The Big Alligator River

The Big Alligator River
Original Title: Il fiume del grande camano
Directed by: Sergio Martino
Italy, 1979
Horror/Drama, 86min
Distributed by: NoShame

There’s something about mammoth sized “real” animals that take revenge on mankind movies that just doesn’t work for me, with a few exceptions of course. I can never really seem to get into them in the same way as a monster of the fantastic (i.e. Godzilla or Alien or Zombies) or something like a plague of smaller critters and all that stuff. But the big bastard lone predator never ever got under my skin. I saw Spielberg’s original Jaws 1975 when I was something like seven or so and I dared not go for a pee that night as I was sure that the head of that bloke who’s head floats up and scares the crap out of Richard Dreyfuss would float up out of the crapper and scare me to death. See, it was the human element and not the big shark that got to men that time, and that’s quite the way it’s been since then.

Saying that, Sergio Martino’s The Big Alligator River hasn’t got the best starting position when I finally settle down to watch it. But it’s not all bad. Sure it’s pretty slow, has an obvious Jaws complex, and a strange subplot with alligator worshiping natives that decide to kill humans that never really get’s explained in a proper way. It goes something like this…

Photographer Daniel Nessel [Claudio Cassinelli] arrives at the Tropical Tourist Paradise soon to be opened to the first batch of visitors, and is happily greeted by owner and cynical businessman Joshua [Mel Ferrer]. Even though Daniel has a spiffy photo model Sheena [Geneve Hutton] with him for the promotional shots he’s been hired to shoot for Joshua, he is more prone to setting his focus on Joshua’s assistant Alice [Barbara Bach]. After a few obvious set ups and some needed exposition such as Joshua being a greedy moneybags who cuts corners on safety so that everything can be set when his first bunch of paying guests arrive. There’s also a subplot that involves Joshua exploiting the Maccuma tribe as cheap labour on his resort, and not giving a damn about laying their surrounding nature to waste as he expands on his paradise island, there’s going to be a major payback later on… a strange on, but still a payback.

Alice takes Daniel and Sheena out for a tour of the area, and Daniel continuously shoots photographs of the working tribesmen, Sheena and on every possibly chance shoots of a candid shots of Alice. Later that night Sheena takes off on the lake with one of the natives that she previously danced seductively with during yet another photo shoot. Strange drums are heard over the waters (well really a primal and crap disco track by Cipriani) and Alice tells Daniel of the tribe who worship the giant crocodile god on the other side of the waters… Obviously it’s the set up for the initial attack as something attacks Sheena and her lover whilst they frantically paddle back to shore dragging them under the waters.

The tourists arrive and a new batch of secondary characters are introduced, sleazy youngsters only there for romance, elderly couples who mostly complain about the disco music and scantily clad youths and a little kid called Minou [Silvia Collatina – who later starred as Mae Freudenstein in Fulci’s Quella villa accnato al cimitero (The House by the Cemetery) 1981. Obviously none of these characters really mean anything to the plot except perhaps Minou who Daniel later rescues, but all in all it’s just another annoying red-haired freckled kid in an Italian genre piece. Daniel goes out to search for Sheena and obviously Alice goes with him, and at the same time the disco dancing youngsters hit the waters all reassured by Joshua that there’s absolutely no threat at all in the water… sound familiar? Alice and Daniel arrive at the island inhabited by the crocodile cults who are mourning a warrior – obviously Sheena’s suitor. The tribe tell them that they have woken the crocodile god Kroona, and he’s here for his booty, which leads them to the only “white man” to have seen the monster and survived – Father Jonathan [Richard Johnson], a hermit that lives in a cave deep in the jungles. As they make their way back to the resort they are attacked by Kroona, who chomps down on their native guide. Joshua is furious that they took off outside the restrained areas and refuses to have anything to do with the fact that there’s an enormous monster in the waters – after all he’s invested three million dollars into his paradise and will not cause a panic amongst his guests.

With all that set up the movie moves into its final act and it’s an act that finally sees some action taking place. Joshua takes all his guests out on the lake for the Tarzan’s Raft boat party, the tribe of croc worshippers decide to make a sacrifice to the god of the rivers snatch Alice, and Daniel is caught in-between with the dilemma of who to save. The boat now under attack by Kroona or Alice submerged in waters as an appetizer for Kroona. Panicked the tourists jump from the boat and swim to shore, as the monster easily guzzles them down and as if that wasn’t enough, the lucky bastards who make it to the shore are attacked by the crocodile cult – it’s a complete massacre. No action adventure is complete without its climax, and The Big Alligator River definitely has one, one that sees Daniel and Alice venture back down into the deep waters to take on the gigantic Kroona in a final battle.

The Big Alligator River isn’t one of Sergio Martino’s better films. It has severe problems, one of them that it takes too long to set stuff up. There’s to many minor subplots that never really come into play, it moves way to slow to make it a fierce piece of genre cinema. Which is a shame, because the last quarter of the film is pretty intense and riveting, and if only the rest of the movie had been as fast and ferocious then the movie may have had a chance at making an impression.

Cassellini get’s his job done as the heroic character, Bach is pretty boring as usual, Ferrer overacts a few times and Richard Johnson delivers what may be his most freaked out part ever in an Italian movie. Italian bit part actors like Bobby Rhodes and Romano Puppo have decently large parts and a few action scenes, but still nothing that really makes any difference to the narrative. Which is odd as Puppo’s Peter character is the only real antagonist posed towards Cassinelli.

Needless to say the movie is heavily influenced by Spielberg’s’ Jaws where the cynical and greedy resort owner is more interested in milking his paradise guests for their cash that caring for their safety, and pays the price. Unfortunately where Jaws does have some great scenes and a brilliant narrative, The Big Alligator River doesn’t. Considering the stuff that screenwriters Ernesto Gastaldi, Cesare Frugoni, Mara Maryl, Martino and George Eastman (as Luigi Montefiore) had written previously and would write in the future, I’m surprised that they didn’t really go for the true core of the inspirational source, as it’s just as much about the character development of the lead characters as it’s about the big friggin’ shark, or like here an alligator. This is a key point that The Big Alligator River completely misses. I feel nothing for any of the characters or their troubles. There's never really any direct values or such at stake either, which doesn’t exactly help the movie along.

As said the movie moves terribly slow with way to many tedious slow-motion effects, which definitely don’t create suspense. Not even with the constant referents to there being crocodiles in the waters, as it’s not enough to make it exciting, not even that initial attack that clocks in somewhere just after twenty-five minutes of sapping movie plot. Then there’s the problem with the alligator or crocodile... it’s never really explained in a decent way, more as one single line of dialogue in Father Jonathan’s cave. Just like the reason for the tribesmen suddenly killing off the tourists and then finally just walking away as day breaks leaving several survivors to question why. In all honesty it feels like a major fuckup and sloppy writing, and it’s bad in every possible way.

Not even the great editing of Eugenio Alabiso - who I have to hold responsible for the tedious slowmo scenes. Possibly in an attempt to bring some juice to the movie - or Stelvio Cipriani’s score, which is a really weak on to say the least, manage to salvage this one, which appart that final act is a really poor movie. Perhaps it’s best suited for a Saturday matinee or a late night slumber flick as it never really grabs hold of you in any way and pretty much just chugs along… slowly without a bite.

Finally… that the prosthetic alligator is kind of impressive in some screwed up way, and there’s no doubt that Martino could have gone all in with stock footage if he wanted, but instead there’s a big toy croc in the waters. Even if it does look fake in some shots, so does Bruce in Jaws, and this movie is made on a fraction of that budget.. So give credit where credit is due and acknowledge Carlo De Marchis’ monster alligator for the splendid piece of junk that it is. De Marchis was also part of Carlo Rambaldi’s special effect team on Ridley Scott’s Alien 1979, and special effects supervisor on Claudio Fragasso’s awful Leviatán (Monster Dog) 1984 starring he one and only Alice Cooper.

I don’t know what magic Sergio Martino had during that impressive run of stunning Gialli and Poliziotteschi a few years earlier, but The Big Alligator River sure lacks it. Sadly it’s quite a disappointment on many levels, which disturbs me, as I really wanted it to be a good classic Sergio Martino movie.

Image:

Widescreen 2.35:1 /16x9

Audio:

Dolby Digital Mono, Italian or English Dialogue with optional English subtitles.

Extras:

Well being a NoShame disc there’s a great bunch of extras, In the Croc’s nest features interviews with Sergio Martino (who also gives an impression of not quite liking the movie) and production designer Antenello Geleng. The Italian trailer, Poster Gallery, and a booklet on animal revenge movies and talent biographies.

Don't be fooled by the trailer, but check out Bobby Rhodes early on. And yeah this is about as good as it get's and it's all in the trailer...

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.

Island of the Fishmen

Island of the Fishmen
Original Title : L’isola degli uomini pesce
Directed by: Sergio Martino
Action/Adventure, 1979
Italy, 93min
Distributed by: Mya Entertainment

Sergio Martino. Say his name and many a genre fan, especially myself, will start salivating and ranting on about those magnificent Gialli he directed during the seventies. But Martino also directed a bunch of films beyond those initial Gialli, as he also made movies in the Comedy, Spaghetti Western, Science Fiction and Action/Adventure genres. One of these is the entertaining Island of the Fishmen.

Loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the story was written by Sergio and his brother Luciano Martino (who worked as a producer and director, but also wrote several movie scripts, among them some of the great Gialli and Spaghetti Westerns) and reworked by Cesare Frugoni [Mario Bava’s Rabid Dogs 1974, Ruggero Deodato’s Cut and Run 1985] and Sergio Donati [Sergio Leone’s For a Few Dollars More 1965 and Once Upon A Time in the West 1968]. This many writers could possibly cause a mumbled jumble of varied influences and a mixed bag of complications as storylines and subplots come and go. But I feel that they brought themselves together to write a highly entertaining little film, and anything relying on Lovecraftian mythos grabs my attention and is going to fall in good ground with me.

Island of the Fishmen is not a horror flick, but more an Action - Adventure flick that rubs up against the Science-fiction/Fantastic genre. It starts with a boat drifting in the mist with a few men sat exhausted in the tight space. Quickly the tension between the few men onboard is set and we understand that the power structure is ruptured and they really don’t like each other. Then, strange creatures move in the water and the men are spooked, and to make things worse the boat starts picking up speed and smashes into the cliffs hurling the men into the water once again. Obviously the strange creatures in the water attack and we have an initial attack assuring us that the “fishmen” are not gentle dolphin like playthings. They are vicious killers.

Awaking on the shore of an island, Lt Claude de Ross [Claudio Cassinelli – a fine leading man indeed who died all to soon by a freak accident during the shoot of Martino’s Fists of Steel 1985. But his movies remain and among them you’ll find highlights like Massimo Dallamano’s What Have They Done to Your Daughters? 1974 and Martino’s previous film Mountain of the Cannibal God 1978 to name a selected few.] De Ross roams the island finding various crewmembers dead in the nearby swamp… And Martino starts playing visual gags with us to keep us confused about what sort of movie this is going to evolve into.

The short but great scene of de Ross looking over his shoulder screaming “No! No!” at the lurking – staggering shadow making the groaning noises definitely sets off the Zombie alarm, but in the next second de Ross screams “No José, don’t drink that, if you do you will end up like him!” pointing to the dead guy in the distance. It’s a grand little scene that is humorous, pokes fun at our expectations and at the same time sets up the friendly relationship between José and de Ross. And with every good note in this film there’s a negative contrast waiting. Finding death in the swamp leads to finding his friend José [Franco Iavarone]. Finding a second friend, Francois, leads to meeting up the other survivors, the ones in the beginning that don’t like de Ross. They make a clear comment that they are no longer his prisoners and they won’t take orders from him anymore (which brings a neat little bit of back story into the flick. – and it’s going to be dropped like this each time we need to understand de Ross further during the movie). From this point it’s easy to think that the film is gong to be a survival horror as the men start wandering through the marshlands and surrounding jungle. Alliances are tested in a rather tense sequence where José proves his alliance with de Ross against the others, and before you know it they walk into a cemetery that brings Lucio Fulci’s Zombie 1979 to mind, as José screams out “Don’t touch it! It’s Zombies, ZOMBIES!” de Ross calmly tells him to relax, zombies never existed. Again Martino taunts us concerning genre as there definitely has been enough Italian zombie set-ups established that all we need now is a groaning guy with clay n his face to jump start this baby.

Instead we get Amanda Marvin [Barbara Bach - from Paola Cavara’s 1971 Giallo, The Black Belly of the Tarantula featuring not one, not two, but three Bond Girls; Bach, Barbara Bouchet and Claudine Auger. Bach also featured in Aldo Lado’s creepy black magic Giallo Short Night of the Glass Dolls 1971. Obviously she’s probably most know for being the wife of Beatles drummer Ringo Starr who she met on set of Caveman in 1981] Anyway, Amanda saves the four grown men from a tiny snake with a perfectly aimed bullet from her rifle and delivers some valuable exposition. The Island is uncharted, it belongs to Edmond Rackham and that they would be safer returning to the beach.

As retraining to their point of start, the beach, would make for a shit movie, the men obviously push on forward and eventually find the mansion that Amanda and Edmond Rackham inhabit. Rackham [the great Richard Johnson – Robert Wise’s The Haunting 1963, Fulci’s Zombie 1979] makes his grand entry. He offers the men a place to stay and sees a use for the good-looking de Ross who apparently was the ships doctor! See, there’s more back-story laid out elegantly here. The movie takes a new turn into a more superstitious ground as the Rackham’s house maid Shakira [Beryl Cunningham] performs a voodoo ritual and Amanda pays a visit to the strange Fishmen creatures that don’t tear her apart but act friendly towards her as she offers them a strange milk like fluid. But they do chomp down on the wreck survivor who follows Amanda into the jungle attempting to rape her.

The entrance of Rackham sees the horror element fade out of the movie and shift more into a sci-fi / adventure area. Shakira performs Voodoo sacrifices for Mr. Rackham and José panics and flees the mansion after the last of the group is killed leaving him and de Ross the only survivors from the boat, and in his panicked flight he falls down into an underground cavern… De Ross goes after his friend only to have Amanda once again save him from deadly traps (which trigger the mental image of Charlie the pilot being nailed in Ruggero Deodato’s Last Cannibal World 1977.) and an attack by a Fishmen! Rackham and Shakira recapture the two men and force de Ross to drink a strange fluid that brings Zombie/Voodoo origin rituals to mind. Enter the Professor Ernest Marvin [Joseph Cotten – Yeah Orson Welles' 1941 Citizen Kane Cotton and Mario Bava’s Baron Blood 1972] who is in such bad shape that he has to be saved by de Ross. Remember he’s a doctor, and earlier Rackham made a note of how he could benefit from this. Underneath the island there is an advanced series of tunnels and labyrinths that leads down to ATLANTIS! Wow and we’re just gone halfway!

Now the sinister Rackham turns out to be a treasure hunter and the Fishmen are the original inhabitants of Atlantis… But there’s always a but, to get his hands on the treasures hidden in Atlantis Rackham has had Professor Marvin concoct a strange potion that he’s got the Fishmen addicted to. In return for the gold and treasures they get the drink… so now you know why Rackham so desperately needs de Ross to keep the Professor alive so that the Fishmen slaves keep busy at work. The twist comes suddenly; Amanda is the Professor's daughter, who Rackham holds captive. And as she can communicate with the Fishmen Rackham needs to keep Professor Marvin alive until all the treasure is salvaged, for Amanda is against the exploitation of the Fishmen and Rackham fears she would make them revolt against him if her father died. It’s greed that motivates Rackham, greed for the treasure, greed for Amanda’s love. In the professors secret laboratory de Ross finds out what happened to his mate José, and it’s apparent that the Fishmen are not the original inhabitants, but fiendish experiments!

In a rage de Ross tears apart the laboratory and puts the terrifying experiment José out of his misery. Ironically the José hybrid was the most successful specimen of Professor Marvin’s attempts to save the future of mankind. An amphibian creature that can take salvage in the depths of the ocean when modern man ruins earth. And the experiments are so controversial, that they only could be conducted on an uncharted island, out of sight, out of mind.

Needless to say Rackham busts into the room at this time, bringing death and mayhem with him as the film grinds up to it’s climax and to make things even more nail biting, the bloody volcano that the island sits on is coming to an eruption. The last twenty minutes is really just all action adventure, several leads are in pursuit and there are a lot of subplots rushing forth to their conclusion. But the road there is all great entertainment with a fantastic swashbuckler fight off and poetic justice served out to end it all. Splendid stuff indeed, and something I’ll be showing my kids in a few years time as I cradle them into the fantastic world of Italian genre cinema.

I guess that the easiest way to describe this film would be to call it a hysterical mix of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Island of Dr Moreau, Jules Verne - H.G. Welles, - H.P. Lovecraft science fiction, Atlanian myths and an episode of the hit TV show Lost. It uses the same sort of “cut the crap” narrative as Lost, and exposes only he necessary info needed to shift the value of each scene from negative to positive and vice versa. Neat work indeed. It starts right where we need to start, on the boat AFTER the shipwreck. We don’t have to see the prisoners board the ship, we don’t need to establish power positions on that boat, we have no interest seeing men scream and splash into the sea as he ship goes down. We start AFTER the situation that brought the men towards the island. Fragments of de Ross’ background are portioned out at the exact time it is needed as to keep his origin and back-story a mystery. Much of the events on the island are mysterious, and each time we think that we have a grasp on the main ingredient, Martino throws us a curve ball and introduces new elements of mystery – Cannibals, The mysterious Edmund Rackham, the Voodoo priestess Shakira, the Fishmen, the traps in the jungle, the underground caves, the secret experiments. You see it’s like a concentrated double episode of Lost but without that annoying ever-fresh cast.

Like many other EuroMovies, even this one was picked up by American distributors, re-cut, re-shot and trashed as it was turned into a stinker. Obviously Roger Corman was responsible for the reshooting, reediting and remarketing the movie as the appalling Screamers with Mel Ferrer and Cameron Mitchel in parts in an attempt to turn it into a more horror oriented flick.

Corman also did this with Pavel Klushantsev’s fantastic Planet of the Storms 1962 – Klushantsev, the director that Stanley Kubrick snatched his entire glorious Award Winning special effect tricks from for the 1968 film 2001 – A Space Odyssey. Corman reshot scenes with corny dialogue, a silly new plot and bikini girls selling it as something other than the masterpiece it was. These new versions where retitled and ”directed” by Curtis Harrington [Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet 1965 with Basil Rathbone in a new lead] and Peter Bogdanovich [Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women 1968 with Mamie Van Doren in the lead] the original cast where billed as ”archive footage”. Nice touch Roger. Luckily the Mya release (most likely the same source as the previous NoShame disc) makes sure that this is the intended Italian version without the Corman manipulation.

This is especially important when it comes to the score. Gone is the Sandy Berman stuff and back in is the original Luciano Michelini score full of its fuzzy guitars, swaying strings and vibrant beats. It’s wonderful stuff and at times the score is reminiscent of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s symphonic poem Isle of the Dead fitting to say the least. Even though Luciano Michelini isn’t a very known composer, you will probably have heard one of his pieces if you ever saw that Larry David show Curb Your Enthusiasm. That theme song is a Luciano Michelini composition.

The cinematography by Giancarlo Ferrando, who worked with Martino on more than a dozen of his films, is wonderfully accompanied by Eugenio Alabiso’s editing. He moves fast and there are a few wonderful scenes beautifully edited, usually with something happening outside of Cassinelli’s view, his turn/reaction/reveal, work like textbook examples of how to create the best results in the editing suite. Alabiso who edited Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 1966, Sergio Corbucci’s Companeros 1970, Umberto Lenzi’s Oasis of Fear 1971 and Martino’s Case of the Scorpion’s Tail 1971 to mention some of the 160 and counting great movies that he’s worked on.

I'll say it again; Island of the Fishmen is a marvellous piece of film that could easily play as a Sunday matinee for the whole family to gather around. It’s action packed, it’s scary in an innocent way, and it’s fun to watch.

Image:

Aspect Ration 2.35:1 (16x9 Anamorphic)

Audio:

English or Italian Dialogue, Dolby Digital Mono. Unfortunately there are no English subtitles on the Italian dub, but luckily

Extras:

There’s the original Trailer, a two-minute photo gallery and that’s it.

The Secret Killer

The Secret Killer

Original Title: Gatti rossi in un labirinto di vetro

Aka: Eyeball

Aka Wide Eyed

in the Dark

Directed by : Umberto Lenzi

Italy /Spain 1975

Giallo, 89min

Distributed by: Marketing Film

Story:

A group of American tourists in Spain find themselves having a terrible holiday when a homicidal manic with a passion for chopping out the eyes of the victims strikes among them. Tension and paranoia set in as they try to figure out who is stalking and killing them, and everyone is fast on the hand to point out a assailant.

Me:

Umberto Lenzi, a fantastic director to say the least. I usually say that he’s mostly know for his cannibal movies [Man from Deep River 1972, Eaten Alive 1980, the infamous Make Them Die Slowly 1981] and the rather cheesy, but ever so atmospherical Nightmare City from 1980. But in my opinion I have to put my money on his decent amount of Gialli and Poliziotteschi which are so much more superior to his gut-muncher movies, and if I was ever forced to write a top ten Gialli list, Umberto Lenzi’s splendid Seven Blood-Stained Orchids from 1972 would definitely be one of the selected few. But today I cast my left eye and thoughts on The Secret Killer (or Red Cats in a Glass Maze as the original title really translates as) which Lenzi directed in 1975.

Obviously there is a reasonable amount of doubt as one sits down to a Gialli. Will it be one of the great ones, or will it be a mixed up jumble like so many other have been. The Secret Killer is quite often refered to as a mediocre Giallo which lack

s plot, a critique often aimed at the Giallo genre. A critique that definitely is unjust, as the plot definitely is there; Who is the killer, and what is the killer’s modus operandi and added to that there are all the cryptic subplots that shave the viewer searching high and low for the right answer. And unlike so many other detective or criminal movies you can almost never predict the outcome of the Giallo as it plays with a completely different set of rules opposed to convention, which is why they still fascinate audiences once again on digital media.

The Secret Killer sees a band of American tourists in Spain being driven round and shown the sights in your general touristy manner. At one stop Reverend Bronson [George Rigaud, who’s face will be familiar to genre fans from Luciano Ercoli’s Death Walks on High Heels 1971, Lucio Fulci’s A Lizard in a Womans Skin 1971, One on Top of the Other 1969, Sergio Martino’s All the Colors of the Dark 1972 and Lenzi’s Knife of Ice 1972] is the first to reach the scene after a young woman is brutally stabbed by an offscreen killer who for a change wears red gloves instead of the genre trait black gloves. The cops, Inspector Tudela [Andrés Mejnuto], who only has a week before retirement, and his young assistant Lara go to the autopsy, where Lara drops the classic line “Excuse me Doctor, are you saying that the killer is a sadist?” to which the Doctor replies “I wouldn’t really doubt it!” That’s the sort of tickling dialogue Lenzi and co-writer Félix Tusell come up with in this fine example of the Gialli. Félix Tusell was originally a producer and went on to continue producing movies after writing the screenplay for The Secret Killer, and that’s kind of a shame, as The Secret Killer has a lot going for it as I will point out shortly.

During the autopsy and later towards the end, when they know who their main suspect is, you will also see a policeman played by Fulvio Mingozzi, who frequently had bit parts as detectives, policemen or agents in almost all the great genre pieces. Do check out his resume, it’s an impressive list to say the least!

Anyhow after questioning the Reverend, setting up the first of many red herrings, the cops leave and the group of tourists continue their holiday. During this set up we are introduced to Paulette Stone [Martine Brochard, who had previously been in a few Nunsploitation flicks and Sergio Martino’s Poliziotteschi Violent Professionals 1973.] the secretary and former mistress of Marc Burton [John Richardson, who starred in Mario Bava’s Black Sunday in 1960 and later Martino’s Torso 1973]. Burton, who mysteriously arrives at the scene of the crime to comfort Paulette and try to swoon her back into his arms. But Paulette won’t be seduced so easily, at least not until Marc is divorced from his wife!

This sequence introduces the major mulligan of the plot; in the very opening after the credits we see a woman in an airport rebooking her flight to New York for a flight to Barcelona instead. We will pretty soon realise that this woman is Alma [Marta May], Marc’s wife, and our knowledge that she took a flight to Barcelona definitely sets her up as our prime suspect, especially as the next victim of the gloved killer is one of the tourists. The killer is moving in on the group!

Keeping the confusion high and pointing fingers in the wrong direction is frequently used throughout the first half of the movie, we learn of further connections between the group in Barcelona and Marc’s wife Alma. Gale Alvarado [Silvia Solar] tells friends in the group that she used to go to school with Marc’s wife, and that she doesn’t think Alma would like to learn about his romances with his secretary on the side. Marc gets a note from Reverend Bronson that his wife called and has taken up residence at the Hotel Presidente on the other side of town. As you see there are major forces working towards pointing out Alma as the gloved killer, but do we really want to believe that our leading lady is the killer? Red herrings are renown to shove the audience in the wrong way!

The second killing, the murder of Peggy is a wonderful sequence that takes place inside an amusement park ghost train ride. Filled with creepy masks and sudden shock effects the killer strikes and once again chops out the left eye of the victim. Once again the cops round up the group of tourists and start going though their suspects. This gathering of the group could have been a pace killer if it had not had been used in an interesting way which works in favour of the narrative. Every time the group are assembled after a killing, they start pointing fingers at each other, hence leading us on and planting new red herrings. After the murder of Peggy, there are several threads at play, and Marc goes to the Hotel his wife is supposed to be located at, obviously she isn’t there, but Marc finds a bloodied dagger in the suite which generates the first of a series of flashbacks related to Marc and Alma. He has returning flashbacks to a situation where he found Alma fainted in their garden with the same knife he found in the hotel in her right hand and an eyeball in her left… he can’t put his finger on it, but something is wrong with the image, and his is a subplot that will later have great importance.

It’s quite fair to say that from this point on Marc becomes the primary protagonist of the story, and even tough we don’t completely free him from suspicion, he will be the character who leads us through this mysterious Giallo. As viewers familiar with the genre will know, you can never be determined until the last scene has played out, these movies constantly pull the rug from under our feet and in some cases even the most obvious becomes the opposite in the flash of a knife.

The finest example of the finger pointing occurs after a young woman outside the group is murdered as she feeds her pigs on a farm they are visiting. There are several leads pointing to various members of the group and a great montage showing the whereabouts of our favourite suspects enhances this. The murderer stalks and kills the farm girl and the soon inspector, cursing that he has to solve this case before retiring and handing his position over to his young assistant, comes to the scene yet again. But then the splendid twist is that as the police question those we favour as prime suspects, they flip it around and point towards Paulette, our secondary protagonist. Once again, we have been following the tale through the narrative of Paulette and Marc, and it couldn’t be Paulette donning the red gloves as that would be illogical wouldn’t it. Or would it?

Burton learns that Alma is to catch a flight back out of Barcelona and races to the airport to confront her, but in a last minute decision Alma cancels her flight ticket and once again she slips through Marc’s fingers leaving him non the wiser. Although he does encounter Lisa Sanders [Mirta Miller] a photographer who is part of their little group and uses ever possible moment and location to photograph her girlfriend Nabila [Ines Pellegrini, who starred in a few Pasolini movies, including the infamous Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom]. Marc asks her to keep her professional eye open for Alma, and to photograph her if she sees her in Barcelona. He then goes back to Paulette and tells her about his suspicion that Alma is in town, killing all these people in an attempt to frame him!

Needless to say Lisa becomes the next victim in a beautiful sequence that easily is among the most finest of the genre. Antonio Millán’s cinematography peaks here as composition and pacing climaxes in a stunning sequence utilising deep focus and vivid colour schemes. I could go as far as referring to his as the must see scene of the movie. Nabila walks into the apartment and see’s Lisa’s body, screams waking the rest of the group, once again invoking a wonderful series of mis-en-scene where we are presented with possible suspects. At this point we have a fair idea of our own suspects, but we need to go yet another round before it is all exposed. The group take a trip to Stiges (yes Sitges of the legendary horror and fantasy festival) but as a change the group is separated in yet another cunning subplot to lead us astray. Nablia is in hospital following the attack, and Reverend Bronson stays in Barcelona to visit her, Marc has to check some last details of Alma’s whereabouts, and this is obviously when the killer strikes again! This time it’s a failure, and Nabila escapes once again, but the cops are in the killers trail, and soon their prime suspect will be captured.

Eventually Marc is too close to the killer for his own good and the police, persuaded that he just tried to murder the last victim and not chance the killer as he states himself, take him into custody. Once again I point out the common misunderstanding that Gialli have no plot or comprehensive storyline and only use cheap tricks. But here you go, evidence proving the opposite, in the autopsy scene, the doctor pointed out that the wounds where made by a right handed person which is later in the end of the movie proves a possible suspect to be innocent!

All good things come to an end and even so The Secret Killer. The murderer is exposed and the motif for slicing out eyeballs of the victims too and bizarrely enough there’s even a happy ending for one of the lead protagonists to wrap things up nice and tidy. Ironically there are several small clues and questions that get revealed during the final scenes. Answers to suggestions and questions which I would think may be seen more coherently by an audience perhaps not to familiar with the genre. I say ironic because with knowledge of the genre and the “anyone can be the killer” twists that frequent the Gialli, it’s a rarity that the most obvious killer is there right under your nose.

The Secret Killer has a fabulous score by the late Bruno Nicolai, who composed some of the finest scores ever set to Gialli movies, This one much in the same suave style of his previous scores for Guiliano Carnimeo’s The Case of The Bloody Iris 1972, and Sergio Martino’s Your Vice Is A Closed Room and Only I Have the Key also from1972. But on the down side, this fantastic score is misused and brutally wasted on this film, or perhaps overused is a better word as it keeps coming in every now and again without any regards to what mood the scene is playing for what so ever. Sometimes it’s just plain annoying and distracts from the narrative. But on it’s own it’s a great soundtrack.

Image:

2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen

Audio:

Dolby Digital Mono English, Dolby Digital 5.1 German, Dolby Digital Mono German, no subtitles available.

Extras:

The theatrical trailer, filmographies for Umberto Lenzi, John Richardson, Martine Brochard and Ines Pellegrini, a slide show of stills and promotional materials. Finally a bunch of trailers for other Marketing Film’s releases, but nothing of real genre interest unless you like your Hong-Kong actioners dubbed to German.