Tag Archives: 1975

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Mitchell (1975)

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Mitchell reveals a lot of misconceptions.

First: Joe Don Baker was once presented as the kind of sex symbol who didn’t just get Linda Evans in bed, he was kind of angry about it.

Second: Mitchell was not intended to be riffed on. And yet here we are, with a movie that most people know from the final episode that Joel was on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Then again, critics hated this when it came out in 1975. Vincent Carnaby said, “Mitchell, starring Joe Don Baker as a hard-nosed Los Angeles detective named Mitchell, has a lot of over-explicit violence, some gratuitous sex stuff and some rough language, yet it looks like a movie that couldn’t wait to get to prime-time television. Perhaps it’s a pilot film for a TV series, or maybe it’s just a movie that’s bad in a style we associate with some of the more mindless small-screen entertainments.

Mitchell spends what seems to be the greater part of the film climbing in and out of automobiles, driving automobiles, chasing other automobiles, parking automobiles, and leaning against the body of automobiles that are temporarily at rest. Once he smashes a hoodlum’s hand in the door of an automobile.

The climax, for a giddy change of pace, features a police helicopter in pursuit of a high-speed cabin cruiser. Automobiles sink when driven onto water.”

He could have been right. After all, the cut that aired on the CBS Late Movie was heavily edited with scenes shot just for TV, eliminating most of the violence, nudity and profanity. It also has the death of John Saxon’s character happen off screen, where we hear about his death on the radio. Keep in mind that he’s presented as Mitchell’s arch enemy.

Mitchell (Baker) is after Saxon’s character, Walter Deaney, but learns from the Chief of Police (Robert Phillips) tells Deaney is wanted for “every federal law violation in the book” and “FBI property.” This doesn’t stop Mitchell, who wants to go after him instead of staking out James Arthur Cummins (Martin Balsam), a crime boss shipping in heroin. To get him off the case, Deaney hired $1,000 a night call girl Greta (Linda Evans) to keep him busy. Instead, Mitchell arrests her for possession and even turns down a bribe. Soon, Deaney and Cummins are working together to kill our slovenly hero.

If you enjoy larger men battling, this has Baker fighting Merlin Olsen. I mean, we’ve already imagined a world where a high priced sex worker wants to sleep with Baker for free. Why not?

Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen (The Wild Geese, The Sea Wolves, Sahara) and written by Ian Kennedy Martin, this also has a great theme song, “Mitchell” by Hoyt Axton.

“My my my my Mitchell
What do your Mama say?
What would she do
if she knew you
were fallin’ round and carryin’ on that way…
Crackin’ some heads, jumpin’ in and out of beds
and hangin’ round the criminal scene…
Do you think you are some kind of a star like the guys on the movie screen…

Well oh my my my Mitchell
What would your captain say?
If he knew you was hangin’ round
Eatin’ with the crooks and shootin’ up the town
Know you been out there, roundin’ up the syndicate
succeedin’ where the others have failed
Oh my my my Mitchell
You shoot ’em just to get ’em in jail
When they take a look in the record book, they’ll find you got a lot of class…

The whole shebang, arrestin’ painted ladies for a little grass
Oh my my my Mitchell!”

Supposedly, Baker was so upset by this being on Mystery Science Theater 3000 that he threatened to fight anyone from the show if he saw them. That didn’t stop them from also doing another of his movies, Final Justice — another movie in which he uses an orange to prove how he is going to destroy someone — on the show.

You can watch this without riffing on Tubi. They also have the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version.

APRIL MOVIE THON DAY 25: The House of Exorcism (1975)

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April 25: Bava Forever — Bava died on this day 43 years ago. Let’s watch his movies.

Mario Bava — or John Old — was the man who could make a studio backlot look like the gates of Gehenna. And while Lisa and the Devil was his heart and soul, it didn’t exactly set the box office on fire. But then The Exorcist happened, and suddenly every producer in Italy wanted their own pea-soup-spewing cash cow.

Producer Alfredo Leone had a masterpiece on his hands that nobody wanted to see, so he did the most exploitation producer thing imaginable: He asked Bava to chop it up, add some possession flavor and then he retitled it House of Exorcism. Now it was less of an art film and more, well, Exorcisty.

This flick is a Frankenstein’s monster of cinema. You’ve got the ethereal, dreamlike footage of Bava’s original cut smashed together with new scenes directed by Leone (and a helping hand from Lamberto Bava, aka John Old Jr.). To slap a name on this identity crisis, they credited Mickey Lion as the director.

Mario said, “Even though it bears my signature. It is the same situation, too long to explain, of a cuckolded father who finds himself with a child that is not his own, and with his name, and cannot do anything about it.”

So what is new? A lot. Enough to make you think that this is two movies joined together, which it totally is.

There’s a new framing device in which Father Michael (Robert Alda, father of Alan) is an exorcist trying to exorcise a demon from Lisa (Elke Sommer). She’s swearing more than Regan MacNeil, showing way more skin and also throwing up frogs. She’s also Elena, and all of Bava’s superior cut becomes a series of flashbacks to how she lost her mind, her life and her soul, eventually possessing Lisa.

Elena was stuck in an incestuous four-way relationship between her husband Max (Alessio Orano), a guy so impotent and tied to his mother’s (Alida Valli) apron strings it’s no wonder Elena looked elsewhere and found love — and some deep dicking — from her husband’s stepfather (Espartaco Santoni). It all ends in blood and with every in hell.

Somewhere in all of this, we have the priest get tempted by the ghost of his dead wife — she burned up in a car wreck — Anna (Carmen Silva), who is one of those Eurohorror women who seems like an android with a perfect body and fake eyelashes. Magic in its purest form. “Darling, don’t be embarrassed. You’re still a man. Take me.” You know, the devil works hard to convert those who have faith, but have you seen Carmen Silva? I get it. Man, I sure get it.

This feels like a weird U.S.-made exploitation rip-off of Lisa with bloodier deaths and a near-inserts level edit of Sylvia Koscina and Gabriele Tinti (and body doubles) getting it on. You know, I’m sure Gabriele Tinti was a good guy, but between this and him being married to Laura Gemser, I kind of despise the dude.

Spare a thought for poor Elke Sommer, who had to come back two years later just to contort on a hospital bed and projectile vomit neon green slime. It’s a far cry from the gothic beauty of the original, but there’s a greasy charm to it that you just can’t find in modern horror. I can’t help but kind of love the balls on this concoction of a movie.

Also: In Annie Hall, Alvy Singer (Woodie Allen) walks past a marquee playing Lisa and the Devil and Messiah of Evil, and he kind of scoffs. For this and so many more reasons, I hope Tisa kicked him right in the dick at Passover, and it was no accident.

You can watch this on YouTube.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Man from Hong Kong (1975)

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Brian Trenchard-Smith is the patron saint of go-big-or-go-home. For his feature debut (along with action scenes directed by star Jimmy Wang Yu), he didn’t just walk through the door. No, he kicked it down, set it on fire and then hang-glided over the ashes. The Man from Hong Kong (aka The Dragon Flies) is the ultimate East-meets-West collision, a 50/50 co-production between Australia and Hong Kong that plays like a James Bond flick on a steady diet of adrenaline.

Originally, this was supposed to be a Bruce Lee vehicle. Can you imagine? But after the Dragon passed, the production pivoted to Jimmy Wang Yu (The One-Armed Swordsman himself). He plays Inspector Fang Sing Leng, a Hong Kong cop who lands in Sydney to extradite a drug courier and ends up tearing the city apart to get to the man at the top. That man? None other than George Lazenby.

Yes, the guy who played Bond once gets to play the heavy here, Jack Wilton, and he is clearly having the time of his life being a total bastard. He’s joined by an Ozploitation who’s who, including Hugh Keays-Byrne and Roger Ward (both of whom you know from Mad Max). Even a young Sammo Hung, billed as Hung Kam Po, shows up to get into a scrap on top of Uluru!

If you’ve seen Stunt Rock, you’ve seen the action from this movie, as legendary stuntman Grant Page hang-gliding over Sydney Harbor like it’s no big deal. This is a stunt show with massive automotive carnage designed by Peter Armstrong that rivals anything coming out of Hollywood at the time. In the final showdown, Lazenby actually gets set on fire. Not movie fire. Real fire. He even got singed during the take, because that’s just how they rolled down under

And let’s not forget the theme song. “Sky High” by Jigsaw is a soaring, majestic piece of 70s pop that has absolutely no business being the intro to a movie where people are getting punched in the throat, yet somehow, it’s perfection. It was also the theme song for Mil Mascaras and his brother Dos Caras in Japan.

If you want to see what happens when you mix martial arts mastery with a complete lack of regard for human safety, make The Man from Hong Kong your destination. Also: No permits were used to film this.

You can watch this on Tubi.

VINEGAR SYNDROME BLU RAY RELEASE: Forgotten Gialli: Volume Eight

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This is the seventh Forgotten Gialli set from Vinegar Syndrome. You can check out my articles on the others here:

This box set has the following movies:

Rings of Fear (1978): This is the third entry in a loosely linked series of films that are known by the pervy and wonderous title of the Schoolgirls in Peril trilogy, a run of movies that take the already queasy obsessions of giallo and crank them into something even more uncomfortable. These are films where the camera lingers just a little too long, where morality is nonexistent and where the punishment for youthful sexuality is swift, brutal and usually wrapped in plastic. 

The series starts with What Have You Done to Solange?, directed by Massimo Dallamano, one of the absolute high-water marks of the giallo form, a movie that balances sleaze, sadness, and a genuinely upsetting mystery in a way most of its imitators can only dream about. He followed that up with What Have They Done to Your Daughters?, which dials up the nihilism and leans harder into the idea that the world is an uncaring machine designed to chew up the young and spit them out. Sadly, Dallamano would die before this movie was made, but his fingerprints are all over it thanks to his screenplay credit, which means you still get that same mix of procedural grit and moral rot.

This time around, the film wastes no time getting to the good stuff. A teenage girl’s corpse is found wrapped in plastic, which feels like a grim premonition of Twin Peaks and the whole Laura Palmer thing by over a decade. Inspector Gianni DiSalvo, played by Fabio Testi with the kind of weary, seen-it-all expression that giallo cops are contractually obligated to have, starts digging into a group of schoolgirls known as The Inseparables. You know right away that any group with a name like that is going to be nothing but trouble.

These girls attend one of those prestigious all-girls’ schools that only seem to exist in Italian genre cinema — the kind of place where education is secondary to whispered secrets, coded glances, and the constant threat of violence lurking just outside the gates. Among them is Fausta Avelli, played by Barbara Bach, who had already been orbiting the genre in films like Don’t Torture A Duckling, The Psychic and Phenomena — basically a resume that screams “you’re in for something good” You also get Helga Liné, one of those faces that shows up in everything from classy Euro-thrillers to absolute bottom-shelf horror like So Sweet…Perverse and Nightmare Castle to The Vampires Night Orgy, Horror Rises from the Tomb and Black Candles. If European exploitation cinema had a frequent flyer program, she’d have lifetime platinum status.

Then there’s that ending. You get one killer casually offing himself like it’s just another item on the to-do list, and just when you think the movie is winding down, it pulls the rug out and reveals who’s really been behind everything. It’s mean, it’s cynical, and it’s exactly why you sat through all the recycled sleaze in the first place. In true giallo fashion, justice doesn’t feel like justice. It feels like just another ugly secret getting buried along with the bodies.

Reflections In Black (1975): A mysterious woman, dressed all in black, including stockings, is killing other beautiful women with a razor. Tano Cimarosa — usually an actor — directs this film, where we soon learn that all of the women are connected to affairs that they had with another woman, which was quite shocking in 1975.

Inspector Laurina (John Richardson) and his partner, Sergeant Panto (director Tano Cimarosa), are on the case, but, as always, defund the giallo police. Who could the killer be? Leondra (Dagmar Lassander, Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion, The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire and The House by the Cemetery), a politician’s wife? Lesbian photographer Contessa Orselmo (Magda Konopka)? Former Miss Italia Daniela Giordano (Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key)? Drug dealer and denim lover Sandro (Ninetto Davoli)?

This is really just for those who have to see every giallo ever made. Which would be me. Probably you, too, if you’re reading this. I mean, you’re going to buy this set, right?

A.A.A. Masseuse, Good-Looking, Offers Her Services (1972): Cristina (Paola Senatore*, Emanuelle in America, Ricco the Mean Machine) is a call girl, and for that, every man that has ever partaken of her services must pay, in some sort of role reversal for every other giallo and slasher.

Much like how his leading lady was known for westerns, so was director Demofilo Fidani, who made movies like Coffin Full of Dollars (how’s that for a title?), Django and Sartana Are Coming… It’s the End, One Damned Day at Dawn…Django Meets Sartana!, His Name Was Pot… But They Called Him Allegria and His Name Was Sam Walbash, But They Call Him Amen. As you can tell, many of his films were titled and treated like either sequels or — let’s be fair — rip-offs of better-known characters and movies.

So when everyone else started making giallo, Fidani was sure to follow.

You know how people on Twitter like to use the term problematic? Well, they’d lose their brains all over those, which presents leaving home to enter the sex industry to be a loveable lark, even when your clients get their throats slit the minute they leave her flat. It’s also a film that wants its cake — Vitelli is gorgeous and frequently involved in increasingly kinkier situations — and eat it too, as the whole moral of the story is that the world is falling into decay because of all this sex. So let’s show some more sex! And violence!

Also known as Caresses à domicile (Caresses at Home), the funny thing is that her life gets better when she leaves her father’s house — well, despite the fact that her daddy gave her everything that she ever wanted — to live with a friend, Paola (Simonetta Vitelli, who is the daughter of the director). So there’s not really any drama here, other than you know, all the murder.

*Sadly, she became addicted to heroin late in her career. After making two softcore films for Joe D’Amato, she made her one and only hardcore film, Non stop… sempre buio in sala. She was then arrested for drug smuggling, went to prison and disappeared.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ1fSPQu6cw

You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Long Arm of the Godfather (1975)

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The movie opens with a high-stakes military heist that feels more like a war film than a mafia flick, as Vincenzo (Peter Lee Lawrence) and his crew ambush an army convoy to steal a crate of rifles. Vincenzo’s fatal mistake isn’t just stealing from Don Carmelo (Adolfo Celi); it’s his arrogance. He believes he can outmaneuver the seasoned Don by selling the hardware to a group of Arab insurgents.

The middle act shifts the tension to a claustrophobic hotel in North Africa. This change of scenery distinguishes the film from other Italian crime movies of the era that rarely left the streets of Rome or Milan. The Middle Eastern subplot adds a layer of political cynicism, suggesting that Vincenzo is out of his depth not just with the Mafia, but with international arms dealing.

But you know how these Italian crime movies end. Not always well, you know? Maybe he should have just stayed at that hotel with his girlfriend, Sabina (Erika Blanc), and forgotten about a life of crime.

Nardo Bonomi (sometimes credited as Leonardo Bonomi) is a ghost in film history. This is his only officially released directorial credit. While he brings a surprisingly energetic eye to the action, this is one mean-spirited film. Vincenzo isn’t a hero, but an amoral social climber who uses his girlfriend Sabina’s jewelry to fund his escape.

His other project, Sortilegio, remains one of the great holy grails of Italian cult cinema. The fact that it was co-directed by Corrado Farina (the visionary behind the psychedelic Baba Yaga) suggests Bonomi had a foot in the more avant-garde side of Italian filmmaking before disappearing from the industry entirely. This movie starred Erna Schürer as a woman given to waking nightmares. It was completed, assembled and dubbed, but never arrived for censorship approval and went unpublished. Four Flies Records released the soundtrack, saying, “One of the most mysterious movies that came out from the golden age of Italian cinema, its soundtrack was recorded in 1974. The movie had never been officially distributed and was probably never taken to the final stage of post-production. The film is lost, gone forever apparently.” 

Peter Lee Lawrence was often criticized by contemporary critics for being too pretty or wooden, but in The Long Arm of the Godfather, his youthful, clean-cut looks work perfectly. He plays Vincenzo as a man whose ambition far exceeds his intelligence. At the time of filming, Lawrence was already nearing the end of his prolific but short career. The headaches — he died in 1974 at the age of 30 — he suffered during his final years make his frantic, high-energy performance here feel somewhat haunting in retrospect. He was married to Cristina Galbó, who may be best known for playing Elizabeth in What Have You Done To Solange?

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Loaded Guns (1975)

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Nora Green (Ursula Andress) is a flight attendant who is asked to deliver a letter to a circus led by Silvera (Woody Strode) when she lands in Naples. This gets her in the middle of a gang war. She’s beaten up and thrown to what should be her doom, but she somehow survives. Working with a former circus acrobat, Manuel (Marc Porel), she puts multiple bad guys — there’s Silvera, as well as Don Calo (Aldo Giuffrè) and the mysterious Americano — against one another and looks gorgeous doing it. Luckily, they find another partner in Rosy (Isabella Biagini), who has been the lover of nearly all these gangsters.

Known in Italy as Colpo in canna, this is a fascinating departure for director Fernando Di Leo. While he is the undisputed master of the gritty, nihilistic Poliziotteschi genre — he made Caliber 9, The Italian Connection and Blood and Diamonds and wrote one of my favorite parodies of the genre, Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man — this film sees him blending his signature violence with a lighter, almost comic-book tone that leans heavily on the charisma of its lead.

While Di Leo’s “Milieu Trilogy” (Caliber 9, The Italian Connection, and The Boss) is defined by cold-blooded betrayal and urban decay, Loaded Guns feels more like a colorful caper. Di Leo pivots Nora into a femme fatale superwoman archetype. Unlike the doomed protagonists of his other films, Nora is proactive and resilient; she isn’t just a victim of the gang war. She becomes its architect, deliberately whispering in the ears of rival bosses to ensure they wipe each other out.

This ends with a fun brawl that involves the entire cast, including Andress, who did her own stunts. She’s beyond ravishing in this, reminding you that she was not just a Bond girl, but the first of them all. She plays Nora with a wink to the camera, balancing the high-fashion glamour of a flight attendant with the grit of a woman who can take a beating and come back swinging.

You can watch this on YouTube.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Lady Cocoa (1975)

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While it might look like a standard witness protection thriller on paper, Lady Cocoa is a masterclass in 70s aesthetic. It trades the typical urban grime of the genre for the icy, high-altitude isolation of Nevada, making for a sleek, atmospheric watch that feels like a chilly companion piece to a Bond film.

The film belongs entirely to Lola Falana. Known primarily as a singing sensation and a protégé of Sammy Davis Jr., Falana brings a magnetic, world-weary energy to Coco. Fresh out of the Nevada prison system after flipping on her boyfriend Eddie (James A. Watson Jr.), she isn’t just a damsel in distress; she’s a woman navigating a get out of jail free card that feels more like a death sentence.

Watching her bounce between the protection of Ramsey (Alex Drier) and that of the local law officer, Doug (Gene Washington), you get a real sense of her internal conflict. Is she actually falling for the badge, or is she just playing the hand she was dealt?

She’s being hunted by Arthur (director Matt Cimber, who made The Witch Who Came from the Sea after this) and Big Joe (“Mean” Joe Greene). There are also some newlyweds, Arthur (Gary Harper) and Marie (Millie Perkins), who aren’t who they seem.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a true cult classic without the ubiquitous George “Buck” Flower. His turn as a drunken gambler isn’t just a cameo; it’s the soul of the film’s grimy casino backdrop. Nobody played disheveled and desperate with quite the same charm.

Cimber handles the tension well. He uses the Lake Tahoe locations to great effect, contrasting the neon warmth of the casinos with the bleak, dangerous mountains surrounding them. It’s a slow-burn thriller that pays off with a climax that reminds you exactly why Eddie was a man worth snitching on.

You can watch this on Tubi.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: The Carhops (1975)

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Also known as Kitty Can’t Do It, this was directed by Peter Locke, who also produced The Hills Have Eyes and directed It Happened in Hollywood. It was written by Paul Ross (who also wrote Journey Into the Beyond and Beyond Evil) and Michael Blank, and edited by Rick Jackson and Wes Craven, with second-unit direction by John “Bud” Cardos. It tries to be a nurse’s cycle movie, but reminds you how good the people who made the great ones are, like Stephanie Rothman.

Kitty, as you can expect from the alternate title, is the heroine, and she’s played by Kitty Carl. Speaking of better female-cast movies, she was also in The Centerfold Girls. All of Kitty’s friends are getting laid while she’s still a virgin,  perhaps because of her overbearing mother (Fay DeWitt). Those friends try to get their men to sleep with Kitty, but it never works out.

One of those men, MacGregor (Jack DeLeon), is seething into lusty rapist territory by the end, which gives us our chase scene. Otherwise, this is worth watching for the female cast, which includes I’m With the Band author Pamela Des Barres as Vickii, Lisa Ferringer from Coffy as Cindy, Marcie Barkin from Fade to Black, Janus Blythe from Eaten Alive and The Hills Have Eyes as a waitress and Uschi Digard as “Lady in Hotel Room.” She’s barely in it, but she’s what you will remember.

Do you know how much I love you, dear reader? I actually bought this to watch, and luckily Wide World Movie also threw in a triple pack of Invasion of the Bee Girls, 2069 A Sexy Odyssey, and Dr. Dildo’s Secret, all of which I would recommend over this. It’s not even Starhops, which is saying something.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Johnny Firecloud (1975)

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Johnny Firecloud (Victor Mohica, Don’t Answer the Phone) just got back from Vietnam and made his way back home to New Mexico. If he thought it sucked before he left, well, it sucks even more now. Colby (Ralph Meeker) runs the town and has a mad on for Johnny, probably because his daughter June (Christina Hart) lost her virginity to him and never got over the Native American getting drafted. The cops, like Sheriff Jesse (David Canary), are bought and paid for. So when the one person who believes in Johnny, his drunken grandfather and tribal chief White Eagle (Frank DeKova) is killed by the cops and some alcoholic rich punks and then the virginal teacher Nenya (Sacheen Littlefeather, who accepted the Oscar for Brando) gets assaulted in a way too long scene, well, Johnny is going to take everything he learned in the white man’s army and go nuts. 

Imagine: Billy Jack and Paul Kersey with no budget or restraint.

Produced by David Friedman, directed by William Allen Castleman (Bummer) and written by Wilton Denmark, this is a movie filled with wild moments like Johnny scalping people, slicing their eyelids off so they fry in the son, burying a dude neck deep and letting snakes crawl around him, putting George Buck Flower’s head inside a sack filled with poisonous snakes, blowing up trailers and plenty of bar fights. There’s also a bad guy who threatens, “One of these days, you and me gonna tangle assholes,” and I have no idea how to answer that.

I would 200% play this in a fancy art theater as a double feature with The Farmer, and that’s why no smart movie place should ever give me a chance.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Cinematic Void January Giallo 2026: Deep Red (1975)

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Editor’s note: Cinematic Void will be playing this movie on January 14 at 7:00 PM at Regal Mira Mesa in San Diego. You can get tickets here. There’s also an event the next day at the Whistle Stop Bar on Thursday, January 15th at 9 PM. It’s a night of drinks, socializing with the film community, and…of course, all things GIALLO. This edition of THE DIVE IN, presented by Popcorn Reef and Morricone Youth, will take you on a journey through shocking Italian cinema. More info here. For more information, visit Cinematic Void.

Deep Red is one of the few Argento movies that I’ve seen in a theater and the drive-in. It’s not the best film for the fast-moving grindhouse or drive-in, but it is a great film. After all, it started with a 500-page script that even Dario Argento’s family felt was too cryptic and continues with not just one, but two references to American painter Edward Hopper. This isn’t just a movie about murder. This is a movie that transforms murder into art.

We begin at Christmas, as two shadowy figures battle until one of them stabs the other. Screams ring out as a knife drops at the feet of a child.

Fast forward to Rome, as a medium named Helga Ulmann is conducting a lecture about her psychic powers. Within moments, she senses that one of the people in the theater is a killer. Later that night, that killer kicks in her front door and murders her with a meat cleaver (which is probably why this movie got the boring American title of The Hatchet Murders).

British musician Marcus Daly (David Hemmings, Barbarella, Blowup, Harlequin), who fits the giallo mold of the stranger in a strange land thrust into the middle of a series of murders that he must solve, is returning home from drinking with his gay best friend Carlo (Gabriele Lavia, Beyond the Door, Inferno) when he sees the murder that we’ve just witnessed from the street. He runs to save Helga, but she’s thrust through the window and her neck is pierced by the broken glass of her window in a kill that has become Argento’s trademark.

As he tells the police what has happened, he notices that a painting on Helga’s wall is gone. That’s when Gianna Brezzzi (Argento’s soon-to-be wife, Dario Nicolodi, who met him during the filming of this movie) takes his photo, which ends up on the cover of the newspaper the very next day.

Unlike most giallo women, Gianna is presented as more competent and even stronger than our hero — she sits high above him in her Fiat 500 and continually bests Marcus every time they arm wrestle. Nicolodi is so perfect in this film that she both breaks and warms your heart at every turn.

Marcus isn’t your typical hero, though. When the killer attacks him, he doesn’t stop them by daring or skill. He locks himself in his study to escape them. He does remember the song the killer played — we also have heard it when Helga is murdered — that psychiatrist (and Helga’s boyfriend) Professor Giordani believes is related to some trauma that motivates the killer.

Feeling guilty that she’s caused the killer to come after Marcus, Gianna relates an urban legend of a haunted house where the sounds of a singing child and screams of murder can be heard. The truth lies in House of the Screaming Child, a book written by Amanda Righetti, which tells the truth of the long-forgotten murder. Marcus and Gianna would learn even more, but the killer beats them to her house and drowns her in a bathtub of scalding hot water (directly influencing the murder of Karen Bailey in Halloween 2). As she dies, the writer leaves a message behind on the wall, which our heroes find. They’ve already assumed the investigation — again, in the giallo tradition — and think the police will assume that Marcus is the murderer, so they don’t report the crime.

Marcus follows the trail of the killer from a picture in the book to the real house, which has been abandoned since 1963. As he searches the home, he uncovers a child’s drawing of a murdered man and a Christmas tree, echoing the flashback that starts the film. Yet when he leaves the room, we see more plaster fall away, revealing a third figure.

Marcus tells his friend Carlos all that he’s learned, but his friend reacts in anger, telling him to stop questioning things and to just leave town with his new girlfriend. At this point, you can start to question Marcus’ ability as a hero — he misses vital clues, he hides instead of fighting and he can’t even tell that someone is in love with him.

Professor Giordani steams up the Righetti murder scene and sees part of the message that she left on the wall. That night, a mechanical doll is set loose in his office as the killer breaks in, smashing his teeth on the mantle and stabbing him in the neck.

Meanwhile, Marcus and Gianna realize that the house has a secret room, with Marcus using a pickaxe to knock down the walls, only to discover a skeleton and Christmas tree. An unseen person knocks our hero out and sets the house on fire, but Gianna is able to save him. As they wait for the police, Marcus sees that the caretaker’s daughter has drawn the little boy with the bloody knife. The little girl explains that she had seen this before at her school.

Marcus finds the painting at the young girl’s school and learns that Carlo painted it. Within moments, his friend turns up, stabs Gianna and holds him at gunpoint. The police arrive and Carlo flees, only to be dragged down the street and his head messily run over by a car.

With Gianna in the hospital and his best friend obviously the murder, Marcus then has the Argento-esque moment of remembering critical evidence: there’s no way Carlo could have killed the psychic, as they were together when they heard her screams. The portrait that he thought was missing from the apartment was a mirror and the image was the killer — who now appears in front of him.

The real killer is Martha (Clara Calamai, who came out of retirement for this role, an actress famous for her telefoni bianchi comedy roles), who killed Carlo’s father in the flashback we’ve seen numerous times after he tried to commit her. She chases Marcus with a meat cleaver, striking him in the shoulder, but he kicks her and her long necklace becomes caught in an elevator which beheads her. The film ends with the reflection of Marcus in the pool of the killer’s blood.

While this film feels long, it has moments of great shock and surprise, such as the two graphic murders that end the film and the clockwork doll. The original cut was even longer, as most US versions remove 22 minutes of footage, including the most graphic violence, any attempts at humor, any romantic scenes between David Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi, and some of the screaming child investigation.

This is also the first film where Argento would work with Goblin. After having scored Argento’s The Five Days — a rare comedy —  Giorgio Gaslini was to provide music for the film. Argento didn’t like what he did and attempted to convince Pink Floyd to be part of the soundtrack. After failing to get them to be part of Deep Red, Goblin leader Claudio Simonetti impressed the director by producing two songs in one night. They’d go on to not only write the music for this film, but also for plenty of future Argento projects.

A trivia note: Argento’s horror film museum and gift shop, Profondo Rosso, is named after the Italian title to this movie.

Deep Red is the bridge between Argento’s animal-themed giallo and supernatural based films. While its pace may seem glacial to modern audiences, it still packs plenty of moments of mayhem that approaches high art.