Cold Sweat (1970)

Original title: De la part des copains

Korean War veteran Joe Martin (Charles Bronson) is living with his wife Fabienne (Liv Ullmann) and her daughter Michèle (Yannick Delulle) at the Côte D’Azur, working his own small boat charter service. The marriage seems somewhat tense thanks to Joe suffering from what we’d now call PTSD. He’s drinking too much and holds back emotionally. As it turns out when one a rather nasty character from Joe’s past named Whitey (Michel Constantin) turns up one summer evening, Joe has also been holding back some facts from his past, as well as his actual name.

You see, seven years ago, he was part of break-out from a military prison organized by one of his former commanding officers, one Captain Ross (the very American James Mason). When Katanga (Jean Topart), one of the other members of the group, murdered a random cop for not much of a reason during the break-out, Joe was having none of it, simply taking off with the escape car, leaving the rest of the men to fend for themselves.

For some reason, Whitey really needs Joe’s boat now, to transport something to or from a Turkish vessel anchored somewhere in the area, and he’s certainly not the kind of guy unwilling to threaten a wife and a kid (if available). Joe, on the other hand, is not the kind of guy to tolerate that very well, killing Whitey and getting rid of his body rather efficiently – with a little help from Fabienne.

Of course, this is not he end of the couple’s problems, for soon enough, the rest of the former break-out gang – Ross, Katanga, and one Gelardi (Luigi Pistilli), turn up. They, too are very much into threatening families and really want Joe’s boat, as well as, probably, a bit of vengeance. So our protagonist agrees to their demands, until the right moment comes to make his displeasure known more violently.

In theory, Cold Sweat is a French production, but it’s one of those international joints that really don’t feel specifically regional apart from its setting. The cast is a merry mixture of people from all over the globe, as is good tradition in European genre filmmaking of this era. Rather less common in this sort of thing, the director isn’t French or Italian but veteran British filmmaker Terence Young.

The script, indeed written by two Frenchmen, is based on a novel by Richard Matheson and follows the Gold Medal paperback style of late 60s, early 70s thriller, something a lot of French filmmakers (and one assumes producers) seem to have admired quite a bit. For good reasons, too, because this style of the thriller, with focussed plots that still manage to squeeze in some surprisingly deep characterization, and an update of a noirish philosophical outlook tend to adapt really rather well to the screen, often without there being too big of a need for major changes. Unfortunately, I can’t say if the film at hand does actually make many changes to the plot, because this is one of the Matheson books I’ve never gotten around to reading.

As it stands on screen, it’s a fine bit of early 70s thriller in any case, with sharp plotting, not terribly deep but effective characterization and a real sense for the tense set-up followed by a follow-through that always escalates the drama of any given situation. As we all know, Young was a wonderful director for this kind of thing, usually not showing himself beholden to the stodgier style of some of his British contemporaries but using the increased technical possibilities of changing times in filmmaking to the fullest.

Particularly the film’s final act where is Joe racing and scrabbling to save his loved ones through ever increasing problems and dangers is absolutely fantastic. There’s a brilliantly done car race against the clock that isn’t even the film’s proper climax to enjoy, for example. The sequence is edited and shot so sharply, Young can even check in on the quieter tension between the surviving rest of the characters during it without lessening its impact, instead ratcheting up the suspense with this device, as it is meant to do but all too often doesn’t.

Acting-wise, Cold Sweat is mostly a fine proposition, the cast of character actors performing just as good as you can expect them to (which is why people like I love character actors often more than the proper movie stars – consistency and quiet capability is the thing), Bronson’s suggesting much about Joe’s inner life by tensing and untensing his shoulders (seriously) and also gets some pretty fun tough guy lines, while Ullmann provides a stock character with actual life. The only problem spot here is James Mason, or rather, James Mason as played by his bad, oh so bad, American accent, a thing so awesome (like giant tentacled monsters are awesome) it apparently does not leave room for much of an actual performance.

But then, he would have been dubbed by someone just as bad in most Italian movies, so we do at least get to experience what this great actor believed Americans sound like.

Cold Sweat is obviously still a wonderful piece of European/International thriller.

Night of the Serpent (1969)

Original title: La notte dei serpenti

aka Nest of Vipers

Alcoholic gringo Luke (Luke Askew) has been taken in by one of the archetypal gangs of bandits/revolutionaries that dominate Italian Mexico and the border regions of the US to Mexico. The charming people use Luke as their mascot and punching bag. The band’s leader is not completely without morals – even if it’s the sort that’ll not hinder him from killing quite ruthlessly – yet he’s not above lending Luke out as the perfect scapegoat and one-time killer for the plans of the police chief (which means he is his own kind of little violent potentate) of a neighbouring village. That man (Luigi Pistilli) has gotten in on reaping the fruits of a semi-accidental killing, and he and his not quite so willing co-conspirators just need somebody like Luke to either kill a child, or at least take the fall for the deed.

Turns out they couldn’t have chosen a worse alcoholic, for Luke’s mandatory trauma is just the right one to get him to leave off the tequila, take up his gun, and do some very practical things to assuage his guilt.

Just when I thought I finally truly had seen all the good films the Spaghetti Western had to offer and was basically down to Demofilo Fidano films (a fate as worse as death, and probably more painful than most deaths), along comes Giulio Petroni’s Night of the Serpent. I shouldn’t be too surprised, really, because Petroni’s handful of westerns is always at least interesting.

As a director Petroni here fluctuates between competently regurgitating stylistic elements of the genre he’s working in (his fast eye zooms are particularly dangerous there) and breaking them up or in with moments reminding me of completely different things. There are, for example, a handful of scenes staged as if they belonged into an old west gothic, or perhaps an atypical giallo. Particularly the initial murder-by-accident comes to mind here, but there are bits and pieces of this sort sprinkled throughout the film, turning it at times into something stranger or perhaps more personal than your typical Spaghetti Western.

Petroni also adds quite a few other strange moments to the film – there’s for example the mildly perverse subplot about two of the conspirators – the local priest and the local prostitute – and the rather unhealthy thing that’s going on between them. These moments give the film a peculiar mood and demonstrate a good degree of disgust towards your typical bourgeois, towards minor authority figures (and the film is good at emphasising how tiny these people’s authority is in the large run of things) who only ever misuse their little power and then whine about the consequences.

Consequently, the film’s positive figures are a self-destructive loser with something to feel as guilty about as his enemies, the local female shaman peyote popper, and a kid who explains he likes a certain of his relations best because that one doesn’t hit him as hard when he beats him up. Oh, it really is 1969, isn’t it?

Night isn’t quite as cynical (I’m tempted to say noirish, given the philosophical outlook) as some other Spaghetti Westerns, so it finds a kind of happy ending that might actually see the surviving characters grown through the violent proceedings. In another fine twist, it does so not in the traditional manner but by breaking up the climactic show-down through some surprising business I’m unwilling to spoil. Petroni is again playing with the expected formula here and at the very least deserves a smile and a bit of praise for that, as well as for turning what could have been a bog standard example of its genre into something a little different, without ever leaving the formula too far behind.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,reviews,spaghetti western,giulio petroni,luke askew,luigi pistilli

The Eerie Midnight Horror Show (1974)

aka Enter the Devil

aka The Devil Obsession

aka The Sexorcist

aka The Tormented

Original title: L'ossessa

When art student and ingénue Danila (Stella Carnacina, who will turn out to by a very enthusiastic actress when her time to writhe, shout, moan and puke green stuff comes) takes on the job of helping restore a wooden religious statue whose mere sight seems to arouse her, she probably doesn't expect what follows. After watching her mother (Lucretia Love) take a friendly rose whipping by her lover, Danila has a vision of the statue coming to life as Ivan Rassimov and having sex with her (most reviews actually speak of rape, but the act is clearly consensual in the print I saw). Suddenly, Danila's mild-mannered character begins to change.

A new-found interest in very rough masturbation and spending her nights screaming soon turns into an attempt to seduce her father (Chris Avram), who declines, leading to more noisome behaviour. Why, you could think Danila is possessed!

A bit of rest seems to help the young woman just fine, though, until she visits a former heathen temple. At this point, it's vision time again. Now, Danila sees herself at a Witches' Sabbath, where she pledges herself to Satan (who likes to spend time hanging on a cross, laughing, it seems) and gets crucified for her trouble. Danila's following hysterics are enough for the group of doctors her parents called in to diagnose her as Possessed by the Devil (it's SCIENCE!, I tell you) and give her into the loving (perhaps too loving) hands of exorcist Father Xeno (Luigi Pistilli), a man who, frankly, sucks at his job so much I was rooting for Satan.

Yes, Enter the Devil (or whichever title you prefer) was another of many attempts of the Italian cheap-shot film industry to beat The Exorcist (winner of the title "classic horror movie I personally care least about") at its own game by sexing it up a little (or a lot) and going into directions US movies even in the 70s seldom dared to walk.

For the first thirty or forty minutes, director Mario Gariazzo (last seen here making the noirish and very interesting Passport for a Corpse) delivers a film with a fine eye for taboo-skirting sleaze, put side by side with imagery that would probably look pretty blasphemous to me if I were Catholic; you just gotta love the willingness of Italian filmmakers to go to places like this.

Unfortunately, the conceptually wonderful and creative scene of the wooden statue coming to life and then having a bit of fun isn't really a sign pointing in the direction the film will be moving in during its second half. It doesn't take too long until The Sexorcist mostly gives up on the sexually loaded imagery (except for a slight return with a lame but nearly effective attempt by possessed Danila to seduce the hapless Father Xeno), wags its finger at Danila's mum's sex practices (really), and goes for the most basic exorcism movie stuff, with a lot of unexciting writhing and praying. In a film that starts out as sleazily strong as this one did, that really is a bit of a shame.

The Devil Obsession isn't improved by Gariazzo's rather variable direction style. Here, too, the film starts out strong with scenes filmed with a certain panache, a clear eye for the strange, and a complete absence of subtlety, but soon enough gets dragged down to a level where nothing that's happening on screen is staged in an interesting manner. I wouldn't be at all surprised if somebody told me there were two directors at work here, one responsible for the three vision sequences and the early scenes in the church, and somebody much less talented for the rest of the film. This is, of course, mere speculation.

Be that as it may, I can't say I found The Eerie Midnight Horror Show (a most puzzling title for the film at hand) to be all that bad as possession movies go. While its second half is pretty boring, it does at least have three (perhaps even four) good scenes, which is more than I'd be willing to say about a lot of movies.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,reviews,horror,mario gariazzo,stella carnacina,lucretia love,ivan rassimov,luigi pistilli

In short: Delitto D'Autore (1974)

Professional heiress Milena Gottardi (Sylva Koscina) has just returned to her provincial home town after having spent three years in the big city to hide her marriage to Marco Girardi (Pier Paolo Capponi) from her aunt Valeria (Wilma Casagrande), who has her hand on the family's purse strings. Valeria, you see, doesn't approve of Marco at all, and seems to have made it clear that this disapproval could make one a very skint heiress.

Shortly after Milena has arrived, threatening things begin to happen. Someone follows Milena everywhere and records her conversations; possibly the same mysterious person makes threatening phone calls; somebody leaves a pair of black gloves in Milena's bed.

Eventually, Milena is kidnapped and held for ransom, her aunt murdered and a possibly valuable painting stolen. It's clear to the police there must be more than one criminal, seeing how at odds kidnapping someone but then killing the person who is supposed to pay a ransom would be, yet knowing that and actually arresting anyone are two different things.

Delitto D'Autore is one of the more obscure giallos you can stumble onto, and can therefore only be found in a beat up print with colours so faded you'd think it was filmed in 2010.

Not that I'd expect a better print to be the film's saving grace - there's too much wrong with it to make it salvageable that way. Delitto's main problem is a disturbing lack of everything that makes a giallo worth watching: acidic commentary on the upper classes, stylish visuals, a sense of madness or the air of a dream all are absent. What's left to see is some random nudity, lots of scenes of cops talking in a room, and even more scenes of director Mario Sabatini just waving his hands pretending to do anything beyond somehow filling up the running time.

Where the good films of the genre swagger and wink and flash their stuff, proud of their sleaze, their style and often their absurdity, Sabatini's Delitto is tepid and timid and just sort of there, not even able to get any interesting performances out of a perfectly serviceable cast (Luigi Pistilli and Krista Nell are also in it, and both pretty much wasted).

The film's transformation from an exceedingly boring example of the giallo into an exceedingly boring example of the police procedural might come as a surprise (possibly the only one you'll experience watching it), yet it is not the sort of transformation that leads anywhere besides, perhaps, to a soundly sleeping viewer.

All in all, Delitto D'Autore is one of those films that languish in obscurity because they just don't have anything of interest to offer.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,in short,giallo,sylva koscina,luigi pistilli,krista nell