Amsterdamned

 

"The canals are an ideal place to hide. You can go all around the city incognito."

Amsterdam is being terrorized by a mysterious scuba diving serial killer, who stalks his victims from the canals and detective Eric Visser (Huub Stapel) is on the case. Eric's investigation leads him to a local diving club, where he meets beautiful novice Laura (Monique van de Ven) and her friend and psychiatrist, Martin Ruysdael (Hidde Maas). The killer keeps striking - both in daylight and under cover of night - leaving a gruesome trail of corpses. With pressure from the Commissioner and his job on the line, can Eric find the killer in time?

Amsterdamned is a fascinating Dutch take on the giallo genre. Much like The Girl Who Knew Too Much, it's part murder mystery and part travelogue, showcasing an exciting European destination. We get to see historic canals and locks, quaint houseboats, beautiful old buildings on narrow streets and even a charming brass band. But we also get to see a bloody corpse hung from a bridge get smeared across the glass roof of a tour boat full of children. It's a fun, wild ride featuring two brilliant chase scenes - one on the streets and one through the canals, ending with a massive fireball. It's a highly entertaining, well-made film full of twists, suspense and humor but, unfortunately, it all falls apart in the last five minutes. The killer's identity, motivation and ultimate fate are a giant let-down, leaving the viewer desperately unsatisfied.

• The "paranormal" element in the checklist above comes from Eric's daughter's friend, who claims to have psychic powers.

• Dick Maas not only wrote and directed this movie, he also composed the score.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

This movie is full of crazy moments. After we're treated to the aforementioned reveal of the first victim, we're introduced to Detective Eric in the bath, when his daughter creeps in, aiming a loaded gun at him. 

There's a fun Nightmare on Elm Street homage where a woman is sunbathing on an inflatable raft in a canal when the killer swims up beneath her. His knife rips through the plastic right between her knees and the camera cuts away as we hear her scream.

Also, please note that in Holland, the giallo tropes are reversed and the color yellow indicated the heroes, not the villain.

Fashion Moment:

I really dig Martin's home office and its eclectic postmodern industrial aesthetic. This guy was Niles Crane five years before Niles Crane was even a thing.

Massacre

 

"Please, Jenny. Film making isn't hard. It's like a machine that marches on."

The cast and crew of the supernatural horror film Dirty Blood are using a local hotel as production headquarters. Love triangles, rivalries and backstage scheming plague the production, but star Jennifer (Patrizia Falcone) escapes the madness by spending time with police detective Walter (Gino Concori), who is investigating a recent series of murders. Director Frank (Maurice Poli) decides to host a real séance in order to give his film a sense of realism, but things take a dangerous and spooky turn and soon, members of the cast and crew are picked off by the killer in gruesome fashion. Could the killer be the scheming Assistant director, Robert (Pier Maria Cecchini)? Or jealous actress Liza (Silvia Conit)? Maybe a demon really was released at the séance and is responsible for the murders. It's up to Walter to find out!

Massacre (not to be confused with Crimes) is equal parts sexy and gory, as any good giallo should be. There's plenty of nudity and blood and even a few severed limbs to get the horror fans excited. After a gruesome opening scene, the first half of the film focuses on the soap opera relationships of the cast and crew of the film-within-a-film. Robert and Liza are scheming to seduce Jennifer in order to cause a scandal while Liza is having an affair with lead actor Jean (Robert Egon), who has a contentious relationship with cast mate Adrian (Danny Degli Espositi). But in the second half (after the séance scene), all that information goes out the window and it's full speed ahead - the killings ramp up and the film devolves into a series of stabbings in quick succession. By the time you know it, most of the cast is history and the whole thing ends on a giant question mark.

• This movie is clearly on-brand for director Andrea Bianchi, who made Strip Nude for Your Killer and What the Peeper Saw. It was also produced by the legendary Lucio Fulci, which explains the gore effects.

• You may remember Maurice Poli, who plays the Director, from Five Dolls for the August Moon.

• The "scene in a cemetery" in the checklist above turned out to be a movie set in the film-within-a-film, but it still counts. 

• In one scene, a policeman reports that they entered all the evidence of the murders into a computer, which concluded that they're actually dealing with two killers. The police laugh at the absurdity of this, but the computer turns out to be correct.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

 In the opening scene, the killer effortlessly dismembers a prostitute with a small hatchet like she was made of Play-Doh.

Midway through the film, Adrian puts on a show for the camera, impersonating Joel Gray, Liza Minelli, Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich. I am dying to know how any of this fits into a movie about demon rituals.

The craziest moment in this movie is obviously the séance scene, wherein Madame Yurich's face contorts and inflates as she howls and gets blown back by a gale-force wind.

Fashion Moment:

Here's a moment where a movie about making movies pays homage to a classic movie:

 Also, I love the glam silver lamé gown Jennifer gets to wear in the demon ceremony scene. Very Dana Barrett.

Night After Night After Night

 

"So soft...so beautiful...so evil!"

When a fourth prostitute is knifed to death in the London streets in as many nights, Inspector Bill Rowan (Gilbert Wynne) is called to the scene to investigate. We see his passionate relationship with wife Jenny (Linda Marlowe) contrasted with the crumbling marriage of Helena (Justine Lord) and Judge Charles Lomax (Jack May), a vindictive moralist. Inspector Rowan is certain that his chief suspect, lothario Peter Laver (Donald Sumpter), is the killer and tries desperately to prove it, to the point of harassment. Meanwhile the killer keeps striking and eventually things get personal for Inspector Rowan. Is Peter really the killer? Or could it be Carter (Terry Scully), the Judge's porn-obsessed law clerk? How many will die before the killer's identity is revealed?

Night After Night After Night (not to be confused with Death Occurred Last Night) is a decent British giallo, set in the gritty world of swinging 60's London. It's definitely a "sexy" giallo, spending more time on nudity and vigorous makeout scenes than on blood and graphic violence. But rather than including sexy scenes only for prurient shock value, the movie uses them to make a serious point. In the courtroom scenes, Judge Lomax and his clerk look down their noses and angrily punish "immoral" and "permissive" behavior while repressing it in themselves until it manifests in unhealthy and violent ways and the film uses the sexy scenes to point out their hypocrisy.

• The most famous face in the cast is probably Donald Sumpter, who plays chief suspect Peter. You may know him as Maester Luwin on Game of Thrones.

• Note that three of the murders listed occur before the action of the movie starts.

• The identity of the killer is revealed about an hour into the movie but I assure you, you will have guessed his identity long before then.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

After first getting released by the police for lack of evidence, we follow Peter on a date in the country, where he steals away with a young woman.

As they're making out in a meadow, we see another young woman skulking in the bushes nearby, spying on them menacingly. After the couple has finished with their grownup time, the stalker steps out of the bushes, and Peter slips off with her for another encounter, not wasting any time. A funny ending to a suspenseful scene.

Later, Peter is putting the moves on another woman at a bar.

Clearly, he has a weakness for women wearing yellow.

Also, let's talk about how inept the police are in this movie. Not only do they let the killer slip by on several occasions, but they spend days at a time harassing a guy who is clearly not the murderer. They do, eventually catch up to the killer at the end, but only because he's too exhausted to run.

Fashion Moment: 

I love that 1969 prostitutes dress like 21st century soccer moms.

Peter is the fashion star of the film. The movie doesn't tell us what he does for a living or when he has time for all these wardrobe changes, but each outfit is mod perfection. I especially like the fur-lined bomber jacket.

Fashion Crimes

 

"Make the shoulder pads larger."

On her way home from a photo shoot, fashion model Gloria (Theresa Leopardi) gets stranded and runs to a nearby villa for help. Inside the house she witnesses a man killing a woman with a fireplace poker as opera music blares from a nearby radio. Terrified, she dashes back to the street and collapses. When Commissioner Rizzo (Anthony Franciosa) investigates her story, he finds the long-abandoned house of Greta Stiller, a deceased fashion designer, whose estate is in contention. With no evidence of murder, the police's hands are tied, but when the killer returns to stalk Gloria and murders her friends and acquaintances, they take notice. Could the killer be Gloria's photographer, Georgio (Giancarlo Prete) or her psychiatrist, Gianmarco (Miles O'Keefe), both of whom have a connection to the Stiller home? Commissioner Rizzo will have to work fast to sew up this case!

Fashion Crimes (not to be confused with Crimes) carries on the tradition started by Blood and Black Lace, of a gritty giallo set in the refined world of high fashion. This one is well-shot, nicely acted and steadily paced, even if it is light on kills and explains away its plot inconsistencies by introducing a paranormal element at the last minute. If you're looking for a late 80's thriller with some fabulous art direction, definitely watch A Blade in the Dark. But if that's not available, give this one a spin. 

• The original Italian title La Morte E'di Moda translates as "Death is in Fashion," which I love for its clever double meaning.

• Mystery Science Theater 3000 and RiffTrax fans may recognize Miles O'Keefe from his role as pumped-up action hero Ator, "the Fighting Eagle" in a trilogy of early 80's fantasy films.

• You'll also remember Anthony Franciosa from Dario Argento's Tenebre and his long career on American TV throughout the 60's, 70's and 80's.

What the Hell am I Watching?

In one scene, we see someone flipping through the pages of an old fashion magazine to find an article about Greta Stiller. It looks like the props department got a real vintage magazine and pasted text and photos onto one of the pages, because the edges are clearly visible.

Fashion designer Sebastiano (Giusseppe Pambieri) insists that Gloria model "the gem" of his new collection, and calls it "a stupendous gown I've been working on for months." And when we finally get to see it as the grand finale of his fashion show it's... a simple black sheath with spaghetti straps.

Fashion Moment:

The clothes are very of-the-moment and rather chic for the late 80's but surprisingly, fashion isn't the focus in Fashion Crimes. I was a lot more impressed by the production design and the director's choice to showcase his sets, letting the the camera luxuriate in these long wide-angle shots.

The Psychopath

 

"Some of those dreams are fantasies of revenge. Some of those dolls existed in real life."

When lawyer Reinhardt Klermer (John Harvey) is found dead in the streets of London with a doll effigy of himself nearby, Inspector Halloway (Freddie Wymark) is called to investigate. The victim's friends,  including Frank Saville (Alexander Knox), his daughter, Louise (Judy Huxtable) and her fiancee, Donald (Don Boriensko) are all questioned and no one is ruled out as a suspect. When more murders are discovered, accompanied by similar dolls, the investigation leads to Mrs. Von Sturm (Margaret Johnson), a frail, invalid doll collector with a grudge against Klermer. But how could she have committed the murders from her wheelchair? The answer to the killer's identity lies in a dark secret - can the inspector discover it before he becomes the next victim?

After reviewing a run of amateurish, artless films it's a real breath of fresh air to see a giallo made by skilled professionals. The Psychopath is gorgeous to look at, sensitively acted, beautifully paced and expertly edited to a brisk 88 minutes. There are even a few good action scenes and an explosion to punctuate the story. My only quibble is that the mystery aspect is a little weak. Suspicion is cast on several different characters throughout and the exact motivation of the killer is withheld until late in the film, but the broad strokes of the story are pretty evident early on. Still, this is definitely one worth seeking out.

• The screenplay was written by Robert Bloch, author of the book "Psycho," upon which Alfred Hitchcock based his 1960 movie. You'll see a few similarities between the Von Sturm and the Bates families.

• Perhaps the reason this movie is so beautifully shot is because it was directed by a cinematographer. Freddie Francis won two Academy Awards for Cinematography (for Sons & Lovers in 1960 and Glory in 1989) and has worked with Martin Scorsese on Cape Fear and David Lynch on The Elephant Man, Dune and The Straight Story.

• The actual cinematographer for this movie was John Wilcox, who worked on The Third Man with Orson Welles.

• When Inspector Holloway visits Mark at his job, Mark is playing a record of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K581, 1st movement. Shortly after Mark is seen stopping the record player, the 2nd movement starts on its own.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

This movie pays close attention to detail, so it's disappointing that they couldn't get someone to show the actors how to hold musical instruments. A music stand is shown in this very room in a later scene, but it's anyone's guess why they couldn't use it while playing.

Fashion Moment:

Take some time to luxuriate in the gorgeous camera work in this movie, starting with the Saul Bass-inspired opening credits.