April 18: Heavy Metal Movies: Pick a movie from Mike McPadden’s great book. RIP. List here.
Jason Jones (Robin Askwith from the Confessions Of… movies) is a burned-out would-be rock star on his way to Brittlehurst Manor, a health escape that has also drawn in Judy Peters (Vanessa Shaw), who is looking for her aunt.
It’s no surprise or spoiler that this is really a…Horror Hospital!
Yes, Dr. Christian Storm (Michael Gough), Judy’s aunt (Ellen Pollock) and evil dwarf Frederick (Skip Martin) have been drawing hippies her and either turning them into brainwashed, motorcycle-helmet wearing zombies or outright killing them.
There’s even a band, Mystic, who play the movie’s theme “Mark of Death!” Their members are James IV Boris, Alan “The River” Hudson and Simon Lust. Those are some great stage names! The cross-dresser who is singing for them is co-writer Alan Watson. And Mystic is really the psychedelic group Tangerine Peel, who at one point had songwriter/producer Mike Chapman, who promised Blondie that he would make Parallel Lines into their biggest album. It includes “Heart of Glass” and he said of the album to Rolling Stone, “There’s loads of hits, it’s a great album, but who gives a fuck. It’s easy, you see. When we go into the studio, we go in and make hit records, and it just happens. We don’t think about it. If you’re going to be in the music business, you gotta make hit records. If you can’t make hit records, you should fuck off and go chop meat somewhere.” He also produced albums for The Knack, Suzi Quatro, Toni Basil, Pat Benatar, and more.
Vanessa Shaw is really Phoebe Shaw, who was mainly in commercials and dated Askwith after this. She also dosed the entire cast and crew at the wrap party with the cake she made. Ah, 1973!
This was directed and written by Antony Balch, who in addition to bringing all sorts of incredible movies to England — Don’t Deliver Us from Evil, Supervixens, Truck Stop Women — also directed one of my favorite movies ever, the mummy starring Secrets of Sex AKA Bizarre.
This movie is a total mess. Who cares? I loved it.
In Italy, this was known as Diario proibito di un collegio femminile, which means Forbidden Diary of a Girls’ Boarding School. That’s the type of title that gets you into the theater.
I have to speak with pride for my Italian filmmaking countrymen: they do not give a fuck.
Any other movie these days that would put a child in danger would not do what director Enzo G. Castellari and writers Tito Carpi, Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino and Leonardo Martín do in this movie.
When the question is asked, “Does this go too far?” I assume Castellari laughed and drank another shot of J&B, delirious in the director’s chair.
Castellari claims he saw Bullitt and wanted to make this, but he probably was thinking of The French Connection. I mean, Fernando Rey is in it, just to assure us that, yes, this Italian movie will be stealing a lot from that movie.
But who cares? This is the story of a tough cop, Vice-Commissioner Belli (Franco Nero), battling perhaps even tougher bad guys, the kinds of drug dealers that’ll blow up their own men just to take out a few lawmen. These new criminals are so disgusting that even the the old-school organized crime bosses like Cafiero (Fernando Rey) try to take them out, only to learn that some of their most loyal men have decided to work for the other side.
Even after all the work it takes to convince Commissioner Aldo Scavino (James Whitmore) that he has a case, Belli must watch as the old man is killed. Soon, the new mob beats his lover Mirella (Delia Boccardo) into submission and then well…runs his daughter over with a car.
Any other movie would hold back from this and do it off-screen.
Welcome to Italy.
In Erica Schultz’s The Sweetest Taboo: An Unapologetic Guide to Child Kills In Film, she refers to this scene as one of the best ever made: “…High Crime’s car death is definitely top tier.” It’s shocking, so wild that I had to rewind it to ensure I had just seen what I thought I had. So when Belli goes wild, killing off everyone in his path — and looking suave doing it, I’m secure enough in my manhood to say Franco Nero is smoldering — we understand. I mean, we just watched his kid fly over the roof of a car and get run over.
When I was researching this movie, I saw that someone on Letterboxd referred to its soundtrack as dull and plodding. I want to go total Inspector Belli on that person, throwing the kind of slaps that an Italian action hero is known for. I was humming along the entire film and it’s been trapped in my head ever since. I don’t know how anyone could watch this and not fall in love with this movie.
The Blue Underground release of High Crime has so much. It includes a 4K UHD and Blu-ray with the film on it, along with three commentaries (Castellari; Nero with Mike Malloy; Troy Howarth, Nathaniel Thompson and Eugenio Ercolani); interviews with Castellari, Nero, Massimo Vanni, Roberto Girometti and Oliver Onions (Guido and Maurizio De Angelis); a featurete by Eurocrime! director Mike Malloy; an alternate ending; a trailer; a poster and still gallery; and the soundtrack on CD.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will be playing this tonight at 7 p.m. at the Sie Film Center in Denver, CO. (tickets here). It will be hosted by Theresa Mercado with very special co-host James Branscome of Cinematic Void.For more information, visit Cinematic Void.
Torso is such a simple title. I’d rather call this film by its Italian name: I Corpi Presentano Tracce di Violenza Carnale, or The Bodies Bear Traces of Carnal Violence. Either way, it was directed by Sergio Martino and features none of the cast that he had come to use in his past films like George Hilton, Ivan Rassimov or Edwige Fenech.
It does, however, star Brtish actress Suzy Kendall, who played the lead role of Julia in Dario Argento’s seminal The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. She’s so associated with giallo that she appeared as the main character’s mother in 2012’s ode to the genre, Berberian Sound Studio.
This is a film that wastes no time being strange. Or salacious. A photographer is shooting a soft focus lovemaking session between three women amongst creepy, eyeless baby dolls. By the time we register what is happening, we’re now in a classroom, where swooping pans and zooms refer us to the main cast of the film as we overhear a lecture and later a discussion about Pietro Perugino’s painting of Saint Sebastian. Did he believe in God? Or was he just trying to sell sentimentality? Could an atheist find himself able to translate religion to those with faith?
We cut to a couple making out in a car as a figure stalks them through the eye of the camera, making us complicit in the act of the killer. Quick cuts reveal the white-masked face of this maniac. The man runs after him while the girl doesn’t even care that they had a voyeur watching. As she waits for him to return to the car, but grows impatient. The headlights of the car cast her shadow large across the columns of a bridge. And their light is quickly extinguished by black-gloved hands. The camerawork here is really striking, keeping us watching for the killer, as we’re no longer behind his eyes. His attack is swift and ruthless, juxtaposed against the images of fingers penetrating the eyes of a doll.
The art professor (John Richardson, Black Sunday, The Church) and Jane (Kendall) meet by chance at a church where she challenges him to change his views on Perugino. As she returns from their somewhat romantic afternoon, Jane spies her friend Carol arguing in the car with a man who she believes is married.
Meanwhile, ladies of the evening walk the street, ending up with Stefano, a student who has been stalking Julie. He has trouble performing and the prostitute he’s with tells him that all the men with hang-ups always come her way. That said — even if he’s queer, he better pay the money. He flips out and attacks her, but she makes her escape.
We’re then taken to a hippy party that looks like it’s taking place inside Edward Lionheart’s Theater of Blood. There’s weed, there are acoustic guitars, there are bongos, there are dudes with neckerchiefs, there are motorcycles. Truly, there’s something for everyone. But after leading on two men, Carol just walks out into the mud. They try and chase her, but she makes her escape into the foggy night. We hear her footsteps through the swamp as she walks, exhausted and covered in mud. What better time for our white-masked killer to return? We see glimpses of him through the fog and then he is gone. Whereas in past films Martino ignored the murder scenes instead of story, here the violence is extended, placing the killer and his actions in full view. After killing the girl, he rubs mud all over her body before stabbing her eyes — again intercut with the baby doll imagery. Her blood leaks into the mud as the score dies down.
This scene really feels like what the first two Friday the 13th movies were trying to achieve, but of course several years before they were made.
A police detective is in front of the art class, showing images not of art, but of the crime scene. A piece of cloth has been found under the fingernails of one of the murdered students, Flo. And that same scarf was found on Carol’s body. It’s their duty to report seeing anyone who wore this scarf to the police, who want to cooperate with the students who normally riot and throw rocks at them.
Two of the men in the class — Peter and George — were the last two people to be seen with Carol, the ones who she turned down at the party. Meanwhile, Stefano continues to stalk Jane. The music in this film is so forward-leaning — tones play when the killer shows or during moments of tension.
A man calls Daniela and tells her that if she ever tells where she saw the red and black scarf, she’s dead. Fearing for her life, she tells her uncle, who lends his country home to her and her friends so that they can get away from the city while the killer is at large.
Oh yeah — I forgot the pervy scarf salesman, who the police are leaning on. Right after talking to the police inspector, he calls someone and asks for money to buy his silence. Whoever it is, they bought the scarf from him and wouldn’t want anyone else to know. They’ll also get out of town and head to the country. Coincidence? I think not!
Stefano is all over Dani, telling her that he needs her. She wants nothing to do with him. When she stares at him, she remembers seeing him wear the red scarf. She escapes — slamming the door in his face. She tells Jane that she remembers seeing him wear the scarf — and never again — the day Flo died. The whole time, the creepy uncle is watching the two girls. Jane offers to speak to Stefano, then meet the girls at the vacation home.
The street vendor is flush with cash, creeping along in the dark. A car starts to follow him. We see the black-gloved hands again as the car hits its victim again and again, bright red gore pouring all over the screen.
Jane goes to speak to Stefano, finding only strange baby dolls and letters to Dani asking her to love him and remember the promise that she made as a little girl. Jane is surprised by Stefano’s grandmother, who tells her that he left town.
The other girls are asleep on the train as someone watches them. A strange man enters their train car and sits down.
The camerawork in this movie feels as predatory as the perverts and killers that exist within it. Speaking of pervs, when the girls arrive in the countryside, the local men pretty much lose their minds, particularly over Ursula (Carla Brait, the man wrestling dancer from The Case of the Bloody Iris). She and Katia make out as a peeping tom watches, only for the killer to show up and off the leering man. There’s an amazing scene of the killer dumping the pervert into a well, shot underwater and staring upward as the body falls toward the lens.
Man, every man in this movie is scum. They’re either frightened boys or perverts wanting one chance to knock up a woman or scarred from past sexual encounters. None of them are positive, as even the uncle who gives Dani the villa seems way too interested in her. Every man is a predator at worst and a leering pervert at best.
Jane hurts her ankle when she gets overly excited about breakfast. A doctor arrives — the mysterious man from the train — and he gives her a pill, which knocks her out.
The girls go sunbathing while Jane recovers. Dani thinks she sees Stefano — complete with the red scarf — watching them. They return home and drink champagne, which Jane uses to wash down her sleeping pills.
A few minutes later, the door rings. It’s Stefano — the girls all scream — but he’s dead — the girls scream again — and the killer is behind him, holding the red scarf — now scream even louder! Instead of showing us the murders, Martino switches form, cutting to a ringing bell and Stefano being buried.
Jane wakes up, asking where her breakfast is. She’s obviously slept late as a result of the pills. She walks around the apartment, looking for Dani, Ursula and Katia, only to find a mess. Tossed chairs, bottles of beer and every single one of her friends murdered. Suzy Kendall is amazing in this scene, caught between fear and nausea. Unlike so many wooden giallo performances, she’s actually believable.
She hides as the killer comes back, forced to stay quiet and watch as he saws her friends into pieces. Even the ordinary world routine of the milkman arriving cannot stop the butchering of her friends, with her trapped just feet away.
This final act is completely unexpected, as up until now, the film had played by the rules of the giallo, the large number of victims versus a large number of red herrings.
In fact, this film is so packed with red herrings, even the cast had no idea who the killer was. Martino wouldn’t tell them who it was, so each of the actresses had her own theory as to who the killer was. And in the original script, the killer survived.
Now, instead of that traditional giallo structure as I mentioned above, it is the last survivor — a near prototype for the final girl — against a killer. Throw in that Julie can’t move well due to her leg and Martino has set up quite the suspenseful coda.
Trapped in the house, Julie tries to signal with a mirror, using Morse code. But it totally misses the heroic doctor’s sight. He places a call, but it doesn’t seem like it’s to Julie. She looks out the window and sees the killer coming back.
It turns out that the killer was the professor, who saw a childhood friend die trying to reach for a doll. He compares the other kills to dolls, with only Julie as a flesh and blood person. Everyone else was a bitch or played games with him or blackmailed him. He hacked Ursula and Katia to pieces like dolls as a result. Dani saw him. Carol may have seen him. And he killed Stefano when he saw him in the village. Death, he says, is the best keeper of secrets and then he sees Julie as a doll and tries to hang her. She’s saved at the last second by the doctor.
They battle into a farmhouse, across the yard and to a similar rock where we saw the younger professor watch his friend die. We hear a screen and have no idea who has been killed — but luckily for Jane, the doctor survives. He discusses whether fate or providence had kept him in town, where he could save her. Perhaps it was written in the stars. Julie replies that Franz, the professor, would have been a realist and called it a necessity. Franz is dead and the dreamers live on.
The more times that I’ve watched this film, the more that I appreciate it and how it flips the genre conventions on their head and moves toward more of a slasher, with many of the giallo elements feeling tacked on somewhat to stay within the expected pieces of the form. A real clue that it’s really a slasher? The killings are more important than who the killer is.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will be playing this on Thursday, Jan. 9 at 7:30 PM at the Little Theater in Rochester, NY (tickets here). For more information, visit Cinematic Void.
Chris Miller (former Spanish child star Marisol; when she married dancer Antonio Gades, Fidel Castro acted as their godfather) lives with her stepmother Ruth (Jean Seberg, the haunted and doomed beauty who was also in Breathless and Saint Joan). The loss of Chris’ father has damaged both of them, so when a drifter named Barney (Barry Stokes, Prey) shows up, it changes their lives. Maybe not for the better, what with a killer slicing his way through the village…
This Spanish giallo was directed by Juan Antonio Bardem (yes, the uncle of Javier) who also made Death of a Cyclist and wrote A Bell From Hell. It was written by Santiago Moncada, who was also the pen behind Hatchet for the Honeymoon, Ricco and The Fourth Victim.
Ruth blames Chris for her husband leaving, so she uses Barney to seduce her stepdaughter, who is recovering from the dual loss of her father and being assaulted at school. Her plan? When daddy comes home, he won’t love his daughter much any longer because she’s no longer a virgin. Meanwhile, the killer keeps on killing, including a scene where he dresses like Charlie Chaplin.
Also released as Behind the Shutters Sisters of Corruption and , this movie is also a proto-slasher, rife with bloody murders, including a moment when the rain slicker-covered villain kills an entire family in slow motion.
This is a film that deals as much with trauma as murder, that has the sound of running water causing horrifying flashbacks and has no easy ending for anyone in the film, as the guilt of the killings won’t disappear with the death of any suspect.
Vinegar Syndrome recently released this on blu ray, complete with a newly scanned 4K capture from the original 35mm negative. That version will be playing at The Little.
VIDEO ARCHIVES NOTES: This movie was discussed on the November 12, 2024 episode of the Video Archives podcast.
Directed by William Graham (Change of Habit, Calendar Girl Murders) and written by Robert Boris (Steele Justice, Some Kind of Hero, Electra Glide in Blue, Doctor Detroit), Birds of Prey debuted on January 30, 1973 on CBS.
Harry Walker (David Janssen) is a war vet who is now flying a helicopter for the news, checking in on traffic. He finally gets the action he missed when he sees a bank robbery and learns from his former commander, McAndrew (Ralph Meeker), that the criminals — former Vietnam vets — have kidnapped teller Teresa Janice “T.J.” Shaw (Elayne Heilveil), who is due to be married in a few days.
Pilot Jim Gavin told Flying Magazine, “Birds was a ground-breaking project. We took the helicopter out of its normal environment, put it in the city streets and did all the work with Janssen in flight for real. In fact, since he was a pilot Janssen did a lot of the flying, and I’d sit opposite him.”
If you watch this and wonder why Janssen is singing along to songs and his lyrics don’t match the songs, that’s because copyright issues caused the removal of the jazz standards that were originally in this movie.
As you can imagine, the IMDB trivia section for this movie is filled with deep cut helicopter facts.
Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.
Cleopatra “Cleo” Jones (Tamara Dobson) is the coolest. She’s an international supermodel who drives a ’73 Corvette Stingray, volunteers for the B&S House — love that name — which is a street help group run by her lover Reuben Masters (Bernie Casey) and, oh yeah, she’s also a secret agent.
Her goal is to stop drugs from destroying her community and she starts by burning the poppy fields owned by drug lord Mommy (Shelley Winters). Mommy might run the cops and have drug dealers like “Doodlebug” Simpkins (Antonio Fargas) on her side, but she can’t even match up to Cleopatra.
Unlike so many blacksploitation films, Cleopatra never gets naked. There’s a lot of equality in her relationship with Reuben, but there is an evil lesbian obsessed with sex role for Mommy, so it’s not all forward thinking.
The cops in this are at war with the black community, while Cleopatra, working as a Special Agent to the President, seeks to lift people up and help them to improve their station in life. She’s the authority figure we wish we had. Plus, she wears ten different Giorgio di Sant’Angelo outfits, so she’s always at the front of fashion.
Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.
There are other martial arts movies, but for those that have never seen one before, they’re probably thinking of this movie when they imagine a kung fu movie.
To reach the biggest audience, Bruce Lee, who plays the hero Lee, would be teamed with a white man, Roper (John Saxon) and a black one, Williams (Jim Kelly). They’re on the way to the island of Han (Shih Kien, voiced by Keye Luke) to participate in a fighting tournament to discover the world’s greatest fighter, a theme that so many movies would take. Roper owes the mob money, Williams killed two bad cops and is on the run. They’re friends from Vietnam and ready to scam everyone to make money off the tournament.
British intelligence man Braithwaite (Geoffrey Weeks) informs Lee that Han, a former Shaolin Temple student, is running a fighting school that also sells drugs and trades in people. Oh yeah — Lee’s sister (Angela Mao Ying, Lady Whirlwind) was one of Braithwaite’s agents who was killed by O’Hara (Bob Wall), one of Han’s bodyguards.
When they win their fights, everyone gets the woman of their choice. Williams takes several, Roper takes Tania (Ahna Capri), Han’s secretary, while Lee chooses Mei-Ling (Betty Chung), who is an undercover agent there to help him.
This is filled with so many amazing things, such as Bolo Yeung as the main bodyguard, Mr. Han’s fake hands, a gigantic ending filled with so many battles and Lee and Han facing off inside a room full of mirrors, which finds director Robert Clouse taking the end of The Lady from Shanghai.
Kien Shih, who played Han, was a close friend of Bruce Lee’s father, an actor in the Cantonese Opera where Shih had worked as a makeup artist. Their relationship was so close that Bruce addressed Kien as uncle and Kien called Bruce nephew. At one point during filming, Bruce told Kien Shih, “I feel that you will live longer than me.” Kien replied, “Nephew, don’t force yourself too hard. You are overworking yourself.” Lee died weeks before Enter the Dragon was released in Hong Kong.
This movie changed martial arts films, while two other actors who would do the same a few years after, Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, appear in small roles.
I’ve watched this hundreds of times and it still makes me happy every single time I put it on. It’s just the perfect episodic fighting movie.
Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.
Directed and written by Walerian Borowczyk, Immoral Tales is four stories that each have a different tale of lovemaking, starting with “The Tide,” the story of André (Fabrice Luchini) getting head from his 16-year-old cousin (Lise Danvers) in concert with the waves of the ocean. This is taken from a story by surrealist writer André Pieyre de Mandiargues.
It’s followed by “Thérése the Philosopher,” an adaptation of the 1748 novel of the same name that was written by either Jean-Baptiste de Boyer or Marquis d’Argens. Thérése (Charlotte Alexandra) becomes locked out of her room, freeing her to mix her love of Christ with need for sex. There’s an incredibly sacrilegious moment filmed in actual church, which had the director exclaim “Thérèse was played by an English actress. She was only seventeen years old, I remember, and very shy. We had to film her nude scenes in complete seclusion, only my assistant and I were allowed to be there, and he was only twelve! We got permission to film in a real church, a very beautiful and quite famous one, an historical monument. There were no difficulties with the priest; I was very surprised. The man was very tolerant indeed, in spite of all this pipe organ business ! The film was even shown in the church cinema of the village, if you can imagine that!”
The third tale is probably the most famous, as it concerns Elizabeth Báthory (Paloma Picasso) bathing herself in the blood of the young virgins of her kingdom. Picasso is really bathing in 30 gallons of pig blood in this part of the movie. Borowczyk was inspired by surrealist poet Valentine Penrose and the way she related the legend of Bathory.
Finally, Pope Alexander VI’s daughter Lucrezia Borgia (Florence Bellamy) indulges her passions with her male relatives. There was a fifth story, which ended up being the film La Bête. When Arrow released this on blu ray, they added that film into this one as the third chapter.
Despite being a movie all about sex, this is a gorgeous act of cinema, filled with lush imagery and gorgeous camerawork. There was a time when non-hardcore movies could be made as art and this is a prime example, a film that was second place in the French box office behind another example of softcore, Emmanuelle.
Severin is releasing this to retail on November 26, 2024. Until now, it has only been available on their site.
At the peak of his cinematic triumphs, horror legend Dario Argento created projects for RAI TV that broadcast his singular vision of terror into millions of Italian homes: Door Into Darkness was the top-rated 1973 anthology series produced and hosted by Argento. This set has three of the four episodes sourced for the first time from the original 16mm negatives. Argento’s popular 1987 variety/talk show Giallo has stories directed by Argento, Luigi Cozzi and Lamberto Bava, as well as behind-the-scenes tours from Tenebrae, Phenomena and Opera, and guests that include Anthony Perkins, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Fiore Argento newly digitized from broadcast masters.
This Severin set also has over 8 hours of new and archival special features, including commentary by Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth, Dario Argento: My Cinema, Dario Argento: Master of Horrorand interviews with Argento, Cozzi, Bava, Dardano Sacchetti and Antonella Vitale.
In 1973, Dario Argento was invited to RAI television and delivered Door Into Darkness, a show that he would host and even guide some of the episodes. Argento says, at the start of one of the episodes (translated into English) “As for Door Into Darkness, which is the title of the series, you will wonder what it means. Well, it means many things: opening a door to the unknown, to what we don’t know and which therefore disturbs us, scares us. But for me it also means other things. It can happen, and it has happened once, even just once in a person’s life, to close a door behind them and find themselves in a dark room… looking for the light switch and not finding it… trying to open the door and not being able to Do. And having to stay there, in the dark… alone… forever. Well, some of the protagonists of our stories have closed this fatal door behind them.”
The first episode, Il vicino de casa (The Neighbor) was the second directing job for Luigi Cozzi, who had debuted with Il tunnel sotto il mondo (The Tunnel Under the World). It’s the tale of a young couple by the names of Luca (Aldo Reggiani) and Stefania (Laura Belli). They arrive at their new home late at night with their infant child and barely meet anyone, other than knowing they have a neighbor (Mimmo Palmara) but otherwise, they live in a very isolated neighborhood.
On one of the first evenings they are there, as they watch Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, they start to see a stain in the corner of the ceiling that starts to leak from upstairs. What is it? And should they tell the neighbor they have never met? When they go up there, no one is home. However, they soon find the dead body of their neighbor’s wife just in time for him to come back and tie them up.
This story was also written by Cozzi and it has plenty of tension, such as the couple hiding in the dark and then realizing that the husband has dropped his lighter in the killer’s room. It also has a dark non-ending that doesn’t give you much hope, as well as an Argento cameo as a hitchhiker.
For the second episode of Doorway to Darkness, Dario Argento himself would direct and write. Il Tram (The Train) under the name Sirio Bernadotte (thanks to the incredible Italo Cinema).
A young woman is murdered on a train in the seconds that the lights go out and before they return. The murder baffles everyone except for Commisario Giordani (Enzo Cerusico) who seeks to solve it. He thinks that it has to be ticket taker Roberto Magli (Pierluigi Aprà), except that he’s never satisfied. It seems too simple. That’s when he brings his girlfriend Giulia (Paola Tedesco) to ride the train and try to lure out the true murderer.
A very Hitchcock-influenced story, this moment was originally going to be part of The Bird With the Crystal Plumage but it took away from the story. Argento would return to the dark mystery of a train and how frightening it can be in probably the best sequence of his post-Opera films in Sleepless. This may not have the insane energy and madness of his usual style, but the story is well-told and I loved how the hero must overcome his own shortcomings — he’s too cocky, which may be because of his youth — if he wants to save his lover and solve the mystery.
There’s also a striking scene where the killer chases Giulia through the train and into a station and down an immense hallway, all POV, all with her staring back at us. It’s incredible.
The third episode of Doorway to Darkness was directed by Mario Foglietti (who wrote the original story for Four Flies On Grey Velvet) and Luigi Cozzi and was written by Foglietti and Marcella Elsberger.
Argento informs us, in his introduction, that someone has escaped from a sanitarium, saying “…a sick mind wandering a small town, apparently normal, in matter of fact incandescent… Its aim: to kill.” That sick mind may be Robert Hoffman, who has checked into a hotel with an attache case before wandering the streets. One redhead is already killed when he meets Daniela Moreschi (Mara Venier) and follows her back home.
This feels like ten minutes of story shoved into an hour and sadly doesn’t work. But hey — Erika Blanc is in it and if the worst thing you do is watch a giallo with her in it, your day isn’t all that bad. Foglietti gets the look of Argento but doesn’t have the same ability to make art out of a flawed script.
Directed by Roberto Pariante (who was the assistant director for Argento on The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, The Cat o’Nine Tails and Four Flies On Grey Velvet) and Dario Argento, who wrote the script with Luigi Cozzi, Testimone oculare is my favor episode of Doorway to Darkness. It’s so simple and yet succeeds as an example of giallo.
Roberta Leoni (Marilù Tolo, Las trompetas del apocalipsis) is driving on a dark and rainy night when she sees a woman dive in front of her. She doesn’t hit her, but does find her dead body. She’s been shot in the back. That’s when she sees the glint of a gun and runs through the storm to a diner where she breaks down. The police, led by Inspector Rocchi (Glauco Onorato), take her back to the crime scene but there’s no body and no blood.
Everyone treats Roberta like a hysterical woman, including her husband Guido (Riccardo Salvino), even after someone breaks into their house while they’re out for their anniversary and the next day when someone tries to shove his wife into traffic. Then the phone calls start and never seem to stop.
One night, while all alone, the killer calls and says that they will finally kill Roberta. Guido comes home just in time and says that instead of leaving — the killer cut the phone line — they are going to wait for them and he will shoot whoever is after her. As you can imagine, this isn’t the way things end up happening.
Sometimes, a simply told mystery is exactly what you need. That’s what this episode gave me. Supposedly Argento disliked the work that Pariante did and went back and filmed a lot of this himself — the tracking of the killer by footsteps is definitely him — and then not putting his name on it.
Gli incubi di Dario Argento (Dario Argento’s Nightmares) was a TV series created and directed by Dario Argento that was part of the RAI TV show Giallo by Enzo Tortora. He’s probably most famous for the show Portabello that had viewers call in to buy or sell things, present ideas or try and look for love. And if they could get the parrot who was the show’s namesake to say his name, they would win a prize. He was also arrested in 1983 and jailed for 7 months as it was thought he was a member of an organized crime family, the Nuova Camorra Organizzata. It was a case of mistaken identity and he got out of ten years in jail thanks to the Radical Party. They offered him a candidacy to the European Parliament, which he won in a landslide. He was cleared of all charges the year this show ran and brought this show — on which he discussed unsolved murder cases — and Portabella to RAI.
The main draw of these episodes are nine new mini-movies made by Argento. They’re three-minute shorts shot on 35mm that show off some wild effects but one of them, Nostalgia Punk, so upset viewers that it has rarely been shown since. The stories are:
La finestra sul cortile (The Window on the Court): This is Argento’s tribute to Alfred Hitchcock and Rear Window. After watching the film, a man named Massimo watches his neighbors fight. He runs down with a knife to stop them, but falls on his own weapon and is blamed by the police for killing the woman. If you recognize the music, it’s part of the Simon Boswell score from Phenomena.
Riti notturni (Night Rituals): This is also missing from some online versions of the film, but has a maid conspire with a voodoo coven to murder and devour the couple that she works for.
Il Verme (The Worm): A woman who goes by the name of Bettina is reading Dylan Dog (the comic book that Cemetery Man comes from) when she overhears a story about parasites that go from cats to humans. As she explores her nearly nude body in a mirror, she notices a worm has grown out of her eye, which she stabs out.
Amare e morire (Loving and Dying): Set to Michael Jackson’s “Bad,” this story has Gloria assaulted and left for dead. As she recovers, she believes that the man who raped her is one of three neighbors. She sleeps with each in an attempt to learn who it is and get her bloody revenge.
Nostalgia punk: The most controversial segment, this has a woman’s water become poisoned. She begins to vomit multicolored liquids and then parts of her body before she finally tears her own body to pieces and her organs rain out of her destroyed carcass. It got so many complaints that Argento was told to settle down in future segments.
La Strega (The witch): Using Morricone’s score from The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, this has Cinzia’s party guests playing a game called “The Witch” that ends with children screaming and holding a bloody head.
Addormentarsi (Falling asleep): A man is possessed by a demon just before he falls asleep and then devours his dog. This uses “Anarchy in the UK” by the Sex Pistols.
Sammy: Sammy is a young girl who is frightened when Santa enters her room. Then Santa removes his face and reveals a monster. It’s simple but it really works.
L’incubo di chi voleva interpretare l’incubo di Dario Argento (The Nightmare of the One Who Wished to Explain Dario Argento’s Nightmare): A young man comes to REI to be part of this series and when he stays at a hotel, he soon learns he’s in a room with foreigners who steal everything he has and then threaten to kill him. It turns out that it’s all a set-up by Argento.
At the beginning of every episode, Argento appears, often with Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni (Demons 2, Il Bosco 1, Opera) all gothed out and acting as his starry-eyed assistant.
Argento also created another segment for Giallo, Turno di notte (Night Shift), which was about what happens to cab drivers at night. Episodes were also directed by Lamberto Bava and Luigi Cozzi. He also shared how he filmed several big moments in his most famous movies, such as the Loma camera sequence in Tenebrae; the bird attack in Opera, the transformation scenes in Demons 2and how he directed Goblin to create the score for Suspiria. These scenes are worth watching and also appear in the Luigi Cozzi-directed Dario Argento: Master of Horror.
While this is by no means necessary watching for those with a passing interest in Italian horror, for devotees of the form and Argento, it is required viewing. It’s the chance to basically get nine new stories even if they are very short.
Directed and written by Han Hsiang Li, this is the steamier side of Shaw Brothers. Yes, it’s not all punches, kicks and blood. This is an anthology about a brothel, telling the story of Da-Qin (Yu Feng) and her battles against owner Miss Ho (Lily Ho, playing the opposite of her role in Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan). Despite being sold into sexual submission, she remains defiant. Then, the story moves on to a young emperor having his first time in the brothel before meeting a soldier who wants the house of ill repute’s most gorgeous woman and finds himself possessed by the emperor, while the object of his desire was saving herself for the very same leader. It’s a musical, it has ghosts and yes, none of these anthology chapters really add up.
In the middle of all the whippings and nudity, Jackie Chan shows up in the last story as a waiter.
I kind of like the audacity of this movie in that it wants to be a history lesson and then fills the screen with wall to wall depravity. Well done, Shaw Brothers. You aren’t that far away from your Italian exploitation filmmaking cousins after all.
The 88 Films blu ray of this movie has art by Yu-Ming Huang, as well as the option of displaying the original Hong Kong poster art. You can buy it from MVD.
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