Saturday, 18 April 2009
An idea - please comment
One broad distinction between the post-1982 giallo and its earlier counterpart is that issues around Italian identity no longer seem as important.
For example, the mixture of ethnicities and nationalities amongst the characters in Nothing Underneath, with the presence of a photographer of East Asian and a model of African extraction amongst them, goes without remark.
This is in sharp contrast to the discourses of exoticism and otherness that typically employed in relation to analogous characters in the 1960s and 1970s, as with the treatment of the 'black' characters in Your Vice is a Locked Room..., The Case of the Bloody Iris and Torso.
If such an approach, along with the increasing tendency to locate narratives in the US rather than Italy can in part be read as a concession to market forces, recognising US hegemony after thirty years of Italian counter-hegemonic action, it might also be read as signifying the end of the vernacular giallo audience.
The terza visione, that is, had largely been left behind and/or incorporated into the (post)modern world.
For example, the mixture of ethnicities and nationalities amongst the characters in Nothing Underneath, with the presence of a photographer of East Asian and a model of African extraction amongst them, goes without remark.
This is in sharp contrast to the discourses of exoticism and otherness that typically employed in relation to analogous characters in the 1960s and 1970s, as with the treatment of the 'black' characters in Your Vice is a Locked Room..., The Case of the Bloody Iris and Torso.
If such an approach, along with the increasing tendency to locate narratives in the US rather than Italy can in part be read as a concession to market forces, recognising US hegemony after thirty years of Italian counter-hegemonic action, it might also be read as signifying the end of the vernacular giallo audience.
The terza visione, that is, had largely been left behind and/or incorporated into the (post)modern world.
Motif spotting #2
Gialli with killer priests or fake priests:
Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye
Don't Torture a Duckling
The Seven Blood-Stained Orchids
7 Hyden Park
Who Saw Her Die?
And what others?
Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye
Don't Torture a Duckling
The Seven Blood-Stained Orchids
7 Hyden Park
Who Saw Her Die?
And what others?
Monday, 13 April 2009
Motif spotting #1
Expect a lot of these posts over the next few days as I lazily test your knowledge rather than trawl through the archives myself ;-)
Which gialli can you think of featuring killers who have either not been cured via psychoanalytic / psychiatric interventions or who have suffered relapses?
For example: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, The Eye in the Labyrinth, Eyeball
Which gialli can you think of featuring killers who have either not been cured via psychoanalytic / psychiatric interventions or who have suffered relapses?
For example: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, The Eye in the Labyrinth, Eyeball
Saturday, 11 April 2009
The Deuce - Grindhouse Database
Wasn't aware of this till now; pretty cool:
http://www.grindhousedatabase.com/index.php/Main_Page
http://www.grindhousedatabase.com/index.php/Main_Page
Tornado / The Last Blood
Made in between the David Warbeck and Lewis Collins jungle war trilogies, Tornado is something of the odd one out amongst Antonio Margheriti, Tito Carpi and Gianfranco Couyoumdijan’s 80s war entries.
Though there is still plenty of action, stunts and things exploding, it’s more of a message movie with stronger defined characters and situations than normal. The big surprise, in terms of the traditional derivativeness of the Italian genre film, is that as a Vietnam war film it was made after First Blood, but before Rambo, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and company, and as such emerges as a film which innovates as much as it imitates.
At the core of the film is the conflict between two Green Berets, one a Captain and the other a sergeant. The Captain believes that the war against the Vietcong could and must still be won and, as a demonstration of this, relentlessly sends his men on what Sergeant Maggio surmises to be pointless, high risk missions.
To the captain the men are fundamentally resources excepted to follow orders, whatever they are, while to the sergeant the are human beings who need to be protected against his superiors' growing Kurtzian madness.
In the middle is journalist Freeman, played by Alan Collins / Luciano Pigozzi, who provides a sounding board and critique for both men's perspectives whilst also making clear where his own sympathies lie.
After one mission Maggio is left behind by the helicopter support and forced to bring a wounded soldier back to camp via a canoe. Though the soldier, a promising athlete, survives he proves unable to come to terms with the amputation of his leg and thus shoots himself.
Flying into a rage, the Sergeant has to be restrained by his troops, before being goaded by the Captain into attacking.
Arrested by the reluctant Military Police, Maggio is taken to another base where he will be held until his court martial. The Vietcong attack, giving him a chance to escape for the Cambodian border.
At this point the Rambo element comes to the fore as the Captain takes an ironic pride in the achievements of his “creation,” praising Maggio’s resourcefulness in evading the Vietcong whilst also making it clear that he intends to himself capture and execute his underling for desertion.
Action and direction wise it’s pretty much the standard Margheriti fare, with model work and stock footage being used to compensate for the low budget and a certain gung-ho treatment of the battle scenes. Some torture scenes involving Maggio are also of note as an indicator of what might have happened to Charlie and Tom in Cannibal Apocalypse.
Though there is still plenty of action, stunts and things exploding, it’s more of a message movie with stronger defined characters and situations than normal. The big surprise, in terms of the traditional derivativeness of the Italian genre film, is that as a Vietnam war film it was made after First Blood, but before Rambo, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and company, and as such emerges as a film which innovates as much as it imitates.
At the core of the film is the conflict between two Green Berets, one a Captain and the other a sergeant. The Captain believes that the war against the Vietcong could and must still be won and, as a demonstration of this, relentlessly sends his men on what Sergeant Maggio surmises to be pointless, high risk missions.
To the captain the men are fundamentally resources excepted to follow orders, whatever they are, while to the sergeant the are human beings who need to be protected against his superiors' growing Kurtzian madness.
In the middle is journalist Freeman, played by Alan Collins / Luciano Pigozzi, who provides a sounding board and critique for both men's perspectives whilst also making clear where his own sympathies lie.
After one mission Maggio is left behind by the helicopter support and forced to bring a wounded soldier back to camp via a canoe. Though the soldier, a promising athlete, survives he proves unable to come to terms with the amputation of his leg and thus shoots himself.
Flying into a rage, the Sergeant has to be restrained by his troops, before being goaded by the Captain into attacking.
Arrested by the reluctant Military Police, Maggio is taken to another base where he will be held until his court martial. The Vietcong attack, giving him a chance to escape for the Cambodian border.
At this point the Rambo element comes to the fore as the Captain takes an ironic pride in the achievements of his “creation,” praising Maggio’s resourcefulness in evading the Vietcong whilst also making it clear that he intends to himself capture and execute his underling for desertion.
Action and direction wise it’s pretty much the standard Margheriti fare, with model work and stock footage being used to compensate for the low budget and a certain gung-ho treatment of the battle scenes. Some torture scenes involving Maggio are also of note as an indicator of what might have happened to Charlie and Tom in Cannibal Apocalypse.
Eroina / Heroin / Fatal Fix / The Tunnel
As the downbeat and depressing story of a group of heroin addicts in a northern Italian city circa 1980, Massimo Pirri’s film might well be summarised as Panic in Needle Park or Requiem for a Dream all’italiana.
Like the writer-director’s earlier L’immoralita – in which an escaped paedophile embarks upon relationships with a woman and her 12-year-old daughter – it falls into that littoral zone between art and exploitation.
For while dubbed awkwardly into English – with lots of not quite convincing bad language that sometimes veers between ‘flip you!’ and ‘fuck you cunt!’ approaches – and making heavy use of a soundtrack sourced in its entirety from The Pretenders’ eponymous debut album, it also makes for uneasy exploitation fare by virtue of taking a comparatively realistic, non-sensationalist stance in its tale of two junkie lovers, Marco (Helmut Berger) and Pina (Corinne Clery).
Though the message that hard drugs mess you up certainly comes through, with a heavy sense of inevitability about the failure of Marco’s fantastical plan of coming to have so much heroin they could lie in it, contrasted with their daily realities of hustling for that next fix and ripping off or being ripped off by their contacts and clients in a dog-eat-dog way – both also lying and cheating on one another, friends and family repeatedly – there’s no particular moralising or preaching evident.
Rather, it’s just how junkies are, their love for the needle paramount, as the image of Pina shooting up into her genital area attests.
One of the most interesting sociological aspects of the film, besides some suitable grim industrial / post-industrial locations is the inclusion of a bored teenager from a wealthy family who indicates that he tried heroin before cannabis and believes that injecting is surely healthier than smoking, as a challenge to official discourses.
The film’s in-between aspect is compounded by its cast, with Berger equally at home in Visconti films (although The Damned is perhaps as much Naziploitation as Salon Kitty), The Bloodstained Butterfly and Beast with a Gun, while Franco Citti, who cameos as a local drugs boss, had moved from Accatone to become a familiar poliziotto face.
Dubbing makes the quality of their performances difficult to assess, but there is no question that both men look right for their roles – sadly because of his own drugs problems in Berger’s case.
Though making an attempt to be down and dirty, Clery is perhaps that touch too glamorous.
Francesca Ciardi of Cannibal Holocaust makes a brief appearance as a drug pusher.
Pirri’s extensive use of the hand-held camera, imparts a fly on the wall sense to the proceedings and conveys the edginess of the characters and their milieu. Some more self-consciously showy moves and compositions elsewhere indicate he was not just an amateur, as can be a risk if the viewer does not ‘get’ the raw handheld aesthetic, wrongly adjudging it mere amateurism.
Not a pleasant experience, but certainly an intriguing one.
Like the writer-director’s earlier L’immoralita – in which an escaped paedophile embarks upon relationships with a woman and her 12-year-old daughter – it falls into that littoral zone between art and exploitation.
For while dubbed awkwardly into English – with lots of not quite convincing bad language that sometimes veers between ‘flip you!’ and ‘fuck you cunt!’ approaches – and making heavy use of a soundtrack sourced in its entirety from The Pretenders’ eponymous debut album, it also makes for uneasy exploitation fare by virtue of taking a comparatively realistic, non-sensationalist stance in its tale of two junkie lovers, Marco (Helmut Berger) and Pina (Corinne Clery).
Though the message that hard drugs mess you up certainly comes through, with a heavy sense of inevitability about the failure of Marco’s fantastical plan of coming to have so much heroin they could lie in it, contrasted with their daily realities of hustling for that next fix and ripping off or being ripped off by their contacts and clients in a dog-eat-dog way – both also lying and cheating on one another, friends and family repeatedly – there’s no particular moralising or preaching evident.
Rather, it’s just how junkies are, their love for the needle paramount, as the image of Pina shooting up into her genital area attests.
One of the most interesting sociological aspects of the film, besides some suitable grim industrial / post-industrial locations is the inclusion of a bored teenager from a wealthy family who indicates that he tried heroin before cannabis and believes that injecting is surely healthier than smoking, as a challenge to official discourses.
The film’s in-between aspect is compounded by its cast, with Berger equally at home in Visconti films (although The Damned is perhaps as much Naziploitation as Salon Kitty), The Bloodstained Butterfly and Beast with a Gun, while Franco Citti, who cameos as a local drugs boss, had moved from Accatone to become a familiar poliziotto face.
Dubbing makes the quality of their performances difficult to assess, but there is no question that both men look right for their roles – sadly because of his own drugs problems in Berger’s case.
Though making an attempt to be down and dirty, Clery is perhaps that touch too glamorous.
Francesca Ciardi of Cannibal Holocaust makes a brief appearance as a drug pusher.
Pirri’s extensive use of the hand-held camera, imparts a fly on the wall sense to the proceedings and conveys the edginess of the characters and their milieu. Some more self-consciously showy moves and compositions elsewhere indicate he was not just an amateur, as can be a risk if the viewer does not ‘get’ the raw handheld aesthetic, wrongly adjudging it mere amateurism.
Not a pleasant experience, but certainly an intriguing one.
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