Le Notti della violenza / Night of Violence / Callgirl '66

A masked killer stalking beautiful young women. An ineffectual police investigation. Drugs. A fatal fall.

No, it’s not Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace but rather Roberto Mauri’s Night(s) of Violence, co-scripted with Eduardo Mulargia and also known by the immediately dated title Callgirl ’66.

With a listed running time of 91 minutes, the version under review is shorn of about 14 minutes, mostly dealing with the drug smuggling subplot and thus playing up the film’s horror and thriller aspects.

Despite the elements outlined at the start, I would hesitate to identify the film as an early giallo except in a roundabout krimi / shocker / pulp way. Yes, Bava was undoubtedly inspired by these sources as well, as indicated by Nora Davis’s acting like the heroine of one of the pulp thrillers she compulsively reads, but it’s near impossible, I would argue, to imagine Blood and Black Lace in particular working as text or fotoromanzo.

This is not the case here, with lots of static, talky police procedural scenes and not much in the way of set pieces, the maniac having a tendency to savagely attack with little or no build up or use of suspense devices.

While his motivation and back-story are suitably outlandish and grounded in a traumatic experience they also have a distinctly 1950s feel to them. Rather than wearing a stocking mask that serves to hide his features, he also wears a Phantom of the Opera / V for Vendetta type mask, tellingly modelled on the face of a Grand Guignol actor. If the inclusion of this character affords the filmmakers a degree of reflexivity, they don’t make particularly good use of it, the actor also having an iron-cast alibi for the night in question that fails to really establish him as obvious red herring or suspect.

This backwards rather than forward looking feel is further compounded by the black and white realist / noir / traditional expressionist visuals and the associations these further strengthen with the likes of The Embalmer, Eyes without a Face and – given the presence of Alberto Lupo there as well – Seddok.

Marilu Tolo has an early appearance as the girl investigating her sister’s murder.

Le Porno Killers / The Porno Killers

If nothing else The Porno Killers has one of the all-time great titles, the kind that is guaranteed to attract the attention of the potential viewer. Unfortunately that's about all it has going for it, despite a plethora of nudity, violent action and – in the version under review at least, which also admittedly suffered from being somewhat bleached out – hardcore inserts featuring anonymous bodies rather than those of the lead performers.

Reminiscent at times of Meyer's Faster Pussycat Kill Kill, Franco's Red Lips films, Thelma and Louise and Baise Moi, the most interesting aspect of the film is probably its take on female sexuality, with the two protagonists assuming an active rather than a passive role and generally providing the superior to the men.

What are we to make of these characters? Are they progressive, reactionary or both? Fantasy figures on the part of the director and his audience, expressions of his and the implied viewer's fears, or both?

Given that provenance of the film, it seems safe to assume that shock value was the first thing on director and writer Roberto Mauri's mind, and that any subtext we may read in is purely accidental.

Does Mark Shanon make an uncredited appearance; there's a guy with his moustache and a indistinct tattoo, but I wasn't 100 per cent certain it was him.