greenhouse of his boarding school.
At this point the thriller rather than political aspects of the scenario come to the fore as the conspirators' personal motives emerge, in that Mell and his mistress Sonia (Sylva Koscina) only wanted to be rid of her husband, while the authorities begin to investigate the case in a throughly routine manner rather than take advantage of it by attributing it to some convient political enemy – a spider's stratagem that would seem to have been all too common in Italy's years of lead, but which would have never passed by the Spanish censors under Franco; it is also perhaps telling that the location of the film is southern France rather than north western Italy or northern Spain. (Not that any other country is necessarily any better: who knows what secret histories will emerge in 30, 50 or 100 years around our present, or what has already vanished from the official record, or was never put on any record to begin with.)
The trajectory of the piece is completed by the fact that one of the school's pupils, saw Mell kill the assassin. While Mell isn't sure which one, Sonia is sure of what they must do once they identify the child who saw too much: silence him...
All they initially have to go on is the size of the child's shoes, from which the Spanish and Italian versions of the film take their titles.
Much like the way Martino's film unexpectedly disposed of its apparent female protagonist one third of the way through a la Psycho, The Student Connection's inversion of the more usual giallo framework helps keep it fresh and engaging throughout.
Knowing whodunit, the emphasis is more on whosawit and whether the reluctant killer, already wracked with guilt over his initial crimes, will actually be able to coldly kill an innocent himself when the moment comes.
The commutation of what would otherwise be an array of adult suspects into potential child victims also works in the film's favour, in that every time Mell or Sonia are alone with one of the children the imbalance of knowledge between viewer and characters – except for in the case of the child who saw it all – creates considerable suspense, with one false move or misreading potentially signalling an innocent's death.
Though Milland likely took the role strictly because it was available and he wanted / needed to keep working, his performance, like that in The Pyjama Girl Case, belies such circumstances, beautifully expressing the complexities, anxieties and position of his character as a man hopelessly out of his depth.
Koscina doesn't quite transcend the femme fatale role, but then again isn't really required to so long as she brings the necessary glamour and danger to it. While none of the child actors are required to provide the same complexity of performance as Ana Torrent in the contemporaneous Spirit of the Beehive, which still represents the touchstone for all child performances as far as I am concerned, they are nevertheless always believable and avoid obnoxiousness of the sort that starts to see you almost rooting for the killer.
Essaying his first thriller after a series of westerns, Rafael Romero Marchent demonstrates a professional facility for adapting his style with some nice nighttime stalking sequences, echoed on the soundtrack by Stelvio Cipriani's tense, psychedelic rock giallo rather than spaghetti themed cues, with jazz squalls in lieu of mariachi deguellos.
One does, however, wonder what co-writer Luciano Ercoli might have made of the same material, and his wife Nieves Navarro of the Sonia role.
Yet, disregarding the what ifs, the what is still warrants an hour and a half of your time.
Another opinion: http://euro-fever.blogspot.com/2008/02/student-connectionun-par-de-zapatos-del.html
The assassin's reasoning makes sense, in its own perverted, psychopathic way: it's safer than taking a more director, personal approach to his target and, with this number of casualities, its highly probable that the a political motivation will be presented or imputed for the terrorist-seeming act.
Unlike his counterpart in Sergio Martino's film, however, his co-conspirator, doctor and headteacher Roger Mell (Ray Milland) isn't too pleased to learn that he's now indirectly responsible for a mass murder and proceeds to react by killing the assassin, whom he then buries in the greenhouse of his boarding school.
At this point the thriller rather than political aspects of the scenario come to the fore as the conspirators' personal motives emerge, in that Mell and his mistress Sonia (Sylva Koscina) only wanted to be rid of her husband, while the authorities begin to investigate the case in a throughly routine manner rather than take advantage of it by attributing it to some convient political enemy – a spider's stratagem that would seem to have been all too common in Italy's years of lead, but which would have never passed by the Spanish censors under Franco; it is also perhaps telling that the location of the film is southern France rather than north western Italy or northern Spain. (Not that any other country is necessarily any better: who knows what secret histories will emerge in 30, 50 or 100 years around our present, or what has already vanished from the official record, or was never put on any record to begin with.)
The trajectory of the piece is completed by the fact that one of the school's pupils, saw Mell kill the assassin. While Mell isn't sure which one, Sonia is sure of what they must do once they identify the child who saw too much: silence him...
All they initially have to go on is the size of the child's shoes, from which the Spanish and Italian versions of the film take their titles.
Much like the way Martino's film unexpectedly disposed of its apparent female protagonist one third of the way through a la Psycho, The Student Connection's inversion of the more usual giallo framework helps keep it fresh and engaging throughout.
Knowing whodunit, the emphasis is more on whosawit and whether the reluctant killer, already wracked with guilt over his initial crimes, will actually be able to coldly kill an innocent himself when the moment comes.
The commutation of what would otherwise be an array of adult suspects into potential child victims also works in the film's favour, in that every time Mell or Sonia are alone with one of the children the imbalance of knowledge between viewer and characters – except for in the case of the child who saw it all – creates considerable suspense, with one false move or misreading potentially signalling an innocent's death.
Though Milland likely took the role strictly because it was available and he wanted / needed to keep working, his performance, like that in The Pyjama Girl Case, belies such circumstances, beautifully expressing the complexities, anxieties and position of his character as a man hopelessly out of his depth.
Koscina doesn't quite transcend the femme fatale role, but then again isn't really required to so long as she brings the necessary glamour and danger to it. While none of the child actors are required to provide the same complexity of performance as Ana Torrent in the contemporaneous Spirit of the Beehive, which still represents the touchstone for all child performances as far as I am concerned, they are nevertheless always believable and avoid obnoxiousness of the sort that starts to see you almost rooting for the killer.
Essaying his first thriller after a series of westerns, Rafael Romero Marchent demonstrates a professional facility for adapting his style with some nice nighttime stalking sequences, echoed on the soundtrack by Stelvio Cipriani's tense, psychedelic rock giallo rather than spaghetti themed cues, with jazz squalls in lieu of mariachi deguellos.
One does, however, wonder what co-writer Luciano Ercoli might have made of the same material, and his wife Nieves Navarro of the Sonia role.
Yet, disregarding the what ifs, the what is still warrants an hour and a half of your time.
Another opinion: http://euro-fever.blogspot.com/2008/02/student-connectionun-par-de-zapatos-del.html
Thursday, 18 January 2007
Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion / Foto proibite di una signora per bene
Minou is beautiful and devoted to her husband Peter. Yet her tendency to drink too much and a tranquilliser habit suggest some underlying malaise even before, walking along the seafront one night, she is confronted by a mysterious sword-cane wielding sadist.
All but threatening Minou with rape – the phallic symbolism of his weapon hardly needs discussing, with the film as a whole likewise offering (almost too) easy pickings for the psychoanalytically minded – the man calmly informs her that Peter is a fraud and a murderer, then inexplicably departs, allowing Minou to make her way to a nearby bar, call for help and have a few drinks to calm her nerves while awaiting her husband.
The mirror lets the man gaze at the woman gazing at herself
A few days later Minou gets talking with her friend Dominique at a nightclub. In the course of conversation Dominique comments on how one of Peter's creditors was recently found dead, with nitrogen in his bloodstream.
Meeting again the next day, Dominique shows Minou some of the candid photographs she brought back from her recent visit to Copenhagen. (“Are they pornographic photographs?” “Yes, but good ones. Quality is important in every profession.”) One features the man.
A further shock comes from Minou's visit to Peter's business, where one of his colleagues shows her the new decompression chamber, used to simulate different pressure conditions for testing deep-sea diving equipment.
Putting the details together, Minou realises that Peter had motive, method and opportunity to kill the man and make it look like an accident.
In the middle of the night the telephone rings. It is the stranger. He plays Minou a taped conversation implicating Peter in murder and demands a meeting with her the next day.
The Frightened Woman
Hoping to buy the man off, Minou offers him money. He laughs at this, telling Minou that it is her that he wants. Desperate to obtain the tape and save her husband, Minou accedes to his demands.
Unfortunately her situation then gets worse instead of better as the man then starts blackmailing Minou with the photographs he surreptitiously took of their encounter. Worse, he says that Peter did not murder anyone, with the whole story being fabricated as a means of ensnaring Minou herself.
Not sure what do to on her return home, Minou tells Peter that she has been out with Dominique all afternoon – a claim that backfires when Dominique turns out to be there as well...
Interior design by the House of Bava?
Although showcasing the talents of the same team who would later make
Death Walks on High Heels and Death Walks at Midnight – director Luciano Ercoli, screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi and actors Susan Scott / Nieves
Navarro and Simon Andreu – this 1970 giallo from Luciano Ercoli differs
from its successors in one key respect. With Dagmar Lassander taking
the female lead as the “Lady Above Suspicion” of the title, Minou, Scott is
relegated to a supporting role, that of her decidedly more suspect friend, Dominique.
The change has a vital effect on the dynamics of the piece as a whole,
as can be seen if we apply the semiotic “commutation test” and imagine what the film might have been like with Scott in the lead.
The picture that emerges is very different, the no-nonsense persona that Scott conveys in the two Death films (and their companion piece, Predeaux's Death Carries a Cane) being entirely at odds with the neurotic Minou, as someone who is about internalisation and introspection rather than externalisation and action.
Equally, however, it is important to recognise that Scott is in no way miscast. Rather, as with All the Colours of the Dark, she seems to enjoy the opportunity to play a more ambiguous character – a role not too distant, for that matter, those essayed by Simon Andreu opposite her in the other two films, albeit obviously with a more overt masculine danger.
Here Andreu is a more straightforward villain, leaving ambiguity up to Pier Paolo Capponi's Peter. While a relatively bland figure by comparison, one suspects this was something consciously sought by the film-makers, his sheer inoffensiveness providing additional reasons why Minou might have subconsciously sought to get into her predicament as a means of compelling Peter to do / say something. (Undoing the top of her dress at the start of the film - “ Dominique is right. I dress too much like a housewife” – Minou fantasises about telling Peter she has been having an affair to see what his reaction might be.)
Of the four leads, it is Lassander who has the most difficult role but who also, unfortunately, comes across as the least able to meet its demands, as perhaps signalled by the way in which Minou's inner state emerges as much through voice-over; a mise-en-scene that repeatedly emphasises mirrored and other doubled compositions; and thoughtful editing, most notably when a sequence of her making love to Peter is seamlessly intercut with her more S&M tinged encounter with the stranger, making it is difficult to tell who and what she is responding most passionately to.
Elsewhere the director throws in the odd nod to Cocteau and I Vampiri as the strangers' apartment, formerly festooned with plaster hands, is mysteriously devoid of signs of recent habitation when revisited by Minou with others in tow.
Morricone's score, with the exception of the odd party music cue that is just too far towards kitsch, is another asset, with its beautiful main theme and effective suspense cues.
The most unsatisfying aspect of the film for me was its last minute “surprise” ending. Though not completely deus ex machina, the very fact that it had to be summarised and explained within the diegesis seemed to indicate that the film-makers were really more interested with exploring Minou as a character than in crafting a more routine conspiracy thriller / mystery.
Indeed, in this regard while the film certainly recalls the kind of risqué gialli Lenzi and Baker were making around the same time, it also seems to suggest affinities with 1940s female noirs such as Mildred Pierce and, especially, The Reckless Moment at times.
While certainly willing to put herself in a compromising position to protect her husband (rather than daughter, as is the two 40s films) the thing Minou never contemplates is conspiring with or against her husband; in this respect those conspiring against her, whoever they may be, know her only too well that she is truly a signora per bene.
Yet – and this is perhaps the film's ultimate strength – while Minou may not be a murderous figure akin to Blood and Black Lace's Countess Cristina or A Bay of Blood's Renata, she is thereby also one that viewers can more readily identify and engage with, perversions and all.
The question the film then raises, consciously or otherwise, is what perverse actually means in a context where perversion – or at least specific manifestations of perversity, i.e. Minou's implicit masochism but not Dominique's confident bisexuality – is the social norm.
All but threatening Minou with rape – the phallic symbolism of his weapon hardly needs discussing, with the film as a whole likewise offering (almost too) easy pickings for the psychoanalytically minded – the man calmly informs her that Peter is a fraud and a murderer, then inexplicably departs, allowing Minou to make her way to a nearby bar, call for help and have a few drinks to calm her nerves while awaiting her husband.
The mirror lets the man gaze at the woman gazing at herself
A few days later Minou gets talking with her friend Dominique at a nightclub. In the course of conversation Dominique comments on how one of Peter's creditors was recently found dead, with nitrogen in his bloodstream.
Meeting again the next day, Dominique shows Minou some of the candid photographs she brought back from her recent visit to Copenhagen. (“Are they pornographic photographs?” “Yes, but good ones. Quality is important in every profession.”) One features the man.
A further shock comes from Minou's visit to Peter's business, where one of his colleagues shows her the new decompression chamber, used to simulate different pressure conditions for testing deep-sea diving equipment.
Putting the details together, Minou realises that Peter had motive, method and opportunity to kill the man and make it look like an accident.
In the middle of the night the telephone rings. It is the stranger. He plays Minou a taped conversation implicating Peter in murder and demands a meeting with her the next day.
The Frightened Woman
Hoping to buy the man off, Minou offers him money. He laughs at this, telling Minou that it is her that he wants. Desperate to obtain the tape and save her husband, Minou accedes to his demands.
Unfortunately her situation then gets worse instead of better as the man then starts blackmailing Minou with the photographs he surreptitiously took of their encounter. Worse, he says that Peter did not murder anyone, with the whole story being fabricated as a means of ensnaring Minou herself.
Not sure what do to on her return home, Minou tells Peter that she has been out with Dominique all afternoon – a claim that backfires when Dominique turns out to be there as well...
Interior design by the House of Bava?
Although showcasing the talents of the same team who would later make
Death Walks on High Heels and Death Walks at Midnight – director Luciano Ercoli, screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi and actors Susan Scott / Nieves
Navarro and Simon Andreu – this 1970 giallo from Luciano Ercoli differs
from its successors in one key respect. With Dagmar Lassander taking
the female lead as the “Lady Above Suspicion” of the title, Minou, Scott is
relegated to a supporting role, that of her decidedly more suspect friend, Dominique.
The change has a vital effect on the dynamics of the piece as a whole,
as can be seen if we apply the semiotic “commutation test” and imagine what the film might have been like with Scott in the lead.
The picture that emerges is very different, the no-nonsense persona that Scott conveys in the two Death films (and their companion piece, Predeaux's Death Carries a Cane) being entirely at odds with the neurotic Minou, as someone who is about internalisation and introspection rather than externalisation and action.
Equally, however, it is important to recognise that Scott is in no way miscast. Rather, as with All the Colours of the Dark, she seems to enjoy the opportunity to play a more ambiguous character – a role not too distant, for that matter, those essayed by Simon Andreu opposite her in the other two films, albeit obviously with a more overt masculine danger.
Here Andreu is a more straightforward villain, leaving ambiguity up to Pier Paolo Capponi's Peter. While a relatively bland figure by comparison, one suspects this was something consciously sought by the film-makers, his sheer inoffensiveness providing additional reasons why Minou might have subconsciously sought to get into her predicament as a means of compelling Peter to do / say something. (Undoing the top of her dress at the start of the film - “ Dominique is right. I dress too much like a housewife” – Minou fantasises about telling Peter she has been having an affair to see what his reaction might be.)
Of the four leads, it is Lassander who has the most difficult role but who also, unfortunately, comes across as the least able to meet its demands, as perhaps signalled by the way in which Minou's inner state emerges as much through voice-over; a mise-en-scene that repeatedly emphasises mirrored and other doubled compositions; and thoughtful editing, most notably when a sequence of her making love to Peter is seamlessly intercut with her more S&M tinged encounter with the stranger, making it is difficult to tell who and what she is responding most passionately to.
Elsewhere the director throws in the odd nod to Cocteau and I Vampiri as the strangers' apartment, formerly festooned with plaster hands, is mysteriously devoid of signs of recent habitation when revisited by Minou with others in tow.
Morricone's score, with the exception of the odd party music cue that is just too far towards kitsch, is another asset, with its beautiful main theme and effective suspense cues.
The most unsatisfying aspect of the film for me was its last minute “surprise” ending. Though not completely deus ex machina, the very fact that it had to be summarised and explained within the diegesis seemed to indicate that the film-makers were really more interested with exploring Minou as a character than in crafting a more routine conspiracy thriller / mystery.
Indeed, in this regard while the film certainly recalls the kind of risqué gialli Lenzi and Baker were making around the same time, it also seems to suggest affinities with 1940s female noirs such as Mildred Pierce and, especially, The Reckless Moment at times.
While certainly willing to put herself in a compromising position to protect her husband (rather than daughter, as is the two 40s films) the thing Minou never contemplates is conspiring with or against her husband; in this respect those conspiring against her, whoever they may be, know her only too well that she is truly a signora per bene.
Yet – and this is perhaps the film's ultimate strength – while Minou may not be a murderous figure akin to Blood and Black Lace's Countess Cristina or A Bay of Blood's Renata, she is thereby also one that viewers can more readily identify and engage with, perversions and all.
The question the film then raises, consciously or otherwise, is what perverse actually means in a context where perversion – or at least specific manifestations of perversity, i.e. Minou's implicit masochism but not Dominique's confident bisexuality – is the social norm.
Monday, 27 November 2006
The Luciano Ercoli Death Box Set
The early 1970s were the boom time for the Italian thriller or giallo, the name coming from the yellow covers in which mystery and suspense novels were published. An important part of the giallo film phenomenon was the presence of a number of attractive female starlets such as Edwige Fenech, Barbara Bouchet and the star of these two Luciano Ercoli directed Italian-Spanish co-productions, his wife Nieves Navarro, appearing here under her Susan Scott pseudonym.
La Morte cammina con i tacchi alti / Death Walks on High Heels opens boldly, with a sequence that alerts the viewer to expect the unexpected: a one-eyed gunman on a train, the kind of figure who you believe to be an assassin, is himself murdered by a balaclava wearing, razor-wielding killer with distinctive blue eyes.
We soon learn that the victim was jewel thief Rochard. His ill-gotten gains remain missing. The police suspect his daughter Nicole, an exotic dancer, may know their whereabouts. But she professes ignorance.
Later, Nicole is threatened by the train murderer, who caresses her with a straight razor and warns her that the next time she had better tell him the location of the diamonds or he'll use the sharp side of his blade.
Finding bright blue contact lenses among her neer-do-well boyfriend/pimp Michel's accoutrements, Nicole believes he may be involves and thereby flees into the arms of Dr Robert Matthews, an Englishman who showed up at one of the strip clubs where she works shortly before and, wooing her with flowers, confessed to being wowed by her strip routine…
The pair leave Paris for London and thence to Matthews's cottage by the sea, empty but for a decidedly creepy looking groundsman with an artificial hand…
From here on in the plot gets complicated, with nothing quite what it seems, including the titular killer…
Coming across as a hybrid of Psycho, Rear Window and Il Diavolo a sette facce / The Devil Has Seven Faces – the two Hitchcock productions providing prolific genre screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi with themes of voyeurism and sexual deviancy and Osvaldo Civriani's giallo the missing diamonds McGuffin and narrative contortions – Death Walks in High Heels is a bit of a curate's egg of a production, with effective direction and a top-notch genre cast – besides Scott we have Frank Wolff (The Great Silence) and Simon Andreu (The Blood Spattered Bride), playing Matthews and Michel respectively, along with Claudie Lange, Luciano Rossi (The Stranger's Gundown) and George Rigaud (Knife of Ice) in supporting roles – outweighed by a marginally overlong and too-confusing narrative that pulls the rug out on the spectator rather too much to fully engage their attentions.
Less, then, an example of the giallo as art than as trash, the film's main selling points are undoubtedly Scott – one soon loses count of the number of different, but invariably revealing costumes (and wigs) she dons as Nicole – and some satisfyingly grisly murder scenes.
La Morte accarezza a mezzanotte / Death Walks at Midnight AKA Death Caresses at Midnight reunites more or less the same cast – Peter Martell/Pietro Martellanza (The Bogeyman and the French Murders) stepping into the Wolff type role, the American born actor having committed suicide barely weeks after the November 1971 Italian release of Death Walks in High Heels – with Ercoli once more working from an Ernesto Gastaldi penned-script.
This time Scott plays Valentina, a hot-tempered fashion model who is persuaded by her journalist boyfriend – again essayed by Andreu – to take an experimental drug for a story he is writing. Under its influence, she has a horrifying vision of a man smashing a woman's face in with a spiked glove, reminiscent of the one prominently featured in Mario Bava's seminal Blood and Black Lace.
It soon proves, however, to be no mere hallucination, with a woman having been murdered in the apartment opposite under near identical circumstances. Valentina's half-remembered memories thus plunge her into a nightmare world of deception and murder. Plus ca change…
Again, what the film may lacks in seriousness it makes up for in trashy fun. Valentina's apartment showcases some especially groovy interior design, while composer Gianni Ferrio contributes nice themes and Mina some gorgeous vocalism.
The main thing to be said about the Death Walks at Midnight disc is that it is in the 2.35:1 ratio, with the earlier release from Mondo Macabro having been incorrectly framed at 1.85:1. While the earlier disc was watchable, nowhere near as bad as a scope film being panned and scanned to 1.33:1, the extra information previously “lost” is clearly welcome in a “see it again for the first time” way.
Much the same can be said of the difference between the audio presentations of the two discs: whereas the Mondo Macabro release was sourced from a French print and so lacked the Italian dub, the NoShame disc features it instead; both also, of course, including the English dub.
The extras on the disc comprise a small poster and stills gallery and – rather more impressive – a 105 minute TV version of the film. While the quality is poor, being panned and scanned and sourced from a VHS copy, it's nice to have even if not the sort of thing you're likely to revisit often beyond the Video Watchdog nerd factor.
Also presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen with a choice of English and Italian 2.0 audio tracks, there's not much to say about the Death Walks on High Heels except that it's again a pretty much top-notch transfer, clean, bright and sharp as a maniac's straight razor. (Apologies; I just had to work that one in.)
The extras, meanwhile, comprise another small gallery and the original – somewhat psychedelic – English and Italian trailers for the film, which are otherwise identical bar their languages.
The set also includes miniature reproductions of the films' lobby cards and a booklet containing liner notes; biographies of Navarro, Rossi and Wolff by Chris D – author of Outlaw Masters of Japanese Cinema – illustrations, poster reproductions and a track listing for the Cipriani CD.
One contestable point within the liner notes is the author's assertion that Romolo Guerreri's 1968 film Sweet Body of Deborah “inadvertently opened the floodgates,” for the giallo. While the years 1968 and 1969 saw a rising number of productions in a similarly vein, such as Umberto Lenzi's Orgasmo and Così dolce… così perversa and Lucio Fulci's One on Top of the Other most other commentators would probably have suggested that the key film here was Dario Argento's 1969 debut The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, as signalled by the rash of like-sounding titles that quickly followed in its wake like Fulci's Lizard in a Woman's Skin and Sergio Martino's The Case of the Scorpion's Tail.
While dedicated followers of Italian pop cinema will likely have many of the 18 tracks featured on The Sound of Love and Death: The Very Best of Stelvio Cipriani, the CD provides a good demonstration of the composer's versatility. Curiously it does not include anything from Death Walks on High Heels, the closest thing to a giallo among the films featured being two tracks from Massimo Dallamano's police / giallo hybrid La polizia chiede aiuto / What Have They Done to Your Daughters, the title piece and a driving chase score. with the mix otherwise one of pieces from dramas, cop actioners and horror. Fans of the trashier side of Cipriani's work may be disappointed by the lack of anything from his Joe D'Amato porno-horrors, but should find the TV studio disco track from Lenzi's Incubo sulla citta' contaminata / Nightmare City a decent enough substitute.
All told, a must-buy for Euro cultists.
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