Si può fare molto con sette donne / You can do a lot with Seven Women

You may be able to do a lot with seven women, but making a decent film out of them is not one of those things.


The groovy titles

It’s difficult to know where to apportion the blame, for while director Fabio Piccioni / F A King [sic] hardly come across as the most imaginative of filmmakers, the mark of writer-producer Frank / Farouk Agrama is all over the piece.

There’s the Egyptian setting, with lots of travelogue material and a models by the pyramids routine that seems to prefigure his later Dawn of the Mummy, and his lyrical contributions to the theme song, sung by one Melody:

What is this love
That burns me so
That has me in its spell
Is it the hope
Is it some dope
Or just a binding rose
Is it chinchilla
A seaside villa
Or a delicious ice cream
La, la...

The story begins in comparatively serious Blood and Black Lace territory as model Maggie discovers her employers to be involved in drugs smuggling and is consequently murdered.


The obligatory darkroom scene

This continues as her Interpol agent boyfriend Mike, played with typical seriousness by Richard Harrison, takes it upon himself to solve the case: “I’m going to get those bastards!”

But as Mike goes to see his woman-obsessed photographer friend Tiger for assistance in going undercover as a photographer, the tone quickly changes to more of a crime caper comedy where no-one really seems to be playing for keeps.

The problem is that it isn’t really all that funny in itself, with most of the smiles being raised through the general datedness of the early 70s styles on display; some rather stereotypical depictions of the Egyptians, albeit perhaps with a hint of detournement, of Agrama ironically playing upon Italian / western expectations to subvert them (“Once again, the Oriental motif has been our inspiration,” as one of the designers / smugglers remarks); Harrison’s macho bluster; or the extensive product placement for airlines and messrs Justerini and Brooks’ finest.


The fashion show by some pyramids

Elsewhere we get a spot of Blow-Up style play with photographs, though the detail is less hidden than obvious in line with the general style of the direction and narrative, an extended fistfight in a bakery and a perfunctory car chase.


Harrison enjoys the breakfast of champions

If nothing else, it’s all accompanied by some delightfully catchy caper cues that, if I didn’t have them already via the first Beat at Cinecitta compilation, I would have surely tracked down.

Una Donna per sette bastardi / The Sewer Rats

With both the One Woman for Seven Bastards and Sewer Rats titles proving apposite, this is one nasty little film from first - a sequence including a POV shot from the perspective of a man being buried alive - to last.

Based on a story by star Richard Harrison, it plays a bit like a contemporary riff on Greed, crossed with A Fistful of Dollars - the film which Harrison turned down, to the eternal detriment of his career, which I suspect The Sewer Rats can't exactly have done much for either - and elements of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Cut Throats Nine, Django Kill and McCabe and Mrs Miller.

Indeed, were it not for the fact that Harrison's mysterious crutch-using stranger arrives in the no-horse town after his car breaks down on the road or that there's J&B whisky in the bar, the film could easily be taken for a western filmed on some extremely run-down Spanish or Italian set.


Even the J&B bottle looks beaten up

Pleasantville it is not, with the nameless place perhaps resembling nothing so much as Hammett's Poisonville instead in the effect it has on all the existing inhabitants, each of whom has their own story and secrets, and the newcomer whose arrival threatens the already precarious dynamics between them.

Antonio Casale plays Carl, the jealous husband who owns the tavern and forms the only point of contact with the outside world, making regular 300km trips in his pick-up to stock up on J&B, beer and other necessities. He's also, in possible reference to The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, in possession of a stolen strongbox.


Casale, disreputable looking as ever

Gordon Mitchell plays Gordon, an ex-military man wanted for desertion or other offences, whilst Luciano Rossi plays a harmonica playing mute with a penchant for spying on Carl's wife, Rita.


Rita in defiant mood

She, meanwhile, is incarnated by the beautiful Dagmar Lassander in full-on tramp mode, taking great pleasure in turning on the men, in both senses of that term, whilst fully enjoying her effects upon them and pursuing her own agenda.






The film is replete with the kind of scenarios that implicate the viewer in whatever dubious pleasure he takes from them

Even without the scuzziness of the Danish-subtitled VHS sourced presentation under review, this is the kind of film that leaves you wanting to take a shower afterwards. As such, Roberto Bianchi Montero, the director of The Slasher is a Sex Maniac, is perfect for it. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the music, which adds neither atmosphere nor tension.

Kaput Lager Gli Ultimi Giorni Delle SS / Achtung! The Desert Tigers

Kaput Lager Gli Ultimi Giorni Delle SS

The title card is odd, half in German and half in Italian.

Wouldn't a kaput lager be a broken camp?

Maybe if it's the last days of the SS then it might make sense.

Whatever, it certainly cues us in as to the kind of thing to expect from this late Nazisploitation entry from Luigi Batzella, directing under his Ivan Kathansky pseudonym, and starring Richard Harrison as the heroic US commando, Gordon Mitchell as the camp commander and Lea Lander as the sadomasochistic lesbian doctor.

Rather than the European theatre of war, our location is North Africa, as a mixed group of British and American soldiers, along with some Arab alllies, mount a daring raid on a German base.

Some murkily photographed confusingly directed action scenes follow, the kind where the confusion seems less the filmmakers's attempt to convey the reality of a firefight than basic lack of ability.


A dangerous mission


An over-confident doh! moment

Major Lexman (Harrison) and company lay their demolition charges and blow stuff up, but are captured as they make their getaway and sent to the nearest POW / concentration camp, where von Stolzen (Harrison) gets a chance to strut his stuff and ve have vays voice, ordering that a Jewish prisoner be whipped regardless of the small detail that he is already dead.

Next, the action shifts to an Arab settlement, where the Nazis drag off some women, whom they take to Dr Lessing (Lander) for her inspection and approval. The story's location again makes things a little odd, as Lessing spouts the obligatory Nazi racial inferiority stuff as if her prisoners were the more usual Slavs or Jews. Then again, it could be the filmmakers' attempt at subtly critiquing the notions of race, along the lines of Arabs also being a Semitic people, although this would probably once more be to grant them too much credit.

Later, von Stolzen takes Lexman around the camp's dungeons, including the castration of some Bedouins who attacked his staff car, while Lessing turns her attentions to the Jewish virgin who has conveniently been brought to the camp for normal service to be resumed. The girl's humiliation arouses Lessing, who then tries to get it on with the English nurse / prisoner, Clara, begging that she be whipped. “I've been dying for it for so long,” she explains, in what is presumably not intended as an ironic reference to the Nazi's actual treatment of homosexuals nor as a commentary on the attraction / repulsion dynamic often bubbling away barely beneath the surface of fascist sexual ideologies but rather as the checking off of another generic requirement or two.


The wonders of point of view: note how we are positioned on the same side of the bars as the prisoners, looking out at our / their tormentors.

The worst crime that the film commits is not this parade of bad taste – this synopsis only takes us about one-third of the way in – given that this is after all what we expect from a Nazisploitation movie and watch it for. Rather, it is being boring.

Yet, this is also a charge that could be levelled against most entries in the filone, with their tendency to present a few moments of jaw-dropping what-were-they-thinking material strung together with longer passages of utter banality.


The obligatory degenerate Nazi orgy scene

As such, the real problem is that even the sex, sadism and sleaze set-pieces just aren't that memorable, lacking the delirious qualities of their counterparts in SS Experiment Camp – no line here comes close to topping the all-time classic of “you bastard, what have you done with my balls” – and Batzella's more notable contribution to the cycle, The Beast in Heat, which may have an equally awkward mix of Nazisploitation and war movie tedium but at least has those completely over-the-top performances from Macha Magall and Salvatore Baccaro to enliven the former aspect.




The whip and the body...

In this regard, the biggest surprise is perhaps the presence of Lander, given that she is better known for her appearances in classier fare like Blood and Black Lace, where she appears as Lea Kruger, and Rabid Dogs.

That Lander appeared as Lea Kruger can be put down to her more famous cousin, Hardy Kruger. Seeing as he disliked playing Nazi roles because they reminded him of his own time in the Hitler Youth and Wermacht, one wonders if he had any thought of his cousin's involvement here, or just recognised it as part of the reality of being a working actor in Italy circa 1977.

Marcello Giombino provides entertainingly cheesy score as appropriate to the proceedings as it would be inappropriate to anything more serious, complete with kitschy lieder playing over Lander's sexy scenes as a twisted leitmotif.