The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire / L' Iguana dalla lingua di fuoco

The body of a young woman is found in the trunk of a car belonging to the Swiss ambassador to Ireland, Sobieski (Anton Diffring). Her throat has been slit and her face melted by acid, making identification all but impossible until an anonymous parcel containing her passport is sent to the police and identifies her by name and as of Dutch origin.


The Iguana strikes with his fiery tongue...


... leaving a victim with a face burned beyond recognition


Close ups and zooms on glasses and cut throat razors are everywhere in the film


Do you think Freda is telling us that that ring means something?

With Sobieski recently having arrived from the Netherlands, suspicion falls upon him. Unfortunately he is also protected by diplomatic immunity and has influential connections, compelling Inspector Lawrence to use what he terms “unorthodox methods”.

These it transpires entail getting former colleague Norton (Luigi Pistilli) AKA “the beast”, who was thrown off the force following the death of a suspect whilst in his care, to see what he can find out through more covert means from the ambassador's wife (Valentina Cortese), daughter (Dagmar Lassander) and the embassy staff.

Sure enough, Norton soon uncovers a web of intrigues, including blackmail and drug smuggling. Meanwhile, the killer is steadily working his or her way through the blackmailers and, as Norton gets too closer to the truth, then targets the ex-cop's own daughter and mother – an eccentric old woman who refuses to wear her glasses and takes her own, Miss Marple-like interest in the case...




A blackmailing Tori Amos-alike gets hers

One suspects that responses to The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire will fall into two distinct camps: those who take it as just another giallo directed by a no-name filmmaker, and those who know that behind the multiple credits to “Willy Pareto” lurks one of the founding fathers of Italian horror and thriller cinema, Riccardo Freda.
Taken as just another giallo, the film delivers pretty much what we would expect – a black gloved killer, sleaze, sadism, stalking, sex and set pieces – and is not really any worse than innumerable others. Taken as a Freda film it is frankly a disappointment. Importantly, however, the use of Pareto rather than his more usual Robert Hampton pseudonym indicates that Freda himself was dissatisfied with the film and effectively disowned it.


Lassander doing what she did best




And as the woman in peril in one of the film's few truly effective and accomplished sequences

The questions that then emerge, seeing that Pareto is listed as co-writer, director and editor, are at what point Freda gave up on the film; itself one of the recurring features of his cinema. A man of independent means, Freda was in the apparently enviable position of not having to really worry about where his next paycheck was coming from. The downside, however, was that if he lost interest in a project there was little anyone could do to force him to redouble his efforts. On I Vampiri and Caltiki the Immortal Monster it had not mattered because of Mario Bava's involvement, precisely because his more precarious financial position meant that he could not afford to turn away work or risk getting a reputation for being difficult to work with.

Indeed, in this regard, a comparison of Iguana with Bava's Five Dolls for an August Moon seems instructive: While Bava took over that project at the 11th hour and freely admitted to having no enthusiasm for the script he was given, one gets a sense of real enjoyment when watching it, of a filmmaker having fun playing with technique and the spectator's expectations. Here, however, it almost seems as if Freda had an equally muddled script that he thought could be brought to life in the course of filming, only to fail to find a spark at this point, and thus then endeavoured to save it at the editing stage, with little more success.

Taking the script to begin with, Sobieski is too obviously guilty for the attempted whodunnit aspect to really work. It would have been better, one feels, had be been explicitly identified as the killer at the outset, thus allowing the cat and mouse game to be foregrounded. Unfortunately what we get instead is the introduction of Pistilli and Lassander as suspects, with the former's crude proposition – “Well now me fleet footed filly, are we going to have it off in the bushes or on the bike?” – being greeted with the kind of enthusiasm from the latter that would only really make sense in a porn film.

While we do eventually learn Pistilli's true role and that Lassander is well aware of who he is, it does rob us of any strong points of identification until nearly midway through the film and places a sense of dubiety on both characters that fails to completely vanish. Likewise, the conflict between Norton as caring family man, traumatised by an incident in his past – itself shown in repeatedly flashbacks in that classic “primal scene” way – and as violent brute is never satisfactorily resolved.

In terms of the direction and editing, what we have are a few effective set pieces outweighed by a overall crudeness of approach in which far too many scenes degenerate into shock zooms in on and / or close ups of “significant” details, almost – but, crucially not – to the point of obvious parody.

The excessive violence that some have remarked on as further detracting from the film did not, however, seem that out of place as far as I was concerned. While this could be a reflection of desensitization or simply finding the effects work unconvincing, I would prefer to think it is down to the razor slashings and acid splashings being less a radical departure and more a logical continuation of the kind of thing already present in Barbara Steele's hand-held subjective camera razor attack om Peter Baldwin in The Ghost.


Dressed to kill?

Or, that rather than borrowing from Argento, Freda was merely reclaiming his own – albeit in the context of a black-gloved killer and a soundalike title shoehorned into the dialogue that, for better or worse, served to disguise this. (Reversing things, one further wonders if Argento, who has often proclaimed his admiration for Freda in interview, perhaps borrowed from the film's climax for the sequence in Opera where Betty, her vision similarly impaired, unwittingly invites the disguised killer into her apartment.)

One thing that remains is the performances. Though it could be argued that Pistilli and Diffring are really given little opportunity to do anything other than play to type, as man with issues and cold-eyed villain respectively, they perform these roles so well that it is hard to really be bothered. Valentina Cortese, meanwhile, seems to have been the one person to have genuinely enjoyed herself, playing the Ambassador's wife with a mixture of boredom, flirtatiousness, sardonic wit, hauteur and downright out there-ness. Lassander is eye candy, no more, no less.

Another is Stelvio Cipriani's score. Thought some of the cues are used as diegetic shock effects, lessening their value in their own right, the lush, romantic piano pieces with vocalism by Nora Orlandi – an equally talented composer in her own right – that play in the nightclub scene / scene of the second murder are pleasant compensation.

Database of dubbing voices

Looks like it is more of current dubbers than those from the past and is also more for who dubs voices into Italian than the other way around, but probably something of interest nonetheless - e.g. Massimo Foschi is the voice of Darth Vader in Italy

http://www.antoniogenna.net/doppiaggio/voci.htm

Legacy of Blood: A Comprehensive Guide to Slasher Movies

This 2005 release from cult specialists Headpress, published under their Critical Vision imprint, seeks, as its subtitle indicates, to provide a Comprehensive Guide to Slasher Movies.

Author Jim Harper begins by establishing where he is coming from: that he first and foremost a fan of the form, happy to recognise its good, bad and ugly examples rather than just acknowledging the odd critically respectable exceptions. He likewise establishes what is missing, crucially arguing that gialli would really warrant a book in their own right but also unfortunately not providing the reader with any pointers in that direction.

Part I of the book, running 22 pages, provides a brisk history of the genre from its origins in the likes of Hitchcock's Psycho and Bava's Blood and Black Lace and Twitch of the Death Nerve as “Slasher Bloodlines,” through Halloween and Friday the 13th (“Genesis”) onto A Nightmare on Elm Street (“The nightmare ends?”) before concluding (“Too young to die”) with the emergence of Scream and company in all their pomo ironic glory.

In other words, all the major bases are covered, though the giallo enthusiast might also note the omission of the likes of Martino's Torso, which also featured a co-eds in peril plot and did good business on the US drive-in circuit in the mid-70s, or indeed that films like The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Tenebre were doing the self-reflexive thing decades before their American counterparts.

Part II, running 30 pages, focusses on the key themes and motifs of the slasher film, in the form of “the heroine”, “the killer”, “location”, and “parents and authority figures” and was, for me, the best part of the book. Not only summarising the academic commentaries on the genre from the likes of Carol J. Clover, Harper also responds to their assertions. Using a broader sample of films and genre knowledge, distinct from the sometimes over-enthusiastically applied theory, he demonstrates that some of the by now well established dogmas, such as the “have sex and you die” notion, are nowhere near as definitive as many have assumed. Perhaps more importantly, to continue to repeat them and to fail to acknowledge the changes that have taken place in the genre, not just post-Scream – in the 2000 film Cherry Falls, for instance, the killer targets virgins – but also through the course of the 1980s – with a shift to more nudity and less gore as the decade wore on – runs the risk of reifying a continually developing form.

Part III, the largest at over 120 pages, provides reviews of some 190 slasher films, ranging from the well known franchises and series to some genuine obscurities, including a smattering of foreign language entries. Typically combining exposition, critique and background detail, these make for lively reading and give a good idea of whether an individual film will suit the reader's tastes. For example, on Wynorski's Sorority House Massacre II: “To be honest the last half of the film is fairly atmospheric and the ending is pretty cool. Even so, the only real reason to watch it is the excessive nudity – even when they're not naked the cast are running round in their underwear. If you're after a T&A slasher film, then [this] is about the best you can do. You get the added bonus of watching Gail Harris trying to keep up an American accent, before giving up halfway through and slipping into her native Yorkshire lilt.”

On the downside, there are again a few noteworthy omissions: Argento's Trauma, for instance, was made stateside in a bid to break into the American marketplace, with the result that its exclusion when Italian-made slasher imitations like Soavi's Stagefright and Deodato's Body Count are present seems odd.

Likewise, there is also the occasional failure to make a trivia connection, as when in the aforementioned Sorority House Massacre II review Harper notes that Wynorski originally had himself credited as Arch Stanton and that Ennio Morricone's theme music for The Good, The Bad and the Ugly plays over the film's end credits but without recognise that Arch Stanton is the name on the grave next to the one containing the gold in Leone's film.

Still, again the good outweighs the bad here, with the reader likely to pick up some new trivia and a shopping list of obscure slashers to check out.

Part IV contains what are really four appendices: “banned films,” on slashers that fell foul of the Department of Public Prosecutions in the UK's “video nasties” scare of the 80s; “before they were famous,” detailing the slasher film exploits of various A- and B-list actors including George Clooney and Tom Hanks; and brief notes on “international slashers” and “seasonal slashers”; all doing little more than compiling together and highlight material present within the other sections but worth inclusion for this selfsame reason.

A few minor misgivings aside, Legacy of Blood is a worthwhile read for slasher fans, though whether there is enough in it to really warrant going for it in preference to the cheaper Movie Essentials volume is harder to say.

Descartes and the giallo ?!

I started reading Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception today as part of my studies, my intention being to produce a broadly phenomenological reading of Dario Argento inspired by the work of film theorists like Vivian Sobchack and Dudley Andrews. The thing that has struck me most so far, however, has been something Merleau-Ponty cites from Rene Descartes 2nd Meditation:

"I do not fail to say that I see men [...] yet what do I see from the window except hats and coats which may cover ghosts or dummies worked by springs? Yet I judge them to be real men"

This seems, to me, a pretty apt way into how we perceive at the archetypal giallo killer, that anonymous, often masked shape whose flesh cannot be seen but which we nevertheless trust to be there.

The next question, I suppose, is whether men in this context refers to humanity in general or specifically to the male, seeing how many gialli rest on our misrecognitions here...

Three Mothers Trailers

Just a heads up that over at Prevues of Coming Attractions there are the Suspiria and Inferno trailers to download, along with various gialli in the archives.

Eurocine

Eurocine are not particularly noted for gialli, nor good films for that matter, but they did put out a fair number of Jess Franco's films, including The Awful Dr Orloff.

http://www.eurocine.net/

Death Carries a Cane / Passi di danza su una lama di rasoio

While waiting for her boyfriend Alberto to arrive, Kitty (Susan Scott) witnesses a traditionally attired giallo killer attacking a woman. Unfortunately just as the assailant leaves the building the telescope she was using needs more money and by the time she has fed another coin in the killer has fled. Nevertheless Kitty manages to identify the number of house where the crime occurred – 57 – and other witnesses in the form of a chestnut vendor and a girl.








Typical giallo self-reflexive voyeurism

En route to see inspector Merughi (George / Jorge Martin) Alberto (Robert Hoffmann) starts asking questions – did she see the man's face? can she identify the street? – and acting suspiciously.

This, coupled with other circumstantial evidence – an unexplained limp, just like the killer; a penchant for bizarre performance art involving stabbing mannequins (cf. Spasmo); and Hoffmann's sheer shiftiness – sets him up as obvious suspect as the killer starts covering their tracks, leading to a succession of investigative and murder scenes.

Equally however, this is a giallo. Thus, we also have the sexually impotent Marco (Simon Andreu), partner of scoop seeking Paese Sera journalist Lydia, whose sister Silvia (both played by Anuska Borova) also has a limp and is partner of Luciano Rossi; I did not catch the name of his character, but it is not really important given his sheer presence, look and inter-textual associations.




The De Chirico-esque mannequins

The moment where Death Carries a Cane begins to really lose it can perhaps be pinpointed as the point when Kitty agrees to pose as a prostitute to entrap the killer but instead almost gets picked up by the chief of police, as suspense – we know the killer is there, while the police chief has a cane – dissipates into awkward comedy without developing into the kind of critique of police corruption (cf. What Have You Done to Your Daughters) that might otherwise have compensated.

Fortunately the craftsman who made the distinctive bag – can we say McGuffin – that Kitty was using to identify herself recognises it and calls in at the offices of Paesa Sera. This providing a new avenue of investigation that leads Lydia to arrange a meeting with the only remaning eyewitness. But when the woman arrives, the sight of a photograph causes her to flee in terror – might the killer be among those pictured?












Classic giallo imagery and iconography

Worse the killer is in fact waiting. Again, Predeaux shows a flair for suspense and the set-piece, making a Psycho-style association between the assassin's straight razor and the blade of the windscreen wiper, ironically useless against the spatter of blood left on the inside of the car.

Happily yet another plot contrivance, the realisation that three of the female victims were all dancers or dance students, means that the investigation can continue. This in turn leads to a protracted old dark house showdown in a dance academy – or “school at night,” to cite the title of one of Deep Red's musical themes – that again juxtaposes the effective establishment of mood with its puncturing as Kitty develops the need “to go pee-pee” at the crucial moment.

It is not that comedy and giallo are inherently inimical, as is demonstrated by the Commedia dell'arte supporting characters of the Animal Trilogy and the screwball battle of the sexes in Deep Red. Rather it is that the filmmakers here lack Argento's sense of judgement (and even there many Anglophone viewers may well find the laughing / screaming dynamic a touch strange i.e. unfamiliar). Predeaux and company just do not know when to keep things serious – searching through old records and photo albums for clues to the murderer's identity Kitty even finds the time to take pictures of some “absolutely adorable” costumes!

Looking at things the other way round, it this selfsame Argento-style reflexivity, with lines like “you know Kitty, I think you read too many detective novels” or “The investigation is at a standstill, to use an old cliche” everywhere, supplement the artistic protagonists and recurring themes of mediation and voyeurism, and general sense of psychosexual edginess that prevents Death Carries a Cane from succeeding as trashy fun giallo in the vein of Ercoli's otherwise comparable vehicles for the ever-watchable Scott.




Anuska Borova displays her charms

If the reasons for the film's awkwardness are thus fairly self-evident, the biggest mystery is what happened to Anuska Borova, whose only credit(s) this would appear to be, as on this evidence she had both the goods and the willingess to display them to have made a career in this kind of cinema.