A man is stabbed on a train, leading the police to question Nicole (giallo queen Nieves Navarro) about diamonds that are missing. Her life turns upside down, as she begins to receive disguised phone calls asking about the diamonds and a blue-eyed masked man attacks her in her boudoir. She then remembers that her jealous lover Michel owns contact lenses in that color, so she runs away with an older eye surgeon to the coast of England. But Michel isn’t far behind…

The first of three giallo directed by Navarro’s husband, Luciano Ercoli, this is what the genre should be: shocking, lurid, bloody and oh so fashionable. It also makes a deft turn from what we expect from the form into an actual mystery film.

There’s a plot twist here that honestly shocked me, so I won’t spoil it. While the other two films in the Ercoli giallo trilogy — Death Walks at Midnight and The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion — are much better, this is still a quality film worthy of your time. Some critics decry them as Ercoli making movies just to feature his wife, but if you had a quality woman like Navarro in your life, I bet you’d do the same.

Want to see it for yourself? It’s on Shudder along with plenty of other great giallo films!

When a movie starts with a fashion model dying during a back alley abortion and it being covered up as a drowning, all before the opening credits, you know that you’re in for something demented. When you realize that the film was written and directed by Andrea Bianchi, who brought us Burial Ground, you will either run screaming or sit down and pay attention.

The doctor who performed the operation is killed by a maniac in a motorcycle suit, but nobody at the Albatross Modeling Agency cares. All Carlo, the head photographer, cares about is using his modeling connections to pick up women. That’s how he meets Lucia (Femi Benussi, Hatchet for the Honeymoon), whom he takes from the steam room to the modeling agency.

Magda (Edwige Fenech looks better than I’ve ever seen her look in any movie) is jealous, so she surprises Carlo with some black lace, and they begin an affair. We then see a photo of the main agency members, like Mario, Magda, Carlo, Stefano, Dorris, Maurizio and his wife, and the owner of the studio, Gisella. There’s one other person in the photo—Evelyn, who we saw die in the beginning.

Mario heads home, and the killer shows up. When their helmet is removed, Mario knows the killer. But it’s too late. He’s dead now. The killer takes the photo so that they have a checklist of who to kill.

So then there’s Maurizio, who is cheating on his wife with a prostitute. He takes her on a crazy ride through the streets and then takes her back to his place, where he begs and threatens her life before she suddenly wants to have sex with him — because, you know, that’s how things worked in the 1970s — before he lasts all of a minute and starts embracing his blow up doll. Honestly, what the fuck? Of course, he’s killed right afterward. Good riddance.

Carlo later witnesses Gisella being murdered and even photographs the attack, but he’s hurt in a hit-and-run accident. While he’s recovering, Magda develops the film, but the killer ruins the negatives.

After killing Doris and Stefano, the murderer tries to kill Carlo and Magda, but the killer is knocked down the stairs. So who is it? New model Patrizia — Evelyn’s sister — blames him for her sister’s death. However, she dies before she can tell the police of his involvement.

The movie ends with Carlo playing around by mock choking Magda before initiating anal sex with her, as she tells him not to, in a scene meant as a comedy but lost in translation and the fact that forty-plus-year-old Giallo could never anticipate the #metoo movement.

The title of this film says it all. It’s the most nudity I’ve ever seen in a movie. And it’s one of the most lurid I’ve seen, too. I do not know if Bianchi intended this as a comedy, but it feels like one.

It’s almost incredible that a movie with this much nudity and mayhem moves at a glacial pace. It felt like the film’s first hour was the entire running time and contained wall-to-wall misogyny. I know, I know, that’s the majority of Giallo, but it feels so overwhelming and alien when seen with today’s eyes. I mean, should I be shocked that a movie called Strip Nude for Your Killer is so sexist? And why do I love it so much? Maybe it’s because Edwige Fenech makes me watch anything that she is in.

Films just show up in my YouTube subscriptions and I watch them, always hungry to discover something new. Imagine my surprise when I looked up and this film went from a giallo to a totally NSFW affair!

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x585zup

Dublin, 1902. As an acting troupe finishes their latest show, Count Marnack shows up and invites Evelyn and her friends — Cora, Rosalind, Penny and stagehand Samuel — to his castle. Once they get there, everyone but Samuel gets down — as we share a name I was displeased by this. But seriously, I was not expecting hardcore insert shots on YouTube. I figure they had a program to catch things like that (they caught a clip of a song in a trailer we used and took one of our podcast posts down and they let this go?)!

The secret is that the Count’s father and grandfather killed their brides with a ceremonial dagger. And the Count’s first wife went missing long ago. Soon, people start showing up with their heads missing. So whodunnit? The maid? The gardener? A ghost?

This film boasts some nice period costumes and settings, but it’s patently ridiculous. It wants to be a giallo but where those films are sexy, this is just plain rutting in the sheets. I feel like Jon Lovitz’s character Evelyn Quince from SNL’s Tales of Ribaldry. “No, no, no, no, we’ll have none of this! You’ve gone too far! You’ve ruined it for me!”

That said, I’ve never seen a movie go from pornography to an Agatha Christy style resolution within its running time. That said, the insert scenes weren’t in the original cut and were only added when the film was released in France as L’insatiable Samantha in 1977.

London. The 70’s. Professor of Italian Enrico Rosseni (Fabio Testi, The Four of the Apocalypse) is on his boat, making out with Elizabeth (Cristina Galbó, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, The House that Screamed) and trying to get her to go further than she has before. Right when it seems like he’s going to finally conquer her, she looks up to see a woman being stabbed on the shore.

After angrily rowing to the shore, Rosseni and Elizabeth find no evidence of a crime. He accuses her of being too religious, like all the girls at the school her uncle sent her to. The next morning, while he dresses and argues with his wife Helga, he hears about a horrid murder on the banks of the Thames river. He drives to where he and Elizabeth were and finds tons of cops. And there are even more at the school where he works!

The victim was one of Elizabeth’s friends, so she wants to tell the police what they know. However, he doesn’t want the affair exposed. However, his pen has been found near the body and he shows up in the crime scene photographs in the newspaper.

More murders. More clues in Elizabeth’s mind. More priests doing evil things. More anger from Helga. More of Rosseni trying to solve the crime. And all he has is one clue: Who is Solange and what was done to her?

The movie takes a turn when Elizabeth is killed inside the apartment that Rosseni has rented for the two of them to continue their affair. And at that point, Helga starts being much nicer to our hero. As their relationship improves, her makeup grows softer, her clothing gets more fashionable and her hair comes down. How strange to find a giallo about a relationship coming back together as the result of murder!

What happened to Solange (Camille Keaton, I Spit on Your Grave)? She was given an abortion that all of the murdered girls were there for. In a kitchen, no less. And all of those girls were involved in doing drugs and dating older men.

So what do the cops do? Oh, just set up a sting operation with all of the surviving girls. And of course, Solange just happens to show up, walking through the park. Here’s the second of course — the cops bungle everything and the killer takes Brenda, asking her the story of Solange, as he did every other victim.

This is one well put together film, thanks to Massimo Dallamano, who was the cameraman for Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. Joe D’Amoto was the cinematographer and added plenty to the film. And you can’t deny the power of having an Ennio Morricone score!

This film is an interesting combination of the German krimi film and the Italian giallo and gave way to Dallamono’s Schoolgirls in Peril trilogy, which includes What Have They Done to Your Daughters? and Rings of Fear.

I always love seeing what titles films get released and re-released under. What Have You Done to Solange has so many, including an attempt to sell it as a teen comedy entitled The Rah-Rah Girls! You can learn more at the amazing Temple of Schlock site. And for an awesome police report of the events of the film, head to The Giallo Files.

So who was the killer? No spoilers here. You’re just going to have to watch this on Shudder.

“…And then a sudden violent shock that left a deep impression on the mind and damagen (sic) it permanently…”

“What has been remains imbedden in the brain nestled in the folds of the flesh. Distorted, it conditions and subconsciously impels…(Freud)”

Those words start this movie off, with a crime being shown in the past and then fast forwarding 13 years into the future, where we meet one screwed up family. There’s the mother, Lucille and her children Colin and Falesse. Yet all is not as it seems — the real Falesse has been locked away in a mental institution and is being replaced by Lucille’s daughter from her first marriage, Ester.

Ester lures man after man to their estate and then goes into a trance and kills them, upon which point she relives the decapitation of her stepfather 13 years ago. Of course, she’s also in love with her brother Colin. Remember when I said this family had some problems?

Then, Pascal, the killer from the opening sequence returns. He’s brutal and uncompromising, demanding $200,000 from the family, then having sex with Lucille and Ester in front of Colin. Finally, after killing one of Colin’s vultures, Lucille draws on her experience in a concentration camp to kill Pascal with gas while he showers. The flashback to the Nazi camp is harrowing and feels so different — and much darker — than the body of the film.

Yet what if Ester’s father isn’t dead? And what if he comes back? Can the family keep killing and getting away with it? And is “I’m sorry I took your place, but I really had no idea I wasn’t you!” the best giallo quote ever?

This is one strange movie — it combines Nazi elements, a police procedural, a giallo, a psychological examining of identity and even comes close to a Last House on the Left vibe.

Severin released this film several years ago, but it’s sadly out of print. It’s certainly one of the oddest entries in the genre and one you should track down. I’ve only barely touched on the many twists and turns of the plot because I believe that you should enjoy them for yourself.

Did you know that Larry Cohen wrote, produced and directed the last film Bette Davis was ever in? No? Well, she dropped out after filming began, citing issues with the script and how she was being photographed, but Cohen claims that it was due to her ill health. Regardless, the results are…interesting.

Davis plays the title villain, a chain-smoking witch (Becca sees her as the hero of the story) who marries Sam (Lionel Stander, Max from Hart to Hart) while his vegetarian family — daughter Jenny (Colleen Camp, the maid from Clue) and husband Steve (David Rasche from Sledge Hammer!) — are on vacation.

When Davis left the film, her character becomes a cat and her daughter Priscilla (Barbara Carrera, Never Say Never Again, Condorman) takes over as the film’s villain. She mostly argues with her other about switching bodies and sleeping with Steve.

People get shrunk, Tom Bosley, Seymour Cassel and Richard Moll (remember, all 80’s horror and science fiction must have either him or Robert England in it) show up and there’s a crazy moment where Jenny discusses how much she misses her mother and they show a photo of Joan Crawford!

This is…well, it’s weird. You can tell the movie fell apart when Davis left days into filming for a dentist visit and never came back. Her ADR was all done by Michael Greer (Thorn from Messiah of Evil!), who was an accomplished female impersonator. What a strange film!

I fear sounding like a broken record, but Larry Cohen’s films contain themes that stay timeless, regardless of when they were released. Take The Stuff for example — consumerism, corporate greed, celebrity culture, junk food — none of the theme in this film have gone away. If anything, they’ve only increased in importance.

The Stuff — a yogurt-like white dessert — is discovered coming out of the ground like black gold to Jed Clampett. It’s sweet and addictive and quickly gets sold like ice cream. It’s all natural with no calories and incredibly filling, so it helps people lose weight. Of course, sales go through the roof and destroy the ice cream industry. Along with junk food mogul Charles W. “Chocolate Chip Charley” Hobbs, these purveyors of sugar hire David “Mo” Rutherford (Michael Moriarty, who also appears in Cohen’s Q) to get to the bottom of The Stuff and then destroy it.

The more he learns about the product, the more horrified he becomes. The Stuff is actually a parasite that takes over whoever eats it, taking over their brain and gradually transforming them into zombies as it consumes them from the inside out — the very inverse of how people consume products.

A young boy named Jason is learning the same lesson the hard way. It’s ruined his family, so he destroys a supermarket display.

David also meets Nicole, the ad exec who learns that the campaign that she created for The Stuff has only led to death and destruction. As someone who has worked in the ad industry for over twenty years, the battle between craft and commerce has never been so beautifully illustrated than it is here. The film is packed with fake commercials of celebrities hawking The Stuff, including Wendy’s pitchwoman Clara “Where’s the beef?” Peller, who yells, “Where’s The Stuff?” to Abe Vigoda.

Everyone that consumes The Stuff eventually turns into a gooey white substance and those under its grip do everything they can to kill our heroes (Nicole and David become lovers; they rescue Jason just as the police arrest him). The corporation that makes The Stuff claims they are trying to rid the world of hunger, but the possibly extraterrestrial substances is really being created to take over the world.

They work together with retired United States Army Col. Malcolm Grommett Spears (a perfectly cast Paul Sorvino, Goodfellas) to destroy the zombies and a lake of The Stuff before sending a civil defense message to the country — the only way to destroy The Stuff is to burn it with fire.

David then visits the leader of The Stuff Company, Mr. Fletcher, who reveals that they haven’t destroyed all of the ways they can get the product. Now, they’re working with the ice cream industry –including Mr. Vickers, who originally hired David — to make The Taste, a product that is 88% ice cream and 12% The Stuff. They believe that it will be much safer and still as addictive. However, David brings in Jason and the two force the CEOs to eat The Stuff at gunpoint. David asks, “Are you eating it or is it eating you?” as the cops arrive to arrest the corporate con men.

You know how you should never leave the credits during a Marvel movie? Cohen was again ahead of his time here, as the final crawl also has moments showing smugglers selling The Stuff on the black market and a woman in a bathrobe saying, “Enough is never enough” while holding a container of The Stuff.

From its inventive gore and special effects to its wry social commentary, The Stuff is sheer delight. It moves fast, it’s packed with action and it has plenty to make you laugh, too.  It may make you avoid ice cream for awhile, too.

You can watch The Stuff on Shudder (it’s also available with commentary by Joe Bob Briggs) or you can grab the Arrow reissue at Diabolik DVD.

Back in the early 1980’s, the VHS market allowed my family to enjoy movies that never made it to Ellwood City, about an hour from Pittsburgh. Our hometown video store, Prime Time Video, was packed with films that fascinated me. I wish that someone had footage of all of the movies on shelf. I know we definitely rented Ruggero Deodato’s Raiders of Atlantis and this bizarre piece of cinema about an Aztec god loose in Manhattan. What a time to be alive, when you could walk down the street and wander row after row of horror movie choices!

The Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, a feather winged dragon, has found its new pyramid on the Chrysler Building. The film starts by showing us how it finds and devours the heads of its victims in gory detail. Meanwhile, an Aztec cult is leaving sacrificed victims in its wake as Detective Shepard (David Carradine, Death Race 2000) and Sgt. Powell (Richard Roundtree, Shaft) try to keep up.

The film cuts to a failed diamond heist that leads Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty, who owns this film with a manic Method performance) to the title monster’s nest. He uses his new knowledge to move away from crime (and jazz piano playing) as he extorts the city for the location of the creature’s egg.

Shephard finds out the location on his own, ruining Quinn’s plans. The cops conduct an attack that takes out a baby Q as the creature returns home, wiping out nearly everyone (don’t take Shaft, Q!) until it’s shot over and over, falling dead to the streets below. The cop also saves Quinn as a crazed Aztec priest almost sacrifices the crook to his gods.

That said — the magic of the past in man’s modern world is not gone. The film ends with one last egg hatching.

Q is a great movie even without the monster. In Will Harris’ great oral history of the film, David Caradine said: “I thought if [Larry] had left the monster out of it, between me and Michael Moriarty, there was a real great story there between the detectives and the sleazebag heroin addict/petty-thief character. That’s where the power in the movie is. That’s where the heart of it is… and not in the chicken that ate New York!”

And this is a movie that rose from tragedy! Cohen had just been fired from I, the Jury and didn’t want to waste the hotel room he had already paid for. He wrote the script, hired actors and was done with pre-production in just six days!

Like all of Cohen’s films — do I sound repetitive yet? — this is a movie that outdoes its small budget and looks like a million bucks. It has heart — and plenty of other organs — and verve and panache and any other hyperbole you’d love to bestow upon it.

It‘s easy to find, too. If you have Shudder, it’s right here! And you can grab the blu-ray from Scream Factory.

Four years before Teen Wolf (and 24 years after I Was a Teenage Werewolf), Larry Cohen wrote, produced and directed Full Moon High, a comedic take on what it’d be like to be a werewolf in high school. Ironically, it came out in the same year as An American Werewolf in London, covering some of the same ground, but from a very different perspective.

The tie to Michael Landon’s werewolf turn is that the opening of this film is in the 1950’s. There, Tony Walker (Adam Arkin, Halloween H2O) is a high school football player whose dad, Colonel William Walker (Ed McMahon!), is in the CIA. He takes his son with him to Romania for a secret mission where he’ll shove some microfilm up his own ass. Yes, if you ever wanted to see Johnny Carson’s sidekick yell things like, “Did you get laid?” and act like he’s being butt plugged, then this is the film for you!

Tony gets his palm read by a gypsy while his dad is having sex with a prostitute — yes, this is a comedy — and finds out that he’ll be an eternal doomed to wander the earth. Soon, he will return home to find his destiny and he shouldn’t make any plans during the full moon. On his way back to the hotel, Tony is killed by a werewolf and returns from the dead the next morning.

On their way back to the U.S., Cuban terrorists hijack their plane, but Tony transforms into a werewolf and takes them out. However, Tony’s curse keeps him too distracted to play football, so he misses the big game and costs his school the championship. He also starts to hide from his girlfriend Jane (Roz Kelly, New Year’s Evil) as he’s worried that he will kill her. His dad is convinced that Tony is a neighbor’s dog until he catches him transforming and tries to shoot his son. The bullet ricochets and kills the Colonel and Tony skips town after the funeral.

The film descends into pathos here — not the last time it’ll happen — as Tony wanders the earth for twenty-five years before returning home. It’s just in time, as Tony’s football team hasn’t scored a touchdown since he left town.

His old girlfriend, Jane, is married to his old friend Flynn and still calls out his name during sex. She figures out that Tony Jr., as he calls himself as he returns to town, is really Tony. And she’s fine with having sex with a werewolf. There’s also Ricky (Joanne Nail, The Visitor), a high school girl who falls for him. Oh yeah — and Tony also goes full werewolf and kills his principal before turning himself in. His court-appointed shrink, Dr. Brand (Adam Arkin’s dad, Alan) really wants to conduct experiments on Tony, but acts like he’s trying to help him.

There are plenty of character actors and strange personalities in this strangely cast film. In addition to Ed McMahon, there’s also Laurene Landon (Maniac Cop, …All the Marbles, The Stuff), Sanford and Son‘s Demond Wilson, 1980’s sitcom and Hollywood Squares star Jim J. Bullock, Bob Saget in an early role as a sportscaster and Pat Morita (The Karate Kid) as a silversmith.

Cohen said of the film, “It has some interesting ideas about how life in America has changed sexually and politically since the early sixties. All of Arkin’s friends have changed but he hasn’t. And whereas he changes into a werewolf all of the time, his friends change into middle-aged people while he is gone, with different values and different ideas. They change as much as he does, actually.”

Where most of Larry Cohen’s films succeed in spite of their high concept and low budget, Full Moon High was a bit of a struggle for me. That said, Alan Arkin is great in this and elevates every scene he’s in.

Shout! Factory is finally releasing this film on blu-ray. It’s been available in grey market form for awhile, but it’s getting their full treatment and comes out on April 10th, complete with plenty of extras.

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