Violent Bloodbath

 

"Anyway, don't worry about me. I'm learning karate this year."

Stressed out from his job, District Attorney Oscar Bataille (Fernando Ray) takes his younger wife Patricia (Marissa Mell) to a seaside resort to unwind and reconnect. But while there, each of the Batailles is distracted by a looming shadow from their past. Just as Patricia encounters former lover Wilson Vargas (Espartaco Santoni) and secretly resumes her affair, Oscar uncovers a gruesome crime scene nearly identical to the case of Jacques Morell - a killer whom Oscar convicted and had executed three years ago. Did Oscar convict the wrong man? Or is someone trying to trigger his stress further with these murders and push him over the edge? Could the killer be fellow hotel guest and playboy movie star Javier Duran (Máximo Valverde)? Oscar and the Inspector (Julián Navarro) are on the case!

If ever there was a title that over-sells the movie, it's Violent Bloodbath (not to be confused with Bay of Blood). Equal parts of soap opera and murder mystery, this obscure Spanish giallo is light on both violence and blood. The original Spanish title makes a lot more sense - Pena de Muerte translates as "Death Penalty." Overall, it's entertaining and, while it lacks some of the classic tropes, it's worth seeking out.

• The guillotine killing listed above is a flashback to the execution of Jacques Morell, which happened before the action of the movie but is shown in a flashback midway through the film.

• Marissa Mell is, of course, a giallo all-star from Marta and Perversion Story. You may recall Fernando Ray as criminal Alain Charnier in The French Connection, waving to Gene Hackman from the safety of a well-timed subway train.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

There's a party at the resort that includes a lobster-eating contest. A row of young women strip down to bikinis and chow down on lobsters as the MC shouts at them to eat faster. It's one of those great "why?" moments that randomly pop up in giallo movies.

Fashion Moment:

For most of the movie, Patricia keeps a cool exterior in fashionable daywear, often featuring high contrast stripes for a dynamic look.

But occasionally she likes to let loose with a wild floral print.

Also, a quick shout-out to The Inspector, whose wardrobe is giving us the full Larry Dallas.

The Sinister Monk

"I'm not going to cover up for you this time!"

Lord Wilmore has died and left his  whole estate to his grand daughter, Gwendolin (Karin Dor), but the will is stolen and without it, the estate will be divided among Wilmore's adult children. When the thieves send a copy of the will to the Lord Wilmore's son, Richard (Sigfried Lowitz), he uses it to blackmail his siblings John (Sigfried Schürenberg) and Patricia (Ilse Steppat) - give him the majority of the inheritance or lose it all to Gwendolin. In an effort to protect her and win her favor, Patricia invites Gwendolin to stay at the Manor, which is now a girls' boarding school. When Gwendolin arrives, she learns that the house is  haunted by the ghost of a Medieval monk - and soon people start getting murdered by a whip-weilding figure in a black hood. Is the ghost of the monk really behind the killings? Or could the killer be Patricia's smarmy son, Ronnie (Hartmut Reck), who has been implicated in the disappearance of three students? Maybe it's the creepy artist who rents a room in the manor or the mysterious new French teacher? Inspector Bratt ( Harald Leipnitz) has no shortage of suspects in this case!

The Sinister Monk is brought to you by the same team that made Room 13. In fact, Rialto Films did a whole series of popular films in the 60's based on the novels of Edgar Wallace, using the same stock cast and crew. All of the films cross over into the worlds of crime dramas and drawing room mysteries, but this one stands out for its unusual costumed killer and his gruesomely original method of murder. There's a lot going on with a wide array of suspects and subplots about human trafficking and Gewndolin's father's wrongful conviction for murder, but somehow it all manages come to a satisfying conclusion.

• Just like in Room 13, the movie is in black and white but the titles are in color.

• You may recognize Mary, one of the boarding school girls, as Uschi Glas (credited as Ursula Glas). This is one of her first film roles, but she'd go on to star in one of my favorite gialli, Seven Blood-Stained Orchids.

What the Hell am I Watching?

The craziest thing in this movie is how the Monk kills his victims - he whips them from a distance, coiling the lash around the victim's neck and then yanking to break their spine. 

Props to Lola (Uta Levka) who had the ingenuity to fill a squirt gun with sulfuric acid for self defense.

Also, I suspect that the taxidermy in Gwendolin's room might be a subtle homage to Psycho.

Fashion Moment:

Being the matriarch and Head Mistress of the school, Patricia is really the only one who gets to glam it up.

However in one scene, Gwendolin gets a note telling her to go to London to get proof of her wrongfully-convicted father's innocence and not to tell anyone. She complies but, remembering that several girls have been kidnapped during trips to the city, she makes sure Detective Bratt knows she's leaving the Manor wearing this suit with a bold houndstooth pattern, making it easy for the police to trail her.

Trhauma

"If you don't do as I say I'm never going to play with you again."

Lilly (Domitilla Cavazza) and Andrea (Gaetano Russo) are hosting friends for the weekend at their newly-refurbished villa, but Lilly isn't happy - it seems that Andrea is badly in debt and Lilly feels that he only married her for her sizable bank account. The otherwise relaxing weekend is shattered when one of the guests, Olga (Anna Maria Chiatante), goes missing and later turns up dead. Soon, more guests are attacked by a mysterious one-eyed killer. Who is this killer living in the catacombs beneath the house? And who will be the next victim?

Trhauma (not to be confused with Dario Argento's Trauma) comes from an interesting period, when gialli were losing popularity and slowly transitioning into the new genre of slasher films. Released three years after Halloween and the same year as Friday the 13th, Trhauma puts much less focus on the mystery - we see the killer throughout and know his identity - while maintaining the style and a lot of the tropes giallo audiences have come to expect. The result is a much shallower effort than we're used to seeing and an abrupt, unresolved ending doesn't help.

• I don't have any idea where the superfluous "H" in the title comes from. Italian for "trauma" is "trauma." Maybe the intentional misspelling is just a marketing ploy to draw attention?

• The original Italian title translates as "The Mystery of the Cursed House."

• The killer, played by Per Holgher, is credited as "The Being," rather than given a name. This is perhaps an homage to Halloween, in which Michael Meyers is referred to as "The Shape."

• This is Domitilla Cavazza's first screen credit. Her only other one is the comedy Saparati in Casa.

What the Hell am I Watching?

Early in the movie, we visit "The Being" in his dingy underground lair where he has built a giant castle out of Legos.

Fashion Moment:

Lots of boring preppy clothes. 

Only photographer/blackmailer Paul seems to have a flair for fashion, standing out in a very 70's look with his vest, open collar and purple ascot.

Orders Signed in White

"The organization has become a trap."

Luca "The Fisherman" Albanese (Gianni Manera) is the mastermind of a mafia-backed bank robbery in Rome, with associates Michael (Herb Andress), Teresa (Irina Maleeva) and Patrick (Enrico Manera) assigned to back him up. After the robbery, the thieves meet up with their girlfriends and flee to a safe house outside the city. But shortly after they arrive, one of the women turns up dead - strangled, with her face smeared in white paint. The group moves to a new location but the killer seems to follow, killing people off one by one and leaving a trail of painted corpses. Who is behind these killings? What is the motivation for these brutal slayings? And what message is he sending with the white paint? 

Orders Signed in White is a highly ambitious movie that tackles the lofty themes of justice, the meaning of loyalty and the insidious, pervasive nature of corruption. Unfortunately, it's also a poorly-made film that takes itself way too seriously, with a convoluted script that undermines all of its ambitions. Despite a pre-credits disclaimer stating that police and legal experts were consulted on the script for maximum authenticity, one gets the impression that the filmmakers got all their information about the mafia from 1940's gangster flicks. The dramatic and action aspects of the film might fall flat, but strangely, it works as a giallo - we get a classic black-gloved killer with a unique signature and some of the craziest moments the genre has to offer. If that sounds good to you and you have some patience for a lot of extra nonsense, give it a spin.

• Director Gianni Manera plays Luca and his brother, Enrico Manera, plays Patrick. They also co-wrote the screenplay together.

• Before the credits and before the disclaimer, the film begins with a poetic message, describing the mafia as threads, reaching out in all directions, forming a tapestry of corruption and crime. 

• The music for this film was done by the great Carlo Savina, whose work you might remember from The Killer Reserved Nine Seats and Naked Girl Murdered in the Park, among others. He gets a nice shout-out in the movie when Luca is listening to the radio in the car.

• Irina Maleeva, who plays Teresa, went on to a long career and appeared as a day player on American TV shows, such as The Gilmore Girls, Heroes and Angel. She also had a recurring role on The Bold and the Beautiful.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

I get the strong impression that a major motivation for making this movie was to write off vacations as business expenses. Luca flies from Rome to Paris to meet up with Teresa on the Eiffel Tower, with a lot of B-roll footage of French tourist spots in between. Then, the pair travel by train back to Rome to pull off the heist.

 

Later, Luca has a dream sequence which includes him and his friends skiing at a resort in the Austrian Alps. This obviously has nothing to do with anything in the movie and was almost certainly included in the final edit for tax purposes.

The car crash scene is actually fantastic. They had at least three different cameras going during the stunt and they used all the footage from each one. It includes a very satisfying explosion.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Let's get to it and discuss one of the wildest scenes in the giallo canon, which occurs late in the movie. Our group of gangsters is down to four: Luca, Patrick, Lucia and Teresa, who all take a walk to the top of a high cliff overlooking a village. Acting out a dramatic scene in the movie he wants to make with his cut of the heist money, Patrick lunges at Luca, who casually steps out of the way, causing Patrick to careen down the cliff to his death. As the women are horrified and shocked, Luca shoves both of them over the edge as well. Then he steps back and delivers a tearful monologue, ranting to the heavens about being trapped in his fealty to the mafia. It is absolutely bonkers and comes like a one-two punch out of nowhere. What's even crazier is that with all the characters except Luca now dead, we still have about 10 more minutes of movie left to watch before everything gets tied up.

Fashion Moment:

When I saw the ladies waiting for the robbers in a getaway car, I had high hopes for the costumes in this movie.

But then for the rest of the film everyone dressed like extras on the set of Guys & Dolls.

Special point of interest: After the heist, the robbers abandon their getaway car at the foot of one of Rome's most famous modern buildings - the "Colosseo Quadrato," a noted example of Brutalist architecture from the Mussolini regime and current home to Fendi's corporate offices. It's also the site of the final scene in Fatal Frames which is a film that makes a lot less sense than this one but is way more fun to watch.