Delitto D'autore

"How strange, Marco. I sense fear and my head feels light."

Countess Valeria Volpi Gerosi (Wilma Casagrande) has generously donated a painting by Peter Paul Rubens as the prize for a prestigious music festival. In attendance for the event is her niece, Milena (Sylva Koscina) who is secretly married to Marco (Pier Paolo Capponi), because Valeria doesn't approve of Marco. When a mysterious phone call threatens misfortune if the painting is donated, nobody takes it seriously, but soon after, Milena is kidnapped, the painting is stolen and Valeria is murdered. Bloody priest's robes are found at the scene, but could the killer really be the kindly Don Lino (Luigi Pistilli)? Who stole the painting? Who kidnapped Milena and why? The police have a web of motives to untangle!

Delitto D'Autore (not to be confused with Delitti) is a tough watch - not for the content, but because its plot is absolutely inscrutable. I appreciate the neorealist approach of dropping the audience into a naturalistic conversation, but there are so few context clues in the dialogue that it's challenging to figure out what's going on, who the characters are and what their relationships are to each other. It all becomes more clear as the movie goes on, but writer/director Mario Sabatini was obviously more interested in style than a coherent plot. The mis-directs seem forced and the ultimate motivation of the killer is sadly anticlimactic.

• The movie was apparently never released with an English title, but it translates as "Copyright Crimes," which doesn't make sense until the final minutes of the film. The only alternate title I could find is the Greek O dolofonos me ta kokkina heili, or "The Killer With Red Lips."

• Despite the rickety final product, the movie has a star-studded cast - Luigi Pistilli (Bay of Blood), Sylvia Koschina (Crimes of the Black Cat), Pier Paolo Capponi (Seven Blood-Stained Orchids) and Krista Nell (So Sweet, So Dead) are giallo all-stars

What the Hell Am I Watching?

With a run time of only 75 minutes, I wish the filmmakers could have taken more time with the plot. But instead, they chose to pad the film with two scenes of naked frolicking women. First, there's a pool party that devolves into a giddy lesbian grope session. Later, we take time for a topless dance party, which looks like an X-rated episode of Laugh-In. Obviously, neither of these scenes has anything to do with the rest of the movie and are just awkwardly shoehorned into the edit.

Dream sequences are always fun, especially when the character is drugged. Milena tells Don Lino about her drug-induced dream, where she was dancing feverishly with shadowy figures.

 

 

 

She then woke up to find a pair of leather gloves. If an intruder was in her room while she slept, why would he take off his gloves and place them on her blanket before leaving? This is the kind of style-over-logic thinking that we find throughout the film.

The movie ends with a climactic car chase, in which the drivers zip up and down staircases, which is pretty fun. In one shot, you can clearly see the camera operator's shadow on the roof of the car as it passes by.

Fashion Moment:

There wasn't a lot of thought or effort put into the script and, sadly, this laziness carries over into the production design and costumes. The cast gets glammed up for a night of dancing, which is about it. Also, the mid-70's European swimwear is on full display at the pool (before it gets tossed aside).

A White Dress for Marialé

A White Dress for Marialé

Maybe we're not all innocent?

As a child, Marialé (Ida Galli, credited as Evelin Stuart) witnessed her father murder her mother and her mother's lover before turning the gun on himself. Now, years later, she finds herself in a crumbling pallazo married to Paolo (Luigi Pistilli), a rich brute who secretly sedates her. To ease the boredom and seek help, Marialé invites friends over for a raucous party. Guests include her former flame, Massimo (Ivan Rassimov), Semy (Shawn Robinson) and her racist husband Gustavo (Edilio Kim), and Mercedes (Pilar Velasquez), Joe (Giancarlo Bonuglia) and Sebastiano (Ezio Marano), who form their own open love triangle. Passions are unleashed over dinner, but things soon turn serious when one by one, the guests start turning up dead. Is Paolo offing his unwelcome visitors? Has Sebastiano's jealousy finally gotten out of hand? It all leads to a bloody conclusion!

In its first half, A White Dress for Marialé is one of those freak-out gialli like Death Falls Lightly or Spasmo, where a dream-like stream-of-consciousness narrative skips around, disorienting the audience until we're dizzy and confused. In the second half , the movie sobers up and sticks its landing as a standard drawing-room whodunnit. If you find the crazy psych-out style tedious like I do, just watch the first 15 minutes and then skip ahead to the movie's midpoint. 

• It's not a great movie by any stretch, but there's some real talent on both sides of the screen. Ida Galli, Ivan Rassimov and Luigi Pistilli are Giallo all-stars. Editor Francesco Bertuccioli worked on Sister of Ursula and Strip Nude for your Killer and Bruno Nicolai, one of the best composers of giallo scores ever, goes uncredited here.
• The movie was filmed at the Palazzo Borghese in Rome.
• We breeze quickly through character introductions at the beginning of the film, so it's easy to get confused about who's who and how they're all connected. On top of that, Gustavo and Sebastiano sort of resemble each other and they spend half the movie in stage costumes and makeup, making things even more confusing. I had to draw a diagram to keep everything straight.
• There seems to be a half-hearted "relflection" motif, where characters – especially Marialé – are shown in mirrors or reflected in windows. I was expecting it to foreshadow a split-personality twist, but that never came to pass

What the Hell am I Watching?

So much to cover here...

 Let's start with the part where a harmless garter snake – no more than half an inch around – crawls over Mercedes' foot. When she screams, Paolo immediately pulls out a gun and shoots it off her. Paolo is a). more than a little over-reactive and b.) an amazing marksman.

Let's talk about the scene where Semy feels up and gropes an empty suit of armor.

The women in this movie really get brutalized. Before getting murdered, they're constantly slapped around and Mercedes gets raped in one disturbing scene.

Speaking of getting slapped, my brain broke at the sight of Gustavo wearing a ballerina's dress in a slap fight with a naked Semy. The fight is broken up by Joe, who beats Gustavo with a whip. For real. What the hell am I watching?

Throughout the movie, I kept asking myself: Do these people even like each other? Why are they here? Why are they in these toxic relationships?

Fashion Moment

True to the title, Marialé does wear a white dress. In fact it's the same white dress her mother was murdered in. You can clearly see the two bullet holes on her chest. Foreshadowing!

Things get out of hand at the costume dinner.

And the aftermath of the feast looks like a Renaissance Dutch still life.

The Iguana With the Tongue of Fire

The Iguana With the Tongue of Fire

"The murderer has done a perfect job. A specialist, I'd say... like me."

When the naked, acid-burned corpse of a young woman is discovered in the trunk of the Swiss Ambassador's car it sets off a touchy political situation for the Dublin police, so Inspector Lawrence (Arthur O'Sullivan) engages loose-canon former cop John Norton (Luigi Pistilli) to do the dirty work of the investigation. While uncovering Ambassador Sobieski's (Anton Diffring) dirty secrets and family scandals, he falls in love with the Ambassador's step-daughter, Helen (Dagmar Lassander). Soon, more and more people connected to the family are murdered in the same malicious manner. Could the killer be a disgruntled employee like the driver (Renato Romano)? Is this an elaborate plot to create an international incident? Or perhaps Inspector Norton is the killer, using his influence to throw off the police?

The Iguana With the Tongue of Fire is a decent giallo with a large pool of suspects, some crazy moments, and bloody murder scenes, but the conclusion is a big disappointment. Really, the best thing this movie has going for it is that fantastic title, which turns out to be a metaphor for something that is exotic, beautiful, and deadly. To be honest, I would have preferred if the title was a complete non-sequitur and nobody alluded to it in the film.  

• The cast is full of familiar faces including Pistilli (Bay of Blood; The Case of the Scorpion's Tail), Dagmar Lassander (Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion), Valentina Cortese (The Girl Who Knew Too Much) and Renato Romano (Seven Bloodstained Orchids; The Bird With the Crystal Plumage).
• We see the murderer kill two people with a razor but the movie doesn't show the other three. All the dead bodies are shown with bloody necks, but I'm not sure we can assume that a razor was used in all five cases.
• The kill scenes and the acid-burning scene were done with fake-looking rubber dummies, but the real gruesome sequence is when Norton gets stitches at the hospital.
• While The Iguana With the Tongue of Fire is clearly a giallo, it borrows elements from the poliziotechi genre, which is characterized by a dangerous loner cop tracking down a case.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

It takes a while to get used to hearing Luigi Pistilli dubbed over with an Irish accent.

I love that all the suspects, police, and the doctor hang out in the same nightclub. So convenient.

Speaking of which, it seems that there's only one doctor in the city of Dublin. That guy turns up everywhere.

Yes, Ambassador Sobieski gets his dry cleaning done at Swastika Laundry Ltd.

When Norton sneaks into an apartment to gather evidence at night, someone is already there and they duke it out in a brutal four-minute furniture-smashing brawl. Which is filmed in complete darkness.The sound effects are pretty good, though.

Fashion Moment

I want to give a quick mention to Granny Norton's glasses with the built-in hearing aids. They're functional and they're a plot point.

But my favorite thing is this awesome birch-textured military-cut jacket worn by Helen's boyfriend Walter (Sergio Doria). Sharp.

Also, Mrs. Sobieski is really getting her Garbo on in this opulent costume.

One more thing...

Do you think Luigi Pistili has a standard clause in his contract stating that he must wear turtlenecked fishermans' sweaters in all of his movies? Those business suits he wore in The Case of the Scorpion's Tail were a great departure and I wish he'd change up his look more often.

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.

Bay of Blood

Bay of Blood

"The sickle of death is about to strike!"

Countess Frederica Donati (Isa Miranda) is murdered by her husband... who is then immediately murdered by a shadowy figure.  Bickering couple Renata (Claudine Auger) and Albert (Luigi Pistilli) are willing to do anything to make sure they inherit her estate, which includes the valuable land around a seaside bay. Environmentalist Paolo (Leopoldo Trieste), his Tarot-reading wife Anna (Laura Betti), Estate lawyer Frank Ventura (Chris Avram), Frank's girlfriend, Laura (Anna Maria Rosati), and the Countess's illegitimate son, Simon (Claudio Camaso, credited as Claudio Volonté) each have their own plans for that land and are ambitious enough to eliminate anyone in their way.  Add a quartet of trespassing hippies into the mix and this land grab turns into a real bloodbath. It might take a few viewings to sort out who killed who and why.

Bay of Blood (or, if you prefer, Twitch of the Death Nerve) is a true pioneering film of horror cinema. It's clear to see how this film, with its inventive, gory kills and wooded setting inspired the original Friday the 13th – In fact, several murder scenes in Friday the 13th are shot-for-shot remakes from Bay of Blood. The hatchet-to-the-face effect was also famously mimicked in Day of the Dead. Take out the character motivations and simplify the story and you've just invented the slasher flick. Unfortunately, few slasher flicks are as lovingly shot, artfully composed, and feature the vivid, saturated colors of a classic Bava production.

• The film takes its form from the 1950 French film Le Ronde, but instead of a chain of lovers, Bay of Blood features a chain of murders.
• One of the re-release titles is Last House on the Left Part II, even though it has nothing to do with Wes Craven's film and was, in fact, made a year earlier. It's all part of an Italian tradition of trying to cash in on a successful film by means of a fake sequel.  Neither Zombie 2, Beyond the Door 2, nor Troll 2 have anything to do with their namesakes.
• All of the wonderful tracking shots in this film were achieved by mounting the camera on a child's wagon.
• Roberto Rosselini was an uncredited 2nd unit director on this film.
• The one animal death listed above is the still-kicking beetle pinned to Paolo's insect board.

What the Hell Am I Watching?
 There are quite a few inventive murder scenes (hippie-kabob, anyone?) but the best shock is seeing the Count's green, decomposing face with a live octopus crawling over it.

The true "What the hell am I watching" moment is the entire 20 minute segment with the hippies, starting with their arrival in a yellow dune buggy, like Hannah Barbara cartoon characters. Except for one kid's mild objections, they have no problem breaking into a house while the owner is away, lighting a fire, blasting the music, and making a giant mess.

Fashion Moment
Luigi Pistilli has a thing for turtlenecked fisherman sweaters, doesn't he? But, no, My favorite outfit is Anna's flowy gypsy robes, oversized jewelry, and curly shock of hair. She looks like Grace Slick playing the role of Helena Bonham Carter.

Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key

Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key

"What did Irina tell you? That she shares her bed with a crazy alcoholic murderer?"

Irina Rouvigny (Anita Strinberg) has a rough life. Her unloving husband Olivero (Luigi Pistilli) is a failed writer with an Oedipal complex who drinks too much, sleeps around, and parties every night with the hippies from the local campgrounds. She lives in a crumbling mansion and even the cat, Satan, seems to have it in for her. When Olivero's young mistress and then the maid turn up dead, Irina suspects her husband, but still helps him cover up the crimes, hiding bodies in the cellar. Things get more complicated when Olivero's hot-blooded niece, Floriana (Edwige Fenech) shows up for an extended visit. Floriana proceeds to seduce Irina and her own uncle (plus a young motorcycle racer), taking both sides and plotting with each to kill the other. But who is playing who in this game of cat and mouse?

The story is based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat," (though very loosely) and he even gets a screenwriting credit.  Anita Strinberg gets all my respect for heavily downplaying her beauty for this role. For most of the movie she looks like a strung-out Ann-Margaret. Also, let's address the dozens of flash-cuts of the cat's eyes (or "eye" after Irina gouges one out).  

• Edwige Fenech made this movie the same year as The Case of the Bloody Iris and her range between the two movies is amazing. Here, she's a young, self-assured schemer in complete control of everything while in Iris, she plays a shy, nervous, more mature woman lost in victimhood.
• In the film, Olivero shuts himself in his study writing and Irina later sees that he has been typing the same psychotic phrase over and over for page after page: "Kill her and hide her in the cellar wall." Sound familiar? Note that this movie came out five years before Stephen King published The Shining and eight years before Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation.
• As one YouTube commenter writes, one could easily turn the flash-cuts of the cat's eyes into a drinking game. You'd be drunk before you know it.
• The title has nothing to do with this film, but it does come from an earlier Martino-Fenech collaboration. The phrase "Your vice is a locked room and only I have the key" appears in a note from the killer in The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (a.k.a. Blade of the Ripper).

What the Hell Am I Watching?
The craziest scene in the movie is right at the beginning. Drunk, angry Olivero gets his party guests to dump their drinks into a bowl and humiliates his wife by forcing her to drink it.  Then he sexually harasses the maid as the party guests sing a creepy, taunting song and one young woman strips naked and dances on the table. This scene effectively sets up the creepy atmosphere of the film.

Fashion Moment
There's not much glamor to report here, since the characters are a bunch of downward-spiraling depressives.  All the women try on Olivero's mother's 18th Century costume at some point and that's the nicest article of clothing in the film.