Death Haunts Mónica

Death Haunts Mónica

If only I could solve everything with pills.

Madrid businessman Frederico (Jean Sorel) leads a messy life. His real estate firm is sinking, his business partners are plotting against him, his wife Mónica (Nadiuska) just found out about his affair, and Diego (Damián Velasco) - an associate from Frederico's former life as a smuggler and kidnapper - is extorting him. One night while Frederico is away, a masked intruder breaks into Monica's home. But after she shoots him, the intruder springs up, knocks her out, and stages Diego's lifeless body in her home so when Mónica awakes, it looks like Diego was the attacker. When Frederico returns home, he and Mónica dispose of Diego's body but soon, tormenting phone calls begin and more people turn up dead. Who is trying to frame Mónica for murder and drive her mad? And who will be the next to die?

While Death Haunts Mónica meets all of my criteria to be called a giallo, it's really more of a fast-paced soap opera that's 65% exposition and 35% actual plot. The first hour of this 125-minute film plays out like a season of "Falcon Crest" with secret affairs, high-stakes business deals and double-crossings. Death doesn't haunt anyone until the pivotal scene where Mónica shoots the masked intruder. After that, it's all giallo, reminiscent of Lucio Fulci's con-game plots with notes of Diabolique and Gaslight. The movie features high energy and a fast pace throughout and ends with a twist ending on top of a twist ending, which makes up somewhat for its bloodless first two-thirds.

• The Italian title, Il Buio Intorno a Monica, translates as Darkness Surrounds Monica.
• To whomever wrote out the subtitles for this movie: "noone" is not a word.

What the Hell am I Watching?

 Early in the movie, Diego shows up to Frederico's office to extort money and menacingly admires a photo of Mónica on his desk. In the photo, Mónica is wearing the same outfit she was wearing that very morning while confronting Frederico's mistress at the photographer's studio. They clearly used a production still from an earlier day's shoot.

Adding to the blatantly gratuitous nudity (this may be the most well-bathed female cast in any giallo ever), Mónica's friend Elena (Yolanda Rios) goes to a nightclub that features a lesbian sex show for no reason at all.

Fashion Moment

Early in the movie, Mónica gears up for a confrontation with her husband's lover by squaring her shoulders, cocking her hat and glamming it up Joan Crawford style.

She has fire in her eyes and a polished, expensive look that means business. But later on, when her ends have been frayed and her nerves are shot, she looks more like this:

She's looking to an oversized, dowdy brown sweater for comfort and her rumpled, askew collar is the fashion equivalent of a resigned sigh. Pull it together, girl.

The Double

The Double

"For you it's all a game. You're always playing."

When Giovanni (Jean Sorel) is shot by a mysterious bearded man in a parking garage, he flashes back to the events that led him to his demise. Living off his trust fund, he and his Italian girlfriend Lucia (Ewa Aulin) had a free-spirited life in Morocco, alternately making love and arguing due to his intense jealousy. But when Lucia's mother, Nora (Lucia Bosé) visits, Giovanni's lustful attention turns to her, though she seems more interested in a taciturn American hippie named Eddie (Sergio Doria). As Giovanni lays dying, his memories mix with his fantasies. Did he kill Eddie in Morocco or did Nora kill him in Rome? Who is the mysterious bearded man and what does he want? Is Nora having an affair? It may already be too late to find out the answers.

Much like it's protagonist's life, The Double is a messy, confusing, unresolved thing. The idea of a narrative spun out from a dying man's memories comes from another, much better Jean Sorel giallo, Short Night of the Glass Dolls. But instead of focusing on an elaborate mystery, The Double is a serious, arty, and meandering examination of one man's moral contradictions and his inability to commit to a relationship, a family, a career, or home. And, likewise, his mind often diverges into fantasy, showing that he can't even commit to a single version of past events. Giovanni is a nomad in every aspect of his life. This movie wants to use the giallo format to say important things about man's existential crisis during the unraveling of social fabric in the late 20th Century but, unfortunately, it works as neither a serious drama nor as a riveting thriller. It would have worked better if they had either focused on making a contemplative Malick-esque film without the genre conventions or jettisoned the arty pretense and created a high-suspense Hitchcockian thriller. Ultimately, the movie fails by trying to cover both bases at once.

• The title The Double doesn't make any sense, but it's probably a mis-translation of the original Italian title, La Controfigura. A better translation might be The Wrong Man.
• You may remember Sergio Doria from his small role in The Iguana With the Tongue of Fire. I mostly remember him because of the awesome jacket he wore in that movie.
• IMDB.com lists Jean Sorel's character as "Giovanni" but in the movie, he's called "Frank."
• During one of their arguments, Giovanni/Frank refers to Lucia as his wife but, later on, he is surprised when Nora tells him that Lucia is eager to marry him. This could be a case of an unreliable narrator, as we see throughout the film, but I think it's probably a genuine goof.
• The phone in Lucia's Rome apartment is orange, not red. So close.

What the Hell am I Watching?

There are no fewer than two naked swimming scenes.

Early on, a group of locals crowds around the body of a dead man that has washed up on the beach. Our main characters are there and share meaningful looks. This is never addressed again in the movie. Who was he? How did he die? How does it tie in to the story? Did it really happen?

So who killed Eddie? How did he die? We get no answers.

Fashion Moment

Lucia is young, rich, thin, and Italian in the 1970's and that's a Venn diagram that leads to some adventurous high fashion. For example:

It's not a great shot, but she's wearing a flesh-colored bikini top with a matching fringed sarong.

Note the ominous yellow beach blanket.

Lucia gets funky for a night on the town in this purple velvet blouse and comically oversized hat.

In line at the breakfast buffet she's wearing that same bikini top, paired with a lace-up leather bondage collar.

And back in Rome, she goes full-on drag queen with a brunette bob wig, sheer blouse with flower appliques, and a pound of clown makeup.

 

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.

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.

Short Night of the Glass Dolls

Short Night of the Glass Dolls

"There are both good and evil in crime... they're not separate."

Gregory Moore (Jean Sorel) is an American journalist in Soviet Prague who finds himself on a slab in the morgue – paralyzed and fully conscious, but pronounced dead. As he lies helpless, Greg recounts the mysterious events of recent days: His girlfriend Mira (Barbara Bach) disappeared without a trace after a fancy cocktail party, leaving behind all of her clothes and her passport. Greg and his colleagues Jessica (Ingrid Thulin) and Ivan (Relja Basic) set out to find her, questioning the city's corrupt elite. They soon discover that Mira's disappearance is one of many, linked to a dark conspiracy hidden within the walls of an exclusive chamber music society. Can Greg piece together the clues? And will he recover from his paralysis before doctors can perform a lethal autopsy?

Short Night of the Glass Dolls (not to be confused with Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll) has a really ingenious hook – the main character is actually trying to solve his own murder. And because he is paralyzed and flashing back to the events, it's still a somewhat plausible scenario, where his recovery is a possibility. The city of Prague provides a heavy, almost claustrophobic atmosphere for the film and there are some really well-staged scenes. My favorites include the train-bridge scene, where the murderer is hidden behind a well-timed plume of smoke and the intense final five minutes.

• Ennio Morricone's score is reminiscent of the dramatic, dissonant work of Krystof Penderecki, with looming strings instead of his usual noisy, funky bop.
• Ingrid Thulin, who appeared in some of Ingmar Bergman's most acclaimed films like Wild Strawberries and Cries and Whispers, is really slumming here.
• The structure of the movie, with a main character narrating from the morgue, is reminiscent of Billy Wilder's film noir classic Sunset Boulevard.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

Um... Satanic naked geriatric sex orgy? And, man, those oldies are not shy about it.

No one ever alludes to the fact that Ivan, the Czech reporter, speaks with a thick Scottish burr.

Let's talk about Ivan's hippie girlfriend, who is so stoned when we first meet her that she doesn't realize that Ivan is groping her while telling Greg what a stupid slut she is.

Just as the action starts to amp up, everything comes to a screeching halt for a musical number, "Short Night of the Butterflies."  It's a bright, happy tune sung by a hippie street performer, with lyrics about blood raining from the sky and butterflies getting their wings cut off.

One of my favorite parts is at a concert, where the soloist stops in what is clearly the middle of the piece, stands up, and walks away from the piano. What is going on in this movie?

Also: apparently, tomatoes feel pain.

Fashion Moment 

Greg rocks an awesome string bow tie at the cocktail party. And check out that piping.

But the real fashion winner is Jessica, who stands out from the crowd in her purple velvet pantsuit with matching Gypsy head scarf.

The Sweet Body of Deborah

The Sweet Body of Deborah

"You must die, Deborah. You must die to pay for Marcel's crime."

Newlywed jet-setters Deborah (Carroll Baker) and Marcel (Jean Sorel)  are honeymooning in Europe, but visiting Geneva brings back bad memories for Marcel, whose ex-girlfriend Suzanne (Ida Galli, credited as Evelyn Stuart) was killed there years ago under mysterious circumstances. In fact, when Marcel runs into his old friend Philip (Luigi Pistilli), he is accused of murdering the woman he once loved. After that, Deborah is besieged by threatening phone calls and notes and begins to wonder if her husband could be capable of murder. Neighbor Robert (George Hilton), who prefers the term "voyeur" to "peeping tom" adds even more stress to Deborah and Marcel's relationship. Is Deborah getting Gaslighted? Is Suzanne sabotaging the marriage from beyond the grave? Or is a more diabolical plan in motion?

The Sweet Body of Deborah (not to be confused with Your Sweet Body To Murder) isn't a great giallo. The body count is low and the setting moves around so much that the pool of suspects stays small. But what The Sweet Body of Deborah lacks in big scares and blood, it makes up with lots of grown-up time. Carroll Baker is certainly not shy about her body in this movie and she has obvious chemistry with Sorel, who looks like a young, Gallic Robert Redford.

• Some of the elements of the film walk a line when it came time to check the boxes above. Someone gets buried in a backyard, which, technically, is not a graveyard, so I left "Scene in a graveyard" unchecked. Also, the couple visits a nightclub where a dancer of African descent strips to tribal drums. Is that racist? I'm not exactly sure.
• Co-screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi later worked on such giallo classics as The Case of the Bloody Iris, Death Walks on High Heels, and Torso.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

Let's talk about the scene where Deborah and Marcel play an outdoor game of Twister. That is a thing that happened in this movie.  Let's also talk about the pop art comic book-themed nightclub with "POW" and "CLANG" drawn on the walls in the style of the 60's Batman TV show. And there's also a wall of what appears to be Doctor Who cybermen. Groovy, man.

Fashion Moment

Deborah sports some great outfits in this movie, but none is more eye-catching than the lime green knit catsuit she wears during the aforementioned Twister match.