Tropic of Cancer

  
Tropic of Cancer

 

When the spirit chooses a woman and enters her body,

that woman will know the secret of life and happiness.

 

While Fred Wright (Gabriele Tinti) and his wife, Grace (Anita Strindberg) are vacationing in Haiti, they find an old friend, Dr. Williams (Anthony Steffen), who has developed a new miracle drug. But someone wants the formula so badly they're willing to kill for it! Which of  the rival cartels and drug companies is knocking off the competition? Secret alliances and double-crosses abound and the Wrights find themselves caught in the crossfire. Can they survive the web of treachery? And what secrets is Fred keeping from his wife?

Tropic of Cancer (not to be confused with the Henry Miller novel or its 1970 film adaptation) is an action-packed giallo that uses its Haitian setting to full effect. The miracle drug MacGuffin isn't well-explained during the exposition, but the general idea is conveyed - danger is out there and anyone could be the killer or the next victim. The kill scenes are spread out at regular intervals and offer some real creativity For example, one victim is scalded with steam, loaded onto a conveyor belt, falls into a large industrial vat, is jabbed with a pole until he lets go of the rim, and is sealed inside. Another victim's death is attributed simply to a voodoo curse. The whole film is a sweaty, bloody, sexy hodgepodge - all that's missing is a coherent plot.

• Dr. Williams takes the Wrights to a voodoo ceremony and it's clear that the filmmakers wanted to inject the film with a touch of Mondo Cane -  naked dancers circle a bull and writhe on the ground before the animal is killed and its scrotum is removed, all set to delirious drumming. It's presented with minimal cultural context simply for cheap shock value.
• Be warned that there are two scenes where animals are killed - actual animals actually being killed, not puppets. First is the bull being sacrificed at the voodoo ceremony and later, Grace and Dr. Williams visit a beef processing facility and see cows slaughtered. 
• It's never clear exactly what kind of doctor Williams is. He develops the drug for humans but is sometimes described as a veterinarian. He knows a lot about both plants and spiders, creating an anti-venom on the spot when Gardner (Stelio Candelli) is bit. And he also acts as a meat processing inspector.
• The Tropic of Cancer does not run through Haiti.

 
What the Hell am I Watching?

Aside from the voodoo sacrifice and cow slaughter? There's a scene depicting what is supposed to be a Haitian wedding rite: the couple lie naked, face down next to each other as they're splashed with water and surrounded by a singing, drumming crowd.

Grace is poisoned by a local flower, whose scent sends her into a trippy dream sequence.  She finds herself in a black robe, running down a red hallway lined with naked men, who reach out to her. Her hair billows in slow motion as she lies on the floor, watching as one man approaches her and kisses her.  It looks like the music video Madonna was never allowed to make.

Fashion Moment

Grace knows the secret to looking good in the tropics - keep it light and casual.

 

... Even when you're having a drug-induced psychadelic freak-out, layers are not your friend.

 

Philip (Umberto Raho) illustrates another important point: a crisp white suit seems like a good idea, but that only lasts for about twenty minutes before things get sticky.

 

 

Murder Obsession

 

Murder Obsession

"There's nothing to be afraid of now. A stringe bond exists

between the two of us. Nothing seperates us."

Actor Michael Stanford (Stefano Patrizi) has been haunted his whole life by the guilt of murdering his father - an event he repressed since childhood and only barely remembers. So when Michael invites his girlfriend Debra (Silvia Dionisio) and some cast and crew members of his latest movie for a relaxing visit to his childhood home, seeing his mother Glenda (Anita Strinberg) stirs up dark memories. And things get even worse when the weekend guests start turning up dead. Could Michael be blacking out and murdering people in a fugue state? Or was it Oliver (John Riehaudson), the creepy butler? Was Debra really kidnapped and forced to participate in a Satanic ritual or whas that a dream? And did Michael really kill his father all those years ago?

Murder Obsession (which sometimes goes by the title Fear) takes us through a lot of anticlimactic false starts before it starts rolling. And when it does, it becomes clear that the plot is a collage of ideas from other, better movies. The attempted murder of Beryl (Laura Gemser) in a bathtub echoes that of Mizar Harrington in The Case of the Bloody Iris; a woman is attacked by bats like in Lizard in Woman's Skin; the was-it-or-wasn't-it-a dream sequence Satanic ritual is reminiscent of Rosemary's Baby; Debra runs through a forrest at night in the rain in the style of Susperia; We get flashbacks from three different points of view on Michael's father's death in a hamfisted attempt to make this a giallo Rashomon. And, of course, the dark candle-lit mansion, murky dungeons, and shoehorned-in elements of black magic, psychic powers, and magic talismans come from the world of gothic horror.

• The ghostly footprints appearing on the dusty staircase (a la Paranormal Activity) is a cool effect.
• Neither Glenda's nor Oliver's explanation for Michael's father's death makes any sense. But Oliver's makes slightly more sense.
• The ending of the movie is left a little ambiguous. The killer is revealed, one character is mortally wounded (I've counted it as a death in the body count, above), and another character screams right before we cut to credits (I didn't count that one as a death).
• This movie has gone by six different English titles over the years and not a single one of them (except maybe Satan's Altar) relates to the movie.

What the Hell am I Watching?

What's the inverse of an Oedipal complex? Because that's something that happens in this movie. Glenda's reunion with Michael is slightly unsettling and it just gets weirder from there.

Fashion Moment

Movie star Beryl is looking fantastic in this richly-embroidered white silk kimono.

Also, the movie brazenly re-creates one of the greatest works of Western art: Michaelangelo's Pieta.

Who Saw Her Die?

Who Saw Her Die?

"Nobody does anything without a reason. What was yours?"

Franco Serpieri (George Lazenby) is a famous sculptor living in Venice who has to put his swinging personal life on hold when his young daughter Roberta (Nicoletta Elmi) comes for a visit. One night, while Franco is distracted by a lady friend, Roberta is kidnapped and later found dead, leaving Franco and his estranged wife Elizabeth (Anita Strindberg) distraught. In his grief, Franco pursues the killer, only to uncover a sordid web of drugs, sex, and blackmail. Could the killer be someone from his circle of friends? Or perhaps it's the ironically-named Bonaiuti (José Quaglio), a rich and secretive libertine with decadent tastes? And what is the connection to similar murders that occurred years before? As more people involved in the mystery are murdered, Franco must race to find the killer.

Who Saw Her Die? isn't a great giallo, but the shadowy, misty Venetian setting adds atmosphere that does a lot of the heavy lifting. Ennio Morricone's score, characterized by a sinister childrens' chorus, also adds to the creepy factor. Despite all the atmosphere, the movie winds up with a highly unsatisfying ending which doesn't adequately tie up all the loose ends and offers no motive for most of the murders. There's also a little twist tacked on as an obvious afterthought. Possibly the result of angry test audiences.

• It's impossible not to make connections between Who Saw Her Die? and Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now, which came out a year later. Both feature a foreign couple in Venice mourning the death of a small child while a murderer strikes nearby and both include weird, emotional grownup scenes.
• Similarities to Antonio Bido's 1977 giallo The Bloodstained Shadow are also notable: a Venetian setting, an artistic main character, an aristocratic pedophile, and a killer in the same profession who ends up with the exact same fate.
• Child actress Nicoletta Elmi may look familiar to you. She played a psycho kid in Mario Bava's Bay of Blood and would go on to play another psycho kid in Dario Argento's Deep Red. She was also Ingrid the sinister usherette in Lamberto Bava's horror movie Demons. She has a great creepy smile and you just don't know what's going on behind those eyes.
• If you know Australian actor George Lazenby for his most famous role as clean-cut James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, it's shocking to see him here as a lean and lanky artist with long hair, a scraggly mustache, and sideburns.
• Speaking of James Bond, you may recognize Adolfo Celi (the also-ironically named Serafian) as Largo in Thunderball.
• One of the murders listed in the body count above occurs off-screen, after the prologue and two years prior to the main action.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

There's a strange scene where Franco questions a reclusive weirdo over a game of ping pong.  The game is meant to liven up the long-winded but necessary exposition. It's  exactly the sort of thing you'd see in an Argento film.

Franco gives 8-year-old Roberta wine with dinner. Between that and losing her on the streets, this guy is not in the running for Father Of the Year.

The creepy, gleeful look on Elizabeth's face when the killer is set on fire and jumps out a window is as haunting as the death itself.

If you know anything about giallo movies, you'll be able to guess the identity of the killer within 12 minutes.

Fashion Moment

The movie takes place in the world of jet-setting artists and Ginerva (Dominique Boschero) is clearly the most fashionable character.  A chilly autumn in Venice? Time to break out the miniskirts. I especially love her cool "handshake" belt buckle.

That belt buckle was used as a stylistic reference point in the 2009 giallo homage Amer.

The Case of the Scorpion's Tail

The Case of the Scorpion's Tail

"Even a sex maniac must pay his laundry bill."

After Lisa Baumer's (Ida Galli) estranged husband dies in an airline explosion, she must travel to Athens to collect the million dollar insurance premium. While there, she is confronted by her husband's mistress, Lara (Janine Reynard), who demands a cut of the money, but Lisa refuses. Soon after cashing the check, Lisa is murdered and the money is stolen. Insurance investigator Peter Lynch (George Hilton) has been trailing Lisa, but now his mission is to track down the missing money and find the killer, along with local Police Insepctor Stavros (Luigi Pistilli), Interpol detective John Stanley (Alberto diMendoza), and ace reporter Cleo Dupont (Anita Strinberg). As the clues pile up, the killer continues to strike. Could Stanley or Stavros be the killer? Was Baumer really on that plane, like everyone assumes? And what answers can be found in a scorpion-shaped cufflink and a hidden underwater cave?

The Case Of the Scorpion's Tail (not to be confused with The Scorpion With Two Tails) benefits from a first-class script. The plot has great twists, suspicion shifts throughout the story, and there are some effective scenes of action and suspense. Not to mention the fantastic cast of giallo all-stars.  Like Marion in Psycho, our main character, Lisa, is killed off in the first 25 minutes of the movie, giving the film an anything-can-happen sense of reckless danger. Anyone could be the killer and anyone could be the next victim and that's a thrilling feeling.

• The Case Of the Scorpion's Tail features another great score by Bruno Nicolai and fantastic editing by Eugenio Alabiso.
• Martino and his screenwriters really utilize this cast beautifully. The ladies are appropriately alluring, Hilton plays right to his strengths as a bad-boy love interest, diMendoza plays another cop with no-nonsense conviction, and Luis Barboo, as Lara's goon, gets a good rooftop fight scene.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

Are we really to believe that the killer is able to hack through  a solid wood door with a switchblade?

Fashion Moment

On one hand, it's good to see Luigi Pistilli wearing something besides cable-knit fisherman sweaters. But if the alternative is ties like this one, I'd rather see him back in those bulky pullovers.

A Lizard in Woman's Skin

A Lizard In Woman's Skin

"They stabbed her three times... each one of the stabs fatal!"

Carol Hammond (Florina Bolkan) is a respectable wife and stepmother... who just happens to have frequent lesbian sex dreams about her nymphomaniac hippie neighbor, Julia (Anita Strinberg). One night, however, Carol dreams of stabbing Julia to death and later discovers that Julia was indeed murdered that very night, exactly like in the dream. Does Carol have a psychic link to the killer? Or is she schizophrenic? Is her cheating husband Frank (Jean Sorel) framing her for the murder? And are the two glassy-eyed hippies who witnessed the murder real or just part of the dream? With her senses betraying her, Carol must decide what's real and what's in her mind, before it's too late!

Lucio Fulci is best known for his visceral gore films, but his handful of gialli are some of his best work. This one is a fun, sleazy, acid-soaked psychedelic trip featuring naked orgies, lots of blood, and some fantastic surreal dream sequences. The use of forensic science in the investigation was probably inspired by Dario Argento's The Bird With the Crystal Plumage and the bat attack, when Carol hides out in a church attic, is an obvious shot-for-shot homage to Hitchcock's The Birds.

• Here's another great score by Ennio Moricone, in turns funky, wild, and haunting.
• The five animal deaths include one bat in the church attic scene and four dogs in the hospital.
• If you suffer from vertigo, be warned that there are a ton of camera zooms in this movie. You'll find a few in just about any giallo, but Fulci was never known for restraint.
• Let's hear it for giallo mainstay George Rigaud, who appears here as Dr. Kerr, Carol's psychiatrist.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

More about that dog scene: Running from an attacker in a hospital, Carol stumbles upon a room where four live dogs are strung up with their bellies slit open (we can see their beating hearts), and their blood is being drained through tubes. There's no indication what scientific benefit this serves, but it's still a very upsetting sight. In fact, Fulci was nearly charged with animal cruelty for that scene, until members of his crew testified that the dogs were all puppets and that no animals were harmed. This scene is omitted in some versions of the movie.

The dream sequences are absolutely crazy in this film. Naked limbs writhing around, a dinner party of bleeding corpses, and angry swans attacking from the clouds. Many of these images relate to artwork in the Hammond home... which is sort of ingenious in a Kaiser Soze way, if you're aware of the twist ending.

Fashion Moment

Miss Carol is working it in her wardrobe from the Carmen Sandiego collection. Check out those monochromatic wide-brimmed hats and cape coats in three different colors.

Puzzle

Puzzle

"This is Whiskey... and he's my best friend."

Eight months ago, Ted Walden (Luc Merenda) awoke from a car crash in London with amnesia and has been trying desperately to remember anything from his past. When Phillip (Manfred Freyberger) introduces himself as an old friend, Ted is hopeful – until Philip threatens him with a gun, starts making demands, and is taken down by a sniper. Seeking answers, Ted follows a lead to Portafino, Italy to find his wife, Sara (Senta Berger), who has understandably begun to move on with her life, believing that Ted abandoned her. They begin again, but red-headed thug George (Bruno Corazzari) emerges in Portafino and threatens to kill them both in seven days if they don't hand over the million dollars in merchandise that Ted stole when he double-crossed the gang. Now the pressure is on for Ted to remember his past, to save Sara's life and his own.

If you're going to brazenly call your movie Puzzle (not to be confused with Body Puzzle), it had better be a fantastic, engaging mystery story. Judging by the empty check boxes above, you may be tempted to think this is a weak film but, in fact, this movie totally delivers. It's pretty much a giallo version of The Bourne Identity, (or, rather, The Bourne Identity is a spy movie version of Puzzle) where we must piece the crime story together alongside the amnesiac hero. There's also an element of Regarding Henry, as Ted's amnesia reboots his strained relationship with his wife. There's no "giallo killer" in Puzzle, but the mystery is in slowly discovering Ted's identity and the details of the crime – who knows what, who was involved, and what it is they want.  Puzzle is engaging and surprising from the beginning to the gruesome end.

• George threatens Sara by throwing lit matches at her and says he "saw it in a film once."  He's referring to Charade, a movie where Audrey Hepburn must piece together the details of her dead secret agent husband's final mission.
• The amnesia angle comes from Hitchcock's Spellbound and I'm surprised that more gialli didn't make use of it as a plot device. 
• The fancy gold mantle clock is established as an important clue, but I have no idea what it has to do with anything in the story. 
• Ted is a nice, easy-going guy who slowly discovers that he has a brutal, calculating dark side. This, I think, makes him one of the most three-dimensional characters in the entire genre.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

Luca, the bratty 12-year-old neighbor kid with the Pete Rose haircut, isn't related to anyone but just insinuates himself into every situation. For example, why was he at lunch at a fancy restaurant with the grown-ups?

About 12 minutes into the movie,  we see Sara cleaning up after dinner... washing plates... throwing away leftovers... putting the chiansaw back in the pantry... wait, what?! Why does she have a chainsaw just sitting out on her dining room table? And why does she store it in the kitchen pantry? It makes no sense, but you just know there's going to be a great payoff at the end of the movie.

Amnesiac Ted really needs to stop greeting people with "Who the hell are you?"

Fashion Moment:

Englishman Ted may have moved to Italy, but he's not giving up those impeccable Saville Row suits and preppy-casual sweater vests.