Murder By Music

Murder By Music

"Killed her? I hardly knew her!"

Navy officer Richard Milford (Brett Halsey) has returned to London to visit his sister Catherine, but he is shocked to discover that she is dead, having jumped from the window of her flat – the same way her music professor killed himself the day before. Though the police label these as unrelated suicides, Catherine's classmate Helen (Marilú Tolo) believes it was murder and helps Richard to investigate. Before long their investigation puts them in the middle of a turf war between a Romanian street thug and a hippie cult leader. The clues lead to a drug den, a psychedelic nightclub called The Mousehole, a double-crossing gun moll, and a mysterious, unpublished 18th century musical composition called "The Trumpets of the Apocalypse."  Were these suspicious deaths really suicides? And if not, how were the murders committed?

Murder By Music goes by many names and you'll find it on YouTube under the title Perversion Story (though it should not be confused for Lucio Fulci's giallo Una Sull'altra, which also goes by the name Perversion Story and was released the same year).  The movie meanders quite a bit and more effort is put into getting Richard into and out of street fights than into progressing the mystery.  As a document of late-60's culture, though, it's interesting to see how the movie plays off audiences' fears of the hippie counterculture and the dangers of psychedelic drugs, and depicts flower-child characters as the broadest of caricatures.

• Director Julio Buchs is most famous for his Westerns, including A Bullet For Sandoval (starring the great Ernest Borgnine), which was released the same year as Murder By Music.
• The score by Gianni Ferrio is a strange mix of noir-style saxaphone-and-vibes jazz music and high-energy Hammond-organ-based psych rock. There's also a bit of Morricone-esque free-rhythm bop in there, but somehow it all works. Ferrio would go on to score such notable gialli as Puzzle, The Bloodstained Butterfly, and Death Walks at Midnight. 
• Richard keeps saying that the creepy organ grinder is playing a hurdy-gurdy when, in fact, he is cranking a simple music box.
• Note the two harps at Professor Stone's house. And we get a shot of the action framed through the strings, just like in Blood and Black Lace.
• Not to give too much away, but the 3rd act reveal of how the deaths occurred reminds me of a similar device in Crimes of the Black Cat. And it also presages The Ring.

What the Hell am I Watching?

Early in the investigation, Richard starts a fight at The Mousehole and ends up taking on a whole club full of (supposedly non-violent) hippies.  It's about 200-to-one. At this point we discover that Richard is either very brave or very stupid.

About halfway through the film, the killer breaks into Helen's house, chloroforms her, and rifles through her things. She doesn't feel the need to mention this until days later.

Fashion Moment

It's swinging London, baby!  And it looks like the 60's threw up all over this movie.

Perversion Story

Perversion Story

"What do you know about me, after all?"

When Dr. George Dumurrier's (Jean Sorel) sickly wife Susan (Marissa Mell) dies, he is able at last to be with his girlfriend, Jane (Elsa Martinelli). But one night, George receives an anonymous phone call, directing him to the Roaring 20's Club, where he encounters bombshell stripper Monica Weston (also Marissa Mell) who, aside from her blond hair and green eyes, is a dead ringer for his late wife. Did Susan somehow fake her own death and take on a new identity? If so, why? And who did he bury? George soon becomes obsessed with finding out – an obsession that will uncover a sinister conspiracy.

Perversion Story is a giallo re-imagining of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and is Lucio Fulci's first giallo. The focus is on sex rather than violence and, just as this film was inspired by Vertigo and Diabolique, it lays the groundwork for sexy thrillers such as Basic Instinct.  But Fulci really shines as a writer here, using the switched-identity mystery as a jumping off point for a fantastically twisted plot that unfolds with clockwork precision. He hooks us in the first half with nudity and reels us in in the second half with a roller coaster ride of double crosses and ingenious con-game manipulations.

• Perhaps the title refers to a "perversion of justice" rather than a sexual perversion. Even still, that's a terrible title for such a good movie. The original title, One On Top of the Other, presumably describing George's chain of lovers, isn't much better.
• You may recognize the Demurrier house in Perversion Story, with its yellow curtains, white marble foyer, and spiral staircase with wrought-iron bannisters. The same set was used as the Terzi house a few years later in Dario Argento's Cat O'Nine Tails.
• One Marissa Mell just doesn't seem to be enough! After Perversion Story, Marissa Mell played double roles in 1971's Marta and  Luciano Ercoli's Umberto Lenzi's 1972 giallo Seven Bloodstained Orchids.
• Are Monica and Susan just two reflections of the same person? Throughout the film, Fulci plays with the mystery of their identities with a mirror motif, repeatedly showing the two women reflected in mirrors or windows.
• Fulci gave himself a small role as a handwriting expert at the police forensics lab.
• Everyone say hello to giallo all-star and frequent supporting player George Rigaud, as George's lawyer!

What the Hell Am I Watching?

Fulci gets creative early on with a mattress-eye-view shot, the likes of which I have never seen before or since. The characters are in bed doing the grownup and we have a perspective from below, looking through the sheets. It's this kind of creativity and willingness to experiment that really defines the genre.

Have you ever seen a movie that takes place in a foreign country but everyone speaks English? Perversion Story is like that, but in reverse. It's set in San Fransisco, but everyone speaks Italian. And it's not like the characters are all in the Italian expatriate community living in northern California – everyone, from gas station attendants to prison guards speaks Italian.

Fashion Moment

George's clothes aren't particularly notable and Monica spends most of her time naked or barely clothed. But Jane is the real fashion star of the movie. She wears some fantastic clothes, but my favorite is this Sgt. Pepper's-inspired outfit when she joins George for a night on the town.

 

She looks like she raided Jimi Hendrix's closet. There's also this black leather and silk outfit, accented with silver jewelry that she wears while seducing Monica. Just like Jane, it's a great balance of hard and soft.