Don’t Torture a Duckling

Don’t Torture a Duckling

Original title: Non si sevizia un paperino

Directed by: Lucio Fulci

Thriller/horror, 1972

Italy, 98min

Distributed by: Shameless Films

I won’t start this with a rant on how Lucio Fulci made so much more than the classic video nasty’s he’s infamous for.  I’m quite convinced that anyone who really bears a passion for the works of the late master of genre, will already have ventured back past those seminal works and discovered the real masterpieces of suspense and thrill, hidden away in his back catalogue. If you haven’t seen the movie, I’d recommend that you first check it out before we get into this, as certain spoilers are featured in this text. If you know the movie, then buckle up and let’s go.

I’ve already covered some of the early pre-Gialli thrillers such as Una sull’altra (One on Top of the Other) 1969, Sette note in nero (The Psychic) 1977, and even a couple of the comedic works such as All’onorevole piaccino le donne (The Senator Prefers Woman) 1972, Il cav. Constante Nicosia demoniac, ovvero: Dracula in Brianza (Young Dracula) 1975, and even a few of the Spaghetti Westerns; Le colt cantarono le morte e fu… tempo du massacre (Massacre Time) 1966 and I quattro dell’apocalisse (Four of the Apocalypse) 1975. It’s time to take a look at the bookend movie of the early thriller trilogy, Non si sevizia un paperino (Don’t Torture a Ducking). On one of the greats from his early period, one of those movies where he was started to perfect the themes that would make him a god amongst fans of genre cinema in the years to come.

In a small rural village, someone is murdering young pre-adolescent boys. The Carabinieri are stood almost helpless as they have a hand full of suspects ranging from the village idiot, to the witch who roams the landside, to the shaman who taught her his magic. A curious journalist arrives in the village and together with a somewhat strange choice of companion, starts to poke around the case, coming to a shocking conclusion about the killer’s identity.

I often talk about setting tone as early as possible… Well try this on for size: a woman [Florinda Bolkan] claws at the dirt under a motorway overlay. Her thin soiled and bloodied fingers produce the skeleton of an infant from a shallow grave in the dirt. A young boy (Tonino) shoot’s a stone from his slingshot that upon impact crushes the small lizard he was aiming at whist he sits keeping lookout for a specific car to swoosh by. Editor Ornella Micheli (Fulci’s frequent editor before Vincenzo Tomassi made his entrance) rapidly establishes the small village with a series of fast edits to the diegetic sound of church bells ringing. We enter a church in mass, were two young boys  (Bruno and Michele) sneak out to share a gauloise under the same overlay we saw earlier. Tonino comes running towards them whilst screaming, “They’re here, they’re here” and the trio run off to a shack, where some blokes greet the two prostitutes who have exited their car. The women have  “tits like water melons” in the excited boys’ opinions – but the village idiot Giuseppe wrecks their intended session of sordid voyeurism. Instead they turn their attention on him and start verbally bullying him, as he too was planning to watch the two men shag the prostitutes. As they boys taunt Giuseppe, he screams that he will get they, he will get them…

Potent stuff, and definitely an impressive couple of minutes which accompanied by Riz Ortolani’s short but harsh stinger cues, establishes a lot of stuff, which will come to play within the movies narrative later on. But be alert, those moments establish more than you could ever have guessed. The location is set, a small rural village, where the church is the centre of the town. The crazy woman – Florinda Bolkan’s is presented, and we understand that there’s a dark secret in her past. We learn that the kids are adolescent young men with a budding curiosity of the opposite sex. But they are still kids and can easily turn from their sexual curiosity to a taunting mob, which evokes fear in those they decide to single out. In the subtext we can assume that sex is something sacred and kept within the confinement of the family unit. This can be presumed as the village is most likely a stern follower of catholic values, and the men take their “imported” prostitutes to a shack outside of the village vicinity. But it’s not all presumptions, this is all true, and will give you a rush of insight upon the conclusion of the film.

If you know your Fulci, then you know that he enjoyed giving the church a kick in the ass on any given moment. My theory is that it's due to the tragic events in his personal life. I can’t really see a creative person being a devout follower of religion, when that religion takes away loved ones. Somewhere that bitterness has to vent, and I’m saying that the way Fulci aimed critique towards the clergy was one of them.

There’s a delightful irony that motivates the murders and definitely a provocative one in more than one way. The village priest, Don Avalone [Marc Porel], is the murderer of the piece, and it’s not only a stern poke at the church, but it also presents a delightful dilemma as one can in some strange way empathize with what Don Avalone is trying to do. In his complex state, his philosophy is to kill the yearning young lads as to protect them from committing sin, hence allowing them to enter heaven instead of the burning pits of hell. I’m a sucker for the moral twists of doing bad, for doing good, and Fulci nails this one on the head. Then he makes the priest – or the clergy in the larger picture – pay a most terrible and harrowing death as he has his face torn to pieces against the rock walls, before breaking every body in his bone when he smashes into the hard rock below. If there was one thing Fulci could do, it was provoke.

But perhaps the most provocative moment of the movie is found early on when Barbara Bouchet’s character Patrizia, who oddly enough rents a penthouse flat above the Spriano family, reveals herself as a paedophile! Now this isn’t a Feliniesque moment like the opening one, where the lads merely want to catch a glimpse of the prostitutes “tits like melons”. This is a raw, confrontational, full on flirtation where the fully naked Patrizia invites Michele to go to bed with her. If not for being saved by his mother who calls him back to the first floor. Patrizia, talk about a complex character, and it’s later revealed that she not only has an appetite for young boys, but she’s a recouping Junkie too…  Not that this was the first time Fulci, used paedophilia to provoke, it plays a vital part in the narrative of Beatrice Cenci 1969 too, where both Tomas Milian and Georges Wilson are part of the cast. Fulci, no stranger to getting in trouble with the law – i.e. the puppet dog incident following Una Lucertola con la pelle di donna (Lizard in a Woman’s Skin) 1971 – once again ended up facing another trial when the scene where the naked Bouchet takes to seducing Michele caused a stir. Always the one with an ace up his sleeve, Fulci presented the "little person" Don Semeraro (who almost thirty years later stared in Joe D’Amato’s The Hobgoblin) who had been the stand in for the child actor, and the case was dismissed.

So how does this come together with the opening montage? Well basically Florinda Bolkan’s Macaria character is insane the whole time. Yes, she performs her voodoo-like ritual with the three dolls in the images of the three taunting kids – I told you they where trouble, and they disturbed the grave of her child, hence forcing her to move the dead baby from it’s resting place and have her perform her mumbo jumbo voodoo vengeance. But that’s merely a red herring to toss you off track, just as the trail of village idiot Giuseppe [Vito Passeri] is too. Barbara Bouchet is a red herring too, despite her wonderfully complex character. The church and the whole Catholic Church bit is all about Don Alberto’s modus operandi. Yes, there is a veil of Catholic values draped over the town, and to save the children from corruption – which we see they are on the way to being with the smoking and desire to peek at prostitutes, and possibly masturbate at the same time – Don Alberto saves their souls by murdering them. Then in the last moments of the movie, good Old Catholic guilt comes over him and he takes his own life… ironically as suicide damns the deceased to an eternity in purgatory.

There’s an interesting use of the off-screen space in Don't Torture a Duckling. At first several characters are isolated out  there, the killer, and at least two pairs of hands tampering with the voodoo dolls. The off-screen space had been a safe haven for murderers to lurk around in since Powell’s Peeping Tom and Hitchcock’s Psycho, both 1960, and a genre-defining trait when it came to the Giallo. What Fulci does is use it wisely; he keeps the characters in the off-screen space until he needs to reimburse them into the narrative. Such as when we need to introduce a second red herring, and Bolkan’s character finally comes into frame after tampering with the voodoo dolls off screen since the opening.

It’s said that Don’t Torture a Duckling was Lucio Fulci’s personal favorite amongst his films, well looking at the movie from a retrospective angle, it all rings true, in some way’s the movie is more a piece of Neorealism, with a smidgeon of thriller traits added. It’s definitely the Fulci movie that lies closest to Neorealism, and it is a fair interpretation, which possibly could explain why he was so fond of this little obscure gem. Considering that Neorealism is the big Italian contribution to film history, one can understand his fondness for the film.  With the knowledge that Don’t Torture a Duckling was Lucio’s favourite film, this could explain the reason why he later used several key moments –and beats - from this movie in his later more typical horror films.

Chains whipped against a tender frame of human flesh, creating deep gory gashes, which you all know and love from the “You ungodly warlock” opening of  …E tu vivrai nel terrore! L’alidià (The Beyond) 1981, when a band of villager’s once again take vigilante justice into their own hands. A face being smashing against side of mountain as character plumages to death and presents insightful inner dialogue at the same time, much like the opening visions that torment Jennifer O’Neil in The Psychic. Amusingly enough the film also features a first poke at Disney and primarily Donald Duck. A Donald Duck doll is decapitated and it’s torso dragged around. Originally Fulci wanted the movie to be titled Don’t torture Donald Duck, but when Disney protested, the title was changed. Exactly ten years later the killer of Lo squartore di New York (The New York Ripper) 1982 would disguise his voice and talk like Donald Duck, and Fulci finally got his poke at the cooperate suits of Disney Co.

Don’t Torture a Duckling really is an “all comes together” flick in so many ways. Fulci has an amazing cast, several of which he’d worked previously or would work with again; Florinda Bolkan, Tomas Milian, Marc Porel and Georges Wilson. Not forgetting one-offers like Irene Papas, despite holding a rather small part, and Barbara Bouchet, who delivers a great performance here. Keeping that tight Fulci grip on those he enjoyed working with, the maestro delivers a movie with a water tight script, penned by Fulci, Gianfranco Clerici and Roberto Gianviti (who wrote a stunning twelve screenplays together with Fulci through the years), editing is superb and definitely amongst the best of the eighteen flicks Ornella Micheli cut for Lucio, and without saying, Sergio D’Offizi. Damn, the more I see of this man’s work the more it becomes a mystery to me why he never landed an international career like, say Vittorio Storaro. At least give the man an honorary award because, some stuff like Don’t Torture a Duckling and not forgetting the innovative “found footage” approach of Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust 1980, is all D’Ofizzi. Someone give credit where it’s due!

Riz Ortolani’s score, which is pretty tender at times, has a short moment that fan’s of the Cannibal Holocaust soundtrack will recognize. Not that it’s a complete tune or anything like that, but there’s a small build which Ortolani later used on Cannibal Holocaust and if you know that soundtrack you will find it. Following the violent beating of Florinda Bolkan one can hear the song Quei giorni insieme a te, performed by the domestically renown Ornella Vanoni. It’s a delicate piece written by Ortolani and Jaja Fiastri which definitely set’s a sentimental mood for Bolkan’s dying moment… but just wait for a moment, things are about to get kinda strange here. I’m more curious about the funky shit-kicker Crazy, here performed by Wess and the Airedales, the same funky ass shakers that played on stage in Umberto Lenzi’s Orgasmo 1969 and Paranoia 1970. The same version of Crazy (originally written by Armando Trovalioli), which is heard on the soundtrack to Dino Risi’s Vero Nudo 1969… Now take a guess who wrote the screenplay to Vero Nudo? Jaja Fiastri, the same who wrote Quei giorni insieme a te with Riz Ortolani. Just another reason why I love Italian genre, it’s all interwoven and connected to and fro for all eternity through captivating intertext.

Unlike other releases, Shameless have given the movie a release with the original Italian soundtrack, and an optional English Dub. Now I do find that these movies are more fun with the English dub, but I also prefer to be able to watch them with the original language option. Thanks to Shameless, that’s now an alternative. If you watch one version of Lucio Fulci’s somewhat overlooked masterpiece Don’t Torture a Duckling, then make sure it’s the Shameless Films Version.

The Mondo Cane Collection

THE MONDO CANE COLLECTION
Directed by: (Paolo Cavara), Gialtiero Jacopetti, Franco Prosperi
Italy, 1962, 1963, 1969
Mondo, 108min, 95min, 128min
Distributed by: Trinity Films

Mondo... Italian for World. Cinematically the world as the Italian exploitation filmmakers saw it… But also a magnificent and disturbing genre, which still delivers a profound punch in the gut amongst the laughs and gasps, which it presents along the way. A genre that definitely brings a series of mental images and conscious emotions with it… Fascination, curiosity, humour, repulsion, shame, guilt… usually in that order too, because almost every Mondo movie entertains up to a certain point and then leaves a sour aftertaste when the morbidity of our voyeurism sets in.

The Mondo genre - a bizarre and eclectic approach to pseudo documentary blending authentic and staged footage that undeniably leaves an impression on it’s audience whatever narrow niche of the genre it determines to explore.

The fascinating part of it is that Mondo taps right into our everyday voyeurism - which we all have weather you want it or not – if you see an ambulance on the side of the road you will start to look for the “accident”. There’s really not much difference between the Mondo genre and an evening of television entertainment. You can watch people get drunk, piss themselves and get intimate if you like, you can see religious self-flagellation on the news every Easter, you can watch animals being killed for food on almost every nature documentary on discovery channel, and since the news channels started making spectacles of live correspondence from war scenes there’s no limit to the amount of mutilated and dead corpses that get air in the midst of prime time, not to forget all those “I’m to fat, sexy, ugly, blah, blah blah” shows that air before midnight on many of the channels offering alternative pseudo documentaries as part of their programming. Not to mention the Internet… if you want to see death in the white of the eye without the psychological safety net that it may be staged footage, then the internet is a lethal swamp filled with crazy stuff to settle your voyeurism.

But Mondo is still very much still part of culture, the main difference being that it’s now packaged as news, or viral videos on the Internet. But there is one point that has to be made and that’s that the movies that make up the genesis of the Mondo genre are still a very powerful and haunting movies that still pack a terribly hard punch in the gut of the audience.

Back in 1962, Mondo was the new kid on the block. Franco Jacopetti & Franco E. Prosperi and Paolo Cavara’s documentary Mondo Cane took to the world with a mission to showcase exactly how strange things where outside of the Italian border. So in a way Mondo Cane is something of a jolly good old travelogue compilation that chooses to focus on the more peculiar things instead of the regular tourist traps. And there’s no argument at bay, because Mondo Cane is a damned entertaining movie indeed. It’s a sinister and delightful chamber of oddities told though suggestive alternate cultures, shocking death and ferocious closures to life.

Friskily taking the piss out of everything by rapid edits to give a polarizing effect between baleful juxtaposition evoking gasps, gags and guff’s, and a wonderfully suave and quirky score by Riz Ortolani’s magnificent score – yes the brilliant Riz Ortolani score that featured the Academy Award nominated track More (Written by Ortolani and Nino Oliviero) which has been covered by a whole bunch of famous artists, even Old Blue Eyes himself. Don’t get this wrong as way to many other do, it was nominated, but it didn’t win the Best Original Song Award, as that went to James Van Heusen’s Call Me Irresponsible from George Marshall’s Papa’s Delicate Condition. That’s the end of that constant error.

And then there’s the narration; the narration of these movies should have been enough to win an award themselves. Cynical, degrading, misogynistic, blatant lies slandering for our enjoyment but at the same time terribly amusing, and you have to take it for what it is. Idiosyncratic and playful, not actual fact, but rather skilfully crafted text that nails it’s point over and over again with enthralling conviction and skill. Conviction and skill that had the movie nominated for the Gold Palm Award at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival and a win at the David di Donatello Awards the same year. Amongst the highlights of this award winning chamber of the macabre you will see dogs for dinner, pigs beaten to a pulp by tribesmen preparing a feast, snakes skinned alive for their Viagra blood, kids polishing skeletons, Yves Klein’s art piece that serves as the real inspiration for the Blue Man Group and a shocking cow sacrifice that still has me wondering why the executioner turned up in his whitest suit! But keep in mind that this was innovation in the making, and it was award winning!

Following the success of Mondo Cane, it’s pretty obvious that it would spurn a sequel, Mondo Cane 2, also known as Mondo Pazzo, which this times sees Prosperi and Jacopetti reunited without without Cavara. Much like it’s predecessor, Mondo Cane 2 tackles the heavy stuff with a healthy dose of comical counterparts, but never really get’s as grim as the first instalment. And these ingredients are needed to make a Mondo movie watch able, there needs to be some kind of release valve, because even though a fair amount of the material is indeed staged and fake, the realism is pretty hefty and the authentic footage is powerful, so there needs to be lighter parts if we are going to be able to endure the movie in its entirety.

Mondo Cane 2 starts right off the bat by taking the piss out of the British censors who had concerns with the first movie – especially the dogs in the first movie if you where to trust the narrator, which lead them to ban the movie… – and offer up a nice little montage of dog related moments. This all set’s a pretty funny tone for a movie that slowly will squirm it’s way through religious sects, bizarre rituals, Mexican Day of the Dead sugar highs, Grand Gugniol inspired photo shoots and insane male rites of passage. Don’t worry though, the burning monk may be disturbing, but it’s not real. Look for the cut and how the colour on his garb changes if you want, because this is a “fun” game that one can play when watching Mondo; spot the giveaway moments.

This time around the stupidity, obsessions and evil of Man are in focus and our four legged friends get off lightly – apart from a crocodile which feasted upon whist Nino Oliviero’s xylophone music frenetically plays over the images. The narrator calmly wraps the sequence up with the line “But in the civilized world where we don’t eat crocodile everyday, sex has always been the biggest business ever…” before crashing into a burlesque performance montage. It’s all sex and death, the most primal emotions known to mankind and undoubtedly the firm backbone of any decent Mondo movie. And as I mentioned earlier, the rollercoaster relationship between the humorous and the grotesque are essential to the genre, something that soon would change and take the genre to a completely different level…

I’ve discussed the rise and fall of the Mondo genre previously on this blog, and this box set, just released by Trinity Films, is a splendid way to see where it was going, as the final disc of the set is the notorious Africa addio. With the supposed intent of making a statement and observation on the decline of the African continent post colonisation Jacopetti and Prosperi headed off to Africa with their bag of tricks and cinematic gaze focused on the Dark Continent. And it would get very grim indeed; depressing, cynical and profoundly disturbing, Africa addio presents its audience with a haunting depiction of violence and death that still is a trial to sit through. Unfortunately the most renowned version of this powerful entry is the heavily edited version missing almost an hour of footage, re-issued under the namesake Africa : Blood and Guts. A version relied on a concentrate of the blood and guts for it’s voyeuristic audiences to lap up.

The guy responsible for the “slaughter” was infamous Grindhouse distributor Jerry Gross, the same guy who made sure that, among others, the two previous Mondo Cane movies, Lucio Fulci’s Zombie 1979, Meir Zarchi’s I Spit on Your Grave 1978 and Ulli Lommel’s The Boogeyman 1980 hit the Grindhouse theatres of America. Never the less, the version here isn’t the shortened Grindhouse version, but a longer theatrical version with a run time just close to two hours, and reinstates some of the raison d’être “intended” with the original movie. If you want the full 140min directors cut, then you should try to find the Blue Underground eight disc box set.

Needless to say Africa addio is complete exploitation galore – a voyeuristic hell if you will. The supposed documentation of a continent in crisis is complete bollocks; it’s merely a façade for one of the most disturbing Mondo movies ever made. Africa addio takes no prisoners and is very low on that vital release valve I say you need to cope through these flicks, and without the release you do start to question how far you can go in the name of entertainment… even if you do package it with yet another soaring Riz Ortolani score.

Obviously it’s an almost rhetoric question to ask when discussing the Italian genre scene, as we all know that there’s a lot of questionable moments of animal death in some of the pieces. But at the same time Africa addio does take it to extremes, and it’s questions that you need to be asking when you see the various hunters chase and kill animals that we in modern time know are facing extinction. It’s no wonder that Ruggero Deodato’s classic Cannibal Holocaust 1980 points critique towards the genre and questions who the real cannibals are, but with the infamous animal deaths in that flick, the question posed in Cannibal Holocaust is a mind-boggling paradox indeed.

Following Africa addio, the Mondo genre took a plummet, things got a lot ominous, vile and sensationalistic, possibly peaking in disgust with John Alan Schwartz infamous Faces of Death 1978 which would lead to even darker movies that more or less completely skipped the humoristic and smirky approach and went straight for the jugglar with depraved cocktails of death and violence… To be honest it’s understandable that this would happen. The exploitation genres would take matters into their own hands, setting their pieces in foreign cultures using Mondo traits and effects would become considerably more effective than the real thing, as fictive violence can be exaggerated into levels far beyond realism, and the tantalising sexpose’s of the Mondo genre where nothing compared to the boom of hardcore pornography that soon would sweep over the world. Mondo focused more and more on death and brutality without release the valves, in some later, final, entries like Damon Fox’s Traces of Death series even accompanied by hard death metal and Fox as the corpse painted host growling his way though hard-ass mix tapes of mayhem there’s no room left for a laugh or a smirk at all. It’s nihilistic, brutal and very, very distressing.

The Mondo Cane Collection is definitely not for the squeamish or sensitive viewer, but at the same time they are a fascinating display of masterful documentary tricks and traits, which with the aid of cynical voiceover and corny, or rather out of place music, become a spectacle of dark comedy and shocking morbidity. Even if audiences may have been considerably more naïve back in the sixties, the Mondo movies are fascinating documents that hold an intriguing cultural aspect, because these movies where controversial at the time they where made – even banned in many places – but looking at them today, the shock factor is not as harsh as it may have been and there is even grimmer stuff on the telly every night. Sensationalism has always been appealing to certain crowds, as we all have a streak of voyeurism in us.

Trinity Films release of this collection is a required addition in any eager cineastes collection. A devouring expose of one of the strangest subgenres to come out of Italy and definitely the finest examples of that genre are collected here, from the rise and the beginning of the end, a excellent starting point to pick up if you still have the fascinating Mondo genre ahead of you in your exploration of Italian genre cinema.

Image:

Full frame 4:3 and Anamorphic Widescreen 16:9

Audio:

English or Italian narration, Danish, Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian subtitles are optional

Extras:

There’s the regular stuff, Italian and US trailers, TV-Spots, image galleries, alternative opening sequences and some amusing Radio Spots that make the most out of Ortolani’s More and the Danish press books for the movies. It’s a satisfying amount of extras, but it’s a bit of a shame that the Godfathers of Mondo 2003 documentary made for the Blue Underground collection released some years back, couldn’t have been included as that would have made it an excellent extras in this box set for Scandinavian audiences. But considering that the movies finally are available with subtitles, this is a very price worthy set indeed. If you don’t already have the movies on your shelf, then this is the way to go.

Here's a bunch of trailers for you, but be warned, this is MONDO!

So Sweet… So Perverse

So Sweet… So Perverse
Original title: Così dolce… così perversa
Directed by: Umberto Lenzi
Italy/France/West Germany, 1969
Thriller, 88min

For each Umberto Lenzi interview I see in documentaries, supplement material or on stuff like Mike Baronas' excellent Paura: Lucio Fulci Remembered Vol1, I get the feeling that he’s becoming (or perhaps is already) something of a Gene Simmons of the Italian genre-flick scene. There’s an ”I invented that, I was first” “I’m the prime innovator” tone to him – not that I’m going to argue him – it’s just that I’m always amused by people who claim to have invented, shaped and broke the mould for so many various areas. Just like Gene Simmons, who still to this day can’t see that the hard metal he thinks they invented was only makeup and disco at it’s worst.

Never the less, where Kiss music is complete tripe and could possibly only appeal to ten year old kids who didn’t have their own identity during the seventies and never once interested me no matter how hard I tried to see what’s supposedly so great about them, Umberto Lenzi did indeed stand amongst the forerunners of Italian genre cinema, and on many occasions did try out new terrain. It’s ironic that he’s so strongly associated to those gut munchers and tacky zombie flicks (not that there’s anything wrong with them) because I still seem to find myself becoming more and more impressed by his Gialli, and has a hard time forgiving myself for never quite taking the time to check out these impressive pieces back in the day.

But back in the day meant waiting almost a month for Greek Ex-rentals to fall through the letterbox, or gambling with Dutch imports or trading umpteenth generation copies with your mates and rarely stretching far enough to find these rare delights, but sticking close to the good old gut munchers and gore fests that initially drew me into the world of Italian genre cinema. Thank god for DVD and Internet traders, making all these fascinating films available in excellent or at least something that resonates as third-generation VHS dupes once again. It’s a thrill to settle down on the couch and get into a piece of forty-year-old Italian cinema for the first time.

Like many of the titles that get sold off as Gialli, Umberto Lenzi’s So Sweet... So Perverse is unquestionably not a Giallo. And even though is has a great title, it’s neither sweet nor perverse. But it is a pretty entertaining little movie that stays safely inside the thriller sphere and comes off more like an extended twist on the Boileau-Narcejac novel Celle qui n’était plus (The Woman who Was). Yes just like Henri-Georges Clouzot’s masterpiece Les Diaboliques 1955 and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo 1958 and many, many more. Which makes Jean-Louis Trintignant’s choice of doing this movie odd as he’d starred in Giulio Questi’s La morte ha fatto l’uovo (Death Laid an Egg) 1968, a movie which plays of the exact same premise, just the year before. A movie that just like So Sweet… So Perverse adds a fair amount of the Italian seasoning that story which the original lacks.

Jean Reynaud [Trintignant] is a player kind of bloke who runs a chemical plant – but jus like most other movies of this kind, he never actually works – instead he spends time between his many mistresses and his depressed wife Danielle [Erika Blanc]. On several occasions he hears strange sounds from the apartment above his and Danielle’s. He also see’s a blonde woman rushing to the elevator and taking it up to that flat above theirs, but she’s dropped a piece of jewellery. One night he hears a woman screaming and goes up to investigate; finding blood outside the door he uses the key the previous tenant has left him. Inside he first finds a series of instruments, well knives, handcuffs and a good old cat o’nine tails that obviously make up someone’s kinky fetish, before surprising Nicole [Caroll Baker in her second of four movies directed by Lenzi] She tells him a sad tale of despair and how photographer Klaus [Horst Frank] holds her as a sadistic sex toy ever since raping and tormenting her during a photo shoot years ago. All shown in a great boldly coloured surreal flashback. Jean, being stupendously gullible falls head over heels in love with her and they take off for a few days to get Nicole away from the fiendish Klaus.

But their love escapade quickly goes sour when Nicole during a moment of serenity decides to spill the beans and reveals that she’s merely bait in a sinister plan to lure Jean into an affair with her and then kill him. Her former lover Klaus has been paid 25.000 to get rid of Jean, but she has no idea of who paid the killer. Jean comforts her and says that he lays no blame on her. Later that night in the one scene that has any Gialli quality to it Klaus wanders the flat, flips the switches on the power and tries to kills Nicole. Returning home, Jean tells his wife Danielle that he wants’ a divorce as Nicole is the one he really loves, at the same time he’s interrupted by a desperate phone call from Nicole who claims to have proof of who wants’ Jean dead.

Jean waits until midnight and then goes upstairs to Nicole’s flat only to find Klaus waiting for him. A fight starts that even wakens Danielle, who obviously also goes up to the flat and get’s there just in time to see what looks like Klaus knifing Jean.

So with Jean presumably dead and his body disposed of, the plot tightens, and even Danielle receives some wonderfully stylish death threats which all seem to be coming from Jean! There’s the Boileau-Narcejac novel coming back to make itself reminded. Danielle the wife is left to inherit nothing as Jean decided to leave it all to his new mistress Nicole. But as there’s still a third of the movie left, there’s a snag, and Klaus wants’ more money not to expose their deadly liaison.

From there on though it takes off in a complexly new direction, which isn’t part of the original source, but unfortunately not original enough to break new ground. You will find that you are triggered to solve the plot and figure out who’s playing whom for the wealth of Jean Reynaud, as it could be anyone of the three suspicious characters behind the fiendish plot. But that’s about it and when the climax has been reached it’s somewhat unsatisfying. Sure there is a decent twist to the end, but as mentioned not one that stands out but one that had already been done before and would be done again.

So why do I say that this isn’t a Giallo? Well first and foremost it holds no traits from that genre, and where there’s no red herrings in the shape of masked murderer or strange characters sneaking around, no cryptic devices or visual keys either, and it becomes more of a classic thriller than anything else. With that said though it’s definitely one of those movies that easily could have become a Gialli and does use a few convention gimmicks such as Trintignant’s snooping around in the first two thirds, which automatically designates him as an amateur sleuth of kinds. But that’s as far as it goes, and like I mentioned above the one single scene to be reminiscent of Gialli is the one with Klaus in the apartment, but Lenzi chooses to reveal that it’s Klaus before one has a real chance of starting to ponder who it may be. If it where to qualify into Giallo territory, he should have kept Klaus hidden and indicated that it might have been Danielle, or someone else who was stalking the couple.

There are several of these small scenes that make me feel that the movie misses the ball on some occasions. The first woman that we see Trintignant in bed with is his “rival” Mr Valmont’s [Giovanni Di Bendetto] wife Helene [Helga Liné], there’s an obvious tension between them, and even in the scenes where Reynaud’s family socializes with the Valmont’s. There’s even a scene where the two men shoot clay pigeons and Mr. Valmont “accidently” fires off a shot that just misses Jean’s head. So in that minor subplot there is a great source of red herring material that I feel is completely unused. They could have easily used one or both the Valmont’s as a possible suspect for wanting Reynaud dead, but unfortunately don’t.

But keep in mind that the Giallo was still not defined in any concrete way at this time, and So Sweet… So Perverse certainly does explore images and lines of narrative that are close to the Giallo. It is a movie that undoubtedly is delicately moving towards the Giallo area, but Lenzi still needed a few years to get all the pieces into place before perfecting his Giallo traits.

The masterful Ernesto Gastaldi wrote his screenplay from a story by producer Luciano Martino and Massimo D’Avak. D’Avak who would together with Francesco Barilli script Aldo Lado’s Chi l’ha vista morire? (Who Saw Her Die?) 1972 and Lenzi’s first cannibal flick Il paese del sesso selvaggio (The Man From Deep River) 1972. Two years later D’Avak and Barilli would write the script to Barilli’s debut feature, Il profumo della signora in nero (The Perfume of a Lady in Black) 1974 at which time the Giallo had found it’s tricks and traits.

Executive producer Sergio Martino may have worked side by side with Ernesto Gastaldi on some great movies previous to this one, but it would be the string of magnificent movies that they would make between 1971-1975 with Martino directing that would be their landmark pieces together. In only a few years the genre had become more firm in its language and most of the classic devices and visuals that So Sweet… So Perverse lacks had become standard.

One of the main things to irritate me with this movie is the opening sequence. It starts off with Ortolani’s great score, this time in its’ theme version with lyrics by Norman Newell who wrote the lyrics to Ortolani’s hit More off Mondo Cane 1962, and sung by J. Vincent Edwards. The tempo is fast, showing Trintignant’s Jean Reynaud driving his yellow car through along the roads of Paris – so once again the movies plot space is shown through the opening credits.

Editor Eugenio Alabiso throws in some random images as the scene moves forth, and this is where I start to question what’s going on, as these seemingly random images – the hunting rifle in the back seat and a close up on Helene Valmont’s earring – and having seen a couple of these vehicles, you know that there’s always indicators and referents to important stuff being flashed at the audience every now and then… but these things have absolutely nothing to do with the movie or it’s plot! It’s irritating as it instead leads thoughts off on a trail that never is intended, and possibly another reason why I feel that the Valmont's are underused too...

And what about that Riz Ortolani score? Well it’s a real wonderful piece, especially the suave and lush croonery vocal version, but unfortunately the rest is mostly a variation on the theme that returns in various forms. The track Why? is so lush that Lenzi reused it three years later in the movie which may possibly be his best Gialli of them all, Sette orchidee macchiate di rosso (Seven Bloodstained Orchids) 1972. Never the less it’s once again a testament to the great Ortolani who sadly still hasn’t really received the recognition he should be having. Where Morricone still can pack the likes of the Royal Albert Hall in London, UK, I’d happily pay money to see Ortolani conduct a full orchestra playing his great scores.

Even though I say that So Sweet… So Perverse isn’t a Gialli, it is an important movie in the evolution of Lenzi’s filmography that lead up to those great Gialli and Poliziotteschi films he made only a few years later. It’s an entertaining piece, that definitely get’s you involved, even though you may be able to foresee where it’s going at an early stages. And despite the fact that it’s more of a thriller than Giallo it’s still a neat piece of stylish cinema that you should check out if you are into Umberto Lenzi’s great movies.

Image:
2.35:1 Anamorphic

Audio:
Mono – English dialogue presumably lifted from separate source as there still is not a widescreen, English language version officially released yet.

Extras:
None. But instead you get a splendid presentation of the movie, as this is one of those great FanDubs where one enthusiastic genius has taken the audio from one source and used the great widescreen image so that we can all enjoy this film without the shitty cropping that most old video tapes used to present the movies in.

Here's that annoying opening for you, and that grand vocal track by the great Riz Ortolani and Norman Newell featuring J. Vincent Edwards.