Also known as Historia de una traición (Story of a Betrayal), Nel buio del terrore (In the Darkness of Terror) and Diabolicamente sole con il delitto (Diabolically Alone with the Crime), this was sold in the U.S. as The Great Swindle and the posters hint that it’s similar to The Sting. As you can imagine, outside of having characters using one another for money, it has nothing to do with that movie.

Directed by José Antonio Nieves Conde, who also made Marta a few months earlier with stars Stephen Boyd and Marisa Mell. This was the movie where they began they love affair. In the book Coverlove, Mell said of Boyd, who had avoided her attempts to seduce him the first time they worked together, “He was just so awesome in his passion, his tenderness and his masculinity that I completely lost my head. Finally I asked him the reason why he was now changed so completely after he had been so dismissive before. He was thoughtful, “In the beginning you were too aggressive. I was just at the end of a difficult and desperate love affair. Mentally I was destroyed, and I just wanted to be left alone. I also felt an incredibly dangerous woman in you. To engage with you would mean to never get away from you. That’s why I had completely shut down.””

I’ve mentioned before in the Marta article that their love was so destructive that they needed an exorcism. Mell speaks on this, saying, “Our demon was our passion. We were, as it is in San Vicino custom, made to wear a broad iron ring around the neck. We humbly bowed and prayed. The priest blessed us that we might be “pure.” He celebrated the prescribed ritual for exorcism. It was kind of a supernatural experience. Perhaps you smile today over such hocus-pocus. At that time I felt is was not ridiculous, although I see myself as a clear-headed woman. But my connection to Stephen just had something very mystical, inscrutable in itself, and he felt the same way. Sometimes love is like a deadly disease, sometimes it makes you feel that you are damned for all eternity. Trying to explain the reasons for this is impossible. There are things in our lives that are too high for our philosophy.

Stephen and I returned to Rome, but we did not feel absolved. The demon of passion was still living in us.”

When you watch this movie, know that this drama was going on behind the scenes.

Mell plays Carla, a high class call girl who purrs at one point that she was never made to be anyone’s servant. She finds one of the girls she used to work the street with — back in the old, tougher, darker days — Lola (Sylva Koscina) working as a maid in a hotel she’s staying in. She tells her that she isn’t made for this life and helps to introduce her to the world of being paid by men just for moments of their time.

Her best client is Luis (Fernando Rey), but in the time when she isn’t charging for her love, she starts to develop feelings for a painter named Arturo (Stephen Boyd). In a reverse of their actual relationship, the first evening that he meets her — he’s soaked for being in the rain, she lets him in and he immediately starts drinking her expensive liquor and tries to get in her bed — she rebuffs his advances. A few days later, he saves her from jumping off a cliff and they end up together.

Yet Carla and Lola are more than friends, as they have had a long-time love that is rekindled by finding each other once again. The problem comes when Carla introduces Lola to Luis, who suddenly forgets her. Weeks later, as she’s surrounded by newspapers, Carla learns that Luis died in an airplane crash. And that’s when Lola comes back. Arturo suggests that they frame her for Luis’ death, except that while Lola loves Carla, Arturo soon falls for Lola too. Everybody wants everybody and yet their need for money outweighs everything. Not everyone is going to survive this.

This movie may put some off by the way that it has flashbacks within scenes, but I truly adored every moment of it. Every single room the characters appear in is beyond incredible and I counted more than ten costume changes for Mell in less than twenty minutes. Nearly everyone is impossibly gorgeous and the twists and turns keep you wondering. This is not all that easy of a film to find but it rewards those who seek it.

You can watch this on Vimeo.

SOURCES: Stephen Boyd Blog

Yes, I know, this isn’t an Italian movie, so some think it can’t be a giallo. It may also be closer to a slasher. But seeing as how Suzy Kendall is in it, let’s consider it.

Also known in the U.S. as the more giallo-feeling title In the Devil’s Garden, this starts as Tessa Hurst (Lesley Anne-Down) being attacked and raped. The act damages her so much that she loses her voice and is placed under the care of Dr. Greg Lomax (James Laurenson).

When a second student named Susan (Anabel Littledale) is assaulted and murdered, art teacher Julie West (Kendall) decides that she will offer herself as bait for the killer with help from a reporter (Freddie Jones). She’s pretty brave, because whoever did it seems to have glowing red eyes and looks like some kind of demonic force as it carries away Susan’s body.

Based on The Ravine by Kendal Young (actually Canadian writer Phyllis Bretty Young), this was directed by Sidney Hayers (Deadly Strangers, Burn Witch Burn) and written by John Kruse. It was produced by Carry On… producer Peter Rogers and the school was also the setting for Carry on Camping.

Speaking of alternate titles, when this played in the U.S. as In the Devil’s Garden, it was as part of a double feature with The Devil’s Nightmare and billed as a Devil Double Feature.

When it played on American TV, it was under the title Tower of Terror, which refers to the electrical title where the assaults happen.

Even stranger, in 1980 — nine years after it was made and years after it aired on TV — it came back to drive-ins as Satan’s Playthings along with an ad campaign that promises three women who are under the thrall of Lucifer.

If that’s not enough, it also played as Molested and The Creepers.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Elise (Britt Ekland) is the much younger second wife of Paul (Hardy Krüger), who married her soon after the loss of Sarah from drowning in a tub. Three months into their honeymoon of a marriage, she’s surprised by his 12-year-old son Marcus (Mark Lester, the star of Oliver), who claims that he’s left school early due to a chickenpox epidemic. The film wastes no time letting us know that not only is Marcus weird, he may also be a criminal sociopath.

After their first meeting, in which Marcus confesses to stealing money from his father, Elise looks through the child’s room and soon learns from the headmaster (Harry Andrews) that he was kicked out of school for stalking, creating sexual drawings and killing numerous small animals. She’s obviously worried and Paul just says that his son needs to get over the death of his mother.

That’s when this movie gets weird, as you wonder if Paul just doesn’t care that his son is a lunatic or if he’s just as much of a mentally ill person. Why wouldn’t he tell his new wife that the house they’re attending a party at used to be his and the place where Sarah died? Elise isn’t all that mentally set either, as she’s convinced to strip nude for Marcus if he’ll reveal the truth about killing his mother after she finds a hole above her bed and figures out that he’s been watching her.

That’s when Dr. Viorne (Lilli Palmer), who owns that house where Sarah died, listens to Elise’s concerns. She turns it around on her and accuses her of trying to seduce Marcus, as well as killing the family dog, a crime that was definitely committed by the young man. Elise loses her mind and tries to kill the boy before she’s put in a mental hospital where she dreams of being torn to pieces by the dog, as well as her killing Marcus and making love to him — not the same dream, this isn’t a Joe D’Amato movie — while Paul watches.

Marcus has, of course, been planning this all along. He asks Elise, when they are finally alone, if she wants to have an affair as his father is now too old to satisfy her. She kisses him passionately before…well, that would give up the ending, right? You really need to see this for yourself. The last ten minutes go for it and just unleash everything that could upset people about this movie.

This was directed by James Kelley, who also directed and wrote The Beast In the Cellar, and Andrea Bianchi, the maniac who made Cry of a Prostitute, Strip Nude for Your Killer, Malabimba and Burial Ground. It was written by Bautista Lacasa Nebot, Erich Kröhnke, Trevor Preston and Bianchi, so was supposedly brought in by another lunatic, producer Harry Alan Towers,  to add more exploitative scenes to the film.

By 1988, the giallo fever of the early 70s was over for some time. The genre then began to embrace the feel of the erotic thriller, but inside their heart, they all remain giallo.

Directed and written by Remo Angioli (who also wrote the Joe D’Amato-directed The Hyena as Harry J. Ball and this movie and Intimacy as Bob J. Ross) and Beppe Cino (The House of Blue Shadows), this is all about restaurant owner Paolo Piattelli (John Armstead, Interzone), an unfaithful husband to Silvia (Loredana Romito, You’ll Die At Midnight) who is blinded in a car accident where he is caught with his lover (Carmen Manzano). His wife then meets Alessio (James Villemaire), the motorcyclist who caused the crash, and hires him to be their driver. Despite being blind, Paolo still has a working Italian libido and equipment, so he gets caught again with his mistress, which causes Silvia to ask Paolo — who she has already fallen for, but so has a cook at their restaurant named Cosetta (Ann Margaret Hughes, Top Model) — to kill Paolo.

Silvia goes from a faithful wife to someone who has sex with her husband’s killer moments after he’s shoved that man off a cliff, as well as ordering the death of her new man’s other girl and then shooting him right in the head. It’s an arc, as they say.

In the 80s, giallo forgot the black gloves, the knives, the music and often, the plot. They did remember the synth and sax-heavy sex scenes as well as the outfits, because Loredana Romito has fur coats long after people were protesting them, as well as long nails and big 80s hair. She also smokes throughout the movie, something that may not be as much a part of a giallo as J&B, but it’s close. It also has so much nudity that you’ll wonder why anyone wears clothes.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Love and Death on the Edge of a Razor is the tale of Stefano Bruni (Peter Lee Lawrence), who is in Venice to meet with his father who wants him to marry Giovanna Selva (Ivana Novak), the daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur. This arranged marriage would help the Bruni family business. As for Stefano, he is in love with Lidia Caselli (Erika Blanc), but when he goes overseas, he learns from his father that she has died in a car accident.

Stefano begins to date Giovanna but he can’t get over the loss of his true love. He even sees her, despite the woman named Renata Pavanne who claims that she’s a journalist and has no idea who he is. He’s warned off of her by a mobster named Gianni Massara (Fausto Del Chicca). Yet he refuses to give up and the journalist admits that not only is she Lidia, but that she’s trapped by Gianni and part of his crimes.

Lawrence and Blanc had already worked together (Love and Death In the Garden of the Gods, The Long Arm of the Godfather, Hell In Normandy) and were close friends. Lawrence died just a few years after this film and according to his wife, Cristina Galbo, he did not commit suicide but instead died of a brain tumor at the way too young age of thirty. In just nine years, he made thirty movies.

The end of this movie is left open to you, the viewer, as Lidia is shot by Gianni and taken to an operating room. It makes you wonder if the world of the movie lives on beyond what we see in the fleeting time we get to know these people.

The film was directed by Giuseppe Pellegrini, who wrote the script with assistant director Dante Cesaretti and production manager Camillo Fantacci. This is the only movie that Pellegrini directed, but he wrote both The Vampire and the Ballerina and The Monster of the Opera.

You can watch this on YouTube.

A man is strangled by a transvestite prostitute in his home.

A woman is killed on a bus by a man holding a wrench.

The only thing that ties these crimes together is an illustration from a children’s book by the name of Der Struwwelpete.

Inspector Gaspare Lomenzo (Michele Placido) is on the case, reporting to higher ups played by Tom Skerritt and Eli Wallach. By sheer luck, he meets Jeanna (Corinne Cléry), who witnessed the death of a sex worker that may be part of this case. She was also at a party being held by a group called Wildlife’s Friends — led by Hoffmann (John Steiner) — that hired a prostitute for one of their events and had to kill her after she learned that it was all a front for diamond smuggling. Now, one by one, members of this group — also a front for swinging, not just gems — are being killed off.

This also has a filthy cartoon by Gibba in the middle of all this, as well as the idea that perhaps Loemnzo shouldn’t trust anyone, as Jeanna is a total noir character and the remaining members of the club contact Wallace for protection. And hey — didn’t Heinrich Hoffmann write and draw Der Struwwelpete?

Director Paolo Cavara may be best-known for working with Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco E. Prosperi to create Mondo Cane, but he’s not as celebrated as he should be for making two great giallo — this movie and one of the meanest in the entire genre, Black Belly of the Tarantula. He also wrote the script with Bernardino Zapponi (who wrote seven movies for Fellini and co-wrote Deep Red) and Enrico Oldoini.

So Young, So Lovely, So Vicious… was directed by Silvio Amadio, who also made the giallo movies Assassination In Rome, Amuck!, Smile Before Death and Twisted Girls, as well as Il Medium. He also wrote the story with Roberto Natale.

Also known as Sins of Youth, this tells the story of Angela (Gloria Guida, Bollenti spiriti), a young, beautiful and vicious girl who lives to sunbathe, party and spend her father’s money. But then she learns that her daddy (Silvano Tranquilli) has found a new wife, Irene (Dagmar Lassander). They’re even talking marriage, which worries Angela, because Irene seems to have morals. That means that her endless party seems to be coming to an end. But Angela is willing to go as low as it takes to stay her father’s favorite girl.

You can watch this on YouTube.

The synthpop band Freur did the music for this, but they ended up getting better known when they took the name of this movie as their own: Underworld.

They’re not the only famous people who are part of this movie — also called Transmutations — that nobody really talks about. Clive Barker — yes, that Clive Barker — wrote the story and co-wrote the script with James Caplin. As for the lead, it’s Denholm Elliott — yes, Marcus Brody — as Dr. Savary, a doctor who has created a mind-controlling drug that he uses to keep an army of deformed sewer dwellers under his command. And the main reason, beyond Barker, that I chose this as my underground sewer movie? It has both Miranda Richardson and Ingrid Pitt in it!

But when Savary abducts high class hooker Nicole (Nicole Cowper, who went below the crust again for 1988’s Journey to the Center of the Earth) from her brothel, businessman Hugo Motherskille (Steven Berkoff, Octopussy) gets her former lover Roy Bain (Larry Lamb) on the case. Meanwhile, all these proto-Nightbreed creatures are doing monster cocaine to stay alive.

So how did this weirdo movie ever happen? George Pavlou wanted to direct a movie (he’d also direct another early Barker script, Rawhead Rex). Barker wanted to write one, so he put together a mash-up of mobsters, monsters, film noir and horror. The money people wanted something else, so they got it rewritten and Barker washed his hands of the whole thing. And then Vestron Video released it as Transmutations.

It looks great though! 1985 great, all blue color and billowy dresses and face paint and movie punk and you know, who cares if it’s kind of silly? Monsters in sewers kidnapping prostitutes who can enter your dreams with the power they get from magical powder? Sounds kind of wonderful, when you think of it.

This Kino Cult release has two disks. The UHD has a brand new HDR/Dolby Vision Master from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative. There’s also a new audio commentary by director George Pavlou, moderated by Stephen Thrower. The blu ray disk has a brand new HD master from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative, the same commentary, the 103-minute Transmutations version, behind the scenes footage and an image gallery. You can get this from Kino Lorber.