EDITOR’S NOTE: Marta was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, May 14, 1977 at 11:30 p.m. It also aired on March 22, 1989 and August 1, 1981. I can’t even imagine what people thought when it was on, as this is one of the strangest movies and one that I absolutely love.

Marisa Mell is the female George Eastman. No, she doesn’t act like a wide-eyed gigantic maniac in every movie. It’s just that no matter what movie she appears in, just her name being in the credits guarantees that I will watch the film.

Also known as …dopo di che, uccide il maschio e lo divora (…After That, It Kills the Male and Devours It), which is one of the best titles ever.

A wealthy landowner named Don Miguel (Stephen Boyd, who was in Ben-Hur) is haunted by his dead mother and missing wife — who may have been murdered — when he meets a gorgeous runaway named Marta (Mell), who may have killed the man who she was running from.

I haven’t seen any of José Antonio Nieves Conde’s films before, but this movie makes me want to watch every single one of them.

The strange thing is that this movie pretty much became true in a way, as Boyd and Mell fell in love, as they made this and The Great Swindle one on top of the other*. Despite Boyd not wanting anything to do with Mell at first — was the man made of stone? — he eventually fell for her and they married in a gypsy ceremony near Madrid, cutting their wrists and sealing their blood. The couple was so possessed by the mystical and sexual desire they felt for one another that they even went to have it exorcized in another ritual.

Boyd had to run from her, as the relationship physically and mentally exhausted him. As for Mell, she’d tell the Akron Beacon Journal that “We both believe in reincarnation, and we realized we’ve already been lovers in three different lifetimes, and in each one I made him suffer terribly.”

In the same year that all this happened, Mell was also dating Pier Luigi Torri, an aristocratic nightclub owner who fled the country after a cocaine scandal. Arrested in London after it was discovered he had a $300 million dollar gold mine and had also scammed a bank, he somehow escaped his jail cell and ran from the police across rooftops, escaping to America for 18 months. Evidently, Mell dated Diabolik in art and in life.

So let’s talk about the Mell relationship in the film instead of reality. She has come to live with Miguel, who collects insects and has two servants who keep things tidy. She enters his life by claiming that she is on the run for a self-defense murder. Miguel decides to protect her from the police because she looks like his wife Pilar (also played by Mell) who has left him or was killed. He’s also tormented by the death of his sainted mother while she may not be who she says that she is.

Oh yeah — and now Marta is acting as Pillar to throw the police off the scent of the man whom she either wants to marry or destroy.

Marta is a gothic-style giallo but is also dreamlike throughout. There’s a continual obsession with placing Mell in front of mirrors. And for someone who was rarely used outside of her sex appeal in films, she absolutely haunting here. Somehow, Spain put this movie forward for Oscar consideration and if I ran those popcorn fart boring awards, I would have given this every single award.

Sure, this movie rips off Hitchcock, but it also wallows in sin, which is what I demand from the giallo that I come to adore. Somehow, someway, this aired on broadcast TV as part of Avco Embassy’s Nightmare Theater package, along with A Bell from Hell, Death Smiles on a Murderer, Maniac Mansion, Night of the Sorcerers, Fury of the Wolfman, Hatchet for the Honeymoon, Horror Rises from the Tomb, Dear Dead Delilah, Doomwatch, Witches Mountain, The Mummy’s Revenge and The Witch. Man, how did any of those air on regular TV?

*Credit to the Stephen Boyd Fan Page and Marisa Mell: Her Life and Her Work for this information.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Night of the Witches was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, January 13, 1973 at 1 a.m. It also aired on December 8, 1974; July 17, 1976 and June 11, 1977.

A man pretending to be a preacher (Keith Larsen, who also directed and co-wrote this movie with Vincent Fotre — the English scriptwriter of Baron Blood) is running from the law all through Mexico when he meets an island of witches led by Cassandra (Kathryn Loder, The Big Doll House). He think that they will be easy marks for his abilities, but come on, man. They’re witches.

This movie is more weird than good — yes, that can happen — with the preacher having a chorus on the soundtrack that sings “Amen” to everything he says.

Roxanne Brewer, an adult star, shows up in the cast using the name Susie Edgell. So does Julie Conners from Trader Hornee and Count Yorga, Vampire. The dancing and soundtrack make this, as does the fact that it played double features — “Don’t Be Afraid to Scream in Your Seats! This is the Double Horror Show of All Time!” — with Frankenstein On Campus.

Radiance has released this set that has three crime movies starring Franco Nero and directed by Damiano Damiani. As a proud Italian-American, I must remind you that there is no organized crime syndicate known as the Mafia currently active in the United States.

The Day of the Owl: Franco Nero is Captain Bellodi, who starts this investigating the death of truck driver Salvatore Colasberna, a man murdered while delivering cement to a construction project. The only witness may be Rosa Nicolosi (Claudia Cardinale), a woman of somewhat loose morals. Either her husband caught her with Colasberna or the trucker was killed by a corrupt group of manufacturers under the orders of Don Mariano Arena (Lee J. Cobb).

This was one of the first of a wave of organized crime based films. The trend started when the Leonardo Sciascia’s novel To Each His Own was adapted as We Still Kill the Old Way. Day of the Owl was based on another Sciascia novel which was the first book he’d written about organized crime in Sicily.

Written by director Damiano Damiani and Ugo Pirro, who also wrote We Still Kill the Old Way, this differs from the book that it’s based on. Piro said, “To me, the book is a hint: I must try and preserve its message by using a different language.”

The Case Is Closed: Forget It: Based on the Leros Pittoni book Tante Sbarre, this has Franco Nero on the wrong side of the law as Vanzi, a man jailed for a hit and run misdemeanor and learning just how bad it is inside Italy’s prison system. That’s because organized crime runs everything even inside.

Vanzi tries not to get involved with the others, but soon is helped by an elderly prisoner by the name of Campoloni (Georges Wilson) and hindered by Biro (John Steiner), a killer who is barely able to keep himself under control. When Vanzi is moved into a cell with Pesenti (Riccardo Cucciolla), he learns that his new roommate is about to testify against Salvatore Rosa (Claudio Nicastro), which gets him killed right in front of Vanzi, who can either get out of prison if he says nothing or die if he reveals that the suicide was truly a murder.

This isn’t like any other role I’ve seen Franco Nero in and the ending is a gut punch. Expected, but still it’s a rough indictment.

How to Kill a Judge: Franco Nero plays filmmaker Giacomo Solaris, whose latest film, Inquest at the Courthouse, is based on the real-life corruption of a judge named Alberto Traini-Luiz (Marco Guglielmi). That movie ends with that man’s ties to organized crime causing him to be killed and when the actual judge seizes the film, he’s killed as well.

Solaris feels that he is responsible, but soon finds himself in a world filled with conspiracy and the murder of everyone close to him, as well as a relationship with the judge’s widow Antonia (Françoise Fabian).

This movie is just as tough on director Damiani, as it was inspired by the actual murder of a judge who he had based a character on in his movie Confessions of a Police Captain.

This set from Radiance has tons of amazing extras to go with the new 2K restorations of the films.

There are new and archival interviews with Nero for all three films, as well as filmmaker and Italian crime cinema expert Mike Malloy discussing The Day of the Owl, a video essay by filmmaker Howard S. Berger looking at actor Lee J. Cobb’s career transition from Hollywood to Italy, an interview with Claudia Cardinale, a making-of for The Case is Closed: Forget It; a visual essay on the career of Damiani Damiani by critic Rachael Nisbet; interview with Alberto Pezzotta, author of Regia Damiano Damiani, who discusses Damiani’s contribution to the crime genre, a new video essay on How to Kill a Judge by filmmaker David Cairns; trailers for all three movies, a reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters for each film and — most awesomely, I may add — a limited edition 120-page book featuring new and archival writing on the films by experts on the genre including Andrew Nette, Piero Garofalo, Paul A. J. Lewis , Shelley O’Brien, Nathaniel Thompson, Marco Natoli and Cullen Gallagher.

You can get this incredible set from MVD.

Embracing the socially conscious — yet still exploitative — black humor and tongue in cheek style of the  Brazilian Mouth of Garbage Cinema (Boca do Lixo), the man known as Coffin Joe — José Mojica Marins — directed co-wrote (with Rubens Francisco Luchetti) and stars in this story of a man named Finis Hominis who rises naked from the ocean and walks through the streets of the city, changing the world.

After helping a woman in a wheelchair to walk, protecting a woman and her child from a gang and then being given the finest in clothing, he walks to a church where he drinks Holy Water and is proclaimed Finis Hominis, the end of man. He brings the dead back to life, gathers followers and upsets the leaders of the world until he announces that he must return home. And that is an insane asylum. And this has happened before.

A messiah and an insane person may be the same. That seems like what Marins is saying in a film that avoids his traditional horror look, feel and main character and instead, trips out.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Mephisto Waltz was on the CBS Late Movie on July 29, 1977.

Paul Wendkos may have directed most of the Gidget movies, but he has quite the horror pedigree. There’s the TV movie Good Against Evil, Haunts of the Very Rich, the 1985 remake of The Bad Seed and the legendary 1975 TV movie The Legend of Lizzie Borden.

Because this is a Quinn Martin Production and CBS aired it extensively on TV, many people believe that it was a made-for-TV movie. However, it was actually released in theaters—the only movie that Twentieth Century Fox released for the entire calendar year of 1970, due to several of 1969’s movies failing at the box office.

Myles Clarkson (Alan Alda) once wanted to be a pianist but is now a music journalist. He gets to interview the world’s greatest piano player, Duncan Ely (Curd Jurgens, The Vault of Horror). It doesn’t start well, but then Ely discovers that Myles has hands perfect for the piano.

At that point, Duncan and his daughter Roxanne (Barbara Perkins) become friends with Myles and his wife Paula (Jacqueline Bisset), who doesn’t trust either of them. She was right to suspect them, as they’re Satanists who have transferred Duncan’s mind to Myles’ body. However, as Myles becomes a major star, she starts to like the man she’s married to more and more. She becomes seduced by the power, even if Duncan comes to her in dreams and tells her that their daughter must die.

After that dream, the daughter dies, which pushes Paula to investigate the Ely family. She then finds herself falling into the arms of Roxanne’s ex-husband, Bill (Bradford Dillman).

This is the 1970s, so of course, incest figures in. It turns out that Duncan and Roxanne have bartered with Satan to enable them to pursue their incestuous relationship by placing Duncan’s consciousness into Myles’ body. When Bill is killed with the same blue forehead murder style as Paula’s daughter, she starts to worry for her life. But simultaneously, she decides that no matter who is in her husband’s body, that’s the man she wants to be with.

So she does what any of us would do. She turns to Satan and kills herself, moving her mind into Paula’s body. Then, she returns to her husband, Paula’s father, in her husband’s body. Whatever issues there were with the marriage have been solved, thanks to the left-hand path and outright murder.

Arrow Video continues its exploration of giallo with its fourth box set after the Black, Red, Yellow and White editions of Giallo Essentials.

In the early 1970s, when the giallo boom was at its peak, producer-turned-director Luciano Ercoli made  three standalone — but thematically linked — giallo films all starring his wife Nieves Navarro under the name Susan Scott. This set shares those movies in one convenient and well-priced edition.

The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (1970): Minou (Dagmar Lassander, The House by the Cemetery) loves her husband, Peter. But Peter is cold and only really seems to care about work. All she does all day is pine for her husband and take care of a turtle. Yep. You just read that correctly.

One night, a mysterious stranger attacks her, cuts open her clothes and then warns her: her husband is a killer.

The mysterious man is proven correct when a man who owed Peter money shows up dead. He demands that she come to his home, where he blackmails her into sleeping with him. Seeing as how he has recorded their tryst, he now has more material on her.

Even her friend Dominique (Nieves Navarro, All the Colors of the Dark, who was married to the director, Luciano Ercoli) can’t be trusted, as Minou finds photos of the blackmailer in provocative poses in her possession. When she finally gets the police to investigate, the man’s home is empty and Dominique tells the police he never even existed. Oh yeah. Dominique was once Peter’s woman before Minou. So there’s that.

Minou has a nervous breakdown and overdoses on tranquilizers before sobering up and learning that it’s all been a plot against her from the beginning. But come on — if you’ve watched any giallo, you knew that going in.

Despite its lurid title, Forbidden Photos of a Woman Above Suspicion isn’t filled with sex or even all that much violence. It’s more about alcoholism and how women were taught that they had to have the skills to land a man, but not what to do with their lives to make them fulfilled beyond just a relationship.

Director Luciano Ercoli has some gorgeous shots in here that really take advantage of the space age 1960’s aesthetic. And a bossa nova score by Ennio Morricone keeps this film bouncing. It wouldn’t be the first giallo I’d recommend, but it’s not the last, either.

Extras include commentary by Kat Ellinger; Private Pictures, a documentary featuring interviews with Navarro, Ercoli and Gastaldi; an appreciation of the music of  70s Italian cult cinema by musician and soundtrack collector Lovely Jon; a Q&A with Lassander; the Italian and English trailers and an image gallery.

Death Walks On High Heels (1970): 

A man is stabbed on a train, leading the police to question Nicole (giallo queen Nieves Navarro) about diamonds that are missing. Her life turns upside down, as she begins to receive disguised phone calls asking about the diamonds and a blue-eyed masked man attacks her in her boudoir. She then remembers that her jealous lover Michel owns contact lenses in that color, so she runs away with an older eye surgeon to the coast of England. But Michel isn’t far behind…

The first of three giallo directed by Navarro’s husband, Luciano Ercoli, this is what the genre should be: shocking, lurid, bloody and oh so fashionable. It also makes a deft turn from what we expect from the form into an actual mystery film.

There’s a plot twist here that honestly shocked me, so I won’t spoil it. While the other two films in the Ercoli giallo trilogy are much better, this is still a quality film worthy of your time. Some critics decry them as Ercoli making movies just to feature his wife, but if you had a quality woman like Navarro in your life, I bet you’d do the same.

This comes with audio commentary by film critic Tim Lucas, an introduction to the film by screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi, an interview with Ercoli and actress Navarro, Gastaldi explaining how to write a successful giallo, an interview with composer Stelvio Cipriani and Italian and English trailers. These extras are a sheer joy for giallo lovers and what an opportunity to hear from Ercoli, Navarro and Gastaldi.

Death Walks At Midnight (1972): Nieves Navarro is a true queen of giallo, appearing in All the Colors of the Dark, Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion, So Sweet, So Dead and Death Walks on High Heels. Here, she makes her third film with her husband, Luciano Ercoli.

In this one, she plays a fashion model named Valentina who agrees to help her journalist beau study LSD. But while she’s dosed and in the middle of a photo shoot, she watches a man brutally murder a woman with a spiked gauntlet. He thinks she’s just hallucinating and publishes her account, but she believes it’s real. And when the killer starts stalking her, she really starts to worry.

The entire opening of the film is one big acid freakout and everything that follows is the bad trip, the comedown and reality brutally intruding into drugged out bliss. This is a film packed with brutal violence and plenty of gore, but it makes sense. The movie demands it.

The end, when everything is wrapped up by the killer (killers?) is pretty great, as the many red herrings are discussed and the entire plot is finally explained to us. If everything before felt like a nightmare, this is bracingly cold water directly to the face.

Even better, Navarro portrays a heroine who doesn’t faint at the first sign of danger. She deals with the ineffectual police and indifference of her boyfriend with aplomb.

And yes — this film is packed with bonkers crazy fashion — a metal/glass silver wig and a strange sculpted wall feature prominently — so if that’s why you love giallo, you’ll be quite happy here. Me? I loved every minute.

This release comes with audio commentary by film critic Tim Lucas, an introduction by screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi, an extended TV version, a reflection by Gastaldi reflects on his career in the crime film-writing business and Desperately Seeking Susan, a visual essay by Michael Mackenzie exploring the distinctive giallo collaborations between director Luciano Ercoli and star Nieves Navarro. If you love giallo — or are just getting into it — all of these extras will open deepen your love for the form; Lucas is one of the best commentary track experts there is.

This limited edition Arrow Video box set comes in rigid packaging with the original poster artwork in a windowed Giallo Essentials Collection slipcover. You’ll enjoy 2K restorations for all three films as well as reversible sleeves for each film featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by The Twins of Evil and Gilles Vranckx.

You can get this from MVD.