Evil Eye

Evil Eye

  

"Do you think it's possible for a nightmare to continue when one's awake?"

  

Playboy expatriate Peter Crane (Jorge Rivero), who is haunted by dreams of satanic rituals and anguished souls, is shocked to meet a woman, Yvonne Chevrel (Lone Flemming) who shares the same visions. Peter is inexplicably compelled to murder Yvonne but then immediately wakes up from a dream - but was it a dream? And are the objects that seem to move on their own part of his hallucinations? To add to the confusion, Peter starts receiving threatening calls and letters from a blackmailer, who threatens to expose him as a murderer.  Even though Peter seeks help from psychiatrist Dr. Stone (Richard Conte) and beautiful Dr. Turner (Pilar Velásquez), he keeps envisioning murders before they happen. Is Peter insane? Or is he merely the puppet of a satanic cult? Skeptical Inspector Rameri (Anthony Steffen) tries to find answers and may become a believer in the process.

  

Evil Eye (not to be confused with The Girl Who Knew Too Much, which is sometimes also called The Evil Eye) is an interesting blend of Spasmo's psychadelic weirdness and L'Aldila's sense of supernatural dread, seasoned with elements and images from Dario Argento's early work.  It all amounts to a confusing mishmash of plot threads where motivations and logic get hazy, culminating in an anticlimactic ending that was certainly meant to be a heady twist.

• Evil Eye was co-written by Julio Buchs, who was responsible for Murder By Music. 
• Please to enjoy an appearance by legendary giallo actor Luciano Piggozi (credited here as Alan Collins).
• The Argento influences include shots of a creepy doll, dark trees blowing in the wind, glass breaking in slow motion and a ghostly face appearing in a high window.
• The title makes sense because it refers to the charm pennant that Inspector Ramieri carries (at his wife's insistence) to ward off evil spirits.
• The original Italian title, "Eroticofollia" translates as "Erotic Madness."

What the Hell am I Watching?

Even with all the voodoo stuff, naked ghosts, moving objects and unexplained ideas in this movie, the weirdest scene is the one where Peter and his girlfriend Tanya (Pia Giancaro) shower, brush their teeth and make out all at the same time.

Peter meets an old woman who, it turns out, is a ghost - but her timeline doesn't add up at all. His friend's wife, Elizabeth (Daniella Giordano) says that the old woman died three days before, implying that she was buried or at the morgue. But later, the police find the old woman's body in the yard. If Elizabeth knew the old woman was dead, why did she leave the corpse in her yard for three days? And are we to presume that Peter killed the woman three days ago, forgot about it, and then came back to see Elizabeth? 

Fashion Moment

 Early on, Peter wakes up in this stylish yellow (yes, "giallo") kimono.

Peter sees the doctors about his confusing dreams - but what he really needs is a cure for Saturday Night Fever.

 

And when he stops by Derek and Elizabeth's house, he's decked out in head-to-toe acid washed denim (shirtless, of course).

  

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.

 

 

The Killer with a Thousand Eyes

The Killer with a Thousand Eyes

"I've never dropped a case yet and I won't stop now."

When English Interpol agent Alistair McAndrew is murdered by a kabuki-masked assassin, his colleague, Michael Laurence (Anthony Steffen) is sent to Lisbon to identify and retrieve the body. But while in Portugal, Michael gets pulled into Alistair's case and, with help from an international team of agents, starts his own undercover investigation into the city's drug smuggling operations. As he gets closer to his friend's killer, informants and fellow agents are getting taken out by the mysterious gloved killer. Could it be the work of crime boss Costa (Eduardo Fajardo) or is someone else pulling the strings? Michael must hurry to find out before more people are murdered!

The Killer with a Thousand Eyes (not to be confused with The Man with Icy Eyes) is one of those fun gialli-poliziotteschi hybrids, combining the mysterious black-gloved killer and mystery aspects of a giallo with all the action and idiomatic themes of an Italian police procedural. And boy is this one action-packed. There's intrigue, explosions, six kung-fu fight scenes, a shootout in a dark warehouse and a couple of car chases - the last of which ends with the bad guys driving over the side of a giant suspension bridge. And it all winds up with a satisfying twist ending.

• 1974 was director Juan Bosch's giallo year. He's best known for his Westerns, but he released this movie and The Killer Wore Gloves within a few months of each other.
• Marcello Giombini's score mixes a 1970's crime movie aesthetic with a strange electronic bebop style of synthesized bleeps.
• This movie has a really high body count, but in includes six anonymous thugs, who are gunned down in the warehouse shootout in the course of four minutes.

What the Hell am I Watching?

 When French agent DuVallier (Raf Baldassarre) lets Michael crash at his apartment, he makes a point of showing off an exercise device he keeps in the kitchen. I thought for sure that this would pay off later on - maybe Michael could choke an intruder with it - but it never does.

Crime boss Costa's girlfriend, Sarah is a real psycho, as evidenced by her boisterous bloodlust during a cockfight at a dinner party.

Crime movie cliché #104: the detective and the crime boss square off over a quiet but intense game of chess. Because the chess game is a metaphor for their contentious relationship.

DuVallier's murder scene takes place in the woods and as the tension builds, the birds get louder and louder - but instead of sampling actual bird sounds, they used electronic chirps and whistles, building to a weird robotic cacophony.

Fashion Moment

When we first see Michael, he's getting his hands dirty, busting up a small-time London drug ring in this cool black jacket and turtleneck.

In Lisbon he gets decked out in his Carnaby Street finest. Love this chic jacket-waistcoat-ascott combo.

But for the rest of this investigation, he wears these less flashy outfits: sport coat, chinos, and a wide tie, all in solid colors. He does have a magnificent gold belt buckle, though.

But the real fashion iconoclast of the movie turns out to be Michael's commanding officer, Albert (Antonio Pico) who climbs out of a pool in one scene wearing a tiny white banana hammock.

The Crimes of the Black Cat

The Crimes of the Black Cat

"But I can't just go to the police and accuse a shadow... a voice... a scent."

The models at a Copenhagen fashion house owned by Françiose Balla (Sylvia Koscina) are turning up dead one by one... apparently of natural causes. At each crime scene, Inspector Jansen (Renato De Carmine) finds a picnic basket, a yellow shawl, and strange scratches on the corpse's neck. But how does it add up? Blind composer Peter Oliver (Anthony Steffen), the boyfriend of the first victim, aims to find out and his investigation leads him on the trail of a mysterious woman in a white hooded cape named Susan (Giovanna Lenzi). But what connection does Susan have to these models? Why would she want them dead? And how can she kill without even entering the room? The answers will lead Peter into a dangerous world of drugs, money, and blackmail!

The Crimes of the Black Cat (which often goes by its rhyming Italian title, Sette Scialli Di Seta Gialla, or Seven Shawls of Yellow Silk) is a fantastic giallo in the classic mode, even if it borrows heavily from other films. The killer's method comes from the 1940 Bela Lugosi film The Devil Bat, The fashion house setting and most of the plot comes from Blood and Black Lace, the blind detective can be traced to Cat O'Nine Tails, a slow-motion shot of a woman going head-first through a window comes from every Argento movie ever, and the brutal and highly graphic shower murder is an obvious homage to Psycho.  But even though it appropriates all these elements, The Crimes of the Black Cat synthesizes them in a clever way and it turns out to be a very satisfying movie, highly indicative of the genre.

• Check out the scene where Peter's assistant, Burton (Umberto Raho) is chasing Susan and she disappears when a rack of clothes passes in front of her. Yet another clever touch lifted from Blood and Black Lace.
• There's not a lot of bad art in this movie. In fact, it looks like Peter owns a Mondrian.
• There's a tense scene near the end where Peter is kidnapped and left alone in a closed glass factory. One false move and he'll fall into a pit of broken glass and the kidnapper uses the facility's machinery to try to knock him down. It's a great, suspenseful scene.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

Model Paula Whitney (Isabelle Marchall) is the first victim. Before she dies, her only line in the movie is a nasty homophobic slur against a co-worker.

That shower scene really is the thing that sticks with you, as it doesn't pull any punches. Unlike Marion's murder in Psycho, we see a razor blade tear deep into the victim's body in visceral detail in The Crimes of the Black Cat.

 Fashion Moment

This movie has a giallo killer who wears the classic all-black coat and hat, but it also turns that tradition on its head with a villain in white. Check out Susan's trademark hooded cape.