June 30: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Italian horror!

“A dark and gloomy theatre set for strange castings. An awful and neglected villa. A stage writer who pushes young actresses to put themselves at risk in morbid auditions thick with physical pain and pleasure. Around the writer stir his ancient and sick mother, his agent/stepfather, the aspiring actors and a young actress with whom he falls in love. Who is the torturer who tears to pieces the bodies of the implausible actresses?”

Shot on digital video and directed by Lamberto Bava, this film was written by Bava, Diego Cestino, and Andrea Valentini. It was based on a story by Dardano Sacchetti, Luciano Martino, and Michele Massimo Tarantini.

It’s as if Lamberto saw all the torture porn being made and said, “This is pretty much giallo with more violence. Maybe more nudity. Maybe we make this more sleazy! Hey — I know how to do these films. My dad made The Whip and the Body!”

Ginette Cazonni (Elena Bouryka) auditions for the new movie by director Alex Scerba (Simone Corrente) and ends up in bed with him. When she wakes up in the morning, she finds an earring that resembles the one her missing friend, Marzia, used to wear. It turns out that she also had an audition with the director before she disappeared. And oh yes, Alex’s mother and stepfather are both weird in their own ways. And if you’re looking for that other missing earring, well, Alex’s mother is wearing it.

Look, no matter how handsome a director is, if he’s off camera using a voice box to tell you to get naked and do things for him, perhaps you’re in a movie like this. And man, this movie! Lamberto must have gone down to Argento’s basement under Profundo Rosso and communicated with Fulci, because this sees New York Ripper and raises it a lunatic with a blowtorch and a barbed wire whip, all shown in full detail. I can only imagine Lamberto laughing at the young kids like Eli Roth and saying, “This isn’t so difficult.”

Ladies — in the world of Giallo and in the real plane of existence that we live on — if your boyfriend goes insane when he sees toy cars but then immediately wants to have sex with you, please get out.

This is way late in the Giallo film cycle, but it gets the memo right. You want gorgeous women, you want a nonsensical plot, you want family issues and this has it all. You may not want to watch naked girls get torn up with whips, but it was 2005, after all. At least Lamberto was still out there making movies, the last of a dying breed.

You can watch this on YouTube.