Muriel Spark sold her novel The Driver’s Seat as a whydunnit instead of a detective story. The movie that was made from it, Identikit, by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi somehow goes from a rambling narrative of a woman who has lost or is losing her mind — you knew it, f.giallo — that eventually transforms at the end into an image straight out of the form.

Griffi also made Metti, una sera a cena (Love Circle), which stars Tony Musante and giallo queen Florinda Balkan, as well as Addio, fratello crudele (‘Tis A Pity She’s a Whore), The Divine Nymph which has Tina Aumont from Torso and La Gabbia which had contributions by Fulci and is called an erotic thriller but come on we know what that means.

This was written by Griffi along with Raffaele La Capria.

What’s incredible about this movie is that it finds Liz Taylor — 45-year-old Liz, mind you — playing Lise, a lonely woman from Germany who has come to Rome to find a dangerous liaison, a fatal attraction, dare I say a strange vice to call her own.

Everyone she meets either wants to fuck her or is afraid of her, like the British businessman (Ian Bannen) who tries to pick her up on the plane and offers that he must orgasm every day on his macrobiotic diet; an Italian man (Guido Mannari) who seems perfect if distant and a would-be French lover (Maxence Mailfort).

There’s also the presence of the days of lead looming over everything, as a moment after she lands in Rome, Lise is nearly killed in the crossfire as the police open fire on a protestor and a bomb has cleared all the shoppers away from a mall except for Lise and a doddering elderly woman (Mona Washbourne) in a role that Taylor wanted Bette Davis to play, but Bette said no thanks to a film without a completed script.

Yet the true explosion is within Lise, a woman who won’t have it any way but hers, screaming at a salesgirl — while her one-time biggest star in the world breasts are exposed to the unflinching camera — that she refuses to purchase an outfit that has been treated with stain-resistant chemicals. How dare they believe she’s the type of woman to make such a mess?

This is all told in a way that is both episodic and all over the place, as detectives attempt to understand why Lise was killed along with all of the people that she’s traumatized along the way. It all looks gorgeous, though, as cinematographer Vittorio Storaro is best known for shooting The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, Apocalypse Now, The Last Emperor and Dick Tracy.

At the end, is it a giallo? Well, that fog coming from the trees as — spoiler warning — Lise directs her would-be lover and killer in how to properly bind her hands and stab her isn’t far off from the way most women have to direct their lovers so that they don’t end up penetrating the crease in their leg and never make their way inside them. Liz was just fresh off her first divorce from Richard Burton and it feels like she’s exploding all of her hatred and frustration in this role and man, I only wish that I knew more of this Liz and not the sad last days of tabloid headlines and Larry Fortensky.

One last giallo connection: Franco Mannino also did the music for Murder Obsession.

My favorite thing about this movie? Andy Warhol walks in and takes over a one-minute scene as a British lord.

I love the f.giallo because it’s not always about murder. Sometimes, as in Footprints On the Moon, a movie that this shares the new Severin House of Psychotic Women box sex with, it’s all the female heroine can do to stay sane.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Liz Taylor (from Bar Chef Lu Brow at Café Adelaide in New Orleans)

• 1.25 oz. Absolut Citron vodka
• .5 oz. triple sec
• .5 oz. blue curacao
• .5 oz. lemon juice
• 1 oz. cranberry juice

1. Shake all ingredients in a shaker filled with ice.
2. Strain into a martini glass and drink.

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Directed by René Clément, who wrote this with Daniel Boulanger, Sidney Buchman and Ring Lardner, Jr., The Deadly Trap is based on The Children are Gone by Arthur Cavanaugh.

Jill (Faye Dunaway) and her husband Philipe (Frank Langella) are Americans in Paris. Phillipe may just work in an office now, but he used to be in a spy group that wants one more mission. The lovely couple also is having issues, because Jill is losing her mind and thinks that Phillip is cheating on her. This isn’t helped when their neighbor Cynthia (Barbara Parkins) knows way too much. And oh yeah, she keeps blacking out, which nearly kills the kids in a car accident and then the little fellers suddenly go missing. The cops think the mom did it. Phillipe can’t reveal his past. And Jill keeps going bonkers.

Rex Reed said ”Rene Clement, the French Alfred Hitchcock, has sculptured a masterwork of suspense and human emotions that put sweat on my palms and kept it there.”

What movie did he see?

I kid, I kid. There are some effective moments here, particularly the car crash that sends kids and mother sailing into the street. But you have to wonder about a criminal or spy group that is dumb enough to just leave a gun out around some kids. Surely they know better. No, they don’t.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Also known as La Tumba de la Isla Maldita (The Tomb of the Cursed Island); Young Hanna, Queen Of The Vampires; Crypt of the Living Dead and Vampire Woman, this Spanish film was originally directed by Julio Salvador with new footage added by Ray Denton (Deathmaster, Psycho Killer). TV western-bred scribe Lou Shaw, who wrote The Bat People, tweaked the Spanish dialog for the less-gory U.S.-version.

Andrew Prine (Simon King of the Witches) stars as Chris Bolton, a man who has traveled with his sister Mary (Patty Shepherd, The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman) to attempt to remove his father’s body from where he died. It turns out that there was a heavy sarcophagus that he found inside a hidden tomb but now his body lies smashed under it. The townspeople refused to help, as inside that coffin lies Hannah (Teresa Gimpera, Lucky the Intrepid) and they don’t want her ever coming back.

The 70s were filled with female vampires of all shapes and sizes, from the Hammer lesbian-tinged vampires of The Vampire Lovers, the Satanic Twins of Evil, Jean Rollins’ sexual starved bloodsuckers, Daughters of Darkness, the fairy tale world of Lemora, Lina Romay as Jess Franco’s Female Vampire and the future vampires of Thirst. Every one of these films makes me happy despite the darkness and gloom of these days.

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From 1976 to 1984, Tomas Milan starred in eleven movies in the Squadra antiscippo series. Starting with The Cop in Blue Jeans, these films include Hit Squad, Squadra antitruffa, Little Italy, Assassino sul Tevere, Delitto a Porta Romana, Crime at the Chinese Restaurant, Delitto sull’autostrada, Crime in Formula One, Cop in Drag and The Gang That Sold America.

It all starts here with Milan as an undercover cop named Marshall Nico “The Pirate” Giraldi. A former street hood gone good, he works on the anti-mugging squad which puts him on the case of Norman Shelley AKA Richard J. Russo, a criminal played by Jack Palance.

Unlike every cop on the force, Nico dresses like he’s the guitarist in a Britpop band and has an unkempt beard. He even has a mouse named Captain Spaulding, named for the Marx Brothers’ movie Animal Crackers years before Rob Zombie did that. Actually, his look is a lot like Rob Zombie, come to think of it.

Nico gets even deeper into the mugging case when his girlfriend (Maria Rosaria Omaggio, The Tough Ones, Nightmare City) loses her latest manuscript to a snatcher. He’ll have to get to Shelley or Russo or whatever his name is, but that guy is busy choking out his underlings in the back seats of cars. This is a comedy and Palance is still terrifying.

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Based on the Richard Matheson novel Ride the Nightmare, Cold Sweat has Joe Moran — an American in France played by Charles Bronson — dealing with his wife and kids being taken by former associates that he once double-crossed.

Directed by James Bond director Terence Young from a script by Dorothea Bennett, Shimon Wincelberg and noir master Jo Eisinger, it shows just how quiet of a life Martin is living along with his wife Fabienne (Liv Ullmann) and daughter Michèle. But ten years ago, he’d been part of a gang with Katanga (Jean Topart), Ross (James Mason), his girl Moria (Jill Ireland), Whitey (Michel Constantin dubbed by David Hess) and Fausto (Luigi Pistilli) show back up and ruin his life.

Yeah, like Bronson is going to take that.

Liv Ullmann later complained that Bronson was rude to her and her daughter during the filming. When her daughter wandered over to his lunch table, Bronson brought her back and said, “Please keep your child to yourself.”

I grew up not far from Bronson and my dad always told me when we went to dinner, when and if we did, that the men in the bars had just come out of the mills and mines and just wanted some quiet. “They aren’t here to listen to you be stupid,” he said, and I get it. Bronson got it. And now Liv Ullmann’s kid got it.

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C.C. Ryder (Joe Namath, who is from a town over from me and we shared the same dentist; perhaps he is better known as the New York Jets quarterback who was such a big deal that he had his own fashion doll) is a biker who hooks up with a gang called The Heads who are led by Moon (William Smith, who as we all know improves every movie).

There’s a race between the whole gang and C.C. decides to win it to get a fashion model named Ann McCalley (Ann-Margret, whose husband Roger Smith wrote this) to notice him. She’s kidnapped by The Heads and C.C. has to save her.

This was directed by Seymour Robbie, who mostly worked in television, and was savaged by critics. Gene Siskel gave it no stars and said, “Ann-Margret has a brief nude scene in which she proves that in addition to having a foul mouth she is fat.” Let me say something. Gene Siskel’s wife Marlene Iglitzen was quite attractive, but Ann-Margaret is, well, Ann-Margaret. He’d never get away with a comment like that today.

Well, because he’s dead.

But you know what I mean.

The Heads also have members like Crow (Sid Haig), Captain Midnight (Bruce Glover), Pig (Teda Bracci, who was Bull Jones in The Big Bird Cage and Rita in The Centerfold Girls), Pom Pom (Jennifer Billingsley, The Thirsty Dead), Zit-Zit (Jacquie Rohr, The Mini-Skirt Mob, Devil’s Angels), Tandalaya (Kiva Kelly), Lizard (Greg Mullavey, My Friends Need Killing) and Rabbit (Mike Battle, who also played for the Jets).

Glover was supposed to play the lead, but when Joe Namath saw him, he got Willaim Smith. Glover said, “”He took one look at me and said I was too short to beat him up. I had no power at the time, so I couldn’t quit. But I made my character and improvised every line I had in that movie.”

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