Tag Archives: 1973

Il fiore dai petali d’acciaio (1973)

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Carroll Baker got to be in plenty of giallo films — Knife of Ice, A Quiet Place to Kill, Orgasmo, So Sweet, So Perverse — and it reminds me of a conversation that I had with Mike Justice about how the globalization of mass media has led to a world where out of favor actresses could go to Italy and make some horror or giallo movies. Sharon Stone? You would be perfect right now instead of being a weird head on the end of a finger in a gambling app commercial.

Dr. Andrea Valenti (Gianni Garko, who was in a ton of films, like several Sartana sequels, as well as The Psychic, Devilfish and so many others ) is a surgeon who everyone loves, other than his lover Daniella (Paola Senatore, Emanuelle in America, Ricco the Mean Machine). After a fight, we’re led to believe that Andrea has killed her, cut her up and dumped the remains in a sewage plant. That’s when Baker, playing Evelyn, who is not only one of Andrea’s past lovers, but also the current lesbian love of Daniella as well as her half-sister because this is an Italy movie.

She goes to the police and tries to convince Detective Garrano (Ivano Staccioli, So Sweet, So Dead) that Valenti killed her sister, which seems like it could be true. After all, didn’t Valenti put his rich wife into a mental hospital after they had sex on their wedding night? What the hell is that about? Is he that amazing in bed? Is she so innocent that she was shocked by his member? Really, this is amazing.

But I digress.

The first wife is now sane and has left the asylum, yet no one knows where she is. As for the doctor, he’s already moved on to his secretary Elaina (Pilar Velázquez, A White Dress for Marialé). And then he starts getting blackmailed as someone has the photos of the murder. Or maybe accident is more the term, as whomever it was tripped and fell on the metal flower artwork in his house.

While Argento wouldn’t have art outright murder someone until Tenebre, this movie borrows a lot from him. The metal flower seems like something out of The Bird With the Crystal Plumage and the tunnel of baby doll heads with a body at the end is straight out of Dario.

Director Gianfranco Piccioli produced lots of movies but only directed two other films: The Hokey-Pokey Gang and Double by Half.

By 1973, the giallo was starting to not be as popular as it once was. Then again, rumors of its demise were the same as disco, as the name of the genre may have shifted — erotic thriller — but the stories are the same. They’re still getting made today. Yet when this was made, it was definitely created to fit the exact format that everyone expected with a gloved and masked scalpal slashing killer.

All things being said, I have never seen another giallo that has an underwater scuba lesbian scene, so that’s perhaps one audacious reason to watch The Flower With the Petals of Steel.

Circle of Fear episode 19: “Graveyard Shift”

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Fred Colby (John Astin) used to be a star but now he’s just a security guard at the same studio that he used to perform at, which is set to close in a few weeks. However, he seems pretty happy and he and his wife Linda (Astin’s wife at the time, Patty Duke) are expecting a child. The only problem he seems to have is the gang of kids that keeps breaking in.

Well, that seems to be it until a dark force within the studio threatens everything that he loves about his life.

There are plenty of horror film references here — the monsters don’t want the studio to close — and Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the mummy, the wolfman and the ape man are all characters that Fred once was on screen. And finally, after nineteen episodes, producer William Castle shows up.

I always associate Astin with Night Gallery — he directed “The House,” “A Fear of Spiders” and “The Dark Boy” episodes — so it was kind of interesting to see him show up within another horror anthology.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Mia moglie, un corpo per l’amore (1973)

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My Wife, A Body to Love gets at one of the major issues of the May and September romance. Paolo (Silvano Tranquilli, Castle of Blood) is married to the much younger Simona (Antonella Murgia) and when his stamina isn’t enough, she’s cheating on him with Marco (Peter Lee Lawrence, who was mostly in Italian westerns). The strange thing is, Paolo thinks life is a game and decides to just let this one act itself out. In fact, he even permits her to have sex with Marco but not fall in love.

Or does he? As all three go on a beach vacation, he suddenly starts thinking differently about his wife. He keeps telling her how he’ll stay in control of her and allow her to have sex with men of his choice. You get the idea that — look, the sex scenes are pretty chaste, so don’t get too excited — that he savors making love with his wife after the men she sleeps with and gets off when she tells him how much better they were than him.

But he’s in control, he keeps telling her.

Maybe he’s telling himself.

Go figure — the fantasies of men are impotent when faced with the reality of a woman who finds agency and discovers she can do well enough by making her own way.

Mario Imperoli died young — he was only 46 when he expired in 1977 — and he made a great crime movie, Like Rabid Dogs, as well as the sex comedies Blue Jeans, The Sweet Aunts and Monika, the crime films Canne mozze (written by George Eastman) and Sawed Off Shotgun, as well as the incest drama Quella strana voglia d’amare (also written by Eastman).

La muerte incierta (1973)

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José Ramón Larraz may be best known for Symptoms, Vampyres, The House That Vanished, The Coming of Sin, Black Candles, Rest In Pieces, Edge of the Axe and Deadly Manor, but he also made this giallo.

Clive Dawson (Antonio Molino Rojo) returns to India with his new bride Brenda (Mary Maude, who also is in The House That Screamed and Terror) which upsets his old lover Shaheen (Rosalba Neri, Lady Frankenstein, Amuck, The Devil’s Wedding Night, The Girl in Room 2A, 99 Women) to the point that she kills herself, but not before placing a curse on the new marriage. This being the 70s — not the 30s as the flashbacks claim — incest rears its head as Brenda and Clive’s son Rupert soon find themselves realizing that they’re young, Clive is old and that he thinks he’s being chased by his ghost ex in the form of a tiger, so they should just have rough sex.

“I’ve satisfied all your desires. You’ve taken advantage of me,” says Shaheen, but the real mystery of this movie is why would any man leave Rosalba Neri. Outside of perhaps only Edwige Fenech, no one in this genre — maybe this world in 1973 — offers such a smoldering presence that is as much frightening in its intensity as it is arousing.

Il prato macchiato di rosso (1973)

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The Red-Stained Lawn or The Bloodstained Lawn was originally called Vampiro 2000 and infuses science fiction, Gothic horror and giallo all in one wacky package with a bloodsucking robotic cherry on top.

The film takes place in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. There, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization agent find a bottle of wine with blood in it. How could this happen to such a well-known vintage from Michelino Croci? What if the winery is a front for a blood smuggling scheme? And how would blood stay good in bottles? So many mysteries!

Dr. Antonio Genovese (Enzo Tarascio), his wife Nina (Marina Malfatti, All the Colors of the Dark, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times, Seven Blood-Stained Orchids) and her brother Alfiero (Claudio Biava) look for people with no ties — hippies, drifters, prostitutes and literally gypsies, tramps and thieves — to lure to an all expenses paid getaway at their castle. Folks like freewheeling musician Max (George Willing, Who Saw Her Die?) and his lover (Daniela Caroli), who have accepted an invitation to spend some time in the Genovese estate, along with the alcoholic tramp (Lucio Dalla, who would become a major singing star in the 80s), a gypsy (Barbara Marzano, The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance) and a sex worker (Dominique Boschero, Argoman the Fantastic Superman).

The bloodsucking machine is literally right out in the open, treated like a piece of pop art. You have to admire that level of out in the open when it comes to an Italian film killer. You also have to love that the killers have a shower that sprays wine and this doesn’t bother Max nor his never named girlfriend, nor does the hall of mirrors bedroom seem strange to anyone else. There’s also a curtain between rooms that totally looks like female anatomy and even more so a scene taking right out of The Laughing Woman.

Director and writer Riccardo Ghione only made four movies: this one, a documentary called Il Limbo, the hippy drama A cuore freddo and La rivoluzione sessuale, a movie in which 7 men and 7 women perform an experiment inspired by the sexual orgone energy theories of Wilhelm Reich. If that was crazy enough, it was co-written by Dario Argento. He would go on to write several other films, including the Joe D’Amato film Delizia.

I love that this movie stands on the line between arthouse and grindhouse with every decision it makes leaning away from the artistic and toward the prurient and bloody. Sure, there’s a message about how the rich subjugate the lower classes, but it’s also a film where Malfatti gives speeches about Wagner and how meaningless her victims are, all while a gigantic cartoony machine literally sucks young blood.

Circle of Fear episode 18: “Legion of Demons”

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Directed by Paul Stanley, who had more than 110 directing credits, and written by Anthony Lawrence (who created The Phoenix and The Sixth Sense) and Richard Matheson, is all about Betty (Shirley Knight, Paul Blart’s mom), whose friend Janet (Kathryn Hays, As the World Turns)  has invited to leave small town life behind and enjoy the big city.

Except the big city is filled with devil worshippers.

Janet disappears and the office where she worked suggests that Betty take her place. But as she works more and more around these drones, she wonders if they have lost their souls.

Because they have.

Starring Jon Cypher (Man-At-Arms from Masters of the Universe), John Ventantonio (George Atwood in Private Parts), Neva Patterson, Paul Karr, James Luisi and Bridget Hanley, this episode may take a fair amount from Rosemary’s Baby, but when William Castle is your producer, you can do that.

This is one of the better episodes, filled with inventive camera angles, arresting dream sequences and plenty of Satanic imagery. Consider this my recommendation.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Tetsujin Tiger Seven (1973)

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Iron Man Tiger Seven was a Japanese tokusatsu series that aired from October 6, 1973 to March 30, 1974 with a total of 26 episodes. It’s pretty much trying to be Kamen Rider without being Kamen Rider and has a hero born of tragedy, as several Mu monsters — yes, the same Mu that sung under the ocean and is also the home of the KLF — attack a dig that our hero’s human alter ego — Takigawa Go — is part of with his father, who is leading it. He’s stabbed in the heart and his father gives him an ancient heart that he has found in the ruins and a magic pendant that activates his powers when he says, “Tiger Spark.”

I say tragic because moments later, everyone but Takigawa Go gets killed and then a few episodes later, his girlfriend gets killed to, giving him the trademark scarf he wears when in Iron Man Tiger Seven mode.

Then again, he does get a somewhat intelligent motorcycle with rocket boosters and transformative powers that comes to his aid when he roars.

The bad guys in this are astounding with each monster of the week being called “something” Genjin, so we have Kappa Genjin, Merman Genjin, Flying Dragon Genjin, Rat Genjin and the incredible Wolf Genjin, who is a white wolf riding a motorcycle.

The same company that made this also created Kaiketsu Lion Maru, which has three kids in the samurai era who can transform into a human/lion hybrid.

You can watch the first episode on YouTube. There are also episodes with English subtitles on the Internet Archive.

Circle of Fear episode 17 “Doorway to Death”

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Directed by Daryl Duke and written by Richard Matheson and Jimmy Sangster, this episode is all about a family moving into a new apartment in San Francisco. When young Robert (Leif Garrett) starts to explore, he finds an empty apartment with a door into the woods inside. He also meets a man inside those woods who asks to meet his sisters Jane (Garrett’s sister Dawn Lyn, Walking Tall) and Peggy (Susan Dey). Yet when the girls visit the room themselves, they only find a closet.

And then she learns that the ghost — the man in the woods killed his wife with an axe and then was executed — wants her for his next wife.

“Doorway to Death” may not be the best episode of the show, but the scene where Peggy wakes up to find wet footprints around her bed, as if someone was walking her room and watching her all night? That’s the kind of weird I keep watching this show for.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Circle of Fear episode 16 “Earth, Air, Fire and Water”

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When you have D.C. Fontana, Harlan Ellison and Richard Matheson working on a story, you know it’s going to be good. This episode of Circle of Fear has a community of six artists who discover six colorful glass containers within a storefront that has rent and location that’s too good to be true.

Ellen Parrish (Joan Blackman, Macon County Line, Shivers, Blue Hawaii, Pets), Sam Richards (Frank Converse), Jake Freeman (Tim McIntire,  the voice of Blood in A Boy and His Dog), Tyne Daly (Cagney and Lacey), Brooke Bundy (Elaine in two Elm Street movies) and Paul Cepeda (Scott Marlowe) are the artists who soon find that the containers are starting to take their souls and destroy them.

Director Alexander Singer had a career that stretched from making an episode of Dr. Kildare in 1961 all the way to Star Trek: Voyager in 1998.

This is a strange episode that I’ve noticed that plenty of folks disliked. I have no idea what episode they watched, because I loved it. It’s perfect for 1973 and the end of the era of artist collectives and free love. Watch it and let me know what you think.

You can watch this on YouTube.

APRIL MOVIE THON DAY 21: Nihon Chinbotsu (1973)

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The highest grossing film in Japan in 1973 and 1974, Submersion of Japan or Japan Sinks! was also a big deal in the U.S. Roger Corman bought the rights as part of New World Pictures and made a remix where he cut out lots of footage, added new sequences directed by Andrew Meyer (Night of the Cobra Woman) and added Lorne Greene as an ambassador at the United Nations as well as appearances by Rhonda Leigh Hopkins (Summer School Teachers), John Fujioka (Shinyuki from American Ninja), Marvin Miller (anarratorr in several movies), Susan Sennett (Candy from The Candy Snatchers), Ralph James (Sixpack Annie), Phil Roth, Cliff Pellow and Joe Dante.

Now called Tidal Wave, it came out in May of 1975, while New World also released an uncut subtitled version called Submersion of Japan in America.

If you remember when we discussed Nosutoradamusu no daiyogen, Japan was in disaster mania, predicting the end of the world at every turn. This movie was inspired by Nippon chinbotsu by Sakyô Komatsu, the same author of Virus: The End, Bye Bye Jupiter, Disappearance of the Capital and Time of the Apes. Of all his work, Komatsu’s sinking story was so popular that it became a TV series in 1974 and was remade in 2006 as Doomsday: The Sinking of Japan, then remade again as the 2020 TV mini-series Japan Sinks 2020, which was so big that it played theaters and spun off another series, Japan Sinks: People of Hope.

There was even a 2006 parody, Nihon igai zenbu chinbotsu, which means The World Sinks Except Japan.

This was no cheap picture. Director Shirô Moritani has been second unit on Yojimbo while writer Shinobu Hashimoto was behind Rashomon, Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress and Throne of Blood amongst many other movies, as well as the director of Lake of Illusions, Minami no kaze to nami and I Want to Be a Shellfish.

Two hundred million years ago, what we know as the Earth was a single continent which split up over the years. At one point, Japan was part of the continent of Asia. But now? If you read the title, spoiler, Japan is going to sink. The first people to find out are geophysicist Dr. Tadokoro (Keiju Kobayashi, whose roles in comedies defined what post-war Japan saw as the ideal salaryman) and Onodera Toshio (Hiroshi Fujioka, the original Kamen Rider) take their submarine Wadatsumi-1 to the Ogasawara Islands. How bad is it? Well, the land mass that makes up the islands of Japan itself are about to collapse into a trench.

While Onodera is falling for Abe Reiko (Ayumi Ishida), volcanos start to erupt and earthquakes break out with more frequency. A rich businessman named Mr. Watari (Shōgo Shimada) pays for a series of expeditions to discover if Japan can be saved. But just like our climate, it’s already too late. Unlike our crisis, Japan has three choices: form a new country, seek a home in other countries or accept the end of the country and die.

They only have ten months to decide and as many countries offer to help, I’m reminded that as much as I love Japan, it’s an incredibly racist country. Even in a fictional story, South Korea, China and Taiwan refuse to help them. By the end, as the country sinks into the sea, more than half the population remains to go down with the ship. And our hero and heroine? They’re seperated a world away from one another.

You know who is in this? Turkish born actor Andrew Hughes, a businessman based in Tokyo as an import-export businessman who shows up in so many Japanese films from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s, usually in minor roles but even playing Hitler in The Crazy Adventure. The Japanese prime minister is played by Nobuo Nakamura, who was in Kurosawa’s films, but the really interesting actor is the man playing the driver of the Japanese leader. He’s played by Haruo Nakajima, who played Godzilla from 1954’s original film to 1972’s Godzilla vs. Gigan. After this role, he went to work in Toho’s bowling alley. I wish I was making that up.

This movie has some amazing alternate titles, such as Panic Over Tokyo (West Germany and I’m shocked that Frankenstein was not involved, as his name was on every Toho Godzilla movie releasd there), The Fall of Japan (Belgium), Death in the Rising Sun (Portugal knows how to name a movie), The Sun Does Not Rise Over the Island (Czechoslovakia), Planet Earth Year Zero (Italy), S.O.S. The Earth Is Sinking (Sweden) and The End of the World (Turkey).

Roger Ebert nominated this movie for The 50 Worst Films of All Time–and How They Got That Way by Harry Medved and Randy Dreyfuss. He said, “The movie never ends, but if you wait long enough it gets to a point where it’s over.”

As for the Japanese version of the film — which lends its special effects to the aforementioned Toho Nostradamus movie — I really liked that unlike so many disaster films, the actual socioeconomic problems that the world would face get explained and shown. There’s no shortage of waves crushing everything in their way, but at least we learn something.

You can watch the original Japanese version of this movie at the Internet Archive.