Reflections in Black

Reflections in Black

"If we don't find the third girl in that photo fast,

we're going to have another corpse on our hands."

When Emma Giorgi is attacked in her home late one night by a razor-wielding woman wearing black stockings, Inspector Laurina (John Richardson) and his partner Sergeant Panto (director Tano Cimarosa) are on the case. Before long, a second murder occurs and the victim is one of Emma's close friends. Why is the killer targeting this group and who will be next? The answers will lead the Inspector from Leondra (Dagmar Lassander), the wife of a powerful politician, to a drug smuggling hairstylist to lesbian photographer Contessa Orselmo (Magda Konopka). What secrets do the victims share and who will be the next to die?

Reflections in Black (also commonly called Vice Wear Black Hose) is a classic mid-70's giallo complete with a gloved killer, gratuitous nudity, lesbian love scenes, and a groovy soundtrack featuring a harpsichord, thumping electric bass and jazz drumming. The plot comes into focus late in the game and an overlong but necessary summary of the storyline by one of the survivors may fill in the details, but it drags the ending down. Other than that, the cast of giallo all-stars shines and benefits from expert editing by Romeo Ciatti.

• Director Tano Cimarosa cast himself as Sergeant Panto, the short, wisecracking sidekick to the noble Police Inspector. Could "Sergeant Panto" be a reference to Sancho Panza from Cervantes' Don Quixote?
• This movie features a classic "lovers alone in the woods stalked by the killer" scenario, which first appeared in 1973's Torso and was inspired by the true events of the Zodiac Killer case.

What the Hell am I Watching?

After being questioned by police about Emma's death, Leondra goes to her room. Her maid soon follows and, in an effort to console her, silently starts to undress. Leondra is too upset for grownup time and tells the maid to leave. It's a revealing scene, to be sure, but it's staged in a very strange way.

Leondra then flashes back to a poolside makeout scene with Emma and, rather than using the traditional hazy focus, the flashback looks like it was shot through a glass of milk.

When I started this blog, I decided not to have a checkbox for "horribly misogynistic" because that's sort of a given in the giallo genre. But it's never been so overtly stated as when Sergio (Marco Busciala) tells Anna (Ursula Davis) "Try to keep your impulses to the bedroom and supermarket." 


Fashion Moment

 Fast-talking drug dealer Sandro (Ninetto Davoli) illustrates everything that was wrong with 1970's fashion:

 A tight muscle shirt under a glaringly loud cropped shirt with nine-inch cuffs and a collar fashioned from a couple of airplane wings. Add tight polyester high-wasted bell-bottoms and a Juan Epstein hairdo and you've got yourself a look.

Later, he tops it with a full-on Disco Stu rhinestone denim jacket that reads "OHIO BASE 47."

Murder Obsession

 

Murder Obsession

"There's nothing to be afraid of now. A stringe bond exists

between the two of us. Nothing seperates us."

Actor Michael Stanford (Stefano Patrizi) has been haunted his whole life by the guilt of murdering his father - an event he repressed since childhood and only barely remembers. So when Michael invites his girlfriend Debra (Silvia Dionisio) and some cast and crew members of his latest movie for a relaxing visit to his childhood home, seeing his mother Glenda (Anita Strinberg) stirs up dark memories. And things get even worse when the weekend guests start turning up dead. Could Michael be blacking out and murdering people in a fugue state? Or was it Oliver (John Riehaudson), the creepy butler? Was Debra really kidnapped and forced to participate in a Satanic ritual or whas that a dream? And did Michael really kill his father all those years ago?

Murder Obsession (which sometimes goes by the title Fear) takes us through a lot of anticlimactic false starts before it starts rolling. And when it does, it becomes clear that the plot is a collage of ideas from other, better movies. The attempted murder of Beryl (Laura Gemser) in a bathtub echoes that of Mizar Harrington in The Case of the Bloody Iris; a woman is attacked by bats like in Lizard in Woman's Skin; the was-it-or-wasn't-it-a dream sequence Satanic ritual is reminiscent of Rosemary's Baby; Debra runs through a forrest at night in the rain in the style of Susperia; We get flashbacks from three different points of view on Michael's father's death in a hamfisted attempt to make this a giallo Rashomon. And, of course, the dark candle-lit mansion, murky dungeons, and shoehorned-in elements of black magic, psychic powers, and magic talismans come from the world of gothic horror.

• The ghostly footprints appearing on the dusty staircase (a la Paranormal Activity) is a cool effect.
• Neither Glenda's nor Oliver's explanation for Michael's father's death makes any sense. But Oliver's makes slightly more sense.
• The ending of the movie is left a little ambiguous. The killer is revealed, one character is mortally wounded (I've counted it as a death in the body count, above), and another character screams right before we cut to credits (I didn't count that one as a death).
• This movie has gone by six different English titles over the years and not a single one of them (except maybe Satan's Altar) relates to the movie.

What the Hell am I Watching?

What's the inverse of an Oedipal complex? Because that's something that happens in this movie. Glenda's reunion with Michael is slightly unsettling and it just gets weirder from there.

Fashion Moment

Movie star Beryl is looking fantastic in this richly-embroidered white silk kimono.

Also, the movie brazenly re-creates one of the greatest works of Western art: Michaelangelo's Pieta.

Nine Guests for a Crime

Nine Guests For a Crime

"If the killer is a lunatic, he's a very astute lunatic."

When a wealthy family takes a two-week vacation to their private island estate, it's anything but relaxing. The group includes family patriarch Ubaldo (Arthur Kennedy) his new young wife, Giulia (Caroline Laurente), Umbaldo's sister, Aunt Elizabeth (Dania Ghia), Umbaldo's sons, Michele (Massimo Foschi), Walter (Venantino Venantini), and Lorenzo (John Richardson), and their respective wives, Carla (Sofia Dionisio, credited as Flavia Fabiani), Patrizia (Loretta Persichetti), and Greta (Rita Silva). Family tensions run high as Michele carries on a secret affair with his stepmother and Walter has his own affair with his sister-in-law Greta. But things really take a turn when people start turning up dead and there is no way off the island. Could gold-digger Giulia be killing off the competition for Ubaldo's inheritance? And what about Aunt Elizabeth's theory that the ghost of her long-dead lover, Carlo (uncredited) has returned to avenge his death? Who will be left alive? It all leads to a bloody, explosive ending!

Like Mario Bava's Five Dolls For an August Moon, Nine Guests For a Crime is based on Agatha Christie's famous 1939 novel And Then There Were None.  But Nine Guests takes it a step further and also incorporates elements of Bava's Bay of Blood, including an astronomical body count and some unusual and highly dramatic murder scenes. 

• You may remember Arthur Kennedy as American journalist Jackson Bentley in Laurence of Arabia or as Pontius Pilate in the 1961 movie Barabbas.
• Director Fernando Baldi was one of those directors who did everything - biblical epics, comedies, Westerns, war movies, and documentaries. This is his only giallo.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

Who was the charred skeleton hanging in the closet? Was that Charlie? It's never made quite clear.

When Carla starts thrashing around in the water and shouting that she's drowning, everyone just stops and stares for a ridiculously long time. Sure, maybe she's pulled pranks in the past that looked similar to this, but wouldn't it be better to get out there and find out, rather than discuss it for five minutes?

One has to marvel at the audacity of the two couples having noisy affairs under their respective partners' noses on this tiny island in a cramped cottage. And sometimes – brazenly – in the same room as a sleeping spouse.

Fashion Moment

Psychic Carla wears this breezy multi-colored cover-up (which covers up nothing at all) in a scene where she foretells great suffering and despair.

Eyeball

Eyeball

"I was like you... before this friend of mine ripped out my eye playing doctor with me... 

leaving an empty socket!"

A group of American tourists from Burlington, Vermont is visiting Barcelona, but a mysterious killer dressed in red is murdering them one by one before gouging out the victims' eyes.  The tour group includes Paulette Stone (Martine Brocharad), whose married lover, Mark (John Richardson) has joined her. The murders bring back uneasy memories for Mark, who recalls similar killings back in Vermont and he suspects that his wife, Alma (Marta May) is responsible. Did she follow them to Spain? Or could the killer possibly be some other member of the tour? Maybe it's Reverend Bronson (George Rigaud), the minister with the creepy smile or the interracial lesbian couple. Inspector Tuleda (Andrés Mejuto) is on the case – and he's a hard-nosed old-school cop, a week away from retirement, who doesn't take any guff from his young partner or any American tourists. Can he solve the case before the killer strikes again?

Eyeball (not to be confused with Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll) is one of those gialli that goes by many different names. It's just as well-known under its Italian title, Gatti Rossi In un Labarinto di Vetro (literally, "Red Cats In a Maze of Glass") or as Wide-Eyed In the Dark or just The Eye. The film is really an old-fashioned drawing room murder mystery, but with a more glamorous setting. Director Umberto Lenzi usually has a gonzo, sensationalist sensibility, but this movie is unusually artful and relatively subdued.

• Composer Bruno Nicolai is a superstar of giallo film scores, perhaps second only to Ennio Morricone.
• Lenzi's use of color is brilliant in this film. The killer's signature color is red (using red gloves and a red rain poncho instead of the traditional all-black look) and sharp red accents are found everywhere in the film – clothes, lamps, the handrails at the pool, a tablecloth, a suitcase. It's never dominant, but always stands out in  the background as an omen.
• The whole movie takes place in Barcelona and there isn't a single shot of Gaudí's Basilica de la Sagrada Familia, the most famous building in town.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

 Man, that Reverend Bronson just pops up out of nowhere.

When one of the tourists, Robby Alvarado (Daniele Vargas), is doing a crossword puzzle, notice that he crams the 6-letter word "muerte" into a four-square space.

Inspector Tuleda asks one of the tourists to try on a rain poncho left behind by the killer. Why? To see if it fits? It's a rain poncho – of course it's going to fit. In the meantime, it's a great way to smear fingerprints and blood samples and destroy valuable evidence.

The same framed abstract drawing appears in Reverend Bronson's hotel room and in Naiba's hospital room.

Fashion Moment

COVER GIRL!

You work those Daisy Dukes.