The Magnificent Dare Devil

The Magnificent Dare Devil
Original Title: Troppo rischio per un uomo solo
Directed by: Luciano Ercoli
Italy, 1973
Thriller, 110min

I like the films of Luciano Ercoli. I like the ones that he produced, and even more, the ones he directed. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Ercoli only ever directed some eight movies, and produced almost a dozen, and then mysteriously vanished from the industry, of which you can read more here, but I still consider his petite catalogue of work among my favourites of Italian genre cinema.

Unlike many other of his peers, he wasn’t coming off a background as a newspaper critic and neither did he have any family bonds to the industry. Instead Ercoli was a student of Law and was supposedly to be a lawyer. But finding that he grew bored with the world of academia, Ercoli was lucky enough to get a break from a friend of his who worked in the movies.

Stepping into the world of cinema as a production assistant on Primo Zeglio’s Capitan Fantasma (Captain Phantom) 1953, Ercoli found his new passion and progressed rapidly from production assistant to assisting the director, to editing and then finally getting behind it all and setting up as a producer. As a producer he made a few movies with Totò (the Italian

comedian who can easiest be compared to Jacques Tati and who also starred in Lucio Fulci’s first future I Ladri (The Thieves) 1959) before moving into the Spaghetti Western genre where he produced three movies for Duccio Tessari (his two Ringo Westerns, both 1965 and the action thriller Kiss Kiss… Bang Bang 1966). After a couple more Westerns it was time due for Ercoli to move out from behind the desk, roll up his sleeves and take on the part of director.

This is where the string of Gialli movies that I enjoy so much starts with the interesting Le foto proibite di una singora per bene (The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion) 1970. For the rest of his eight movie run all his films would in one way or another use the traits and move within the Poliziotteschi and Gialli genre.

The Magnificent Dare Devil was shot between the Giallo La morte accarezza a mezzanotte (Death Walks at Midnight) 1972 and the gothic horror Il figlio della spolta viva (roughly The Son of the Dead is Alive) 1974 under the pseudonym André Colbert, and just like it’ predecessors uses some of the traits belonging to those genres. Starting out with a great sequence at a Formula 1 track in the UK where even great legends like Jackie Stewart and Emerson Fittipaldi are seen, you would think that there’s a chance that it might be movie that will take place in the high-speed world of Formula 1. But enjoy those fast cars as long as you can, because within ten minutes, after a terrific stock footage crash, the movie takes us away from the track and into a devious web of life on the run, as race car superstar Rudy Patti [Guiliano Gemma who starred in several of the movies Ercoli produced, and was Ringo] is framed for a murder he didn't commit.

Rudi comes away from the pileup without a scratch and makes plans and celebrates with his best friend and mechanic Piero [Ventantino Ventantini – Antonio Margheritti’s Apocalypse domain (Cannibal Apocalypse) 1980, Lucio Fulci’s Paura nella città dei morti viventi (City of the Living Dead) 1980, and Umberto Lenzi’s Cannibal Ferox 1981]. During the party Rudi gets a phone call from his diplomat girlfriend Nina [Nieves Navarro or here Susan Scott] who he later meets at the airport – watch the matching luggage - and they go back to her place in London for a good old romp. The happy couple pass out from their immense lovemaking and when Rudi wakes up again, there’s a full blown party going on. Uncomfortable with the situation, he tries to leave, but Nina convinces him to stay and have a drink… An unfortunate choice as the drink is laced by a menacing bloke and handed on to Rudi, needless to say e rapidly becomes profoundly intoxicated and leaves the party. Unable to drive his car that he earlier left outside Nina's flat – in a no parking zone – he’s given a ride home by flamboyant homosexual Donald [Giancarlo Zanetti] in his pink VW. With no memory of last night Rudi steps outside to fetch his yellow suitcase from the back of his car, but the car is missing and when he goes up to the nearby police officer to report his car as stolen, he’s nicked and stuffed in the back of a police car… arrested for a murder he has no recollection of committing!

There are several subplots that play throughout the movie, one is the murder and then there’s the missing suitcase. Rudi is the prime suspect for the murder, and all evidence points right at him. At the same time he is convinced that if he only finds his yellow suitcase – the one identical to Nina’s, he can prove his innocence. But as there was an obvious mix up with the suitcases at the airport, there are also two rival organisations searching for the suitcase – as they are certain that it contains a large shipment of heroin – Nina’s been a naughty girl, using her diplomatic immunity for smuggling. So as Rudi – who’s assisted in his dramatic escape from jail by one of the two organisations without knowing which one, it’s all part of yet another subplot – who and why – is not only trying to prove his innocence and stay one step ahead of the police who are searching for him, he also has to stay way ahead of the two rivals that are trying their damndest to lay their hands on him and that missing suit case.

The two fractions, one run by insurance magnate Brauner [Michael Forrest – who dubbed loads of classic Italian pieces, and has for the last fifteen years been doing loads of video game and anime voice work] and Mitridates [Mario Erpichini – from Umberto Lenzi’s Spasmo 1974 and Enzo G. Castellari’s La polizia incrimina la legge assolve (The Marseilles Connection) 1973] are all after Rudi’s suitcase as they want the contents, and he’s stuck in the middle trying to clear his name.

The Magnificent Dare Devil may not be a Gialli or a pure Poliziotteschi even though Inspector Forrest [Carlo Gentil, another Ercoli regular] does his best to play a tough cop, but it does have a script by the great Ernesto Gastaldi who worked with Ercoli on The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion and La morte cammina con I tacchi alti (Death Walks on High Heels) 1971. And that script is a damned fine piece of work. The movie moves fast, has a fair amount of action laden fight sequences, plenty of car chases that ended up entitling stunt co-ordinator Rèmy Julienne with his own credit in the opening titles. Julienne is that legendary stunt man who has worked on everything from Lucio Fulci’s action comedy Operazione San Pietro 1967, Alberto De Martino’s Blazing Magnum 1976 to John Glen’s A View to a Kill 1985 (remember that stunt with the Renault, the one that gets stuck in the tree… that’s him), John Woo’s Once a Thief 1991, and Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code 2006.

Gastaldi’s script – written together with Ercoli - is pretty logic and nothing really sticks out as a quick fix to move things into a new direction, which some Gialli tend to do. Instead we find an intriguing plot to keep you interested in how Rudi is going to get out of the mess he finds himself treading deeper and deeper into. I mentioned earlier that most of Ercoli’s films use Gialli or Poliziotteschi traits. I choose to see those three Gialli as his learning the ropes and keeping what he liked from them. It’s easy to see Rudi as the amateur detective, the prime suspect attempting to clear his name and catch the real culprits of the piece as he works his way through he narrative. His mate Piero is an obvious comic relief, not that the movie needs it, and you never know until the last moment who the killer really is.

The worst thing with The Magnificent Dare Devil is the soundtrack, as there are really only a few tracks used throughout the entire movie. Giampaolo Chiti only ever scored three movies, and it’s painfully obvious as the same melodies keep returning over and over again. But never the less, The Magnificent Dare Devil is a pleasant little action thriller that get’s the job done, has some suspenseful moments, never feels like a waste of time, packs a good mystery tone, delivers a few good laughs.

Image:

Widescreen 16:9

Audio:

Stereo 2.0

If you feel an urge to see it, you can get it from The Giallo Goblin!

The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion

The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion
Original Title: Le foto prohibite di una signora per bene
Directed by: Luciano Ercoli
Giallo, 1970
Italy, 96 min
Distributed by: Blue Underground

Story:
A young woman, Minou is lured into a fiendish web of blackmail and extortion as she tries to protect her husband. Slowly but surely she is tangled up in a terrible game which forces her to engage in lurid sexual activity while the Blackmailer shoots photographs of her. When she finally tells her husband all, and they together with the police breakdown the door to the sex fiends’ apartment, it is empty and Minou’s sanity is questioned. But guess who shows up outside their house in the middle of the night in the pouring rain… The Blackmailer. Minou confronts him and the horrific truth is finally revealed in a plot twist that you never saw coming…
…if you never saw a Giallo before that is.

Me: Luciano Ercoli’s first attempt at directing a Giallo proves that you don’t need a bunch of violent killings to keep the story going. All you need is to delicately plant your red herrings here and there along the way to keep your audience guessing where the movie is going. The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion is a great example of this, and although it’s not my favorite of Ercoli’s Gialli, I found it to be a damned fine and entertaining movie.


Having produced a few dramas, some comedies and three movies for among others Duccio Tessari [both his Ringo Spaghetti Westerns and the action/comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang from 1966 ] it is no surprise that Luciano Ercoli wanted to get himself behind the camera and direct a few movies. And you have to give it to the man, of the eight movies he did direct, there are at least half of them really fabulous genre pieces.


The absurd ending to Ercoli’s career is as enigmatic and strange as the Gialli he directed. His final movie, the Poliziotteschi The Rip Off [La Bidonata 1977] was shelved after the producer Niccolo De Nora was kidnapped! De Nora was held captive for an amazing 524 days, and the ransom was supposedly well over four million. Not long after Ercoli came into a large inheritance, packed up his offices and retired from the movie industry. With a mind filled of red herrings and warped plots makes it easy to fantasize about the strange events and their conclusions. Ercoli obviously had nothing to do with the kidnapping, but it’s a fantastic story. Thanks to the age of restored movies on DVD, Ercoli’s The Rip Off, just like Mario Bava’s last shelved project, Rabid Dogs has finally been able to be presented to it's audience.


Often critiqued for his Gialli first and foremost being vehicle for his girlfriend (or wife, nobody knows for sure) Nieves Navarro aka Susan Scott, I still can’t help to find myself feeling that there is indeed more to these movies in Ercoli’s Giallo suite than just showcasing his fabulous wife. Navarro was a decent enough actress even before Ercoli started directing his own movies, and in some way that kind of diminishes the craft that the rest of the crew put into these pieces. I can certainly understand that one may like to claim that Ercoli only made the movies to show off his marvelous partner, but in all honestly there’s no way they could assemble the casts and crew if that where the case.

All three of the Gialli, The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion 1970, Death Walks on High Heels 1971 and Death Walks at Midnight 1972, where all written by the master of the genre, Ernesto Gastaldi (Midnight was co-written by the great Sergio Corbucci). And, The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion is a great script which definitely has an engaging narrative, wonderful plot twists, even if there are no genre typical killings. It builds empathy for Dagmar Lassander's Minou character as she is lured deeper and deeper into a sinister blackmail scheme set to force her into bed with the stalker. Friend and ally Dominique, played to perfection by Nieves Navarro (as Susan Scott) uses her emancipation to trick the viewers into never quite knowing who’s side she is on, is she really concerned for Minou or is she in cohorts with the blackmailer. The sleazy Blackmailer played by Simón Andreu is excellent, (Andreu returned in all three of the Giallo movies) and Minou’s husband Peter [Pier Paolo Capponi – no stranger to the Giallo genre or the Nunsploitation genre for that part…] once again prove that in an Italian Gialli you can’t trust any man at all, unless it’s the old reliable police commissioner of course. The shock surprise end doesn’t really come as a bombshell after seeing a reasonable amount of movies in the Giallo niche, but at the same time it doesn’t really take all that much away from the story as the final twist is held for an as late as possible reveal, and there’s plenty of red herrings along the way to keep you guessing who masterminded the plan against Minou. It’s pretty common Gialli ground, and entertaining enough to keep the steam going all the way through.



The editing on both Death Walks on High Heels and Death Walks at Midnight was performed by Angelo Curi. Ercoli himself edited The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion, with Curi as his assistant, and Curi stayed on as first editor on all the films Ercoli directed from there on. The Cinematography by Alejandro Ulloa on The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion is probably the simplest of the three Gialli, but brooding sinister reds and deep dark blues create some wonderfully lit scenes. Fernando Arribas on the other hand used the frame much better on Death Walks on High Heels and Death Walks at Midnight, setting the camera at low angles and using wide lenses for some really delicious shots that can’t be found in The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion.


Then there’s the soundtrack. Ennio Morricone’s score for The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion is standard Morricone fare, which is easily summed up in the word fantastic. The music of Morricone does wonders to add to the lush feeling of the Gialli and this one is no exception.

Finally a small reflection on the actors, I’ve never been much of a fan of Dagmar Lassander. She has the same two, three facial expressions in her repertoire and never does much to surprise. (With perhaps Piero Schivazappa’s The Frightened Woman being the exception) and there’s not really any surprises here either, she just get’s the job done. Navarro is almost always fabulous as she constantly wears clothes that look dazzling on her (contrary to Lassander who looks like she got makeup and dressed in the dark), perfect makeup and that stunning smile. I think that if Ercoli had flipped the parts here, had Navarro in the Lassander part, put in Anita Strindberg, Edwige Fenech or Marisa Mell in that ferocious part I'm positive that the movie would have become a classic of the genre. Not taking anything away from The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion, it is a great movie, and it really keeps you trying to figure out who is in on the scam and how far they are going to go with it. But a re-shuffle of the cast would have been beneficial. This could possibly have been in the mind of Ercoli too, as this is exactly what he did with the next two installments of his Gialli suite, giving Navarro the lead, Andreau the male lead, and probably what ignited that reputation of his movies only being a vehicle for Navarro. But if you are married to a woman like that you’d be insane not to have her lead your movie.


One of the things that intrigues me about The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion is that the opening sequence is terrible! The movie opens on Lassander in the bath, she gets out and ponders around her house talking to herself how she’s going to seduce Peter when he get’s back from work. Not until she gets outside and Andreau starts stalking her on the beach does it start to pick up pace. But that opening is just so ridiculous, and it would have been much better to start with her on the beach, roll the credits over shots of her walking and then start straight off with the attack instead of that meaningless five minute blotch at the start.


Image:
Widescreen, 2.35:1 [16x9 Anamorphic]

Audio:
English Dubbed version. Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono. No subtitles.
Extras:
Forbidden Screenplays. A short interview with Ernesto Gastaldi on the script and movie and the Theatrical Trailer.