The Suspicious Death of a Minor

The Suspicious Death of a Minor

"Someone should stop these maniacs."

After dancing with a young woman named Marisa (Patrizia Castaldi) at a party, Paolo Germi (Claudio Cassinelli) finds that she has been murdered and he decides to investigate. With help from teenage thief Gianni (Adolfo Caruso), Paolo uncovers a human trafficking ring and takes justice into his own hands. But is the pimp really the mastermind of the operation? Is there a connection to the kidnap of a local businessman's son? How high up does this organization go? And why does Paolo have such a keen interest in this case? As a hit man with mirrored sunglasses (Roberto Posse) eliminates witnesses, Paolo and Gianni follow the clues to find the real motive behind the killings.

The Suspicious Death of a Minor is a fantastic movie that deserves a wider audience. The story by superstar giallo writer Ernesto Gastaldi walks the line between giallo and poliziotteschi - a genre characterized by a loner cop who plays by his own rules, taking down a crime syndicate. This movie features a constantly-evolving plot, a quick pace, light humor, snappy dialogue, and some top-notch action sequences. Claudio Cassinelli's Paolo is a charming rogue who looks like a bookish nerd but isn't afraid to cross some moral lines. In fact, his methods are so destructive that he could be the prototype for such loose-cannon action heros as Axel Foley and Martin Riggs.

• In a great little meta-joke, Paolo and Gianni question a witness at a movie theater that's showing Sergio Martino's own 1972 giallo Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key. 
• If Claudio Cassinelli  looks familiar, you might remember him from Murder Rock, where he played jealous, estranged husband Dick Gibson.
• The score, by Luciano Michelini, could easily be mistaken for the work of Claudio Simonetti. It has the same funky electric rock feel as the music to Deep Red.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

One of the action sequences is a raucous car chase through the streets of Milan, as Paolo and Gianni are being chased by the police. Gianni literally rips the doors off Paolo's junky old car and throws them at the police car. In fact, the whole scene is full of wacky stunts and sight gags.

Another epic action scene begins with a shootout between two cars on a roller coaster, continues down the street, and concludes in the subway.

Paolo poses as a client to question a prostitute and, after getting the answers he needed, he goes ahead and gets what he paid for.

Fashion Moment

I love The Killer's plaid jacket. He could easily fit in at either a murder scene or a mid-1990's ska concert.

 

Mirrored sunglasses seem to be a thing among murderers. They could have been borrowed from the killer in  Death Walks at Midnight.

The Sister of Ursula

The Sister of Ursula

"We've substituted our eyes for yours and all that's left to us is fear."

 After their father dies of an apparent suicide, sisters Ursula (Barbara Magnolfi) and Dagmar Beyne (Stefania D'Amario) escape with a vacation to sunny southern Italy at a ritzy seaside hotel. The trauma has not only made Ursula sullen and depressed, but seems to have awoken psychic powers in her – she claims to have seen and talked to her dead father. As the sisters arrive in town, a serial killer is on the loose, who watches women have sex before murdering them in an unspeakable fashion. Could the killer be Filipo (Marc Porel), the handsome but troubled hotel guest involved in a drug smuggling operation? Perhaps it's Vanessa (Anna Zinnermann), the hotel's owner, who is going through a contentious divorce. Is it possible that Ursula's father isn't dead, but has followed the sisters and is committing the murders?

The version of Sister of Ursula that has survived to DVD seems to be the "sexy edit," so be warned – there are five extended and extremely graphic scenes involving non-simulated grownup times. It seems, though, that in one edit, the film was even more explicit and some of the racier bits were cut out. Aside from that, the movie is held together by a decent plot, some interesting mis-directs, and some unusually good performances.

• Barbara Magnolfi has a brilliant and intense scene in the hotel's chapel, where she prays to a faceless crucifix about the chaos in her life. 
• There's no way to confirm this, but Yvonne Harlow (who plays nightclub singer Stella Shining) claims to be the great granddaughter of Hollywood legend Jean Harlow.
• The movie was filmed at a seaside hotel in Amalfi called Il Saraceno, which was under construction at the time of filming. But forget about planning your next vacation there - sadly, the place never opened, due to permit complications.
• I once met Barbara Magnolfi at a horror movie convention and she is stunningly beautiful in person. 
• The DVD features an insightful interview with writer-director Enzo Milioni, who recounts the tragic story of Marc Porel. He was a drug addict in real life and earned a bad reputation for being difficult on set, but his girlfriend, Barbara Magnolfi, got Milioni to give him a chance and Porel remained professional throughout the shoot. Afterwards, he got clean and seemed to be doing well, until a lethal overdose while shooting a commercial in Morocco. Milioni recounts the story with great sadness and regret.

What The Hell Am I Watching?

Those grownup scenes are pretty graphic, but the most unusual one features Dagmar having some lady alone time with a gold chain... a few feet away from her sleeping sister.

Stella Shining is the star of the hotel's nightclub but she only seems to know one song. No wonder the manager is always complaining about the bad turnout.

How does heroin addict Filipo have such a nice sports car? It's explained by the end of the movie.

Fashion Moment

There were clothes in this movie? I hadn't noticed. No, the real fashion star is the Il Saraceno hotel. The hotel that never was.

 

Suspiria

Suspiria

"Bad luck isn't brought by broken mirrors, but by broken minds."

Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) is an American dancer who has only just arrived at a prestigious European ballet academy when she notices a series strange occurrences: a recently expelled student is murdered; strange noises can be heard at night; the staff behaves in an odd manner; maggots rain down from the ceiling. Suzy's roommate, Sara (Stefania Casini) has been cataloging the clues for months and may have an explanation – but could her far-fetched, diabolical ideas about the school be correct? Or are the deaths just the accidents they appear to be?

Thanks to its popularity among mainstream horror fans, Suspiria is the most famous giallo ever made, even though it is the least-characteristic film of the entire genre. It is unquestionably Dario Argento's masterpiece and a staggering artistic achievement. It has style to burn, is quintessentially Italian, and centers around a murder mystery, but it stands apart from the rest of the genre, due to its extreme visuals and a story that hinges on the supernatural, rather than a human killer.  In fact, Suspiria has more in common with supernatural horror movies like Rosmary's Baby than it does with giallo.  Emboldened by Suspiria's success, Argento would go on to make a sequel, Inferno, which turned out to be an incoherent, candy-colored mess and can't be categorized as a giallo.  Decades later, he would complete the trilogy with Mother Of Tears, which is a flat-out horror film.

• The most impactful thing about Suspiria is its cinematography and, most notably, the intense, eyeball-searing use of wild, vibrant colors to give the ballet school an otherworldly, disorienting feeling. Argento's color sense comes from his mentor, Mario Bava, who made frequent, pioneering use of colored lighting in his giallo Blood and Black Lace and in the Gothic horror film Kill Baby... Kill! The shifting color schemes in all of these movies have also been linked to Poe's story "The Masque of the Red Death."
  
• The set designs also create a feeling of distortion and unease. They're a curious mix of Art Deco, Art Nuveau, and modernist geometry. The velvet-textured walls of the school give a sense of decadent opulence.
• Suzy is attacked by a bat in a scene which could only have been inspired by Hitchcock's The Birds. A similar scene can be found in Lucio Fulci's giallo A Lizard in Woman's Skin.
• Connections have been made between Suspiria and The Wizard of Oz: The young heroin blows in during a storm, finds herself in a land of crazy colors, takes poison that makes her sleepy, must defeat a witch, and, in the end, finds that she had the answers she was looking for all along.
• The body count is 5+ because, while we see five murders, it's unclear how many people died in the fire at the end of the film.
• The title isn't explained, but the word "suspiria" means "she who sighs" in Italian. It makes reference to the witch's distinctive snoring.
• I once met Stefania Casini at a horror movie convention. She was friendly and very generous with her time.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

The opening sequence is the most famous and it unfolds like a deadly Rube Goldberg device. Expelled student Pat (Eva Axen) runs away from school, gets attacked by a floating spirit, gets stabbed in the gut, crashes through a skylight, and gets hanged by an electrical cable.

My favorite scene is Sara's murder sequence. It starts in green in her room, shifts to red as she follows a strange sound down the hall, turns blue as she ventures into the attic and is attacked, and ends in violet when she falls into a pit of razor wire.

Did I mention maggots raining from the ceiling? Because that's a thing that happens in this movie.

Fashion Moment

Just everything. You'll find yourself slack-jawed at the grotesque beauty of the entire film. Have a look: