One of the last movies New World Pictures made in the Philippines — due to rising costs — this was directed by Cirio H. Santiago and written by Howard R. Cohen. Outside of Hollywood Boulevard, it’s also the last of the New World occupation movies.
Barbara (Pat Anderson, Summer School Teachers), Claire (Lindsay Bloom, The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood) and Mandy (Tara Strohmeier, Van Nuys Blvd.) are, well, cover girl models flying from Los Angeles to Hong Kong for a photo shoot. As always, the three girls each get an adventure: Barbara finds a microfilm that several spies are looking for, Claire wants to be in a movie and Mandy falls for a photographer.
If you know me, you know that I wish this movie had been about fashion editor Diane (Mary Woronov), who only makes an appearance in the first few minutes. But hey! Vic Diaz shows up as a bad guy. This didn’t really get a big release in 1975, but a year later — and a time when Charlie’s Angels was big deal — it came back out.
The difference between New World and, let’s say, Cannon, is that New World has more movies that are in the Criterion Collection or considered high art, because Roger Corman distributed a lot of films from high end directors while staying hands-off on the final product.
Directed and co-written by Akira Kurosawa, this was both his only non-Japanese-language film and his only 70mm film. Based on the 1923 memoir of the same name by Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev, Dersu Uzala won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was a big hit in the USSR, Europe and even the U.S.
This is a story told by Captain Arsenyev (Yury Solomin), who years ago hired a named Dersu Uzala (Maxim Munzuk) and was amazed by the way the man may have been uneducated, yet could deduce nearly anything and knew instinctively how to survive in the harsh world of winter that he lived in. Yet he was also capable of great kindness, as at one point he builds a hut and stocks it not for himself but for those who will come after him.
In 1971, Kurosawa attempted suicide, questioning his creative ability after the commercial failure of Dodes’ka-den and his inability to get another film funded. He had to have seen himself in Uzala, a man growing older whose once incredible powers are reduced to having to live in normal society and afraid when he can no longer see enough to hunt for himself.
He had wanted to make this movie since the 50s, but couldn’t figure out how to make it in Japan. Imagine his surprise when a member of the Russian embassy reached out. He asked him to make a Russian film for Russians. They needed him as their country lacked the talent to make a quality film. It was as if two different dreams could come true and reason to remain alive. The Russians were shocked when he asked if he could film Vladimir Arsenev’s book, because at that time it was little known outside their country.
Directed by Jonathan Demme and written by Robert Thom, Crazy Mama was the kind of movie you used to stay up late to watch on cable when your parents went to sleep.
Melba Stokes (Cloris Leachman) owns a beauty parlor and lives with her mother Sheba (Ann Sothern) and daughter Cheryl (Linda Purl, who has a career of playing relatives, as she was Matlock‘s daughter and Pam’s mom on The Office; she’s also in Visiting Hours). When their landlord Albertson (Jim Backus) kicks them out and takes their belongings, they go on the run and decide to start a crime spree, eventually joined by former Texas sheriff Jim Bob Trotter (Stuart Whitman) and pursued by Cheryl’s would-be baby daddy (Donny Most).
This was to be originally directed by Shirley Clarke. I have no idea how her dance and art background would have worked and we’ll never find out, because she was fired ten days prior to filming. Demme changed the ending to the movie, which was to have everyone die, which he just thought was too much.
Hey — it’s also Bill Paxton and Dennis Quaid’s debut! And John Milius is a cop!
Blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s, Joseph Losey moved to Europe. His exile from Hollywood started when Howard Hughes bought RKO and purged it of people he thought were Leftists. In the book Losey On Losey, he said “I was offered a film called I Married a Communist, which I turned down categorically. I later learned that it was a touchstone for establishing who was a “red”: you offered I Married a Communist to anybody you thought was a Communist, and if they turned it down, they were.” He’d later tell the New York Times that although the blacklist was frightening at first, it ended up making him a better artist: “Without it I would have three Cadillacs, two swimming pools and millions of dollars, and I’d be dead. It was terrifying, it was disgusting, but you can get trapped by money and complacency. A good shaking up never did anyone any harm.”
Losey made The Boy with Green Hair; noir like The Big Night and The Lawless; The Damned for Hammer; Secret Ceremony and Boom! with Elizabeth Taylor; Modesty Blaise and the Palme d’Or winning The Go-Between. He was right. The blacklist didn’t harm him as an artist.
What’s amazing is that this film, screened out of competition at Cannes in 1975, was released in the U.S. by New World. I shouldn’t be surprised, as along with drive-in movies about women in prison and men in cars, Roger Corman championed films by artists like Fellini and Bergman.
Lewis Fielding (Michael Caine) is a pulp novelist who provides for his wife Elizabeth (Glenda Jackson), but she finds their marriage boring. She runs to Germany and into the arms of Thomas (Helmut Berger), a younger and much more exciting lover, but also one who doesn’t have the stability and, well, legal standing of her husband. They never consummate their affair, but when she returns home, he follows. Lewis decides to hire him as his secretary. As you can imagine, being alone in the house with the object of her lust ends with Elizabeth and Thomas canoodling and running back for Germany with gangsters seeking Thomas’ head and Lewis wanting to win his wife’s heart back.
Thomas gives Elizabeth the attention her husband holds back — he doesn’t even react when she walks across their yard nude in front of the neighbors — while his disguise as a fan of the writer’s work feeds Thomas’ needs as well. Whether that attention is carnal or artistic, he’s the person that each wants and needs. The only problem is that Thomas is none of those things. He’s just a con man that screwed up a drug deal and is trying to save his own life. And yet while Thomas holds back the sexual energy his wife demands, he grows angry and resentful of his secretary, knowing that they’re about to have that affair as if he has willed it into existence as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In his biography, Caine said that Losey was so dour that he bet the crew that he could make Losey laugh before the movie wrapped. Caine lost the bet.
New World had already brought The Water Margin to the U.S. as Seven Blows of the Dragon, so they also played the sequel here as Seven Soldiers of Kung Fu, which is I guess thematically a decent sequel title.
Co-directed by Chang Cheh and Wu Ma, this follows up the 108 Bandits having freed second-in-command Lu Jun Yi and being called by their former enemies to stop a rebellious new faction, led by Fang La, and promised a pardon upon the success of that mission.
Where the first film takes time to introduce the viewer to so many characters, All Men Are Brothers is all about action, with gigantic battles taking place on the sprawling Shaw Brothers backlot sets.
If you’ve watched enough Chang Cheh movies, you may have been a bit weirded out when The Water Margin ended and all of the heroes were alive. Don’t worry — he comes back to form on this, which ends with the kind of sacrificial bloody battle that he’s better known for. In fact, this just might be the bloodiest of all Shaw Brothers films. The American cut goes to black and white in some of these moments, one of those tricks that get you an R rating instead of an X.
The early to mid 70s were a magical time for martial arts films, as just about anything could come to America and play drive-ins, grindhouses and even occasionally mainstream movie theaters.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on August 31, 2018.
There are people that say there’s no such thing as a perfect movie. Those people have never seen Death Race 2000, a film that’s packed with pop culture references, ultraviolence, black humor, political commentary and great character moments.
After the “World Crash of ’79”, the United States government declares martial law. To keep the people happy, the Transcontinental Road Race is created. It’s a race across the country — ala Cannonball Run — except that drivers score points for killing people.
This is the twentieth race and each driver has their own character and themed car, including the mysterious champion Frankenstein (David Carradine, Kill Bill) who has been torn apart and rebuilt so many times, no one is sure what parts of him are real any longer; Machine Gun Joe (Sylvester Stallone, Rocky), a Chicago gangster who calls people mashed potato and will even drive over his own pit crew for points; Calamity Jane (Mary Woronov, Night of the Comet), a tough cowgirl; Nero the Hero (Martin Kove, Kreese from the Karate Kid!) and Matilda the Hun (Roberta Collins, Eaten Alive, Caged Heat), a Nazi. They each have a navigator who is also generally their sexual partner.
Covering the race is a parody of network news coverage — that would become even more true in today’s Fox News and CNN climate — which includes loudmouth Junior Bruce (Don Steele, Rockin’ Ricky Rialto from Gremlins), Harold, who is pretty much Howard Cosell and Grace Pander, the gossip columnist who refers to everyone as her close personal friend.
Meanwhile, Thomasina Paine, the great great great great and maybe even great-granddaughter of American Revolutionary Thomas Paine is sabotaging the race to rebel against the President. These revolutionaries have even placed Annie, Thomasina’s granddaughter, into the race as Frankenstein’s new navigator. That said — the government keeps covering up all of the deaths of the racers and blames it all on the French — who have already destroyed the country’s phone system — one of director Paul Bartel’s (Eating Raoul) favorite jokes. In fact, the film was packed with even more silliness before Roger Corman chopped out most of the strangeness that Bartel loved so much.
Everyone but Machine Gun Joe and Frankenstein are left in the race. Before the final day of the race, Annie learns that Frankenstein isn’t even the original man — he was a ward of the state who was raised from birth to compete in the Death Race. When he’s used up, another will take his place. And he’s closer to the spirit of the rebels than Annie would ever think — he plans on using his fake right hand to blow up the President. Of course, that was the plan. But Annie saves Frankenstein using this “hand” grenade in the final battle
Frankenstein is injured, so Annie takes his place and tries to stab the President. But her own grandmother shoots her, as she wants revenge thinking that the champion Death Racer had killed her granddaughter. And this all takes place after the President declares war on the French and appoints Frankenstein to lead his armies!
The real Frankenstein recovers and runs over the President to the roar of the crowd. He becomes President, marries Annie and runs over Junior Bruce as he puts an end to the Death Race.
This film may have been remade (and there are several sequels to that franchise) and Corman finally put out Death Race 2050, his own sequel to the film, in 2017. But do we need anything else when the original is so epic? It’s so much fun, punctuated by moments of sheer lunacy. Viva la Death Race 2000!
Before he moved into making TV movies, Michael Miller made Silent Rage and Class Reunion in the same year, as well as another rough film, Jackson County Jail. Street Girls is more raw than all of them, a movie that seemed to be sleazier than the majority of New World’s catalogue.
Shockingly, it was co-written by Barry Levinson.
Yes, the same person who directed Rainman.
Angel (Christine Souder in the only movie she’d ever make) goes from college girl to exotic dancer to getting hooked on heroin. Her father (Art Burke) decides to go the Hardcore route four years before that movie was made and head out into the filthy streets to find his little girl. At first, he has the help of her co-worker Sally (Carol Case, also in her only movie) until he learns that she was Angel’s lover. Disgusted, he abandons her and continues his search.
This also shows the life that Angel is in, down to a scene where a client brings her a swimming mask so that he can urinate on her. She locks herself in a filthy motel bathroom while he keeps banging on the door, begging for the opportunity to defile her. This scene goes way beyond any small town girl gone wrong movie than any I’ve seen in mainstream movies.
It’s not great, but man, it’s not afraid to show how cheap life can be.
I’ve gone on record saying that I hold Sergio Martino in the same esteem as Dario Argento and feel that his giallo films are if not as good, often really close to being better. In fact, I’d compare his five-picture run from The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardhto Torso to any giallo creator there ever is, was or will be.
Arrow Video has brought together three of his giallo in one impressive looking box set.
The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail (1971): While she makes love to someone else, Lisa’s husband dies in a jet crash. She stands to inherit all of his money, despite them being basically separated. An ex-lover has a confrontation with her, threatening her with blackmail. She pays up — some money now, then some when she gets the letter where she wished that her husband was dead. But a gloved hand finds the letter and kills the ex-lover!
Lisa has to go to Athens to collect the money, but runs into one of her husband’s ex-lovers, Lara Florakis (Janine Reynaud, Succubus) and a knife-wielding maniac. Peter Lynch (George Hilton from All the Colors of the Dark) saves her and takes her to the hotel. She asks for all of the money in cash, despite warnings to how dangerous that is.
That same maniac tries to kill Peter, then comes back to kill Lisa, sharp jazz wails staccato punctuating each stab of the knife, each rip across her body. Jump cuts and flashes and the room is covered by the police, who question him.
An INTERPOL agent, Inspector Stavros (Luigi Pistilli, The Good, the Bad and The Ugly, Your Vice is a Locked Door and Only I Have the Key), offers to help Peter with the case and the moment he goes to talk to Lara, he’s attacked by the gloved man.
That brings in Cléo Dupont(Anita Strindberg, Who Saw Her Die?), a journalist who pretty much instantly falls in love with our hero. They go up to his room, but it’s been turned over by the police, with even the bed sliced open looking for the million dollars that went missing when Lisa was killed.
Turns out the gloved man wasn’t on Lara’s side — he or she slits her throat, then runs up a spiral staircase as a guard gives chase. This reveals a room full of one-eyed baby dolls and a strange oil painting. Between the woman’s face against the glass with blood spraying everywhere and these reveals, this film is really tipping its hat toward Argento.
The bodyguard chases after the killer, but is knocked off the roof. One slash across the fingers and we have another dead body. It’s 45 minutes in…and most of the IMDB cast is already dead!
That said — there’s a stewardess that gets the gift of scorpion earrings from an unseen lover. So there’s that.
Meanwhile, Peter and Cléo make love on an orange shag couch while a peeping tom watches from the window. You know how Bruce Banner always has on purple slacks and you wonder, “Who wears purple slacks?” Peter does.
The peeping tom wants him to move his car, which is blocking the garage. That said — he’s awfully creepy about it. Peter moves the car and then gets back to business time. PS — if you’re into late 60’s/early 70’s patterns and fashions, you may fall in love with this movie.
While George was out, the killer snuck in. Good thing he forgot his keys! He stumbles in at the last second, but Cléo has already been sliced up. The cops suspect Peter — but they also find a scorpion cufflink that looks just like the earrings we saw earlier.
Oh yeah — about that stewartress’s boyfriend? Yeah fights the killer, only to get his eye hacked out. Somewhere, Fulci was smiling.
Cléo is out swimming off Peter’s yacht and finds the money buried in a cave. Like a Republic serial villain, he reveals his entire plot. He worked for years to make money and saw rich people just throw it away. He put everyone against one another and even had a partner who would do the killings while he was in the room. It’s all rather simple as the police find and kill him before he can hurt her.
The Arrow Video release of this movie has an audio commentary with writer Ernesto Gastaldi, moderated by filmmaker Federico Caddeo (in Italian with English subtitles); interviews with Hilton and Martino; an analysis of Martino’s films by Mikel J. Koven, author of La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film; a video essay by Troy Howarth, author of So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films; a trailer; an image gallery and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Chris Malbon.
Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972): Has a movie ever had a better title? Nope. Sergio Martino’s fourth entry into the giallo genre, following The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh,The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail and the previously reviewed All the Colors of the Dark, it refers to the note that the killer leaves to Edwige Fenech’s character in Mrs. Wardh. And the title is way better than the alternate ones this film has — Gently Before She Dies,Eye of the Black Cat and Excite Me!
Martino wastes no time at all getting into the crazy in this one — Oliviero Rouvigny (Luigi Pistilli from A Bay of Blood, Iguana with the Tongue of Fire, Death Rides a Horse) is a dark, sinister man, a failed writer and alcoholic who lives in a mansion that’s falling apart (If this all feels like a modernized version of a Poe story like The Fall of the House of Usher, it’s no accident. There’s even an acknowledgment that the film is inspired by The Black Cat in the opening credits.). His wife, Irina (Anita Strindberg from A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin and Who Saw Her Die?), suffers his abuses, but never more so than when he gathers hippies together for confrontational parties. He makes everyone pour all of their wine into a bowl and forces her to drink it, then humiliates their black servant Brenda until one of the partygoers starts singing and everyone joins in, then gets naked. This scene is beyond strange and must be experienced.
The only person that Oliviero seems to love is Satan, the cat that belonged to his dead mother. A black cat that talks throughout every scene he’s in, his constant meows led to my cats communicating with the TV. God only knows what a 1970s giallo cat said, but it seems like his words spoke directly to their hearts.
One of Oliviero’s mistresses is found dead near the house, but he hides her body. The police suspect him, as does his wife. Adding to the tension is the fact that Irina hates Satan, who only seems to care about messing with her beloved birds.
Remember that servant? Well, she’s dead now, but not before she walks around half-naked in Oliviero’s mother’s dress while he watches from the other room. She barely makes it to Irina’s room before she collapses, covered in blood. Blood that Satan the cat has no problem walking through! He refuses to call the police, as he doesn’t want any more suspicion. He asks his wife to help him get rid of the body.
Oliviero’s niece Floriana (Edwige Fenech, pretty much the queen of the giallo) is in town for a visit, learning how Oliviero hasn’t been able to write one sentence over and over again for three years, stuck in writer’s block (and predating The Shining by 5 years in book form and 8 years away from Kubrick’s film). Unlike everyone else who tolerates Oliviero’s behavior or ignores it, Floriana sees right through the bullshit. The writer is used to seducing every woman he meets and she initially rebuffs him, even asking if it’s true that Oliviero used to sleep with his mother. He angrily asks if it’s true that she’s a two-bit whore. “Those would be two bits worth spending,” is her caustic reply.
Irina confides all of her pain to Floriana as the two become lovers. And another girl gets murdered — perhaps by Oliviero. Then, a dirt bike racer comes to drop off milk and hit on Floriana. Whew — I was wondering when this film would get hard to follow and start piling on the red herrings!
After being questioned by the police, Oliviero comes home to choke his wife. He stops at the last second…then we’re off to the races! The motorbike races! The milkman loses when his bike breaks down, but he’s the real winner — taking Floriana back to the abandoned house that he lives in. And oh look — there’s creepy Oliviero watching the action.
Meanwhile, Satan has gotten into the coop and chowed down on several of the birds. Irina catches him and they have quite the battle. He scratches her numerous times before she stabs him in the eye with a pair of scissors. An old woman watches and is chased away by Irina’s yelling.
She’s afraid that her husband will kill her once he learns that she killed Satan. And Oliviero keeps wondering where the cat is, especially after he buys the cat his favorite meal from the store — sheep eyes. That said — Satan might not be so dead, as we can hear his screaming and see him with a missing eye.
Floriana puts on Oliviero’s mother’s dress, asking if this is what the maid looked like before she died. Whether it’s the dress or the forbidden family love or just her beauty, he rips off her dress — at her urging, mind you — and begins making love to his niece. We cut to Idrina, caressing her pet birds, when Oliviero confronts her with scissors and questions about Satan. He almost stabs her before he ends up raping her inside the coop, while Floriana looks on. She playing them off the other, even telling Idrina that she’s slept with her husband. She also tells her that Oliviero wants to kill her, so she should kill him first.
Idrina wakes up to the sound of Satan, but can’t find him anywhere. What she does find is her husband in bed with Floriana, who is belittling him. With every sinister meow, there’s a zoom of the cat’s damaged eye. Finally, Oliviero attacks her for spying on him, slapping her around before he leaves to write. She walks the grounds of the mansion, seeing the motorcycle rider make a date with Floriana and catching sight of Satan, who runs from her. In the basement, she finds scissors and the hidden bodies of her husband’s lover and the murdered maid. In a moment of clarity — or madness — she stabs her husband while he sleeps. The sequence is breathtaking — a giallo POV shot of the murder weapon intercut with the same sentence being typed over and over interspersed with all of the abuses that Oliviero had wrought upon her. She stabs again and again before Floriana interrupts, asking her if it was easy. The sentence that the author had written again and again was him claiming that he would kill her and there was a space in the wall for her, so obviously, she had to kill him.
As for Floriana, all she wanted was the family jewels, which were hidden in the house. They seal Oliviero’s corpse within the wall while Walter watches from afar. He’s played by Ivan Rassimov, who does creeping staring dudes better than anyone else — witness his work in All the Colors of the Dark. And it turns out that he’s the real killer! He’s been typing “vendetta” over and over again. Floriana asks if Idrina was planning to kill her before she runs off into the night, then Walter appears to kiss Idrina. Turns out they were working together all along — she tells him where to find Floriana the next morning. Holy shit — Idrina reveals her whole plot, revealing how she drove her husband crazy, making him believe that he could have been a murderer! She wishes that there was an afterlife so Oliviero’s mother — who she killed! — could tell him how great her revenge was. She ends by wishing that her husband was still alive so that he could suffer for eternity.
Walter sets up an accident that takes out Floriana and her boyfriend, as their motorcycle crashes, sending blood across the white heart of a billboard and out of her lips. He tosses a match on the gasoline-soaked highway, burning both of their corpses. He collects the jewelry and gives it to Idrina, who responds by shoving him off a cliff!
When she returns to the mansion, the police are there, as there were alerted to her stabbing Satan by the old woman. They come inside the house to write a statement, but hear the sound of Satan’s meows. Following the sound, they find him inside a wall — with the corpse of her husband!
Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key is superb. An intriguing story — only a few derailing giallo moments (like the killing of the girl in the room with the dolls and the B roll motocross scenes) — with great acting, eye-catching camerawork and some genuine surprises, it’s well worth seeking out and savoring.
The Arrow Video blu ray of this movie has an interview with Martino; a making of with interviews with Martino, Fenech and Gastaldi; a visual essay by Michael Mackenzie exploring Martino’s contributions to the giallo genre; a feature by film historian Justin Harries on Fenech’s career; Eli Roth speaking on the film and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matthew Griffin.
This is the last of Martino’s giallo and doesn’t feature his usual cast, like Edwige Fenech or Ivan Rassimov. It does, however, have Claudio Cassinelli, who was in Murder Rock and What Have They Done to Your Daughters?
Cassinelli plays police detective Paolo Germi, who meets a girl named Marisa (Patrizia Castaldi, in her only acting role before becoming a costume designer) who is soon murdered. She was a prostitute and now, Germi is haunted by her death and wants to find the killers. Unfortunately, Marisa was in way over her head and getting the answers won’t be simple. After all, there’s a man with mirrored shades killing everyone that gets close to the truth.
While this film doesn’t reach the lunatic heights of Martino’s finest works, it’s still a gleaming example of how great 1970’s Italian genre film can be.
The Arrow Video release of this film also has extras like audio commentary by Troy Howarth, author of So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films; an interview with Martino and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Chris Malbon.
You can purchase this Arrow Video box set from MVD.
Arrow Video continues its exploration of giallo with its fourth box set after the Black, Red and Yellow editions of Giallo Essentials.
The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (1971): Emilio Paolo Miraglia created two giallo — this film and The Red Queen Kills Seven Times. This one goes more into the horror realm than the typical themes of the genre.
Lord Alan Cunningham starts this movie off by running away from an insane asylum, a place he’s been since the death of his redheaded wife, Evelyn, who he caught having sex with another man. To deal with his grief, Alan does what any of us would do — pick up redhead prostitutes and strippers, tie them up, then kill them.
A seance freaks Alan out so badly he passes out, so his cousin — and only living heir — Farley moves in to take care of him, which basically means going to strip clubs and playing with foxes. Alan nearly kills another stripper before Farley gives him some advice — to get over Evelyn, he should marry someone that looks just like her. Alan selects Gladys (Marina Malfatti, All the Colors of the Dark) as his new wife and comes back home.
Sure, you meet someone one night and marry them the next. But nothing could compare Gladys for the weirdness of living in an ancient mansion, along with a staff of identical waitresses, Evelyn’s brother and Alan’s wheelchair-bound aunt. Our heroine is convinced that Evelyn is not dead. And the other family members get killed off — Albert with a snake and Agatha is eaten by foxes!
Gladys even looks at the body in the tomb before Alan catches her and slaps the shit out of her, as he is going crazier and crazier. Finally, Evelyn rises from her grave, which sends him back to a mental institution.
The big reveal? Gladys and Farley were in on it all along. But wait, there’s more! Susan, the stripper who survived Alan’s attack, was the one who was really Evelyn and Gladys has been poisoned! Before she dies, the lady who we thought was our heroine wipes out the stripper and Farley gets away with the perfect crime.
But wait! There’s more! Alan had faked his breakdown and did it all so that he could learn that it was Farley who was making love to his wife and killed her when she refused to run away with him. A fight breaks out and Farley gets burned by acid. He’s arrested and Alan — who up until now was pretty much the villain of this movie — gets away with all of his crimes!
This is a decent thriller, but it really feels padded in parts and tends to crawl. That said, it has some great music, incredibly decorated sets and some twists. Not my favorite giallo, but well worth a Saturday afternoon watch. There are some moments of sheer beauty here, such as the rainstorm where Alan sees Evelyn’s ghost rise.
The Arrow Video blu ray release of this movie has commentary by Troy Howarth, an exclusive introduction by Erika Blanc, an interview with critic Stephen Thrower, two interviews with Blanc and one with production designer Lorenzo Baraldi and a trailer.
The Iguana With the Tongue of Fire (1971): Other than The Ghost, I hadn’t seen many Riccardo Freda films before, only really knowing him from not finishing both I Vampiri and Caltiki – The Immortal Monster, films which Mario Bava took to completion. After The Bird with the Crystal Plumage made giallo into a box office success, Freda decided to try his hand at the form.
While the film’s credits say that this is based on the book A Room Without a Door by Richard Mann, that was probably an invention of the filmmakers. Freda ended up being unhappy with the movie, wanting Roger Moore for the lead.
The first thing you may notice about this film is that it’s made in Ireland, so the typical giallo set pieces aren’t there. There’s one gorgeous shot of the hills and rocks high above the water later in the movie that is completely breathtaking. And the accents in the film mark this as nowhere near Italy.
Starting with the first murder, where a girl has acid thrown in her face and her throat slashed, the film sets the tone that this is a lurid, scummy affair. But unlike most giallo, the murders appear at odds with the story. They just happen — there’s rarely any lead or tension to them and we often only see the final results, unlike the movies of Argento that wallow in both the set-up and execution of the murders, often at the expense of the story itself.
Once the corpse is found inside a limo — one that belongs to Swiss Ambassador Sobiesky — that suspect claims diplomatic immunity. So the police pull an end around, bringing in tough ex-cop John Norton (Luigi Pistilli, A Bay of Blood, Enter the Devil, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key) to get close to the family and discover the real killer.
He gets close in the biblical sense with the ambassador’s daughter Helen (Dagmar Lassander, The House by the Cemetery, Hatchet for the Honeymoon)and caught up in the blackmail and sheer lunacy of the entire clan. Valentina Cortese (The Girl Who Knew Too Much, The Possessed) really stands out as the mother, who is always smoking long cigarettes and showing up way overdressed for any situation.
This is the kind of movie where every single individual — even the grandmother and daughter — can be the killer. It also has a completely pointless scene where the family cat is decapitated and left in the icebox. There’s no real hero here, just a lot of bad people and people who are worse than them. By the end of the film, you’ll have an entire living room filled with red herrings, trust me.
Arrow Video has released the ultimate version of this film, using a new 2K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative, along with the original English and Italian soundtracks, titles and credits (with newly translated English subtitles for the Italian soundtrack).
There’s also audio commentary by giallo connoisseurs Adrian J. Smith and David Flint; Of Chameleons and Iguanas, a newly filmed video appreciation by the cultural critic and academic Richard Dyer; Considering Cipriani, a new appreciation of the composer Stelvio Cipriani and this film’s score by DJ and soundtrack collector Lovely Jon; The Cutting Game, a new interview with Iguana’s assistant editor Bruno Micheli; The Red Queen of Hearts, which is an essential and thorough interview with actress Dagmar Lassander; the original Italian and international theatrical trailers; an image gallery; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys and a collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Andreas Ehrenreich.
This is the last of Martino’s giallo and doesn’t feature his usual cast, like Edwige Fenech or Ivan Rassimov. It does, however, have Claudio Cassinelli, who was in Murder Rock and What Have They Done to Your Daughters?
Cassinelli plays police detective Paolo Germi, who meets a girl named Marisa (Patrizia Castaldi, in her only acting role before becoming a costume designer) who is soon murdered. She was a prostitute and now, Germi is haunted by her death and wants to find the killers. Unfortunately, Marisa was in way over her head and getting the answers won’t be simple. After all, there’s a man with mirrored shades killing everyone that gets close to the truth.
While this film doesn’t reach the lunatic heights of Martino’s finest works, it’s still a gleaming example of how great 1970’s Italian genre film can be.
The Arrow Video release of this film also has extras like audio commentary by Troy Howarth, author of So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films; an interview with Martino and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Chris Malbon.
This limited edition Arrow Video box set comes in rigid packaging with the original poster artwork in a windowed Giallo Essentials Collection slipcover. You’ll enjoy 2K restorations from the original camera negative for all three films as well as reversible sleeves for each film featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx, Graham Humphreys and Chris Malbon.
AKA The Seduction of Amy, this film finds Jean Rollin stuck yet again in that horrible trauma of having no money to make the movies that he wants to make and instead making adult films and trying to sneak in art amongst all the same old in and out.
It’s set in a castle where de Sade once performed black magic rites and there’s a beach — there’s always a beach — and the Castel twins show up and spank one another, so I’m not made of stone, you know? That said, it’s kind of a kick in the pants to go from slow drone Rollin to just basic coupling and it’s so static and clinical and there it is — just coitus — when I’ve been inside the magical movie drug world, you know?
Back in Video Watchdog #31, Rollin said very much the same: ” I was sure that, with this type of film, one could come up with something new and of interest. I tried with Phantasmes but failed miserably. The reason for the death of French hardcore culture, if you want to use that term, is that the audience just doesn’t care. They don’t want cinema, they want people screwing and that’s it. That’s why after Phantasmes, I made my porn films in a rather uninspired way. I was very disappointed with the failure of that film. I really tried to make something out of it and nobody gave a damn. It was a porno with a real story, with real direction and real actors. The Castel Twins were in it again, for example. Knowing what I know now, I would say it is impossible to turn pornography into something of interest. There is simply no market. I don’t like the other porn films I did, that’s true, but I enjoyed shooting them. I made the acquaintance of a lot of very interesting people and I have respect for them. Today, the actors only do it for money, but back then, it was something different. Some of them did it because they wanted to explore their desires, some because they wanted to enter the film business, but they all had something in common. They were proud of what they did, like a little group of outsiders, because they did something which most people didn’t dare to do. It was some sort of rebellion, a statement, and it was honest.”
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