AMER

Amer

Directed by: Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani

France/Belgium, 2009

Drama/Horror/ Arthouse, 87min.

Distributed by: Anchor Bay

Where the yanks pay homage to their gore, slasher and grindhouse history, the Europeans create pastiches of their cultural treasures found amongst the alternative genres… such is the case with Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani’s stunning debut feature Amer!

Amer is without a doubt the most minimalist and stylised approaches to the horror genre ever put on screen. But it’s also one of the richest and most detailed movies in the genre. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of European art house, the mystery of the Italian Gialli, the lighting of Mario Bava, the sensuality of Borowczyk, the daring mise en scène of Jean-Luc Goddard, to name a few will undoubtedly fall in love with the many nods, homage’s and direct referents to the many movies that dominate the visual style, narrative and tone of Amer.

Amer tells the tale of a woman, Ana, in three stages of her life, [Casandra Forêt, Charlotte Eugène Guibeaud & Marie Bos] as a child where the death of an elder haunts her and set’s demonic ghosts at play, her adolescences, where budding sexuality torments her as she comes of age and tries to fins her place in her new body, and finally the adult Ana coming to grasps with her memories of childhood and the traumatising experiences that she had.

A fascinating aspect of Amer is the minimalist dialouge. There are no long scenes of dialogue or hefty monologs; instead the restricted discourse pushes forth to suggestive imagery that drives the narrative forth.

Symbolism and metaphors are a huge part of Amer and it’s discourse with the viewer. It’s in the colour schemes, it’s in the imagery, it’s in the unspoken dialogue, it’s in the juxtapositions - it’s everywhere. Where deliberate referents have been created, they in turn spin non-intended into play.

Amer plays like a checklist of your favourite Euro horror titles, especially witin the Gialli sphere. Dario Argento’s Deep Red and Suspria, Sergio Martino’s Torso and All the Colours of the Dark, Lucio Fulci’s New York Ripper and many more, are all movies that flash to mind when watching Amer. Something that obviously pleases an old genre hound like myself.

Then there’s that superb soundtrack - what a soundtrack! A mere six tracks make up the entire soundtrack to Amer - Bruno Nicolai’s La Coda Della Scorpione, Ennio Morricone’s Un Uomob Si è Dimesso, A. Celentano/E. Leoni/P. Vivarelli’s Furore and Stelivio Cipriani’s La Polizia Chiede Aiuto, La Polizia Sta A Guardare and La Polizia Ha Le Mani Legate. Six tracks, six classics, six friggin’ masterpieces that give further dimension to Amer and propel the narrative forth when the music bursts through the speakers. You know the movies and that sets you in a certain mind frame. Obviously these tracks are very determined choices to layer out the movie and indicate to what is happening. Each track holds a key to reading the movie. There’s thought behind placing a track from a movie about childhood traumas and sexually charged crimes alongside the images that enhance the experience. It brings an incredible depth to the movie.

Amer is also quite possibly the most sexually explicit movie that you will ever see without actually seeing anything. Yes, without seeing anything. This is a magnificent aspect of Amer, everything is insinuated, everything is amplified by sound and image, but you never see it. The second and final act all ooze sex. You can almost taste it in the air from the atmosphere this movie creates. Theme wise, Amer is all about life, sex and death, which is exactly how the three acts play out.

The first sees Ana coming face to face with death, hence realising the value of her own life. She struggles against the antagonistic forces of the “ghosts” in an attempt to save her own life. The act comes to a harrowing climax – no pun intended – when she interrupts her parents being intimate, their own way of overcoming death. A moment that scars Ana, haunting her for the rest of her life. I will get back to that in a moment.

The second act is the sex act. Ana has become a young woman. All men she encounters look at her from a voyeuristic standing point. We can easily read their minds; they all want her. This is also enhanced though the choices of imagery. Low camera angles, almost peeking up her skirt, the oral symbolism of “sucking on her hair”, wind blowing through her thighs... If you pay attention you will also notice how her mother [Bianca Maria D’Amato] sees her daughter as a threat. She constantly corrects Ana’s ways and when there’s a man on horizon, she evokes all her female attributes, becoming almost a woman and not a mother anymore – a mother with needs, lusts and desires which may not have been responded to in a long time – we see no father figure and the scene is secondarily about a trip to the hairdresser. In a way it’s the mother’s demonstration of power over the young woman, the young woman who obviously is still a child in her mothers eyes. The entire scene holds a feeling of that classic moment where a parent corrects their child from doing the same things that make up their own traits. Do as I say, not what I do…

The final act is the obvious climax/death act, in more than one way. Remember that the French also call the orgasm “Le petitie mort”. Pretty early on in this sequence Ana falls onto a tree trunk and puts her hand in resin. With the suggestive line of association that has been put forth so far in the movie, this resin is not too far from come, a climax symbolism in it’s own right. There’s the anticipation of coming full circle, we are back in the house where the mystery started, we are expecting the ghosts to come back, but instead we encounter a completely different kind of ghost, the ghost of fornication past. Also there’s the climax to the line of Ana’s story. Where we expect her to fall victim, things take a completely different path. Pay attention to the closing scene, it’s a compact concentrate of the three main themes of the movie Life-Sex-Death and when the final climax is reached colour comes back to the world. The circle starts once again.

Freudian analysts would have a field day with this movie, one example being the cyclic movement that flows throughout the movie and the oral fixation, be it fingers, tongue or straight razor in the mouth of Ana. But getting into a brief psychoanalysis, AMer is once again a testament to the great power of guilt. Once again it rears it’s head and shows just how effective it is. As a child Ana interrupts her parents having sex. Her mother is crying a trait that a child will read as pain or sadness. Therefore Ana can’t be intimate without feeling sadness or pain. Also the frightening ordeal before she disrupts her parents – the blasphemy of stealing from a dead person, the horror of having ones life threatened, and the traumatising interruption – seeing mom crying as father [Jean-Michel Vovk] penetrates her – undoubtedly make it impossible for Ana to be intimate. Instead she get’s her kicks from stalking and claiming her own victims.

Her guilt of the childhood experience, disrespecting the dead, evading death, and interrupting life make her the hot mess she is. The life-sex-death circle is complete. Taking a Lacanic approach to the movie and his theory of “objet petit a” it could be fair to suggest that Ana is metaphorically murdering her father for causing that “pain” her mother experienced in the first act.

Without competition, Amer is one of the most visually stunning movies in a long time, but be aware - this isn’t a movie for a lazy audience, this is a movie that you need to pay attention to whilst watching. It may seem to be random imagery, but observing and taking in what you see will lead you to the conclusion. Much like watching early Giallo movies. You think you know where it’s going but you will never be prepared for the next surprise that comes your way. Not until the final moment will you be able to read the movie and gain the insight you are looking for.

Amer - suggestive, surreal and seductive, a honey-coated mindfuck – it probes deep and thrusts hard. With this movie Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani definitely have created a fascinating art-house genre piece that reaches the top of the scale. But the major question is where do they go from here?

Extras:

On the BluRay you can find the four short movies directed by Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani. These four short movies obviously play as a breeding ground for the style, and themes that later would become Amer. There's also the theatrical trailer and teaser.

Now tell me that the juxtaposition below was unintentional...

Killer Cop

Killer Cop
Original Title: La polizia ha le mani legate
Directed by: Luciano Ercoli
Italy, 1975
Poliziotteschi, 95min

I read somewhere that the greatest director of all time is Charles Laughton… Yes, Charles Laughton. And this is based on the one single movie that he ever officially directed – the 1955 masterpiece The Night of the Hunter starring Robert Mitchum. Well if that’s the sort of logic that we are going to be using, then I’d say that Luciano Ercoli is one of the most underestimated directors of the Italian genre scene. Where many of his contemporary colleagues had been hard at work before Ercoli sat himself down in the director chair in 1970, only to get up and disappear off the scene forever more in 1977, Ercoli certainly directed a handful of great movies. And as he quit whilst he was ahead, he never ended up making the kind of lesser movies that many of the other great directors ended up making. So in whatever way you look at it, there’s no way you can deny that Luciano Ercoli is one of the greats.

Amongst the eight movies that Luciano Ercoli directed the final two where crime oriented movies. Where La bidonata (The Rip Off) 1977 was more of a spoofy take on the Poliziotteschi genre, La polizia ha le manig legate (Killer Cop) was a en excellent little dark piece that perhaps deserves to be brought back into the spotlight – because it is one of the finest entries into the Poliziotteschi genre.

Commissioner Matteo Rolandi [Claudio Cassinelli – looking as if he just walked off the set of Massimo Dallamano’s La polizia chiede aiuto (What Have They Done to Your Daughters?) 1974] working hard at busting a drug ring narrowly escapes death when a bomb goes off in the hotel he’s investigating. Several people are killed and among them several prestigious Ambassadors of the International Committee, which obviously sends ripples and outcry through the halls of justice. With an international crisis possible Judge Armando “Minty” Di Federico [Arthur Kennedy] – renown for not taking bribes and being untouchable - is put on the case of the bombings with the hopes of clearing up the mess quickly and efficiently. Still on the prowl, Rolandi starts mooching around for clues in the evidence that is brought back from the bombing case as he suspects that there might be a connection. Rolandi’s best friend Luigi [Franco Fabrizi] degraded to walking the streets due to his clumsiness, sees a young man reading the newspaper reports on the bombings and crying, his instincts tell him that there’s something about the kid and follows him. The kid, Franco [Bruno Zanin] leaves the newspaper in a phone booth, where he’s written an apology and claiming that it (the bombing) was an accident. Luigi takes up pursuit, but as he’s left his piece in Rolandi’s car, he is forced to let him get away when Franco draws a gun on him.

Being the only witness to have seen the only suspect Luigi first gets scolded by his superiors and then forced into safe custody by Judge "Minty". Franco in his own turn receives a bollocking from Rocco [Paolo Poiret] who is the leader of the terrorists fraction that blew up the conference. But all is not lost as the people funding their actions – the corrupted officials that is - tell them that there’s a getaway arranged for them.

It becomes apparent that there’s a leak in the organisation when valuable pieces of information are finding there way to the wrong hands but Commissioner Rolandi finds a lead through the glasses that Franco lost in his struggle with the portiere at the hotel before the blast – yes, Franco tried to warn everyone of the bomb, but more on that later – and starts getting a lead on Franco. After an awkward crossing of paths in the evidence room Di Federico orders Rolandi to stay away from the case and stop interfering with it. Rolandi suspects that Di Federico is covering something up and that he contrary to popular beliefs is involved in a political corruption, Di Federico in his turn suspects that Rolandi has a part in the crimes and is hiding valuable evidence. It’s a tense table that’s being set for sure. Going head to head with the notorious Di Federico, Rolandi starts a race against time to solve the case before someone takes out the most wanted man in Italy – Franco…

Killer Cop is a pretty damned good reflection on how the Italian public looked at their country at the time. There was a lot of politically themed activity and a lot of corruption in the country and obviously filmmakers where going to tap into that. Within the Giallo sphere it’s quite common that policemen and detectives are portrayed as pretty incompetent characters, hence forcing the plot device of amateur sleuth into taking personal action. The directors and screenwriters of many movies at this point in time where not only coming up with some great movies, but also flirting with their audiences and merely projecting onto the screens what the audiences already thought. This is also one reason why many of the Poliziotteschi deal with themes of corruption and dishonest officials, which also generates the strong protagonist characters that take law in their own hands, either as a vigilante outside of the law, or that one hard headed cop who won’t do as his superiors tell him. But remember for every badass cop, there’s an even worse villain.

There’s also a frequent pessimism found in the genre, and many of them end with he protagonist either being forced to leave the force (by own or superior hand) to meet his goals (taking out the antagonists) or not being able to close the case due to that rotted core of corruption that imperfects the authorities.

Killer Cop is a real gem of a movie that has a pretty interesting script by Gianfranco Galligarich, who based it all on a story by Mario Bregni. The same Bregni who later produced Lamberto Bava’s Body Puzzle 1992. Galligarich who opened so strong with Sergio Sollima’s Città Violenta [The Family] 1970 starring Charles Bronson and Telly Savalas, and then La Polizia ha le mani legate, spent the rest of his career writing for TV serials, among them Duccio Tessari’s Nata d’amore (Born to Love) 1984, and never really wrote a piece as strong and powerful as La Polizia ha le mani legate again. This is a shame, because the movie is a fascinating showcase of politically laden themes, empathetic characters and strong narrative, and I’d have loved to see more of his work in other genres from this time period.

This is the kind of role that Claudio Cassinelli nails, and he gives a great performance as the honest cop Matteo Ronaldi here. Arthur Kennedy – perhaps suffering from yet another typecasting as the grumpy old man who will make sure at any means that justice is served – also gives a damned good performance, except for when he tries to show some kind of remorse for Luigi’s fate which he had a direct hand in. Supporting cast get the job done, Franco Fabrizi who starred against Cassinelli as a sleazy photographer in Massimo Dallamano’s brilliant What Have They Done to Your Daughters 1974, and would go on to even grimmer parts in Aldo Lado’s L’ultimo treno della notte (Night Train Murders) 1975 is highly enjoyable as the somewhat clumsy Luigi who does bring a lot of sympathy to his character. But the one that perhaps stands out the most is Bruno Zanin’s Franco – the remorseful terrorist.

This is where the script get’s interesting, as there’s a complexity and honesty to the characters that most often is lacking in the Poliziotteschi genre. Most commonly the cops are hard as nails, and simply kick ass for the law, and the villains are sadistic bastards who bust everyone’s chops as they make life a living hell for everyone but themselves. Killer Cop finds a whole bunch of characters evoking empathy. Cassinelli obviously as he’s the good guy and makes sure to make the "villains" pay when it becomes personal – but in his quest for vengeance, he goes past the law and takes matters into his own hands, forcing a change in character even if it does take place outside of the movies time space. Kennedy – who even though he really doesn’t have a change in character stays true to his reputation and doesn’t budge. He’s still a honourable untouchable good guy who won’t take a bribe, even if his ways are harsh. You can not help but feeling empathy for Luigi, the cop who’s afraid of guns, the reason why he’s been degraded, and also the reason that he end’s up in trouble when he cramps as Franco pulls his gun on him during their chase. But as mentioned, Franco is the one who is most fascinating as he frequently shows remorse for his actions. He tries to warn everyone off when the bomb in the hotel is about to go off, he leaves the note of apology scribbled on the newspaper reporting on the many deaths in the bomb blast, he stops and helps the old man he bumps into when running from Luigi pick up his things and on and on. There’s an interesting depth to the character that you obviously feel empathy for. This is also strengthened by Ronaldi’s, and Di Federico desire to bring him in alive, as his life, and the information he holds – the solution to the crime- is more valuable than the old “a good villain is a dead villain”. His life holds value, and he automatically becomes more than just a random bad guy.

There’s a great Moby Dick reference that runs through the movie – an obvious metaphor for going up against the unseen antagonist - in this case the corrupted superiors. There’s also a small recurrent gag where Ronaldi is constantly hassled for driving a huge Mercedes, and not the usual little Alfa Romeo’s or fiats that they usually race up and down those tight Italian backstreets.

Stelvio Cipriani’s score! What a damned great score, a wonderful flow, strong keys and heavy bass lines. Sometimes soft, sometimes menacing, it’s easily the best of all Cipriani’s work, a definitive piece that should be in every fan of EuroCult soundtracks collection.

So to wrap things up – Killer Cop is possibly one of the most underestimated Poliziotteschi films in the rotted corruption niche. Great acting, fascinating characters, a sometimes cryptic narrative, but at the same time intriguing as we seldom know more of the corruption than those fighting it, which adds to getting into the same mind set as them. Wonderfull cinematography by Marcello Gatti who shot Paolo Cavara's La tarantola del ventre nero (Black Belly of the Tarantula) 1971 and Gillo Pontecorvo's La battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers) 1966, the fantastic Cipriani soundtrack and excellent pacing quite possibly make this one of Luciano Ercoli’s absolute best films.

Image:

Widescreen 16:9

Audio:

Stereo 2.0, English dubbed dialogue.

And if you still haven’t seen it, it’s available at The Giallo Goblin.

Now enjoy that awesome theme by the great Stelvio Cipriani.

The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire

The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire.
Original Title: L’iguana dalla lingua di fuoco
Directed by: Riccardo Freda
Italy/France/West Germany, 1971
Giallo, 92 min
Distributed by: New Entertainment [OOP]

Giallo time again! It’s been way to long since I sat down with a Giallo and why not get back into the groove with Riccardo Freda’s The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire that’s been mocking me from the middle of the pile of “must watch soon” stuff for quite some while now.

For some odd reason I’ve never really checked out much of a Riccardo Freda’s movies even tough he’s one of the pioneers of Italian Horror and Fantasy genres. My knowledge of this guy goes as far as knowing that he directed the classics L’orrible segreto del Dr. Hitchcock (The Horrible Dr. Hitchcock) 1962, I vampiri (Lust of the Vampire) 1956, Caltiki – il monstro immortale (Caltiki, the Immortal Monster) 1959 and that he supposedly abandoned the last two movies to let his cinematographer and protégé Mario Bava complete them so that he could get a head start in the directing game.

Being the man who helped lift forth the great Mario Bava, it’s odd to watch a movie which Freda tried to set in the realm of the genre his former protégé established. At the time the movie was made, 1971, Dario Argento had already started refining the genre with the impeccable The Bird with the Crystal Plumage 1970, and would release his follow up, The Cat o’Nine Tails the same year as this one. The likes of Umberto Lenzi, Sergio Martino, Luciano Erccoli, Lucio Fulci and others also where in the process of making some terrific genre pieces, so in some ways it makes sense that the Grand old Man of Italian fantastic should present a piece within the Gialli spehre.

After an establishing opening title sequence that shows us that the movie is going to take place in Dublin, Ireland, The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire get’s right in there from the start, and blasts off with an initial attack where we see a young woman preparing for bed. Subjective camera work shows us stalking her, and unnerved by the presence she moves to the phone to call for help – or something like that. But just as sure that cell phones won’t work in contemporary horror, the cord has been cut and she can’t call anyone. Instead the killer uses his leather gloved hand to fiddle with the fuses, steps in behind her and after tossing acid in her face produces the tool of the trade – a straight razor and slits that throat from side to side leavening a geyser of blood gushing out. It’s an effective opening as it presents many of the Giallo traits in one neat little package, there’s no doubt what kind of movie this is going to be after that opening.

So with the initial murder out of the way it’s time to start establishing characters, and start laying out the red herrings. The family of Swiss Ambassador Sobiesky prepare for a little ride only to have chauffeur Mandel [Renato Romano – who starred in Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage 1970 and Guilio Questi’s strange Giallo Death Laid an Egg 1968] discover the body of the woman killed in the opening sequence in the boot of their car! This sets off the series of events that introduces the gallery of main suspects to the plot. The Ambassador’s wife, Mrs. Sobiesky [Valentina Cortese – from Truffaut’s brilliant Day for Night 1973, Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits 1965 and Luigi Bazzoni’s The Possessed 1965] and is surprised to find her husband the Ambassador [Anton Diffring who we all know from Jess Franco’s masterful Faceless 1987 and Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun 1977] at home, as he’s supposed to be in Switzerland, and Doctor Johnson [Niall Toibin – who played Reverend Coot in George Pavlou’s Rawhead Rex 1986] who files his report on the disfigured victim and answers the Ambassadors question if he thinks anyone would ever be able to identify the victim with the sinister reply “The murderer has done a perfect Job. A specialist I would say, like me”.

It also get’s the detective work underway as Inspector Lawrence [Arthur O’Sullivan] is introduced into the plot and set’s up a key problem for the movie. The murder has taken place at the Ambassadors residence and his diplomatic immunity obtains the police from being able to question them about the killing. Although this first introduction of the Inspector is pretty darned shaky, and daft. He receives the passport of the dead woman, hence revealing her identity, and has an almost Monty Pythonesque exchange of dialogue with his assistant before they get in the car and head out to the Embassy.

Obviously the Ambassador avoids the few questions that he actually answers and the focus is shifted to the Chauffeur Mandel once again who obviously bring further question marks to the investigation. The Ambassadors daughter Helen Sobiesky [Dagmar Lassander] goes out for the night with her boyfriend and ends up in a weird lounge parlour/pub where a second murder is committed after a few shots of various suspicious characters. The murdered pub crooner and ambassador Sobiesky’s mistress is Dominique Boschero – who was in loads of genre pieces like Aldo Lado’s brilliant Who Saw Her Die? 1972 and Sergio Martino’s All the Colours of the Dark 1972 to name a two.

But this murder doesn’t stop her from going home with the bloke, John Norton [Luigi Pistilli – Leone’s epic The Good, the Bad, the Ugly 1966, Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood 1971 and Sergio Martino’s Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I have the Key 1972] who unashamedly picks her up outside the pub. After a motorbike ride home – which obviously isn’t though Dublin – they arrive at the embassy and being the easy girl that she is, Helen invites Norton in, and they end up in the sack. Cue Stelivo Cipriani’s romantic themed score as Pistilli and Lassander roll around in bed.

So, now we have the main cast established the movie can get going, and about time too as it’s just gone past the first half hour of play. Norton and his family are established, and his mother, an obvious amateur detective tells Norton all about her great theory and who she suspects killed the two women, but Norton just laughs it off and goes back to the Embassy to sneak around in the dark. Aha! So Norton is going to be the amateur detective of the piece we now understand. But after being beaten up and arrested by the coppers keeping an eye on the Sobiesky estate, Inspector Lawrence greets Norton as an old friend. Norton turns out to be a former detective who left the force due to some unfortunate events during an interrogation of a previous suspect. Lawrence brings him in to assist on the case as he, with his unorthodox methods can work outside the regulations of the force.

With the “detective” now taking on the investigation, the murder mystery can start to be puzzled together as Detective John Norton get’s on top of Helen and the case. The hunt for answers and a concrete suspect, because we are still being presented with many possible culprits, get’s deeper and darker leaving a trail of murders in its wake. What is the link between the Sobiesky family and the killings and why are Norton’s family being threatened? Well, it’s all revealed as The Iguana with a Tongue of Fire comes to a quite shocking climax proving once and for all that you should always listen to your mother!

I have some issues with the movie that never really make it take off in the mode, or evoke the interest that other great Gialli does, perhaps it’s because the movie lingers on for too long before bringing in the “amateur detective”, that important character who will take us along for the ride, and be the beacon of investigation for the audience. Or perhaps it’s the ludicrous constant indicators both visuals and audio, with that sharp “Aschwhiiinnggg” sound effect that indicates “this item is of importance” as the camera zooms in endlessly… which later didn’t proves to have no real importance at all… like the sunglasses or each time a straight razor is shown. There’s no need to write it so blatantly on the face of the audience as we know when we see a shot of a razor, like the on in Norton’s home, that it’s a red herring and automatically pose the question – could he be the killer – all by our self with out the silly sound cues. I also feel that the movie tries to hard to set up the suspects, each time the doctor in on screen it’s just quite too obvious that Freda wants’ to set us up and have us thinking that the doctor is the killer… a little more subtlety would have done nicely.

The movie sometimes gets lost in it’s desire to be complex and the pointing out certain key moments, the indication of certain elements. Sometimes it just pushes to hard and almost becomes insulting, as I know what to keep an eye open for and I know how to follow the leads and clues without being told that that’s what they are.

Acting is all right, apart from that early scene between Inspector Lawrence and his assistant, that still comes of as a bad Python sketch, but otherwise the actors get the job done, and Lassander get’s yet another opportunity to get out of her designer dresses.

The complexity of Pistilli's Norton’s character is by far the most interesting theme in the movie. It set’s up a great conflict that the man on the case get’s all cramped up as a former suspect took his own life, by Norton’s gun during an interrogation some time back. It’s given Norton notoriety as a hard-ass brute cop, but he still can’t really come to terms with violence, and has several flashbacks to that moment whilst in action… but for some odd reason Freda ignores this after establishing it and Norton easily beats the crap out of anyone who get’s in his way. Which is a shame, because that would have made a difference as a protagonist which personal restraints, has to overcome these obstacles first to save the day. Which would have made the rather creepy and disturbing finale even more effective. Only when his family is on the line would he cross the line and overcome his obstacle of resisting violence. But that’s not the case as said, and Norton just stays a cliché of genre cops.

And I’m actually surprised that the movie didn’t make a bigger impression on me – sure it has some fine moment’s but merely mediocre at that - because movies scripted, or co-written by Sandro Continenza [Enzo G. Castellari’s The Inglorious Bastards 1978, Jorge Grau’s The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue 1974, Lucio Fulci’s The Senator Likes Women 1972 and José Luis Madrid’s 7 Murders for Scotland Yard 1971] are usually pretty dammed fine pieces. Some things though do work in The Iguana with The Tongue of Fire, there’s a few great set ups that are paid off later on, one being Norton’s mothers constant neglect of her glasses and hearing aids, and her amateur detective suggestions after Norton has been introduced into the plot. But in the whole it’s not quite there.

I can’t quite grasp why Freda decided that he needed to hide behind a silly pseudonym like Willy Parento, and didn’t just go with his real name or the Robert Hampton that he’d used on previous works. Possibly it was something with the many co-producers that wanted an anonymous name to their film or perhaps Riccardo Freda wasn’t quite satisfied with the movie he’d made…

The Iguana with The Tongue of Fire has a great score by the masterful Stelvio Cipriani with some wonderfull vocals by Nora Orlandi this time. Orlandi is also a great composer who has Romolo Guerrieri’s The Sweet Body of Deborah 1968 and Sergio Martino’s The Strange Case of Mrs. Wardh 1971 on her resume. But here she sticks to playing the piano and crooning along to Cipriani’s tunes. Sticking close to a theme that constantly returns in various forms, it’s a neat album with nods at Bernard Herrman on a few occasions, but still staying true to that great loungy Italian style. Oddly though, Cipriani reuses a piece from Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood in two in new guises. But then again they are only used in short sequences, but I’m starting to see a pattern here where many a Cipriani soundtracks reuse previous pieces and reworking of former bits. But I dig Cipriani so it all works for me.

All in all, you could say that The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire is an all right little piece that follows Giallo conventions by the book, but unfortunately doesn’t really make that much of an impression on me. At it’s best I find it a decent one, but nothing that I’d set up amongst the greatest of the genre, it’s entertaining but one that I don’t feel that stands up to repeated viewing. Which is a shame because this is the sort of thing that Freda should have been able to nail completely with his extensive catalogue behind him and the importance that he held for the Italian Fantastic genres. But unfortunately he doesn’t and the movie just rolls on and at it’s best could be remembered for some nice shots of Dublin, cheap gore effects and a great soundtrack.

Image:

Anamorphic 16:9 Widescreen

Audio:

Dolby digital 5.1 German dubbed dialogue, Dolby Digital 2.0 German and Dolby Digital 2.0 English dubbed versions. Optional German subtitles.

Extras:

A German promo and a small photo gallery.

Human Cobras

Human Cobras
Original Title: L’uomo più velenoso del cobra
Directed by: Bitto Albertini
Italy / Spain, 1971
Thriller / Mystery, 95min
Distributed by: Mya Entertainment

Bitto Albertini [born Adalberto Albertini - directing here under his Albert J. Walkner pseudonym] is not a name that one finds in my quick list of genre theatre fix too often, I’ve never really been a fan of his work, and find his movies pretty boring. In my book there aren’t too many title’s that pop out and catch my attention at all, and the ones I have seen, didn’t really make an impression as I when researching him realized that I have and had seen several of his other works.

His sequel/cash in on Luigi Cozzi’s Star Crash 1978, the rather vague Giochi erotici nella 3a galassia (Erotic Games in the Third Galaxy – A.k.a. Star Crash 2) 1981 is a disappointment compared to the campy original, his Mondo movies made at the end of his career as a director Naked and Cruel 1984, and Naked and Cruel2 1985, are quite dull and made ten years to late, as many of the areas had already been covered in previous Mondo entries bring nothing new with them.

I feel that it’s fair to say that Albertini’s claim to fame is for snatching up the success of Just Jaekin’s Emmanuelle 1974, and putting that unique Italian spin on it and making a star out of Laura Gemser, with the film Black Emanuelle 1975. Hence giving Joe D’Amato a star and source to exploit and return to over and over again for the next decade.

But that’s not where we are going to go today, as the movie that actually made me go Hmmm… what else has this guy made? is as far away from the odder genres as one can go. The movie Human Cobras is, even though in some aspects is kind of tricky to pigeonhole, only a good old action-mystery plot movie. It would be easy to claim that it’s a rather tepid Giallo, which many other reviewers have, but that would be unfair, as it really isn’t a Giallo at all. It is simply a mystery thriller that uses some vague Gialli traits along the way.

Any non-domestic movie that starts with shots of my hometown Stockholm, is going to get my attention at least for a few minutes, and Human Cobras starts with a great montage of leading man Tony Garden [George Ardisson] jumping into an old Volvo 242 and zooming around the city’s views only to skid to a halt and fight a masked man who stops him in the middle of nowhere – or Riddarholmen if you know your Stockholm geography. This sets up Tony as a man on the run, and his girlfriend getting worked up, asking him; “Do you think it was them?” brings us to the understanding that something has gone down previously which is forcing him to stay in hiding. A knock on the door delivers both a short sequence of suspense and the enticing incident – Tony’s brother Johnny has been murdered and he tells his girlfriend that he has to go back… These first five minutes are suggestive, and work like a charm to lure the audience in. It continues in the same vibe as Tony dreams about the past during his flight back to New York. We learn from his dream, that there’s a woman somewhere along the line that he still loves – no it’s not the one he just left behind, but another woman he’s left previously – and that he was in some sort of trouble that lead to a contract being put out on him. Luckily for Tony the guy with the contract can’t kill Tony when he holds him in his sights and tells Tony to get the heck out of the country, get out or I’ll have to kill you. So with the plot firmly established, Tony the gangster who once took to hiding abroad has returned to the place he once was banished from to avenge his brother’s death, the movie gets cracking.

Tony smokes, shoves, shuffles and punches his way through a series of thugs and gangsters in his quest to find his brother Johnny’s killer. He also meets up with Johnny’s girlfriend Leslie [Erika Blanc –from Mario Bava’s Kill Baby Kill 1966, Emilio Miraglia's The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave 1971 and Jean Brismeé's The Devil’s Nightmare 1971] who turns out to be the woman from Tony’s airborne dream. She also tells Tony what happened on the evening that Johnny got killed, giving Ardisson a chance to play the role of Johnny too. Eventually Tony comes face to face with Archie, who once held the contract on his life, and starts understanding that the murder of Johnny may not have been an action towards Tony, but something much more sinister…

What was Johnny actually up to? The leads take Tony on yet another flight, this time to Kenya, where Johnny’s business partner George MacGreeves [Alberto de Mendoza – Lucio Fulci’s Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, Sergio Martino’s The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, and Case of the Scorpions Tail - all 1971 - what a great year for Gialli!] obviously becomes Tony’s prime suspect. In Nairobi, he encounters Clara [Janine Reynaud – Jess Franco’s Succubus 1968, Sadist Erotica 1969 and Kiss Me, Monster 1969, not to forget… Sergio Martino’s Case of the Scorpions Tail 1971] Johnny’s girl away from home, and also starts to become more and more paranoid that the tail that followed him from Stockholm to New York also is on his heels in Africa. But being as close as he is to his main suspect, George, that’s the lead that Tony must follow up to the very end where a series of ominous plot twists actually make it a time worthy investment.

It’s also in this later half where the Gialli traits are introduced as there is a suspicious person [Fernando Hilbeck – who also played Guthrie the tramp zombie in Jorge Grau’s Let Sleeping Corpses Lie 1974, and Pedro Almovodar’s Pepi, Luci, Bom 1980] constantly following the footsteps of Tony. Who is this guy? Is it one of he hit men still out to nail Tony and collect the contract payment? Is it Johnny’s killer? Just who is he – and what does he want? And to add to the mystery, he also makes some Gialli like phone calls where he breaths heavily down the receiver and kills his victims with a straight razor. Then there’s the grand finale, an ending that definitely makes one think of many great Gialli endings, but as mentioned, these are only traits used and it doesn’t make the movie a Giallo. Albertini also sneaks in some goth-spook moves too during the latter half as Leslie thinks she’s seeing Johnny walking the grounds outside the African mansion, but nobody ever called this movie a ghost story did they.

I found myself thinking of Mike Hodges’ Get Carter 1971 on many occasions, and that’s not too strange either, as the initial premise; The gangster brother going back to “the forbidden zone” to investigate and avenge the murder of his brother is the exact plot of Get Carter.

After my down putting of Albertini in the opening of this bit, I feel that I may have to go back on my word there, as I actually enjoyed Human Cobras. Sure it has it’s flaws, and there are some issues with the movie that take some of the impact away, but putting it in context of the genre movies of the time, it’s a watchable movie and grows the longer you stay with it. Now this may be thanks to the script by Eduardo Manzanos Borchero and Ernesto Gastaldi, who together and each separately wrote scripts for some of the best genre pieces to come out of Italy and Spain during the seventies and eighties. Producer Luciano Martino also receives writing credit on the movie, but I still feel that it’s the teamwork of Gastaldi and Borchero that make this one stand out. Obviously it’s nowhere near their Gialli masterpieces like Sergio Martino’s The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, or Case of the Scorpions Tail, but I have already pointed out that the movie isn’t a Giallo, but a murder mystery flick.

Also a movie with a Stelivo Cipriani score to its name will add an extra attraction to it for my liking. I’m a huge fan of Cipriani’s work and frequently play his music as I work, write or simply feel like winding down. Cipriani’s pieces heard in Human Cobras is somewhat of a mixed bag, some music may have been, and probably was, written for the movie, but many others are painfully familiar, there’s a track that has the exact same bass line as Blue Oyster Cult’s Don’t Fear the Reaper which wasn’t to be released for another five years to come, and I’m certain there’s a track from Riccardo Freda’s The Iguana With a Tongue of Fire 1971 in there too. But most surprisingly is that there’s two tracks off Cipriani’s soundtrack to Piero Schivazappa’s Femina Ridens – Sophisticated Shake and Femina Ridens (Versione Cantata) from the movie. Which by the way also features the magnificent Edda Dell’Orso’s voice talents too. Which innovatively enough is played on the radio as Tony takes a postcoital shower and Clara meets her death at the hands of the killer.

I’m glad that I gave the movie a shot, especially with my aversion towards Albertini in mind, because while I thought it would be a great movie to nod in and out of n the couch, it caught me off guard me by being an entertaining little piece, that engaged me, lured me in and had me thinking in the wrong lines on a few occasions. Something that doesn’t happen all to often, but gives a kick when it does.

On the down side, I can’t really understand why the team at Mya Entertainment gave it such a shoddy release? With the excellent NoShame and some of the Mya Releases in mind, this one is in real poor shape. The rather tacky print which unfortunately after the almost aspect ratio credit sequence moves in to a hideous full frame version making some scenes look ludicrous really hurts the movie. I hope that this isn’t a standard that Mya aim to continue with, as it gives me a feeling that they might be focusing more on releasing semi rare titles instead of releasing state of the art releases that will, and are becoming collectors items.

Image:

1.33:1 Full frame

Audio:

Dolby Digital Mono, Italian Dialogue with optional English subtitles

Extras:

This is where the lack of extras becomes painfully apparent. There’s not even a trailer for the film.