EDITOR’S NOTE: There’s never been a better titled movie ever. Sergio Martino again proves why he was the absolute master of the genre with this film. We originally shared this movie on November 7, 2017 and can’t wait to see this at the Drive-In Super Monster-Rama Giallopalooza on September 17 and 18. The artwork for this article comes from PhilRayArt. Buy something from them!

Has a movie ever had a better title? Nope. Sergio Martino’s fourth entry into the giallo genre, following The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail and the previously reviewed All the Colors of the Dark, it refers to the note that the killer leaves to Edwige Fenech’s character in Mrs. Wardh. And the title is way better than the alternate ones this film has — Gently Before She Dies, Eye of the Black Cat and Excite Me!

Martino wastes no time at all getting into the crazy in this one — Oliviero Rouvigny (Luigi Pistilli from A Bay of Blood, Iguana with the Tongue of Fire, Death Rides a Horse) is a dark, sinister man, a failed writer and alcoholic who lives in a mansion that’s falling apart (If this all feels like a modernized version of a Poe story like The Fall of the House of Usher, it’s no accident. There’s even an acknowledgment that the film is inspired by The Black Cat in the opening credits.). His wife, Irina (Anita Strindberg from A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin and Who Saw Her Die?), suffers his abuses, but never more so than when he gathers hippies together for confrontational parties. He makes everyone pour all of their wine into a bowl and forces her to drink it, then humiliates their black servant Brenda until one of the partygoers starts singing and everyone joins in, then gets naked. This scene is beyond strange and must be experienced. Luckily, I found the link for you, but trust me — it’s NSFW.

The only person that Oliviero seems to love is Satan, the cat that belonged to his dead mother. A black cat that talks throughout every scene he’s in, his constant meows led to my cats communicating with the TV. God only knows what a 1970’s giallo cat said, but it seems like his words spoke directly to their hearts.

One of Oliviero’s mistresses is found dead near the house, but he hides her body. The police suspect him, as does his wife. Adding to the tension is the fact that Irina hates Satan, who only seems to care about messing with her beloved birds.

Remember that servant? Well, she’s dead now, but not before she walks around half-naked in Oliviero’s mother’s dress while he watches from the other room. She barely makes it to Irina’s room before she collapses, covered in blood. Blood that Satan the cat has no problem walking through! He refuses to call the police, as he doesn’t want any more suspicion. He asks his wife to help him get rid of the body.

Oliviero’s niece Floriana (Edwige Fenech, pretty much the queen of the giallo) is in town for a visit, learning how Oliviero hasn’t been able to write one sentence over and over again for three years, stuck in writer’s block (and predating The Shining by 5 years in book form and 8 years away from Kubrick’s film). Unlike everyone else who tolerates Oliviero’s behavior or ignores it, Floriana sees right through the bullshit. The writer is used to seducing every woman he meets and she initially rebuffs him, even asking if it’s true that Oliviero used to sleep with his mother. He angrily asks if it’s true that she’s a two-bit whore. “Those would be two bits worth spending,” is her caustic reply.

Irina confides all of her pain to Floriana as the two become lovers. And another girl gets murdered — perhaps by Oliviero. Then, a dirt bike racer comes to drop off milk and hit on Floriana. Whew — I was wondering when this film would get hard to follow and start piling on the red herrings!

After being questioned by the police, Oliviero comes home to choke his wife. He stops at the last second…then we’re off to the races! The motorbike races! The milkman loses when his bike breaks down, but he’s the real winner — taking Floriana back to the abandoned house that he lives in. And oh look — there’s creepy Oliviero watching the action.

Meanwhile, Satan has gotten into the coop and chowed down on several of the birds. Irina catches him and they have quite the battle. He scratches her numerous times before she stabs him in the eye with a pair of scissors. An old woman watches and is chased away by Irina’s yelling.

She’s afraid that her husband will kill her once he learns that she killed Satan. And Oliviero keeps wondering where the cat is, especially after he buys the cat his favorite meal from the store — sheep eyes. That said — Satan might not be so dead, as we can hear his screaming and see him with a missing eye.

Floriana puts on Oliviero’s mother’s dress, asking if this is what the maid looked like before she died. Whether it’s the dress or the forbidden family love or just her beauty, he rips off her dress — at her urging, mind you — and begins making love to his niece. We cut to Idrina, caressing her pet birds, when Oliviero confronts her with scissors and questions about Satan. He almost stabs her before he ends up raping her inside the coop, while Floriana looks on. She playing them off the other, even telling Idrina that she’s slept with her husband. She also tells her that Oliviero wants to kill her, so she should kill him first.

Idrina wakes up to the sound of Satan, but can’t find him anywhere. What she does find is her husband in bed with Floriana, who is belittling him. With every sinister meow, there’s a zoom of the cat’s damaged eye. Finally, Oliviero attacks her for spying on him, slapping her around before he leaves to write. She walks the grounds of the mansion, seeing the motorcycle rider make a date with Floriana and catching sight of Satan, who runs from her. In the basement, she finds scissors and the hidden bodies of her husband’s lover and the murdered maid. In a moment of clarity — or madness — she stabs her husband while he sleeps. The sequence is breathtaking — a giallo POV shot of the murder weapon intercut with the same sentence being typed over and over interspersed with all of the abuses that Oliviero had wrought upon her. She stabs again and again before Floriana interrupts, asking her if it was easy. The sentence that the author had written again and again was him claiming that he would kill her and there was a space in the wall for her, so obviously, she had to kill him.

As for Floriana, all she wanted was the family jewels, which were hidden in the house. They seal Oliviero’s corpse within the wall while Walter watches from afar. He’s played by Ivan Rassimov, who does creeping staring dudes better than anyone else — witness his work in All the Colors of the Dark. And it turns out that he’s the real killer! He’s been typing “vendetta” over and over again. Floriana asks if Idrina was planning to kill her before she runs off into the night, then Walter appears to kiss Idrina. Turns out they were working together all along — she tells him where to find Floriana the next morning. Holy shit — Idrina reveals her whole plot, revealing how she drove her husband crazy, making him believe that he could have been a murderer! She wishes that there was an afterlife so Oliviero’s mother — who she killed! — could tell him how great her revenge was. She ends by wishing that her husband was still alive so that he could suffer for eternity.

Walter sets up an accident that takes out Floriana and her boyfriend, as their motorcycle crashes, sending blood across the white heart of a billboard and out of her lips. He tosses a match on the gasoline-soaked highway, burning both of their corpses. He collects the jewelry and gives it to Idrina, who responds by shoving him off a cliff!

When she returns to the mansion, the police are there, as there were alerted to her stabbing Satan by the old woman. They come inside the house to write a statement, but hear the sound of Satan’s meows. Following the sound, they find him inside a wall — with the corpse of her husband!

Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key is superb. An intriguing story — only a few derailing giallo moments (like the killing of the girl in the room with the dolls and the B roll motocross scenes) — with great acting, eye-catching camerawork and some genuine surprises, it’s well worth seeking out and savoring.

Drive-In Super Monster-Rama is presenting “Giallopalooza”, two big nights of classic, fully restored giallo thrillers from such maestros as Dario Argento, Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci and Sergio Martino!

On Friday, September 17, the line-up will be What Have You Done to Solange?, Torso, A Lizard In a Woman’s Skin and The Cat O’Nine Tails. Saturday, September 18 they will present Deep Red, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Blood and Black Lace and Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key.

Admission is $10 per person each night (children 12 and under FREE with adult guardian). Camping on the premises is available each night for an additional $10 a person, and that includes breakfast.

Advance tickets are available online at the Riverside Drive In’s webpage.

A Spanish television crew is making a TV show based on a comic book called Sexy Cat, which is all about the adventures of a sexy Diabolik-style female killer, yet they’re now being murdered one by one by Sexy Cat herself. She’s even killed her creator, who had hired a detective named Mike Cash to figure out who really owns the rights to the creation. But if she’s real who owns her?

Each of her murders matches issues of the comic book — a snake placed in an actress’ apartment, murder by plastic bag that seems like Black Christmas yet these were made across the world from one another at the same time, crushing them under junkyard debris and just old fashioned slashing with claws.

Director Julio Pérez Tabernero had to have had his heart in the sexy side of this movie more than the giallo, as his resume speaks to numerous horizontally inclined movies like Hot Panties, Con las bragas en la mano (With Panties In Hand) and Midnight Party, which he made with Jess Franco.

There’s a lot to like here, like the pop art moments and murders, but I wanted more to love. Then again, Spanish giallo is a fickle mistress and doesn’t always achieve perfect art.

Man, this movie just hit me right in the brain.

Lucia Bosè (Something Creeping in the Dark) plays Ms. Tarantino, a widow who practices spiritualism. As her son grows older, he learns that the parlor tricks his mom uses to get money out of the marks hide what she can really do, so he forces her to give him the power of magic. Before long, he’s stringing all sorts of objects around their apartment building, putting live frogs into a woman’s mouth, creating a voodoo bread man and fondling torn-off chicken legs.

He’s also obsessed with Tina Aumont from Torso and you know, who can blame him?

Director Giulio Questi was the screenwriter for The Possessed, as well as writing and directing the berserk Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot!, which starts with its hero clawing his way out of a mass grave and ends with people being messily melted down by molten gold. He also was behind the equally strange Death Laid an Egg before the failure of this movie ruined his directing career. It would be nine years before he had the chance to make another picture.

This movie starts with these words: “To the viewers, This film is not a story. It’s a card game. This is why the beginning is not credible nor is the ending. You are the players. Play well and win.”

From what I’ve found online, people either absolutely love this movie or hate every single minute of it, much like the other films that Questi made. That means that — you guessed it — I loved this mess of a movie. I can’t wait for people to reply just how much they disliked it.

A wealthy industrialist named Johann Wallenberger has showed up dead outside a haunted house ride and is missing all of his money. His insurance company sends its top man, Chris Buyer (Robert Hoffman, Death Carries a Cane). He decides to go undercover by dating the dead man’s daughter Catherine, but before long, he’s in her family home as her mother loses her mind and her sister Barbara starts to seduce him. And oh yeah — more people start dying, which could be anyone from a blackmailer to a family member to even someone else from Chris’ company trying to ruin his good name.

Director Alfonso Brescia is well-known to us here — we did an entire breakdown of his five post-Star Wars science fiction films — and you can trust the man who made The Beast In Space and the underrated Iron Warrior to make something interesting.

I love that this movie has more than one ending and more than one killer. It plays with the form a bit and keeps you guessing. I’m also all for Adolfo Celli showing up in every movie that I watch.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally posted this on March 26, 2018. To celebrate the Drive-In Super Monster-Rama Giallopalooza on September 17 and 18, we’re posting an article on each of the eight films that will play at this incredible event.

London. The 70’s. Professor of Italian Enrico Rosseni (Fabio Testi, The Four of the Apocalypse) is on his boat, making out with Elizabeth (Cristina Galbó, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, The House that Screamed) and trying to get her to go further than she has before. Right when it seems like he’s going to finally conquer her, she looks up to see a woman being stabbed on the shore.

After angrily rowing to the shore, Rosseni and Elizabeth find no evidence of a crime. He accuses her of being too religious, like all the girls at the school her uncle sent her to. The next morning, while he dresses and argues with his wife Helga, he hears about a horrid murder on the banks of the Thames river. He drives to where he and Elizabeth were and finds tons of cops. And there are even more at the school where he works!

The victim was one of Elizabeth’s friends, so she wants to tell the police what they know. However, he doesn’t want the affair exposed. However, his pen has been found near the body and he shows up in the crime scene photographs in the newspaper.

More murders. More clues in Elizabeth’s mind. More priests doing evil things. More anger from Helga. More of Rosseni trying to solve the crime. And all he has is one clue: Who is Solange and what was done to her?

The movie takes a turn when Elizabeth is killed inside the apartment that Rosseni has rented for the two of them to continue their affair. And at that point, Helga starts being much nicer to our hero. As their relationship improves, her makeup grows softer, her clothing gets more fashionable and her hair comes down. How strange to find a giallo about a relationship coming back together as the result of murder!

What happened to Solange (Camille Keaton, I Spit on Your Grave)? She was given an abortion that all of the murdered girls were there for. In a kitchen, no less. And all of those girls were involved in doing drugs and dating older men.

So what do the cops do? Oh, just set up a sting operation with all of the surviving girls. And of course, Solange just happens to show up, walking through the park. Here’s the second of course — the cops bungle everything and the killer takes Brenda, asking her the story of Solange, as he did every other victim.

This is one well-put-together film, thanks to Massimo Dallamano, who was the cameraman for Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. Joe D’Amoto was the cinematographer and added plenty to the film. And you can’t deny the power of having an Ennio Morricone score!

This film is an interesting combination of the German krimi film and the Italian giallo and gave way to Dallamono’s Schoolgirls in Peril trilogy, which includes What Have They Done to Your Daughters? and Rings of Fear.

I always love seeing what titles films get released and re-released under. What Have You Done to Solange? has so many, including an attempt to sell it as a teen comedy entitled The Rah-Rah Girls! You can learn more at the amazing Temple of Schlock site. And for an awesome police report of the events of the film, head to The Giallo Files.

So who was the killer? No spoilers here.

Also known as The Sensuous Doll and Sweet Spirits (or in Italy, La rossa dalla pelle che scotta AKA The Redhead with Hot Skin), this one is…well, I don’t even know if I’d call it a giallo. I’d actually say that it has to fit in there because what else would you call it? A mannequin movie?

Farley Granger is John Ward, a starving — and drunken — artist who transforms a faceless mannequin that he gets from a gaggle of hippies (is that the right word for a group of them?) into a work of art that eventually becomes a real living and breathing woman that he starts to abuse, so she starts sleeping around. Seeing as how that woman is Erika Blanc, you can see how much I hate our protagonist.

Of course, by the end, he’s offering up his soul for one more night in her bed. So is this a supernatural film? Whatever it is, it’s way darker than the 80s would make a mannequin film. Or two on the move.

Do you think Farley Granger muttered to director Renzo Russo (The Kinky Darlings), “You know, I deserve better than this. I was in two Hitchcock movies!”? I’m sure that Erika Bella was like, “Yeah? I was in The Devil’s Nightmare and A Man for Emmanuelle! So there!”

I’d like to think so.

Translating as Hot Delusion or Hot Frenzy, this film was also released as Delirium and has nothing to do with the 1987 giallo Delirium AKA Photos of Gioia. Instead, it stars one-time Mr. Universe and the former husband of Jayne Mansfield Mickey Hargitay as Dr. Herbert Lyutak, a man who is a psychological consultant to the police and the serial killer they’ve been chasing.

Just when he decides to let his wife Marcia (Rita Calderoni, who was in Nude for Satan and The Amazons) in on the secret, someone starts providing him with alibis and covering up for him, which is good, because Herbert can only perform in the bedroom when he’s beating his wife or murdering other women.

I mean, not good. Good for the story.

There’s also a dream sequence where Marcia and the maid engage in a sapphic encounter while Mickey remains in chains, flipping out and chewing chunks out of scenery that may nearly choke the entire cast. It’s awesome.

The American cut adds in a Vietnam subplot, where Herbert is now a PTSD-damaged ‘Nam vet and Calderoni the field nurse who fell in love with him. It also has two more murders, so there’s that.

Director Renato Polselli has the type of scuzzy credits that mark him as a talent to look into further, like The Vampire and the Ballerina, The Reincarnation of Isabel AKA Black Magic Rites (also starring Hargitay and Calderoni), Revelations of a Psychiatrist on the World of Sexual Perversion and Mania.

Writer/director Nello Rossati isn’t an Italian filmmaker that gets brought up all that often. He does have some interesting films in his resume, including 1987’s Django Strikes Again, the only official sequel to a western genre all on its own. He also made Bona parte di Paolina, one of the few Napoleon-sploitation films that I can think of, as well as Ursula Andress making a comeback by slumming it in a commedia sexy all’italiana called The Sensuous Nurse, a poliziotteschi with the wild name of Don’t Touch the Children!, a movie called Io zombo, tu zombi, lei zomba that I really need to track down as its a sex comedy horror movie about four zombies running a hotel, a giallo-adjacent called Le mani di una donna sola in which a lesbian countess seduces married women until insane asylum escapees chop her hands off, an I Spit On Your Grave-esque film called Fuga scabrosamente pericolosa that stars Andy Sidaris villain Rodrigo Obregón, the all over the place genre buffet that is Top Line and this movie, which is a giallo from right in the middle of the golden era of the form.

Antonio (Silvano Tranquilli, who has been in plenty of giallo, like Black Belly of the Tarantula, The Bloodstained Butterfly and So Sweet, So Dead) is the kind of workaholic husband that falls asleep on date night before fulfilling his duties as a husband. Is it any surprise then that he comes home, finds a dead body in his yard and his wife Anna (Eva Czemerys, The Weapon, The Hour, The Motive; The Killer Reserved Nine Seats; Women in Cell Block 7) has a gun on the dining room table?

As she tells the story of how she left her husband’s bed for their neighbor Massimo, who is always surrounded by other women, loud classical music and a Satanic air. After he abuses her for being rich and continually calls her a cat in heat, then starts abusing her and luring her into all manner of kinks.

The whole time that his wife is telling this story, Antonio is trying to hide the body from neighbors. Yet what if the body is still alive? And how would this couple make it all work after a night of revelations like this? More importantly, is it a giallo when no one really dies?

You may think to yourself while watching this that it looks way better than you’d think, particularly during the LSD orgy sequences. That would be because the director of photography was Aristide Massaccesi, who you may know by one of his many, many names. I often just use the name Joe D’Amato and soon enough, he’d be making movies that put the sex quotient of this movie to shame. You may also notice that the assistant director is someone of some renown: Lamberto Bava.

If you’re new to the giallo, maybe start somewhere else. If you’re starting to think you’ve seen it all, check this one out.

If you’re the daughter of Frankenstein and you need a serum to make you eternally young, there’s only one man’s whose blood will work. That would be Santo. And that’s all we really need to get this movie rolling, right? Also, to make things even more awesome, Dr. Freda Frankenstein has several monsters in her employ, including the half-human, half-ape Truxon and a very Universal Monsters looking version of her father’s creation that she has named Ursus*.

She also kidnaps Santo’s girlfriend Norma and hypnotizes her into cutting out his eyes with a knife because life is cheap in Mexico and our hero has already turned down the evil woman’s advances.

I have a weakness for the female side of the Frankenstein family tree — witness Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter and Lady Frankenstein — and this film has that plus lucha libre and ends with Santo fighting Japanese wrestler Yamaguchi for the title.

After this, Santo would battle Dracula, a wolfman and Dr. Frankenstein himself. Gina Roman, who played Freda, was also in La Venganza de las Mujeres Vampiro as the dreaded Countess Mayra.

*They’re both played by Gerardo Zepeda who was also in El Topo, Night of the Bloody Apes, Santo and Blue Demon Against the Monsters — in which he played Ciclope and a zombie — and so many more movies.

You can watch this on YouTube.