VINEGAR SYNDROME BLU RAY RELEASE: Forgotten Gialli: Volume Seven

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This is the seventh Forgotten Gialli set from Vinegar Syndrome. ou can check out my articles on the others here:

This box set has the following movies:

Mystère (1983): 1983 is pretty late for the giallo, but hey — I’ve been trying to expand into the period before and after the major years for the genre.

Also known as Dagger Eyes and Murder Near Perfect, this film was written and directed by the Vanzina brothers, Carlo and Enrico. They loved the 1981 French thriller Diva, a film that moved away from the realist 1970s French cinema to the more colorful style of cinéma du look. Carlo also directed Nothing Underneath so he gets a forever pass from me.

Mystère is divided into chapters, starting with a prologue, then each section is one of the four days that follows, then an epilogue. The producers demanded this happy ending, while the brothers wanted something more cynical.

Mystère (Carole Bouquet, For Your Eyes Only and the face of Chanel No. 5 from 1986 to 1997) is a high class call girl in Rome who comes into the possession of a mysterious lighter when her friend Pamela (Janet Ågren, City of the Living Dead) and one of her customers are killed over it, as inside the lighter are images of a political assassination.

Unlike the normal giallo — or adjacent giallo or whatever this is — the hero, Inspector Colt, ends up killing the assassin (John Steiner, Shock) and his bosses and then leaves behind our heroine, who ends up tracking him down to Thailand and making up with him. He was good with nunchucks, maybe?

I mean, how many movies are you going to see that somehow take the spirit of the good parts of 1970’s giallo, mix in the Zapruder film, throw in some Eurospy and still end up looking like a super expensive perfume ad?

Also — thanks to BodyBoy on Letterboxd who called out that Mystère’s apartment looks like something straight out of Messiah of Evil.

Obsession: A Taste for Fear (1988):  Pathos: Segreta Inquietudine, the original Italian title for this movie, means Passion: Secret Anxiety. That pretty much sums it up, as this giallo feels closer to one of those Cinemax After Dark films that mixes up murder with softcore sex. Well, this movie also has Lou Gramm’s “Midnight Blue” in it, which is a first for any giallo I’ve seen.

This is the only movie that writer/director Piccio Raffianini’s ever made, which is pretty astounding, because the guy obviously had talent.

Diane (Virginia Hay, The Road Warrior and also the blue skinned Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan from Farscape) is a photographer whose favorite model — and lover — Tegan (Teagan Clive, who was also The Alienator) shows up bound and dead, just like the adult photos that our heroine is famous for. Imagine — a Skinemax The Eyes of Laura Mars and you’re not far off.

Lieutenant Arnold (Dario Parisini) is on the case and suspects both Diane and her ex-husband, particularly after other people close to her are tied up and stabbed, as if they were doing some knifeplay and then gave their lives up.

Eva Grimaldi, who was in Demons 5 and Ratman, is in this. And look out! There’s Kid Creole, from Kid Creole and the Coconuts, probably the last dude I expected to see walk on to a giallo film*. What is happening?

I love the first club that shows up in this film, with little people dancing, muscular folks dancing, mirrors covered with coke, quick cuts and improbably synth Gershwin songs.

Obsession: A Taste for Fear is a completely deranged film, one that supposes a world where everyone wears sunglasses at night, where colors come straight out of the brainstem of Dario Argento, where softcore porn photographers are huge celebrities, cops shoot laser guns, hovering cars are a dime a dozen and no one bats an eye.

Imagine if Rinse Dream made a giallo and had the money to get legitimate recording artists to appear on the soundtrack. Now, do some lines. And then, you will have just some of the strangeness that is this movie, which demands to get a release from a boutique label so that maniacs other than just me can obsess over it.

*To be fair, Kid Creole is also in Cattive ragazze, which is at least an Italian movie with hints of giallo made at the same time.

Sweets from a Stranger (1987): Caramelle da uno sconosciut has the elements of a giallo — a masked and black-gloved killer is slicing sex workers with a razor and then killing them with a bolt gun — but it’s just about how the women decide to stop taking it and empower themselves, which may not have been what audiences were looking for.

It was directed and written by Franco Ferrini (Phenomena, Nothing Underneath, Dark Glasses), who worked on the script with Andrea Giuseppini and got the idea while writing Red Rings of Fear. It’s the only movie that he ever directed.

Stella (Mara Venier) and Nadine (Athina Cenci) are a high end call girl and an older experienced prostitute who learn of the death of Bruna, a mutual friend. They organize their fellow sex workers Lena (Barbara De Rossi, Vampire In Venice) and Angela (Marina Suma) with the goal of finding out who the killer is and stopping him while the police are fumbling in the dark.

Ferrini has spent a lot of time working with Argento — as has editor Franco Fraticelli — so the film looks good. The first kill is totally Bava with a woman being killed while surrounded by sculptures of angels. In fact, it’s nearly one of the scenes from Blood and Black Lace. Thanks for noticing, Giallo Files. Steal from the best, right?

Yet it’s also a serious movie that doesn’t exploit the woman and shows the reasons why someone would sell their body, as well as the abuse and trauma that often comes with this profession. It’s an intriguing way to use the giallo form to tell a story about real life. Of course, the first two girls are simply to get you in, using the exploitative nature of the giallo trappings to whet your appetite for more mayhem and then making you consider the actual people who are often only presented as victims.

You can get all three of these in this new box set from Vinegar Syndrome.