VINEGAR SYNDROME BLU RAY RELEASE: Forgotten Gialli: Volume Eight

Posted on by

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

This box set has the following movies:

Rings of Fear (1978): This is the third entry in a loosely linked series of films that are known by the pervy and wonderous title of the Schoolgirls in Peril trilogy, a run of movies that take the already queasy obsessions of giallo and crank them into something even more uncomfortable. These are films where the camera lingers just a little too long, where morality is nonexistent and where the punishment for youthful sexuality is swift, brutal and usually wrapped in plastic. 

The series starts with What Have You Done to Solange?, directed by Massimo Dallamano, one of the absolute high-water marks of the giallo form, a movie that balances sleaze, sadness, and a genuinely upsetting mystery in a way most of its imitators can only dream about. He followed that up with What Have They Done to Your Daughters?, which dials up the nihilism and leans harder into the idea that the world is an uncaring machine designed to chew up the young and spit them out. Sadly, Dallamano would die before this movie was made, but his fingerprints are all over it thanks to his screenplay credit, which means you still get that same mix of procedural grit and moral rot.

This time around, the film wastes no time getting to the good stuff. A teenage girl’s corpse is found wrapped in plastic, which feels like a grim premonition of Twin Peaks and the whole Laura Palmer thing by over a decade. Inspector Gianni DiSalvo, played by Fabio Testi with the kind of weary, seen-it-all expression that giallo cops are contractually obligated to have, starts digging into a group of schoolgirls known as The Inseparables. You know right away that any group with a name like that is going to be nothing but trouble.

These girls attend one of those prestigious all-girls’ schools that only seem to exist in Italian genre cinema — the kind of place where education is secondary to whispered secrets, coded glances, and the constant threat of violence lurking just outside the gates. Among them is Fausta Avelli, played by Barbara Bach, who had already been orbiting the genre in films like Don’t Torture A Duckling, The Psychic and Phenomena — basically a resume that screams “you’re in for something good” You also get Helga Liné, one of those faces that shows up in everything from classy Euro-thrillers to absolute bottom-shelf horror like So Sweet…Perverse and Nightmare Castle to The Vampires Night Orgy, Horror Rises from the Tomb and Black Candles. If European exploitation cinema had a frequent flyer program, she’d have lifetime platinum status.

Then there’s that ending. You get one killer casually offing himself like it’s just another item on the to-do list, and just when you think the movie is winding down, it pulls the rug out and reveals who’s really been behind everything. It’s mean, it’s cynical, and it’s exactly why you sat through all the recycled sleaze in the first place. In true giallo fashion, justice doesn’t feel like justice. It feels like just another ugly secret getting buried along with the bodies.

Reflections In Black (1975): A mysterious woman, dressed all in black, including stockings, is killing other beautiful women with a razor. Tano Cimarosa — usually an actor — directs this film, where we soon learn that all of the women are connected to affairs that they had with another woman, which was quite shocking in 1975.

Inspector Laurina (John Richardson) and his partner, Sergeant Panto (director Tano Cimarosa), are on the case, but, as always, defund the giallo police. Who could the killer be? Leondra (Dagmar Lassander, Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion, The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire and The House by the Cemetery), a politician’s wife? Lesbian photographer Contessa Orselmo (Magda Konopka)? Former Miss Italia Daniela Giordano (Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key)? Drug dealer and denim lover Sandro (Ninetto Davoli)?

This is really just for those who have to see every giallo ever made. Which would be me. Probably you, too, if you’re reading this. I mean, you’re going to buy this set, right?

A.A.A. Masseuse, Good-Looking, Offers Her Services (1972): Cristina (Paola Senatore*, Emanuelle in America, Ricco the Mean Machine) is a call girl, and for that, every man that has ever partaken of her services must pay, in some sort of role reversal for every other giallo and slasher.

Much like how his leading lady was known for westerns, so was director Demofilo Fidani, who made movies like Coffin Full of Dollars (how’s that for a title?), Django and Sartana Are Coming… It’s the End, One Damned Day at Dawn…Django Meets Sartana!, His Name Was Pot… But They Called Him Allegria and His Name Was Sam Walbash, But They Call Him Amen. As you can tell, many of his films were titled and treated like either sequels or — let’s be fair — rip-offs of better-known characters and movies.

So when everyone else started making giallo, Fidani was sure to follow.

You know how people on Twitter like to use the term problematic? Well, they’d lose their brains all over those, which presents leaving home to enter the sex industry to be a loveable lark, even when your clients get their throats slit the minute they leave her flat. It’s also a film that wants its cake — Vitelli is gorgeous and frequently involved in increasingly kinkier situations — and eat it too, as the whole moral of the story is that the world is falling into decay because of all this sex. So let’s show some more sex! And violence!

Also known as Caresses à domicile (Caresses at Home), the funny thing is that her life gets better when she leaves her father’s house — well, despite the fact that her daddy gave her everything that she ever wanted — to live with a friend, Paola (Simonetta Vitelli, who is the daughter of the director). So there’s not really any drama here, other than you know, all the murder.

*Sadly, she became addicted to heroin late in her career. After making two softcore films for Joe D’Amato, she made her one and only hardcore film, Non stop… sempre buio in sala. She was then arrested for drug smuggling, went to prison and disappeared.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ1fSPQu6cw

You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome.

Leave a comment