Autopsy

Autopsy

"You may have a knowledge of souls, but that doesn't qualify you to 

dispute scientific fact, Father.  Especially when the soul is a woman's"

It's a hot summer in Rome and medical researcher Simona Sana (Mimsy Farmer) is studying the city's unusually high suicide rate, looking for a way to tell real suicides from the fake ones. But her latest case study is Betty Lenox (Gabby Wagner), a neighbor whom she had met just the night before who didn't seem at all suicidal. Betty's brother, Father Paul Lenox (Barry Primus) also wants to get to the bottom of his sister's death and together they team up to follow the clues. Is the rise in suicides caused by an increase in solar flares or by a clever killer who stages the murders to look self-inflicted? Could Father Paul, who hides a dark past and a fierce temper, be the murderer? Or perhaps it's Simona herself, driven mad by her gruesome research? The investigation will lead to an antique bible, a blackmail plot, and a story that has its roots in the historic Florence flood of 1966.

Stylistically and structurally, Autopsy is all over the board, trying it's hardest to be every kind of thriller at once. It has elements of zombie horror, psychological thrillers, and, like The Girl Who Knew Too Much, doubles as a travelogue, even borrowing notable locations from that Bava classic. But despite a messy, meandering plot that frequently stalls out, Autopsy ends up as a fine Argento-inspired giallo that ultimately does make sense.

• Besides the aforementioned collage of influences, Autopsy also strives to be part of the genre I call "Crazy Woman Goes Crazy." In these movies, we watch through an unbalanced woman's paranoid perspective as she slowly goes insane. Starting with 1965's Repulsion, the genre can be traced through movies like Shock and The Perfume of the Lady In Black (which also starred Mimsy Farmer), right through Black Swan. Even though they star men, The Secret Window and 2012's giallo-inspired Berbarian Sound Studios might also be considered part of the genre.
• That body count seems awfully high, but consider that the first six deaths occur in rapid succession in the first two minutes of the movie. I didn't count all the dead people in the morgue.
• The title sort of makes sense in that several scenes are set in a morgue and we do see a brief, informal autopsy. But the movie isn't about autopsies and the plot isn't predicated on one.
• The Italian title, Macchie Solari, could be loosely translated as The Bloodstained Sun, in reference to Simona's theory that the suicides are connected to unusual solar activity.
• The final showdown takes place on the roof of the church of St. Agnes In Agone, high above the famous Piazza Navona. If you're going to have a dramatic ending, that's a fantastic place to do it.
• I could be wrong, but Simona's modern apartment, with its open staircase and cone-shaped central fireplace looks like it might be the same set used in The Fifth Cord for Helene's house.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

Most of the crazy moments in Autopsy consist of shock visuals. Simona works at a gruesome morgue that's run like a chop shop and there are lots of gooey, bloody makeup effects. Exhausted by her work, Simona hallucinates that the scarred corpses come to life in an eerie, unsettling scene.

Later, Simona visits Rome's Criminal Museum, which is a real place. While it does display weapons and torture devices, the actual museum probably doesn't feature huge photo displays of gruesome, mutilated corpses and wax dummies enacting different methods of suicide.

Father Paul drives Simona from the city to the beach to see the scene of his sister's death. But Rome is so far inland that the nearest beach is about 90 minutes away by car. Hardly a quick detour from her office.

Also, we see Simona hail a cab in front of the Spanish Steps – even though cars aren't allowed in the Piazza di Spagna.

Fashion Moment

Simona's playboy father, Gianni (Massimo Serato) shows up in this killer white suit.

Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin' alive...

Also, Mimsy Farmer was born to wear these fitted, backless tops. She looks fantastic here.

Creepster morgue worker agrees.

A Lizard in Woman's Skin

A Lizard In Woman's Skin

"They stabbed her three times... each one of the stabs fatal!"

Carol Hammond (Florina Bolkan) is a respectable wife and stepmother... who just happens to have frequent lesbian sex dreams about her nymphomaniac hippie neighbor, Julia (Anita Strinberg). One night, however, Carol dreams of stabbing Julia to death and later discovers that Julia was indeed murdered that very night, exactly like in the dream. Does Carol have a psychic link to the killer? Or is she schizophrenic? Is her cheating husband Frank (Jean Sorel) framing her for the murder? And are the two glassy-eyed hippies who witnessed the murder real or just part of the dream? With her senses betraying her, Carol must decide what's real and what's in her mind, before it's too late!

Lucio Fulci is best known for his visceral gore films, but his handful of gialli are some of his best work. This one is a fun, sleazy, acid-soaked psychedelic trip featuring naked orgies, lots of blood, and some fantastic surreal dream sequences. The use of forensic science in the investigation was probably inspired by Dario Argento's The Bird With the Crystal Plumage and the bat attack, when Carol hides out in a church attic, is an obvious shot-for-shot homage to Hitchcock's The Birds.

• Here's another great score by Ennio Moricone, in turns funky, wild, and haunting.
• The five animal deaths include one bat in the church attic scene and four dogs in the hospital.
• If you suffer from vertigo, be warned that there are a ton of camera zooms in this movie. You'll find a few in just about any giallo, but Fulci was never known for restraint.
• Let's hear it for giallo mainstay George Rigaud, who appears here as Dr. Kerr, Carol's psychiatrist.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

More about that dog scene: Running from an attacker in a hospital, Carol stumbles upon a room where four live dogs are strung up with their bellies slit open (we can see their beating hearts), and their blood is being drained through tubes. There's no indication what scientific benefit this serves, but it's still a very upsetting sight. In fact, Fulci was nearly charged with animal cruelty for that scene, until members of his crew testified that the dogs were all puppets and that no animals were harmed. This scene is omitted in some versions of the movie.

The dream sequences are absolutely crazy in this film. Naked limbs writhing around, a dinner party of bleeding corpses, and angry swans attacking from the clouds. Many of these images relate to artwork in the Hammond home... which is sort of ingenious in a Kaiser Soze way, if you're aware of the twist ending.

Fashion Moment

Miss Carol is working it in her wardrobe from the Carmen Sandiego collection. Check out those monochromatic wide-brimmed hats and cape coats in three different colors.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

The Bird With the Crystal Plumage

"What's happening to me? This damn thing is turning into an obsession."

Sam Dalmas (Tony Mustane), an American living in Italy, is walking home one dark night when he sees two figures struggling inside a brightly-lit modern art gallery. He is able to scare off the shadowy attacker, but the victim, gallery owner Monica Ranieri (Eva Renzi) is badly wounded. Sam tells the police what he saw, but he can't shake the notion that one detail is missing – one important clue that could change everything. He becomes fixated and, with the help of his girlfriend Julia (Suzy Kendall) begins investigating the three other murders attributed to the attacker. The trail leads him to a reclusive painter, a stuttering pimp, and a rare Russian bird, but the closer he gets, the more danger he is in, as the killer tries to make Sam the next victim.

Director Dario Argento burst onto the Italian movie scene in 1970 with this incredible feature – one of the finest gialli ever made. We see that from the beginning of his career, Argento's talent was to take the predictable conventions of the genre and turn them on their head. Brightly-lit scenes can be as scary as shadows and darkness, ultra-modern settings can be as eerie as gothic mansions, and modern technology and scientific methods can take the place of old-fashioned sleuthing. Plus, the script is peppered with great little character moments and some very clever mis-directs. There are several great suspenseful moments of dramatic irony where the audience discovers a clue before the characters see it. If The Bird With the Crystal Plumage were better-known among mainstream audiences in the U.S., I think it would rank high on lists of the best twist endings in movie history, along with The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects, and The Sting.

Another enormous influence on early Argento films (and especially this one) is Michaelangelo Antonioni's 1966 art film Blow Up, in which a fashion photographer (Deep Red's David Hemmings) slowly realizes that he inadvertently witnessed a murder. While this basic plot can be seen reflected in Crystal Plumage (and several subsequent Argento scripts), it's Antonioni's stylish direction, modern flair, and cool hipster characters that Argento really took to heart. Perhaps The Bird With the Crystal Plumage could be seen as a synthesis of Mario Bava's classic structure with Antonioni's ultra-modern sense of style.

• Legendary composer Ennio Moriccone composed the jazzy, noisy, avant-garde score. Cues from this score can be heard in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof and Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell.
• Near the beginning, Sam is startled by an old lady in the street. That old lady is Maria Tedeschi, who would go on to play scowly Mrs. Moss in The Case of the Bloody Iris.
• A work of art holding a major clue in the case is a theme that would re-appear in a lot of Argento's films, including Deep Red, Four Flies on Gray Velvet, and Susperia.
• In regards to the tally above, it should be noted that three of the murders and one attempted murder occur before the action of the movie starts.
• Argento's whole approach to the giallo was so startlingly new and exciting that it has been copied over and over by successive film makers. Many of them bow to the master with a similarly wordy title involving an animal, an adjective, and a body part.  Some such films include The Cat with the Jade Eyes, The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire, and The Black Belly of the Tarantula. Argento's own follow-up, Cat O'Nine Tails, also follows this trend.

What the Hell am I Watching?

The Bird With the Crystal Plumage seems to be about breaking with the conventions of thriller cinema, which include dark houses, helpless women, and black cats. I think maybe Sam is literally destroying the conventions when he is tricked into eating cat stew.

Fashion Moment

I covet Sam's brown leather jacket, but I have to give it up to costume designer Dario Micheli for putting the hit man in a windbreaker of bright yellow (or in Italian, giallo). He's literally an asassino giallo (a "yellow killer" or a "giallo killer") in every sense. It may not be practical, but it sure is stylish. And it's a great wink to the audience.

My Dear Killer

My Dear Killer

"Nobody Ever Knows Anything"

When an insurance adjuster is decapitated with a dredger, Police Inspector Luca Peretti (George Hilton) is on the case. Peretti soon discovers that the dead man was investigating the kidnapping and murder of a girl and her father and that the killer is eliminating everyone who gets too close to the truth. The investigation leads to a post office box, the victim's drawings, a broken statue, and a house with a crooked chimney, but how do the clues add up? Someone in the victims' family might hold the answer but, while they all say they want to find the truth, everyone seems to have something to hide. 

This movie has some clever ideas and two very well-staged murder scenes (the sight of a body hanging from the claws of a dredger is both hilarious and horrifying; the circular saw murder is gruesomely realized) but try to make sense of the story and motivations and everything falls apart. Don't expect a lot of skin or gore (aside from those two aforementioned scenes) because this is a straight-up procedural. And not a very good one – it's sad that the writers couldn't give the killer any clear motivation. George Hilton does a great job as always, though, and effectively holds the movie together.

• The score was written by the "Italian John Williams," Ennio Morricone.  I just totally made up that nickname.
• When we see her at home, Paola (Patty Shepard) is watching TV. The movie is 1966's classic Western Django, starring Franco Nero of The Fifth Cord.
• The kidnapping victim, Stefania (Lara Wendell, credited as Daniela Rachele Barnes) is about eight years old but, due to a bad translation, she is repeatedly referred to as a "baby." In Italian, the word "bambina" refers to a small child – not necessarily an infant.
• Note that the total body count is seven, but the first two kills listed above occur before the action of the movie starts.
• This movie borrows something from classic mysteries that you don't usually see in gialli: a final scene where the detective gathers all the suspects into one room, runs through the clues, and reveals the identity of the murderer Nick Charles-style.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

Marilú Tolo appears in two completely superfluous scenes as Anna, Peretti's sullen, neglected  girlfriend. Perhaps these scenes were included to give Hilton's character more dimension, but they really stop the movie dead in its tracks.

One of the victim's uncles, Benjamino (Alfred Mayo) is a sculptor. As Peretti is questioning him in his studio, a naked nine-year-old girl appears suddenly in the doorway. Benjamino shoos her away and explains that the girl is a model for his sculptures. And Peretti totally accepts that as a valid explanation for being completely alone in his apartment with a naked nine-year-old girl. I know this is supposed to throw suspicion on Benjamino, but really? Not cool, movie. Not. Cool.

Fashion Moment

In his long sideburns, caterpillar mustache, and wool three-piece suits, George Hilton is serving up some serious Ron Burgundy realness in this film.