Salvare la faccia (Saving Face) is a giallo directed by Rossano Brazzi, who was once the actor who played Emile De Becque in South Pacific. His career started all the way back in the late 30s and saw him work back and forth between America and Italy. He was also in Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks, Omen III: The Final Conflict and there’s even a moment where his adoring female fans tear his shirt off in Mondo Cane. He only directed two other movies — using the name Edward Ross — The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t and Criminal Affair, which he also starred in opposite Ann-Margaret and she tries everything to get in bed with him. It’s good work if you can get it, even if you need to direct and write it yourself.

He was also one of the writers for this movie, alongside Piero Regnoli (Voices from Beyond, Burial Ground), Diana Crispo and Renato Polselli.

Brazzi plays a well-respected and quite wealthy manufacturer named Marco Brignoli (Rossano Brazzi). He’s having issues keeping his daughter Licia (Adrienne Larussa, who was the star of Fulci’s Beatrice Cenci) from acting up. Like how when he gives a major speech, she and a photographer named Mario (Nino Castelnuovo) sneak off to a house of ill repute where he takes some scandalous photos of her to blackmail her father. The cops then come in on a tip he called in, just as he guides her into the flashes of the paparazzi.

Completely upset about the scandalous activities of his unruly little daughter, father Brignoli sees only one way to clean up the publicly scratched appearance of his family to some extent: Licia must be publicly portrayed as mentally ill and for treatment of her “alleged” ailment be forcibly committed to a closed mental hospital. No sooner said than done, and only a few days later, the horrified nest defiler finds herself against her will in the closed ward of a psychiatric clinic, where she is then immediately given her currently registered place of residence for a longer period of time.

There’s only one way to do what the Italian title states. Licia must be seen as mentally ill and sent to a mental asylum. We see bursts of fast cuts, of her twirling around, the press conference, a car she was given and finally her in white trapped inside the asylum. Larussa is incredible in the role, at once a little girl and at others a calculating mad woman transformed — maybe, maybe not — by her time unjustly locked away.

A side note: Larussa was on Days of Our Lives for three years as well as the Bowie movie The Man Who Fell to Earth. And in the mid 80s, she was quickly both married and had an annulment from Steven Seagal when she found out that he was still married to his first wife.

Her character decides to find and unleash all the scandals of her family, like her father’s affair with Laura (Idelma Carlo), the wife of a politician (Nestor Garay) in the pocket of the industrialist. Or trying to steal Francesco (Alberto de Mendoza) away from her sister Giovanna (Paola Pitagora). She also uses Mario as part of her schemes, trailing a gun on him and informing him that because she’s insane, she can kill him at any time and get away with it. They use the Monsignor (Marcello Bonini Olas) that her father pays kickbacks to as the next part of the scheme. As the entire family prepares to watch a home movie of Marco leading his workers on a pilgrimage to Lordes, they instead watch him make love to Laura.

In order to keep everything quiet, Marco must agree to let Mario marry his daughter. But Licia is ahead of him as well, setting up his death to look like her father did it, seducing her brother in law — which sends her sister to her doom but not before screaming, “What’s your game? Don’t you realize you’re trying to destroy people who’re already dead? They’re all dead, Licia, only they don’t know it.” — and even learning about all of her dad’s biggest deals.

The family all pays for the way they treated Licia, as they have taken someone they only claimed was mentally ill and made her into the kind of black widow that populates the giallo, a woman driven by revenge and willing to do absolutely anything and destroy anyone.

So, when I say giallo, I don’t mean that this has black-gloved hands holding a straight razor. But the way it’s shot, the quick edits, every woman in long hair and mini-skirts, well, it’s definitely worth your time. I’m shocked that no one has taken this movie, cleaned it up and gotten a new cult intrigued by it. Larussa is also hypnotically captivating in it, owning every frame despite her young age and relative acting experience. It’s a shame she didn’t make more films in the genre (or more films at all, although she did a lot of TV work).

I’d be pleasantly surprised if this ends up on a future Vinegar Syndrome Forgotten Gialli set.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Devil’s Eight was on the CBS Late Movie on June 19 and June 6, 1973; January 29, 1974 and May 13, 1975.

Oh American International Pictures. You knew exactly what the kids wanted. In 1969, they wanted their own version of The Dirty Dozen. Who better to give it to them than you?

Based on a story by AIP story editor Larry Gordon and the first draft was by James Gordon White. It was eventually rewritten in ten days by two of his assistants, John Milius and Willard Huyck. The future director of Conan the Barbarian quipped, “It was called The Devil’s 8 because they didn’t have enough money for a full dozen.”

White wasn’t a fan of the final film. “They took the Southern flavor out of it and I’m from the south, so I know from whereof I talk.” Take it from the writer of Bigfoot, The Mini-Skirt Mob and both movies about a head transplant, The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant and The Thing with Two Heads.

Originally known as Inferno Road, this movie has an all-star cast. And by that, I mean an all-star AIP 1969 cast.

Christopher George (Day of the Animals, City of the Living Dead, Pieces and about a hundred other movies that I love) plays federal agent Ray Faulkner, who starts the movie on a road gang before he breaks the rest of the guys out and forces them on to a helicopter at gunpoint. They are:

• Sonny (Fabian!) is in prison for murder but he’s a great driver. Unfortunately, he has a drinking problem.
• Frank Davis (Ross Hagen, The Sidehackers) used to drive for the mob, but then they murdered his brother.
• Billy Joe (Tom Nardini, Cat Ballou) is a mechanic who just wants to drive.
• Sam (Joseph Turkel, Dr. Eldon Tyrell from Blade Runner and Lloyd from The Shining) loves to get in brawls.
• Henry (Robert DoQuia, the sergeant from the RoboCop movies) is an African-American prisoner who can really handle the wheel.
• Chandler (Larry Bishop, son of Joey, who was in Wild In the Streets) would rather read the Bible than get involved in all this.
• Stewart Martin (Ron Rifkin, L.A. Confidential) is a rookie fed.

After training “The Eight…you’ll either love or hate!” in high-speed driving and throwing bombs, they work their way into Burl’s (Ralph Meeker, who was actually in The Dirty Dozen, as well as Without Warning and The Alpha Incident) illegal moonshine operation. There are all manner of double crosses and not everyone makes it out alive, but Burl’s mistress Cissy (Leslie Parrish) ends up with her real man, Davis.

Let me talk about Leslie Parrish for awhile. She’s led a pretty amazing life, starting under her birth name Marjorie Hellen, which she changed in 1959. While she was a teenager at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music, she started modeling and became a human test pattern for NBC known as Miss Color TV, as they used her skin tones to test how well they’d transmit over the airwaves.

In 1956, she started her contract with MGM and appeared in redneck classic Lil’ Abner as Daisy Mae. In fact, it was director Melvin Frank who convinced her to change her name. She was also in The Manchurian Candidate and a ton of TV shows at this time, as well as being the Associate Producer on Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Part of that job meant caring for the real seagulls and keeping them in her hotel room, as well as being the mediator between her husband, author Richard Bach, and director Hall Bartlett after they stopped talking. Despite all that, her role is only listed as researcher in the credits.

While acting paid the bills, her real job was activism. She was a member of the Jeannette Rankin Brigade, a coalition of women’s peace groups and had private audiences with politicians and led huge public protests. She has also been incredibly involved in environmental activism and even created KVST-TV, which looked pretty much like C-SPAN does today, but all the way back in 1967. Today, she continues to develop and lead the Spring Hill Wildlife Sanctuary on Orcas Island in Washington. And oh yeah — she was also in The Giant Spider Invasion. Check out her official site!

The Devil’s 8 is decent, but as always, I’m on the side of the bootleggers. Don’t make me divide my loyalty by putting Fabian on the side of Johnny Law! Come on, AIP!

The 2012 we dreamed of in 1969 was very different. In this film, the official review of the Institute of History, after the restless 1960s and 1970s, shows that society has become liberal. Class boundaries no longer exist, and progress is the goal of all.

Documentarian Raimo Lappalainen (Arto Tuominen) is looking back at Finland in the late 60s and making a movie about sex symbol Saara Turunen (Ritva Vepsä), a nude model who dies at some point in the 70s. But as he gets deeper into her life, he discovers that the same issues her world struggled with haven’t truly gone away. Things get stranger when Kisse (Vepsä) plays the role of Saara in recreating her death. Ironically, this film’s director, Risto Jarva, would die young in a car crash in 1977.

This movie promised a future of people dancing by themselves in crowded clubs while wearing headphones, politically compromised media, Edie Sedgwick-looking doomed heroines, pushbutton instant food, unrest in a nuclear plant and inflatable see-through furniture. I should start a Letterboxd list of movies with transparent furnishings, starting with this movie, Too Beautiful to Die and Camille 2000.

Also, I learned from Kathy Fennessy’s Seattle Film Blog that co-writer Peter von Bagh—who worked on the script along with Jarva and Jaakko Pakkasvirta—wrote his master’s thesis on Vertigo. This makes the dead woman being reborn—or at least a look-alike appearing—make even more sense.

By the end, Lappalainen seems like no hero, as the leader of the protests mentions the title of the movie before being killed live on TV, an event that shatters Kisse and barely a notice from him. He seeks to control her in his work, using her as an object instead of a person; this follows through to his real life.

I am obsessed with the ancient future. It seemed like the world would be cleaner and better than the world we live in today. Is it a better place? This movie makes me doubt that. It would, however, be much more stylish.

You can get Time of Roses on Blu-ray directly from Deaf Crocodile. It comes with plenty of extras, including an hour-long documentary Risto Jarva, Tyotoverini (Risto Jarva, My Colleague), in which director Antti Peippo explores the life of the director; two of Jarva’s shorts, Pakasteet (Frozen Foods) and Tietokoneet Palvelevat (Computers Serve); a deleted scene and the original song “Pääskytorni” (“The Swallow Tower”); the trailer; new commentary by film critic, professor and programmer Olaf Möller; a new essay by filmmaker and critic Ville Suhonen of the Risto Jarva Association and newly translated extracts from Risto Jarva’s writings.

As with everything from Deaf Crocodile, this is an incredible release of a film that we may never see in America otherwise.

Sources

Time of Roses – WikiMili, The Best Wikipedia Reader. https://wikimili.com/en/Time_of_Roses

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Maltese Bippy was on the CBS Late Movie on December 23, 1977.

As a kid, I was thrilled when Laugh-In came back to TV. I’d read about it—I was already a devotee of pop culture—and was excited to see this stream-of-consciousness show for myself. Yes, it was before the internet when we couldn’t just dial up everything we wanted to see instantly.

It may seem dated today — it has to; it was nearly sixty years ago — but at the center of this mad show were two men: Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. They were the everymen who couldn’t keep the wild energy of the show from bursting through the screen. But they were also fascinating people in their own right, who knew that the show was the star.

Dan Rowan spent his childhood years following his parents from town to town as they performed their carnival dancing act. He was orphaned at 11 and spent four years in an orphanage. By the time he was 18, he hitchhiked to Los Angeles, where he got a job in the Paramount mailroom. Soon, he was the youngest writer on the lot.

During World War II, Rowan was a fighter pilot, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Air Medal and the Purple Heart. He returned from action and formed his comedy duo with Martin. He was married three times—to Miss America 1945 runner-up Phyllis J. Mathis, Australian model Adriana Van Ballegooyen and TV spokeswoman Joanna Young—and retired in the early 1980s. He only returned to help celebrate NBC’s 60th anniversary in 1988 by appearing with his comedy partner.

Dick Martin didn’t serve in the war — tuberculosis kept him from combat — but was a young writer as well, working on the radio show Duffy’s Tavern. He started teaming with Martin in 1952, playing nightclubs, hosting NBC’s Colgate Comedy Hour and appearing in the movie Once Upon a Horse Together. He also played Lucille Ball’s neighbor on The Lucy Show before Laugh-In became a big hit. After his partner retired, Martin was a frequent game show guest and TV show director. He was married to singer Peggy Connelly and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls star Dolly Read twice.

Anyways…The Maltese Bippy.

Sam Smith and Ernest Grey (Rowan and Martin) are the producers of nudie cuties — their latest film is Lunar Lust — and they’re forced out of their office for not paying the rent. Somehow, a G-rated movie in 1969 could concern pornography, and no one cared.

They move into Ernest’s house by the cemetery in Long Island, a place where a mutilated corpse has already been found and a woman is frightened by a howling man. Oh yeah, Ernest is also given to barking like a dog.

Somehow, despite not being successful, Ernest can have a housekeeper (Mildred Natwick, Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate). He also has two roommates, the bubbly Robin Sherwood (Carol Lynley, The Poseidon Adventure) and Axel (Leon Askin, Hogan’s Heroes), a Swedish violinist.

Meanwhile, the Ravenswoods next door — Mischa (Fritz Weaver, Creepshow), Carlotta (Julie Newmar!) and Helga (Eddra Gale, Fellini’s 8 1/2) — are vampires who want Ernest to join their pack. Sam thinks they should be a variety act, but the truth is that nearly everyone just wants to search for a giant diamond inside the house. (and more to the point, inside the corpse of the home’s original owner).

Hijinks ensue, and everyone but our heroes perish. But that’s not good enough, so they both present their happy endings to the audience and walk into the sunset together.

Look for a pre-Brady Bunch Robert Reed, David Hurst (the head waiter in Hello, Dolly), character actor Dana Eclar, voiceover actor Alan Oppenheimer, Arthur Batanides  (he was Mr. Kirkland in Police Academy 2, 3, 4 and 6), Jennifer Bishop (who was in the William Grefe movies Mako: The Jaws of Death and Impulse, as well as Al Adamson’s Horror of the Blood Monsters, Jessi’s Girls and The Female Bunch) and Garry Walberg, who played Jack Klugman’s poker buddy Homer “Speed” Deegan on The Odd Couple and his boss Lt. Frank Monahan on Quincy, M.E.

Director Norman Panama wrote White Christmas and 1959’s Li’l Abner. He also directed the Hope and Crosby — with Joan Collins! — film The Road to Hong Kong.

This isn’t a great movie—or even alright—but the TV lover in me appreciated it and found joy in discovering this buried moment in time.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed was on the CBS Late Movie on March 10 and July 19, 1972 and November 23, 1973.

There’s a moment in this movie where Baron Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) assaults Anna Spiegler (Veronica Carlson) that was filmed over the objections of Cushing, Carlson and director Terence Fisher, who finally ended shooting when he felt enough was enough. This moment isn’t even in the original script but was added at the demand of Hammer executive James Carreras, who was under pressure to keep the American distributors happy. The fact that a rape scene is what it took is pretty upsetting,

The film starts in a lab where a thief has broken in. By the time he starts his crime, a masked man has broken in as well and decapitated a doctor. The thief reports the crime to the police as the masked man reveals himself to be Dr. Frankenstein, now known as Mr. Fenner. He’s renting a room from Anna, whose fiancee, Karl Holst (Simon Ward), is one of the doctors overseeing the care of Frankenstein’s assistant, Dr. Frederick Brandt (George Pravda).

Karl has a secret. He’s been stealing narcotics to treat Anna’s mother, a fact that Frankenstein uses against him. They work together to free Brandt, and Karl even kills a man in the middle of a robbery, further giving the doctor power over him.

After Brandt has a heart attack, they take his brain and place it into the body of Professor Richter (Freddie Jones). When his wife refuses to accept him because of his horrifying appearance, he goes wild. By the end, he’s poured liquid paraffin all over his house and lures the doctor there, planning to burn him alive or put him out of commission long enough until the next movie in the series, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell. Yes, I realize there’s also The Horror of Frankenstein, but that movie is a remake of Curse of Frankenstein and has Ralph Bates in the lead role.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Illustrated Man was on the CBS Late Movie on July 14, 1972 and October 11, 1973.

Beyond Bird with the Crystal Plumage, there’s one movie my mother has already brought up that she hated. And that would be this one.

The book that these stories come from has eighteen of them, but Howard B. Kreitsek and Jack Smight picked these three for the film without ever speaking to Ray Bradbury, the author of the book. The tattooed man who appears in the book’s prologue and epilogue would become this film’s main story and be played by Rod Steiger.

The funny thing is that when Steiger takes off his glove to reveal his hand, it’s tattooed and played off as a horrific moment. A half-century after this movie was made, nearly all my friends have this many tattoos.

Carl, the tattooed man, meets Willie and uses his skin illustrations to tell tales throughout time. The ink came from a mysterious woman named Felicia. At the end of the film, Willie sees his death at Carl’s hands in the only bare patch of skin on the Illustrated Man.

The stories that are told include “The Veldt,” which takes place in the future and involves children who study within a virtual version of the African veldt. Soon, the lions will solve this issue of their parents. “The Long Rain” has solar rains* that drive an entire crew to madness in space. And “The Last Night of the World” predates The Mist, with parents who must decide if their children should survive the end of the world.

The final story—and its bleak ending—is exactly why my mom hates this movie. The fact that she may have told me all about it when I was a kid may have given me nightmares.

This movie did poorly critically and financially. Rod Serling, an expert on adapting short stories to film, called it the worst movie ever made.

*Their spaceship is recycled from Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes and Escape from the Planet of the Apes.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The House That Screamed aired on the CBS Late Movie on January 30, 1973 and June 14, 1974.

Spain’s first major horror film production, The House that Screamed—AKA La Residencia and The Boarding School—was based on a story by Juan Tébar. Because the cast included both English and Spanish actors, the film was shot in both languages and then dubbed into English in post-production.

Directed and written by Narciso Ibáñez Serrador (Who Can Kill a Child?), it takes place at a school for girls—reforming them and making them acceptable wives for their future husbands—in 19th-century France run by Headmistress Señora Fourneau (Lilli Palmer). Teresa Garan (Cristina Galbó, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) is a newcomer to the school and instantly notices just how strange of a place it is. For example, she always feels like she’s being watched.

Fourneau rules the school by the whip—quite literally, she has no problem beating her students into submission—and has Irene Tupan (Mary Maude), an older student, as her near WIP second-in-command.

Yet things are not alright. Students keep going missing, Teresa is bullied when the girls discover that her mother is a prostitute, and Luis (John Moulder-Brown), Fourneau’s son, is in love with Teresa despite the rules of her mother, who believes that none of these girls are good enough for him. He was once interested in Isabelle (Maribel Martín, The Blood Spattered Bride) until his mother roughly helped his face and intoned, “These girls are not good enough for you. What you need is a woman like me!”

That’s when the film literally goes Psycho, wipes out a main character, and the narrative transforms an antagonist into the protagonist. The horror, however, is nowhere near over for anyone. That idea of Luis finding a woman just like his mother haunts the headmistress.

This gorgeous movie predates Argento’s Bird With the Crystal Plumage by a few months and Suspiria by eight years. It’s as much a slasher as a gothic horror movie and works as both, and it has elements of Giallo and Women in Prison films. Yet, above all, it remains classy and has lush colors, incredible cinematography and luscious interiors, making this quite the furniture movie. Even better, you can see the film that was taken from it. Pieces might be a tribute movie, even if it’s not a movie discussed all that often in the U.S.

The Wedding Party has an interesting story behind it. It was a joint effort between Sarah Lawrence theater professor Wilford Leach and two of his students, Brian De Palma and Cynthia Monroe. Stanley Borden, owner of American Films, as well as De Palma’s mentor and employer, let the young director make the movie on company time.

It was actually made in 1963, but Borden and De Palma fought over the film, as Borden believed that it was not ready for release. It came out in 1969 after the success of Greetings.

Charlie (Charles Pfluger) and Josephine (Jill Clayburgh) are getting married just in time for Charlie to start to realize that he dislikes her family as much as he loves her. They never think he’s good enough and constantly treat him like trash, like how her cousins Cecil (Robert De Niro) and Alistair (William Finley) invite him to his bachelor party and don’t bring him.

He decides to run and leave her behind on the wedding day — dealing with her cousin (Judy Thomas) trying to seduce him, the stress of her mother (Valda Setterfield) and the weirdness of her dad (Raymond McNally) is all too much. But how far can he go when he’s trapped on an island?

Not a great or even a good movie, but it’s worth seeing as it’s the first credit for both De Palma and De Niro.