Autopsy

Autopsy

Original Title: Macchie solari

Directed by: Armando Crispini

Italy, 1975

Giallo/Thriller, 100min

Distributed by: Blue Underground.

After revisiting this title, I have to confess that I got quite surprised by it. I didn’t remember it as freaky and surreal as it indeed is. I recall seeing it years ago when I was a young lad exploring all the bizarre titles I could lay my grubby little hands on, especially the ones with words like Blood, Death and especially Autopsy in the title. Titles designed to jump out and appeal to a young cineaste on search for his next fix of carnage, which is what lead me into the amazing world of EuroHorror.

Even though Autopsy may not be the most violent or blood drenched little oddity you may think from the title, it is a really entertaining and fascinating movie that works out of the Giallo mould. It’s fair to say that it’s one of those Gialli that expand the boundaries of the genre and treats its audience to a wild ride indeed.

The movie jump starts with a series of violent suicides, nekid' woman slits her wrists, old geezer stuffs head in bag and jumps in river, a father takes a machine gun to the heart after killing his kids, all provoked by the intense heat wave hammering down on Rome. Crash cut to a bunch of American tourists having problems understanding the piazza vendors, a young redhead helps them with the explanation that she too is American. She hails a cab and just as she gets in, a man climbs in with her and bursting into tears she falls into his arms. Right now this little scene is a mere parenthesis, but in good old Gialli style it’s of importance will be revealed before the film is over. The meat wagon driving the corpses elegantly leads us to the morgue where medical student Simona [Mimsy Farmer from Dario Argento’s Four Flies on Grey Velvet 1971, Francesco Barilli’s The Perfume of a Lady in Black 1974, Lucio Fulci’s The Black Cat 1981 to name a few], is currently working.

Following a presentation of Simona’s character through a sequence shot almost in documentary type realism of corpse gutting and intestine removals, the long work and heat causes Simone to start hallucinating while she is working in the morgue. And she sees some amazing stuff, like a corpse winking at her, corpses get up and dance, and even two corpses making, out only to end up shagging on the floor (on a conveniently placed rug of course) – Now there’s one way to work in some gratuitous nudity for your audience if there ever was one.

After a baleful practical joke conducted by her boyfriend Edgar [the always a blast, Ray Lovelock from Jorge Grau’s Let Sleeping Corpses Lie 1974, Umberto Lenzi’s The Oasis of Fear 1971, and Lucio Fulci’s Murder Rock 1984] and Ivo [Ernesto Colli who you get bonus points for if you spot him in Sergio Martino’s Torso 1973] her sleazy colleague, Simone is driven home by the laughing, taunting Edgar who tries his best to get in her pants before she climbs out of the car. But Simone rejects him and says that there will be none of that until she’s finished her thesis.

In the comfort of her flat, decorated with photographs of dead, mutilated bodies all over the place, she starts going over her work, and we learn that Simone’s thesis is a study on the differences between real suicides set against murders staged as suicides, sounds like a bizarre study, but this is Giallo territory and it will all make sense eventually… we hope. There’s a sudden knock on the door in the middle of the night, and in comes Betty [Gaby Wagner] who wants to borrow an envelope (another sub plot plant) and then claims to be renting the flat above Simona's – a flat hat belongs to Simona's father… …a man Nancy says she doesn’t know. After she leaves Nancy takes a walk and is pretty soon pursued by the headlights of a car. The car stops and Nancy, with a sigh of relief says, ”Oh it’s you again” and walks towards the car… Hmmm once again a delicate sub plot is planted, and we are given our first hint at the culprit of the movie. It all makes sense in a while.

The following morning Simone and her colleagues gather round the latest ”suicide corpse” that was found in a deckchair on the beach with a gun in hand, and ponder over the question whom she can be… Simone’s sleazy colleague Ivo obviously cops a feel as he washes the dead female body in preparation for his rebuilding of her disfigured face. Simone goes for a lunch with her father Gianni [Massimo Serato who you may recognize as the evil warden from the recently deceased Rino Di Silvestro’s Women in Cell Block 7 1973, Giulio Berruti’s The Killer Nun 1978 and Antonio Bido’s The Bloodstained Shadow 1978], during their lunch poppa Guilin reveals that he’s met a woman whom he plans to marry, but his girlfriend seems to have missed their appointment. Simone feels faint and leaves the restaurant only to run into Giuliio’s ex, Daniela [Angela Goodwin] an artist preparing her next exhibition in the death museum. Daniela’s red hair gives Simona a premonition of who the dead girl might be and returns to the corpse in the morgue with a red haired wig. Just as Simona solves the mystery girl’s identity Father Lennox [Barry Primus] makes his entrance claiming that the dead woman is his sister, and that there is no way possible that she would have killed herself.

That’s just the first twenty minutes of Armando Crispino’s Autopsy. He’s introduced all the main players, their traits, and solved the initial mystery only to spark further mystery that drives the movie forth from here and introduced a gallery of interesting suspects that might be responsible for the death of Betty, and I’m totally drawn in.

It’s a wonderful little piece that brings a lot to the screen with it, double identities, mysterious books found in flooded libraries, suspicious characters and side winding plots that will throw you off track over and over again, There is quite little of the customary killing sprees of a masked murderer here, most murders take place off screen or with the killer completely out of sight, but never the less, it’s the mystery plot of who’s who that makes this movie such a treat.

There’s also a great sub plot with Simona rejecting her boyfriend Edgar, displaying a cold sexual repression that reminds me of Catherine Deneuve in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion 1965, but at the same time she lusts for and falls in love with Father Lennox, a man she can’t have due to his faith which complicates things. But then at the same time, Father Lennox beats the crap out of Simona’s landlord during one of his nightly stakeouts screaming ”I’ll Kill You, I’ll Fucking Kill You!” so it’s doubtful that this man of the cloth is true to his vows. There’s also a fantastic scene where the killer tries to arrange a dual suicide with Simona and Father Lennox after drugging them and leaving them in a bathroom slowly filling with gas. It’s a very exciting and suspense full little scene, and familiarity with the genre will let you know that you never know who is going to get it next, so the killer has a fair chance of killing off the leading lady.

Eventually there’s a wonderful climax that will have you gasping, as the killer ignorant of his past deeds goes about his regular routines and is finally confronted by the only person who know the truth of what has been going on, and that little scene at the beginning with the redhead and the man in the cab, the envelope that Nancy asks for, the mysterious car driver who Nancy recognizes, there all small details that will make sense. I love it when gaily wrap things up and small bit’s that at first seem incoherent and almost like filler scenes drop into their place in the story and you get that rush of insight. It’s one of the small perks of watching movies in this fantastic genre that make it all worthwhile.

Something that I find recurrent in Gialli, apart from clothing supplied by the major fashion houses, and constant fraternisation with the art world, there’s a recurrent display of the cutting edge technology. Be it enormous seventies computers that take up a whole wall, or gigantic matrix printers technology keeps making itself apparent in the genre. Here there’s a bizarre machine that is supposed to help one of the characters, now totally paralysed, to speak with the police and give them a clue to who the killer may be. It’s an enormous machine, that looks more like an instrument of torture than anything else, but more petite and functioning versions are actually used today by people in paralysis. So even how ridiculous the scene may seem today, there is a fascinating foresight in there. Sort of like when you watch classic Star Trek and see their “future tech” which we all have in our households and everyday life today.

Farmer does what is expected of her, she wanders from scene to scene with a puzzled, almost lost look on her face and gives a grad performance as the confused Simone. Once again Lovelock, get’s to play the chauvinistic, misogynist part that he plays so wonderfully. He’s self centred, filthy rich and truly a disturbing character, all he wants’ is to have fun, shoot his photographs and get his rocks off with Simone. He repeatedly tries to get it on with Simone, to varied results, but it is a primal urge hat he can’t resist. Edgar even gives it a shot when he get’s Simona home and after her colleague tries to rape her, Edgar coldly says – ”Well you can’t blame the guy for trying” and sticks his hand up her dress. Sinister and misogynist to the very end. But also Primus gives a decent performance here, even though he made no more Gialli after this one, but disappeared into US TV serial bit parts. But in Crispino’s Autopsy it’s possible that he was given some great direction, as he makes an impression that many other one off Yankee’s in Italian genre pieces didn’t.

Editor Daniele Alabiso [Ruggero Deodato’s Last Cannibal World 1977, Phantom of Death 1988, and Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City 1980] does a wonderful job with the movie. The timing is impeccable, and right on cue. Also he takes a few wild transitions into play to add to the delicate weave. Just keep an eye out for the sequence when Simona’s father is introduced, as he intercuts Massimo Serato swimming towards something, Ivo is remodelling the face of the female corpse, Serato swimming, the corpse with Simona watching on in puzzlement, Serato swimming up to a pair of female feet, the completed corpse being photographed, Serato revealing that the feet belong to Simona standing by the pool greeting her father – Serato. It’s a wonderful part and there’s that great short thread of mystery spinning off the larger – the unknown female corpse – which soon will be integrated with the shorter thread and lead to the solution of the larger sub plot. Great stuff that has the movie stands out over many other Gialli.

Finally there’s Ennio Morricone’s marvellous score. It’s a fascinating and eclectic score filled with both electronic minimalism, and full-feathered orchestral parts. Gentle flutes, brooding synthesizers mix in a catchy but disturbing blend. The use of the electronic harpsichord played heavily brings an added dimension to the score, as it’s a rather delicate instrument played violently. Also Morricone uses his long time collaborator Edda Dell'Orso on the soundtrack, which makes it even more interesting as she’s something of a female Mike Patton of the sixties and seventies. A tremendously talented singer she also explored alternative vocal performances, styles and ranges (like Patton) in many great Italian genre pieces; Morricone’s great scores for Mario Bava’s Danger Diabolik 1968, Dario Argento’s The Bird With the Crystal Plumage 1970, Aldo Lado’s Who Saw Her Die? 1972 (With those great child quires) and Massimo Dallamano’s What Have you Done To Solange? 1972, to give you a few highlights of her amazing talent. For Autopsy she supplies vocal performances ranging from sensual groaning to heavy breathing to death rattles, which makes the soundtrack one of Morricone’s better dark horror works. Definitely a soundtrack worth picking up if you are into that kind of thing.

Image:

1.85:1 – Anamorphic 16x9

Audio:

English and Italian Dialogue in Dolby Digital Mono

Extras:

Very scarce, but there’s the US theatrical trailer and an international trailer for the movie under the name The Victim.

Last Cannibal World

Last Cannibal World

Aka: Jungle Holocaust, The Last Survivor, Cannibal.

Original Title: Ultimo mondo cannibale

Directed by: Ruggero Deodato

Drama/Horror/Cannibals, 92 min

Italy, 1977

Distributed by: Noble Entertainment

Among all the strange and bizarre sub-genres ever to come out of the wonderful world of Italian cinema, the brief, but impactful cannibal genre must be among the most provocative and disturbing. Perhaps the genre itself isn’t such a strange niche as it in many ways is a progressive evolution of the previous Mondo genre perfected by directors like Franco Prosperi, Gualtiero Jacopetti. Gianni Proia and Luigi Scattini.

Say the words cannibal film and two definitive movies come to mind, Umberto Lenzi’s Cannibal Ferox (aka Make them Die Slowly) 1981 and Ruggero Deodato's landmark gut-muncher Cannibal Holocaust 1980 come to mind. Both landmark movies that stand out and still are considered quite offensive and provocative.

Where the nazisploitation traits are sleazy Germans tormenting naked women in their bordello concentration camps, the nunsploitation has sinful nuns engaging in lesbian romps and hailing the forces of darkness, no cannibal movie is complete without loin clothed savages tearing open the stomachs of their victims, cultural clashes between modern and primitive worlds and a fair deal of violent animal deaths. The killing of animals in the genre is still today a sensitive subject, which the directors still are at unease talking about. But in it’s own unique way it’s part of the genre, and it is within here that the movies have their historic debt to the Mondo genre. It’s only a natural progression of the re-enacted rituals and lifestyles of exotic cultures once showcased as documentary footage in the Mondo genre would be brought to life as part of dramatic narrative. This is also what director's of the genre fall back on. I was only showing the primitives everyday hunt and preparation of food, and all animals killed in front of the camera where eaten by the primitives. A rather pale excuse as these scenes of barbaric slaying is still what makes these movies disturbing, but then again so is any footage of slaughter, be it by primitives in the jungle or in your nearest processing plant. Death is a bitch to watch whey you know it’s for real. But no matter how haunting the real animal deaths are there is a vital point to why they are such an important part of the genre’s traits and narrative. The real violence enhances the illusionary violence that the characters are put in front of. We know that the monkey/crocodile/turtle snuffed it for real, there’s nothing but my common sense retaining me from believing that the human deaths on screen are fake. Which is most likely why the cannibal genre was surrounded in controversy and frequently banned as audiences where fooled into believing that the movies could have been snuff films. But for those still in doubt, actors Me Me Lai, Ivan Rassimov and Robert Kerman starred in many more cannibal movies pre and post Last Cannibal World.

Deodato’s Last Cannibal World wasn’t the first of the strange niche, as Umberto Lenzi beat him to it with five years when he directed his Man From Deep River in 1972 which is considered to be the one that set it all in motion. Although Deodato will forever be associated to the genre because of his classic masterpiece Cannibal Holocaust from 1980, a truly disturbing and impactful movie, which leaves no one untouched after a viewing. Directors like Sergio Martino, Mario Gariazzo and Michele Massimo Tarantini also jumped in on the genre, well jumped on isn’t really fair as the majority of these fantastic directors where all “directors for hire” guys, which is why they all followed each others leads when the genre demands turned, but still they all got in to their elbows and went with the flow churning out some savage movies in the obscure niche. Even Jesus Franco, and Joe D’Amato got in on it and brought all their sexploitation traits with the, producing some really weird entries in the subgenre. Who could ever have thought up the movie Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals 1978 but good old Joe D’Amato. During the eighties, the themes once again changed, the cannibal genre was abandoned in favour of the undead zombies, and slasher hybrids which dominated the ever inspirational American scene. A few years ago the late Bruno Mattei tried re-vitalising the cannibal niche with a few low budget attempts, but considering that nobody really noticed, it's fair to say that the genres time has passed long ago.

The producers of Man from Deep River approached Lenzi with a proposal to direct Last Cannibal World, in some ways a sequel to his previous movie, but when Lenzi demanded to much pay, producer Giorgio Carlo Rossi went after the second name on his list, Ruggero Deodato.

Staying with the idea of dramatised realism, Deodato starts his movie by proclaiming that it is based on true events, that this is the true story of Robert Harper and his terrifying ordeal. A group of people Harper [Massimo Foschi], Rolf [Ivan Rassimov who held the leading role in Lenzi’s Man From Deep River 1972 and Eaten Alive 1980], Charlie the pilot and Swan find themselves stranded in the middle of a god awful jungle on the island of Mindano after landing their small airplane on an overgrown landing strip. Charlie sets about repairing the landing gear as Robert and Rolf shoot into the jungle looking for the team supposed to meet them there. In a few minutes they find the remains of the previous teams’ radio, and set off towards the camp location. Obviously it’s abandoned and Ubaldo Continiello’s rather bleak score set’s the tone as flutes taunt us and bring us into a mood of mystery. After finding bloody weapons apparently made by primitives Robert rushes into the jungle and witnesses the first animal death as an anaconda wrestles and chomps down on a large monitor lizard. Nature at work, survival of the fittest, and it is shocking as the snake swallows the giant lizard, which definitely set’s a tone for the movie.

Back at the plane Charlie the pilot starts to curse the two men as it will soon be too late to take off. With this said Robert and Rolf find the rotting remains of the other team… and as night falls the fight for survival begins. Forced to spend the night in the hazardous jungle with the knowledge that the “last cannibals left in the world” are most likely watching them as they speak, taking shelter inside the small airplane. Going out to retrieve herself, Anna is snatched by something sneaking in the rough terrain surrounding the craft. The next morning, the men venture out into the jungle to look for Swan. Charlie finds her dress and grabbing it triggers a deadly trap. Charlie is skewered and dies in front of Robert and Rolf who scramble deeper into the jungle only to come upon a group of primitives enjoying a barbeque. You don’t need any previous knowledge of genre to understand that it’s the remains of the well-done Swan that they are chomping down.

For the next ten minutes Robert and Ralph build themselves as tiny raft and set of towards salvation down the river. But where there are rivers, there’s bound to be rapids and once again the forces of nature strike down man. Climbing ashore on the riverbank Robert tries to come to terms with the fact that he’s the only survivor of their small assemblage. Obviously Robert never watched any nature programmes and is really ignorant as he hungrily binges on some strange mushrooms he finds. After fainting he’s rudely awakened by the savages who drag him along to their amazing camp inside a cave. This is where the movie gets really interesting, as modern man meets primitive culture in a wonderful clash of cultures.

The first thing the cannibals do is humiliate him and reduce him to their level, tearing off his strange clothes leaving him naked just as they are. Screaming and objecting to their treatment of him Robert sees Pulan [Me Me Lai who also starred in Lenzi’s Man From Deep River and Eaten Alive] make her entrance as she pokes his strange white flesh, yanking the elastic in his underwear and finally ripping them off. Robert is now equal to the savages. As the savages saw Robert arrive by plane, they want to see this strange god like entity fly and hoist him up by a rope to the top of the cave. Needless to say Robert can’t fly and as they repeatedly rise and drop him towards the ground he passes out. This scene is reminiscent of the coming of age ritual that Richard Harris goes through in Elliot Silverstein’s A Man Called Horse from 1970. A Man Called Horse is very much the same template and definitely an inspiration upon the cannibal genre, as it deals with the same topic. The savage rituals and crashes between primitive and modern worlds.

The primitives go about their everyday life, as Robert sits starving in his primitive cage but for some strange reason Pulan takes pity, or perhaps it’s fascination, upon Robert and starts befriending him. As we reach half point Deodato reminds us of the cruel and harsh reality of nature as we are shown how the cannibals capture and kill not only a huge snake, but also a crocodile which is sliced open to reveal it’s still beating heart. The obligatory nature documentary footage is here too, as yet another snake snares and swallows a bat whole. The footage acts as reminder of the carnage gone before, and also an effective tool to sell the illusion of reality in the scenes about to come.

Finally Robert get’s his big break, he manages to escape after his cage door is left unsecured and snatching Pulan by the arm the two set off towards the deep deep jungle. The tables are turned in more than one way as Robert is now the predator and Pulan the victim, after all he has kidnapped her. Civilized man plummets deeper and deeper into his repressed primal instincts and as he almost reaches the bottom he rapes Pulan. Robert is now the alpha male and Pulan his subordinate, which is enhanced in the next scene where Pulan hunts for food and serves Robert a delicious meal of fresh caught fish, fruit and berries.

While seeking shelter from a monsoon rainstorm the couple take refuge in a cave, a cave that reveals itself as the hiding place of Ralph! He also survived the ordeal on the rapids, but has a gangrenous knee injury after his bout with the forces of nature. The two friends and Pulan make the most of their safe place as they plan their route out of the jungle. But in any self respecting script, there has to be downfall after joy and happiness, and the script writers of Last Cannibal World [Gianfranco Cleric, Tito Carpi, Renzo Genta and Giorgio Carlo Rossi, yeah the producer] are well aware of this as they unleash the final reel of savagery upon us. Pulan attempts to lead the two men back to their aircraft and obviously they run straight into the cannibals. If you where waiting for mayhem, this is where you will find it in the most disturbing scene of the movie as Pulan is captured, decapitated, gutted and finally roasted before the cannibals consume her freshly grilled flesh.

Coming to it's climax, the movie sees Robert going head to head with the cannibal leader and becomes what he has been fighting against all this time, the civilized man becomes a savage. After beating the leader to death Robert embowels him and frantically gobbles down the tribe leaders innards. Seeing him eating the flesh of their leader, the cannibal let Robert escape and they finally get to see their strange visitor fly off into the skies.

For an early entry into this bizarre subgenre, Last Cannibal World is still an entertaining movie. Its ferocious, disturbing and packs a punch even though it a times is somwhat tedious. Unfortunately the movie was to be overshadowed by the movie magnificent Cannibal Holocaust that Deodato would make a few years later. Daniele Alabasio’s editing is worth pointing out, as instead of focusing on the onscreen violence, he edits his way through the violence towards the cast with such ferocity that the images are almost impossible to see clearly; hence creating mental images that surpass what really was shown. I also have to comment on Paolo Ricci’s special effects, because they are top notch. Keep in mind that in 1976 this harsh violence wasn’t as common as it is in the horror genre these days. It was only a few years previously that George A. Romero showed zombies eating human flesh in Night of the Living Dead 1968, and two years before he unleashed his Dawn of the Dead 1978, setting the guide lines for the splatter genre. People hadn’t really seen stuff like this, and packaged with all that real animal violence, there’s no wonder that the films where controversial. After creating special effects for many of the infamous Cannibal flicks, Ricci later worked with the special effects on Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia 1983. For Deodato and screenwriter Gianfranco Clerici it’s quite apparent that they planted the seeds which they three years later would reap with the masterpiece Cannibal Holocaust, where instead of observing the carnage, they would turn the cameras on themselves and question the genre and it’s origins the Mondo genre in a remarkable way. But Cannibal Holocaust is a completely different movie which apart from being extremely gruesome, also holds a lot of social and political criticism that makes up part of the legacy it brought with it. Although that is a completely different story.

Image: Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1

Audio: Optional English or Italian dialogue, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian or Danish subtitles are available.

Extras: Well unfortunately there are no extras at all apart from the theatrical trailers for each individual film. The trailer for Last Cannibal World is by far the most spectacular as it sees Deodato and Crew paying homage to those great Alfred Hitchcock walking through the set trailers, as they talk about the shoot and the perils they have encountered during it. But considering that this is a rather price worthy collection “The Cannibal Collection” packaged with Lenzi’s Man From Deep River and Mario Gariazzo’s Amazonia: The Catherine Miles Story, I feel that you are getting to great genre pieces and one lesser (Amazonia, which focuses more on Elvire Audray getting her kit off than the horrors of confronting the cannibals) which makes up for the lack of extras.

Phantom of Death

Phantom of Death
(Aka: Off Balance]
Original Title: Un delitto poco comune
Directed by Ruggero Deodato
Italy, 1988
Thriller/Horror/Giallo, 90min
Distributed by Shameless Screen Entertainment


Story:
Concert Pianist Robert Dominici is a praised musician who’s performances are aired on national television. During one of these televised concerts a scientist is murdered in a beastly manner, and the police are left clueless. Inspector Datti, is put on the case and when Dominici’s girlfriend also is murdered he starts putting together a possible solution that doesn’t make sense, but is plausible. Dominici starts dating his old girlfriend and fashion coordinator Hélène Martell, and pretty soon she turn out to be pregnant with his child, but Robert isn’t as happy as he should be, instead he’s quite the opposite. When Inspector Datti starts figuring out the enigmatic mystery put before him, he’s forced to put logic aside when the suspected killer either is several people or one man aging rapidly…




Me:
I really can’t find much good to say about this movie at all. Perhaps it would be that great Argento-esque second killing in the train station with the great big shattering windows and the always fantastic Edwige Fenech, but not even Edwige feels at place in this terrible piece from Ruggero Deodato. Not to mention Michael York in what might be the worst case of miss-casting ever. Michael York just ruins this film for me completely. He’s so not into his character and he acts like a lump of coal. Which is a shame; because I’m sure that this could have been a great movie if the heart had been in place instead of a lump of coal that generates no empathy or interest at all. Even good old Donald Pleasance is more or less just parodying the “inspector” role that he perfected in so many earlier movies that it’s annoying. The story of a serial killer having a lethal disease which makes him grow older at rapid speed is a great, the few effects by Cataldo Galliano (Sergio Martino’s Island of the Fishmen, and Mannaja, Dario Argento’s Four Flies On Grey Velvet) that are in the movie are very effective and are very appropriate of the late eighties special effects, exaggerated and overdone, but gory as hell and fit the movie like a charm and the aging process of York’s character is really well done, but still his acting ruins everything.

Story wise it’s a very interesting and unique attempt at bringing something new to the genre, as York goes insane parallel with his progeria that is turning him into an old man, and when he learns that Fenech is pregnant with his child he goes after her to inhibit his bad genes from to infect their unborn child, hence prohibiting the child to grow into a “monster child” like the one he has previously seen at an orphanage. It’s a decent plot and really is the strong point of the film, but like I said, York just ruins it completely with his shitty acting. But I suppose that’s what you get when you use the wrong person to play the lead part in your movie. Anyhow, the story brings something new to it and it’s a nice twist to it as you are lead on by the opening montage which crosscuts between York playing the piano, and a doctor being murdered, and it couldn’t possibly be nice Michael York who was the killer, as he was playing the piano live on TV at the time, we saw that didn’t we…?


Pino Donnagio’s score works all right, perhaps not his best work and all that classical piano tinkering just adds to the annoyance, as York’s character is so maddening, but the score gets the job done. Considering that the storywriters/scriptwriters Gianfranco Clerici and Vincenzo Mannino have titles like Fulci’s New York Ripper and Don’t Torture a Duckling, Deodato’s House on the Edge of the Park and Cannibal Holocaust, not to mention Enzo Castellari’s The Last Shark, Umberto Lenzi’s fantastic poliziotteschi Violent Naples and Duccio Tessari’s The Bloodstained Butterfly on their writing credits, it’s painfully obvious that Deodato not only miscast, and failed his directorial duties on this one, but also shot it ten years to late. With the right cast, the right score and made at the right time it would for sure have been a classic, and not a dud once again proving that the giallo as a genre wouldn’t make it into the nineties.

Unfortunately this was also the last collaboration between Deodato and editor Daniele Alabiso, who used to bring a much more violent and aggressive tone to the movies he edited for Deodato during the 70's and 80's. Again the movies unfortunately became more about spectacle than the impact full narratives and jazzy swagger of those gone before them.

Keep a look for the bloke who get’s on the moped just before the train station. Don’t blink because if you do you’ll miss Deodato’s cameo, possibly the only part of the movie he really focused on in this terrible piece of Italian Genre Cinema. Great eighties special effects, some brief nudity and the always wonderful Edwige Fenech, but that’s about it.

Image:
16x9 Anamorphic Widescreen

Audio:
2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo.

Extras:
Trailers for: The Killer Nun, The Black Cat, New York Ripper, Torso, Manhattan Baby, and Baba Yaga - The Devil Witch coming from Shameless Screen Entertainment