EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will be playing this on Saturday, Jan. 4 at 7:00 p.m. at Central Cinema, Knoxville, TN with Strip Nude for Your Killer (tickets here). For more information, visit Cinematic Void. 

Before Fulci became known as the godfather of gore, he made movies in nearly every genre. This is the next to last film he’d make — Silver Saddle follows it in 1978 — before 1979’s Zombie announced to the world that he was here to tear eyeballs, unleash bats and provide dazzling if incomprehensible odes to mayhem.

Fulci is no stranger to the Giallo, with some of his most important films being A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin and Don’t Torture a Duckling and the unappreciated Perversion Story. The title refers to the film’s exploration of the duality of human nature, a theme that Fulci often revisits in his work. Here, he’d team up again with writer Roberto Gianviti and begin his long partnership with writer Dardano Sacchetti, who sought to lend a touch of Argento to the original script’s traditional mystery.

What emerged was a film shrouded in mystery and darkness—a rumination where death is inescapable and always close, a world where doom hangs over every moment, captivating the audience with its enigmatic atmosphere.

The film is set in Dover, England, in 1959, a time of social change and upheaval. A woman commits suicide by literally diving from the Cliffs of Dover. Forgive the harmful effects — Fulci tends to use wooden bodies in his films for some reason, much like the end of Duckling. The main point is that her daughter Virginia may be living in Italy, but she can clearly see her mother’s day.

Today, Virginia (Jennifer O’Neill, Scanners) lives in Rome and is married to a wealthy businessman named Francesco (Gianni Garko, Sartana himself!). As she drives him to the airport for his next business trip, she begins to see visions. An older woman is being killed. A wall is torn down. And a letter is under a statue. How strange is it that the house she is beginning to renovate looks precisely like the one in her visions?

When she tears down the wall that looks like the one in her dreams, she finds the skeleton of her husband’s ex-lover and the police want to charge him with the murder. Virginia becomes the detective of the story, obsessed with saving her husband with the help of psychic researcher Luca Fattori. Soon, they believe that the real killer is Emilio Rospini (Gabriele Ferzetti, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service).

So who is the woman? Why was her body in that room, which was once her husband’s bedroom? Why is the woman’s face on the cover of the magazine that Virginia buys? That’s because Virginia’s visions aren’t the past but premonitions of the future.

Meanwhile, she’s given a wristwatch that plays a haunting theme every hour in the house. This eerie soundtrack, composed by Fabio Frizzi, adds a layer of suspense and tension to the film and was reused to incredible effect in Kill Bill. The growing knowledge that the victim isn’t dead yet—and that Virginia may be that victim—darkens every frame of Fulci’s epic.

Quentin Tarantino was so in love with this film that he intended to remake it with Bridget Fonda sometime in the 2000s, but this never happened.

Perhaps just as interesting as the film is the life of its star, Jennifer O’Neill. Possibly best known for her long career as a Cover Girl model, she has been married nine times to eight husbands (she married, divorced, and remarried her sixth husband, Richard Alan Brown). By the age of 17, she’d already attempted suicide so as not to be separated from her dog, had a horse break her neck in three places and married her first husband. She’s also had a horrible history with guns, having accidentally shot herself in 1982 and being on the set of the TV show Cover Up in 1984 when co-star Jon-Erik Hexum accidentally killed himself. While waiting for a delay, he had been playing Russian roulette with a prop gun and was unaware that the discharge could still cause damage. Placing the gun to his temple, he fired and caused so much damage to his brain that he died six days later.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will be playing this film on January 6 at 7:00 PM PT at Los Feliz 3 in Los Angeles, CA. For more information, visit Cinematic Void. For tickets, visit this site. Can’t make it to the movie? Watch it on Tubi.

One of my favorite things about giallo are the alternate titles. As if The Bloodstained Shadow isn’t a great name, this movie also goes by Solamente Nero (Only Blackness), which is a way better title. The other thing I love about this genre is that just when I think I’ve seen every good one, I find another to enjoy.

This is the kind of movie that tells you exactly where it stands in the first minutes, as a killer strangles a girl in a field before the credits even start. That murder has never been solved. Years later, a college professor named Stefano has a nervous breakdown. To recover, he comes home to visit his brother Don Paolo, who has become a priest that hates all of the immorality in their small town.

Oh what immorality — there’s a gambler, a psychic, a combination atheist/pedophile and an illegal abortionist with a mentally challenged son who lives in a shack top the list, along with your typical sex and drinking that happens in any town.

Meanwhile, murders have been piling up and whoever is behind it, they’re leaving notes to the priest, warning him that if he reveals who the killer is, he’ll be next. That’s because on Stefano’s first night back home, Don Paolo saw the killer murder the town psychic in the courtyard.

Stefania Casini (Suspiria) also appears as the love interest, Sandra, who helps Stefano come back to normalcy. Well, as normal as a town filled with murder can be. I’m kind of amazed that she wears a belly chain all day. When you get to the love scene, you’ll know what I mean.

There’s also some amazing religious imagery in this one, like a skinned and bloody animal that has been placed in the sacristy to warn the priest that he’s getting too close, or the communion scene that reveals who the real killer is.

Finally, Goblin plays some great music in here, created by composer Stelvio Cipriani. It’s really a great package, thanks to director Antonio Bido, who directed one other giallo, Watch Me When I Kill. I love how the past childhood trauma that the brothers endured continues to permeate their lives as they try to grow up. This is a very adult giallo and by that, I mean that it doesn’t need nudity and gore to tell its tale.

VIDEO ARCHIVES NOTES: This movie was discussed on the November 12, 2024 episode of the Video Archives podcast. 

One of the things I’ve picked up from Video Archives is that Quentin Tarantino is from the era when Robert Mitchum was considered an action hero.

This was called “the meanest Mitchum movie yet” and has him playing former DEA Agent Quinlan, who was kicked off the force for stealing confiscated drug money. Now he’s using drug dealer Chung Wei’s (Keye Luke) tips to tell the DEA where to bust people. At least that was the plan but there’s a leak somewhere in the DEA.

Mitchum works with agents Howard Odums (Bradford Dillman, who only made this movie so he could take his wife Suzy Parker on a trip), Ridgeway (Richard Egan) and Riley Knight (Leslie Nielsen). Yuen Wah and Yuen Biao also show up.

Man, Robert Clouse made all over the place movies. Whether it’s Enter the Dragon, Golden Needles, Game of Death, The Big Brawl, Deadly Eyes, Gymkata or the two China O’Brien movies, he knew how to entertain. This was a Golden Harvest production and supposedly a remake of Jumping Ash. Editor Allan Holtzman would go on to direct Forbidden World and Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Holocaust.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The Shaw Scope Volume 3 box set has several wuxia films by Chor Yuen that star Ti Lung. In this one, he plays Zhao Wuji, a swordsman who learns that his father has been killed. He’s so upset — and ready for revenge — that he cancels his wedding and gets pulled into a battle between two families, the Tang Family Sect led by Master Tang Ao (Yueh Hua) and his own family’s Zhao Clan who have no successor to his father, as he had hidden his will in a jade tiger that has been lost.

Chor Yuen made many of Gu Long’s books into movies, but this film has the author writing the screenplay which comes from his work The White Jade Tiger. 

How important was Zhao Wuji’s wedding anyways? After all, he was dueling with Dugu Sheng (Norman Chu) beforehand, a man who respected that he was about to be wed, while our hero claims that he would rather die a bachelor and not have a widow. He then takes on the name Shangguan Ren and becomes part of the Tang Family Sect, getting to know his father’s murderer and somehow not hating him as much as he would have suspected.

As much as this is a talky tale filled with twists and turns, it has Master Lu in it, a man so deadly that he uses his glass eyeballs as weapons. He has exploding eyeballs. Let that wash over you.

That said, this is probably not a good first time Shaw Brothers watch. You need to be a bit more into these films, know the actors and the reasons, and then you’ll enjoy this more than someone who hasn’t had a steady relationship with these movies.

The Arrow Video Shaw Scope Volume Three box set has a brand new 2K restoration of Jade Tiger as well as commentary by critic Ian Jane and a trailer.

You can get this set from MVD.

Clans of Intrigue is based on the book Fragrance in the Sea of Blood, which is part of Gu Long’s Chu Liuxiang novel series. The first of these stories to be adapted by Shaw Brothers, with Chor Yuen directing and Ti Lung as Chu Liuxiang. Legend of the Bat and Perils of the Sentimental Swordsman would follow this movie, as well as several other appearances of this character in other movies.

After three martial artists are poisoned using the Holy Water Palace’s Heaven’s One Holy Water has been stolen, it’s determined that only one man could be so deadly and so good of a thief to pull this off: Chu Liuxiang. At least that’s what Kung Nan-Yen (Nora Miao) believes, but she gives our hero one month to clear his name.

Chor Yuen made five movies in 1977: Jade Tiger, Death Duel, Pursuit of Vengeance, The Sentimental Swordsman and this movie. He’d repeat that the following year before taking it easy in 1979 and 1980, only making four movies in both of those years. Not only was he busy, he also made some great films.

This has the feel of a detective tale, as our hero must go through each suspect and attempt to discover who could have stolen the Magic Water and who was also skilled enough to kill three martial arts masters. Chu Liuxiang must also deal with all of the other fighters who believe that he’s the murderer and don’t want to wait for revenge.

You can read Jenn Upton’s review of this movie here.

The Arrow Video Shaw Scope Volume Three box set has a brand new 2K restoration of Clans of Intrigue as well as commentary by Jonathan Clements, author of A Brief History of China; interviews with stuntwoman Sharon Yeung, film historian Bede Chang and film critic Law Kar and a trailer.

You can get this set from MVD.

Kim Ki-young made horror films after studying to be a dentist and making propaganda movies. His 1960 movie, The Housemaid, is considered to be one of the best Korean films ever. Today, filmmakers like Im Sang-soo, Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook proclaim his films like Woman of Fire, Insect Woman, Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death and this movie. When Youn Yuh-jung won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Minari, she brought up Kim Ki-young in her speech and said that he was a genius.

There’s an island in legend called Parang where the men die after they reproduce, leaving behind a country of women. Marketing manager Seon Woo-hyeon (Kim Chung-chui) has named a new resort after this place and plans a boat trip to the island that inspired it for the media but journalist Cheon Nam-seok (Choi Yun-seok) refuses to go as he believes that Parang is real. After the two go for a drink, Cheon Nam-seok disappears and Seon Woo-hyeon is blamed for his death. To clear his name, he goes to Parang to discover what it’s really like.

Imagine what happens when he finds a pagan society that is run by women, all of them the widows of men lost to the sea. Chun’s past is strange, as his father disappeared after first seeing the island, his mother committed suicide after being taken advantage of by an exorcist and the exorcist’s daughter stole money so he could escape the island, if not his deadly destiny. As for her, she was tied to rocks on the beach and left to die.

There’s so much mystery in this that the central murder no longer matters. There’s a strange shaman, women desperate to be with child, a water demon, pollution, necrophilia and so much more. This isn’t a sit back and relax movie. It must be devoured and explored.

Io Island is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including an audio commentary by archivist and Korean film historian Ariel Schudson and Dr. Hyunseon Lee On Shamanism in Korean visual culture. There is also a short, The Present.

You can order this set from Severin.