Killer Fish (1979)

Antonio Margheriti’s 1979 opus Killer Fish has a 4.2 rating on IMDb and is contemptuously dismissed by people who take movies seriously so I figured I’d almost certainly love this movie. And I was right.

And it has a cast guaranteed to bring joy to the hearts of fans of 70s cult movies and TV.

It should be pointed out that the title is just a little bit misleading. There are piranhas, lots of them, and they do the stuff you expect piranhas to do, but they’re not the main focus. This is not a Jaws rip-off. It bears not the slightest resemblance to Jaws (or to the movie Piranha). This is a totally different type of movie. This is a frenetic action movie and it’s a heist movie.

We start with a fine heist sequence. Margheriti loved miniatures effects and he knew how to make them work. He was a guy who was just not going to include miniatures work unless it was done right. Yes, you can tell that he’s using miniatures, just as you can tell when directors of a later era use CGI. But somehow good miniatures work just looks better than CGI. It doesn’t have that cartoonish CGI look. This particular sequence involves lots of explosions. Margheriti liked to blow stuff up. I personally think that this is a very positive thing.

At first we don’t know it’s a heist. We get a brief scene of a smoother operator doing some big-time gambling at a casino, then we cut to a man and a woman breaking into some kind of industrial plant (possibly a power plant) deep in the Amazon rainforest. These people could be secret agents or thieves.

We soon find out that they’re thieves. The objective is not sabotage (they blow up a whole pile of stuff merely as a diversion). Their objective is the safe in the main office. It would appear that either the owners of the plant have been doing some shady financial stuff or possibly they just don’t trust the government but they keep their financial reserves in that safe. In the form of precious stones. Emeralds.

The smooth operator is Paul Diller (James Franciscus) and he’s the mastermind. He has a hobby. Tropical fish. Carnivorous tropical fish. He has a tank full of piranhas. At first it just seems like an odd hobby. The duo who made the break-in are Paul’s girlfriend Kate (Karen Black) and Lasky (Lee Majors). We get the feeling that there could be a bit of a romantic triangle here. This suggests the possibility of a double-cross. In fact there will be lots of double-crosses. The first attempt is made by the two guys who are the gang’s hired muscle. The emeralds are hidden in a lake. These two guys think that grabbing the emeralds for themselves will be easy. Big mistake.

The heist story intersects with a separate plot strand involving a fashion photo shoot in the rainforest. The organiser is the glamorous Ann Hoyt (Marisa Berenson). The star model is Gabrielle (Margaux Hemingway). The thieves are lying low in a luxury hotel and they get to meet the fashion photo people and it’s instantly obvious that Gabrielle and Lasky are hot for each other. That will lead to big trouble.

The plot then gets complicated when the hurricane strikes. And what about those piranhas? Don’t worry, they get plenty to do (and plenty to eat).

So this is a hurricane disaster movie, a killer fish movie and a heist movie. Bringing that all together might seem like a challenge but Margheriti pulls it off with style.

The action scenes are excellent. I’ve already mentioned the excellent miniatures work. We do see the piranhas but mostly we see the results of their activities. And we get scenes of spectacular destruction during the hurricane.

James Franciscus is very good - smooth but with a hint of obsessiveness bordering on madness. Franciscus handles this with admirable subtlety.

Lee Majors isn’t called on to do any fancy acting. All he has to do is project a brooding intensity and a sense of being a dangerous bad boy. He does this effortlessly.

And then there are the women. Three very glamorous women played by three glamorous actresses. Marisa Berenson’s job is to be classy and stylish, which she handles with no problems. Karen Black as Kate shares top billing with Lee Majors and she’s in terrific form. Kate is sexy and dangerous, possibly treacherous and she’s a passionate woman. She’s a bad girl but we like her a lot. She has spirit.

Margaux Hemingway was not a great actress but she’s playing a fashion model and Miss Hemingway was a fashion model. Gabrielle is beautiful, blonde and dumb but maybe not so dumb. A girl doesn’t survive long in the cut-throat world of the super-model without learning a few survival skills. Maybe Gabrielle shouldn’t be under-estimated. This was a role that was just within Margaux Hemingway’s limited acting range but she’s adequate and she looks super-glamorous.

There’s no nudity or sex (although Margaux Hemingway does share a shower with Lee Majors). Considering the presence of thousands of piranhas the gore is very very restrained. The intention was obviously to avoid a US R rating at all costs.

The pacing is excellent (Margheriti always knew how to pace a movie). The plot has the necessary nasty little twists. You get a fine heist story plus a large-scale disaster plus piranhas. This is what cinema is all about! Killer Fish is hugely entertaining. Highly recommended.

I have the Spanish Blu-Ray and it looks great. It includes the English-Language version with removable Spanish subtitles.

The Ark of the Sun God (1984)

The Ark of the Sun God is a 1984 Italian-Spanish-Turkish Indiana Jones rip-off but it’s directed by Antonio Margheriti so you expect that it will be a very good very entertaining Indiana Jones rip-off. And it is.

This is very much a feelgood movie. It’s family entertainment in the best sense of the term. There’s no gore, no graphic violence, no nudity and no sex. But there is an abundance of fun and style.


It begins with a burglary but the burglar, Rick Spear (David Warbeck), has been set up. It was a test. It was a way for his old buddy, English aristocrat Lord Dean (John Steiner) to manipulate Rick into agreeing to carry out a much more challenging burglary. He has to open a door. It is the door to the tomb of Gilgamesh. The objective is to steal a jewelled sceptre, thousands of years old and of immense mystical and symbolic importance. It is reputed to have magical powers. It is potentially the key to vast political power. Lord Dean wants the staff, but Lord Dean is not the bad guy. Or at least he claims to be the good guy.

There are others who want that sceptre. They are the bad guys, although perhaps from their point of view they’re the good guys.

Both groups want to have a lever that will force Rick to join their side. The obvious lever is his cute American girlfriend Carol (Susie Sudlow). Rick is crazy about Carol. If she were to be kidnapped Rick would agree to anything.

Lord Dean is a kind of freelancer who seems to be working on behalf of the British and American governments with the aim of keeping the sceptre out of the hands of those who might use it in a way that would damage British and American interests. This is a story that could easily have been developed in a more cynical direction, with perhaps a suggestion that the good guys are no more moral than the bad guys, but Margheriti clearly did not want to go down that path.

On the other hand Lord Dean does kidnap Carol, ostensibly so that the bad guys cannot kidnap her again. It’s also notable that Carol is not actually mistreated by either the good guys or the bad guys.

Rick has an ally, of sorts, in Mohammed (Ricardo Palacios). He’s a dealer in curios and artifacts and anything else that might prove profitable. He’s a nice guy but he’s unscrupulous where business is concerned. He’s the kind of guy who might well be tempted to double-cross his own mother.

He acquires another ally, a grizzled old adventurer named Beetle (Luciano Pigozzi). Beetle had been part of the expedition led by a German archaeologist who discovered the tomb of Gilgamesh decades earlier but was unable to open it. Beetle is a nice old guy but again we can’t be certain he will prove to be trustworthy. The viewer is left with just enough uncertainty about the motivations of key characters like Lord Dean, Mohammed and Beetle to keep things interesting.

There are some truly spectacular action sequences, naturally all done using the techniques of the pre-CGI era, and they look a whole lot better than most modern action scenes done with CGI. Margheriti had a real flair for action scenes and he had a very good crew.

There’s superb use of the Turkish locations especially the remote location of the tomb.

Margheriti clearly had a reasonable budget to work with but like most Italian genre directors of that era he could always make a movie look more expensive than it was. This is visually a very impressive movie.

David Warbeck makes a fine action hero. He’s a decent guy but he is a professional burglar so he’s not exactly honest and he has a definite tough edge. Warbeck has real charisma. Happily the English dub features Warbeck’s own voice. It also features John Steiner’s own voice and he’s great fun as Lord Dean, a guy who like Rick is a good guy with flexible ethics.

The whole cast is good.

The Ark of the Sun God is highly recommended.

The 88 Films Blu-Ray looks very nice and includes a decent audio commentary.

Web of the Spider (1971)

Antonio Margheriti’s Web of the Spider (the original Italian title is Nella stretta morsa del ragno) is a colour remake of his excellent 1964 gothic horror film Castle of Blood which had starred Barbara Steele. I love the fact that the German title was Dracula im Schloß des Schreckens even though it has nothing to do with Dracula or vampires.

It begins with Edgar Allan Poe (played by Klaus Kinski!) in London which is cool because Poe certainly never visited England. Poe is being interviewed by an American reporter, Alan Foster (Anthony Franciosa). Poe claims that his stories of the strange and the supernatural are all in fact quite true. There really is life beyond the grave. Of a sort. Perhaps the dead are dead in some ways but not in others.

At this point it should be noted that the movie has no connection with any of Poe’s stories, but it’s a gothic horror movie so why not include Poe as a character?

Foster is introduced to Lord Thomas Blackwood. Blackwood owns a famous haunted castle. Foster accepts a wager, that he will not be able to survive a night in the castle. No-one who has ever tried it has returned to tell the tale. Foster is a rationalist. He doesn’t believe in ghosts. He has no doubt that he will have no problem spending a night at Blackwood Castle.

The castle is uninhabited but that doesn’t worry Foster.

To his surprise the castle isn’t deserted after all as he discovers when he meets the beautiful young woman who lives there. She is Lord Blackwood’s sister, Elisabeth Blackwood (Michèle Mercier). There’s another gorgeous babe as well, Julia (Karin Field). As far as Forster is concerned things are looking up.

In fact the castle is full of people. Maybe they’re alive and maybe they aren’t. Maybe this is the present and maybe it’s the past.

There are certainly some romantic and sexual dramas being played out. Perhaps they just go on being played out over and over again.

Foster has of course fallen in love with Elisabeth. She is in love with him, or so he assumes.

Elisabeth has a husband and she has a lover, Herbert (Raf Baldassarre). Or at least she did once have a husband and a lover.

The mysterious Dr Carmus (Peter Carsten) has tried to explain things to Foster. Carmus’ theories are similar to Poe’s. The point at which life ends depends upon what you mean by life.

Foster isn’t sure if he is really involved in these dramas from the past or not. He’s a pretty confused guy. He just knows that he wants Elisabeth.

While this was an attempt to update Castle of Blood by remaking it in colour Web of the Spider doesn’t really feel like a 1970s gothic horror movie. It has a bit of a retro feel. In fact visually it’s reminiscent in some ways of Roger Corman’s Poe movies, but done with a European sensibility. That’s actually no bad thing. It’s also fairly tame by 1971 standards, with nothing more than brief topless nudity.

This is obviously a ghost story, but then again it isn’t. It doesn’t fit neatly into a particular gothic horror sub-genre (which is true of so many Italian gothic horror movies of that era). It deals with what might be described as ghosts but they’re not the kinds of ghosts you find in most ghost stories. They’re not vampires but maybe in a sense they are undead. Whether or not they’re dead or undead depends on your definition of such terms. Of course they might be illusions. Italian gothic horror movies tended to ignore strict genre conventions and also to deal in a certain amount of ambiguity. Web of the Spider revels in ambiguity.

I liked the ending a great deal.

To enjoy this movie you have to take it on its own terms without constantly comparing it to Castle of Blood. It’s a remake but it has a different feel. Being in colour it obviously has a very different aesthetic. I personally like the aesthetic of Web of the Spider. I do have one minor aesthetic quibble - Anthony Franciosa looks too much like he’s just stepped out of the 1970s.

Apparently Margheriti was disappointed by this film but directors are often poor judges of their own work. He was obviously proud of Castle of Blood (and rightly so) and presumably was therefore inclined to judge Web of the Spider harshly.

All of Margheriti’s movies were made on very limited budgets. He was used to that. Like all Italian genre directors of that era he knew how to get good results with very little money.

Of course Michèle Mercier was no Barbara Steele. She can’t match Steele’s magnetism, charisma and sense of dangerous exotic eroticism. No-one could. Mlle Mercier does a pretty effective job. Klaus Kinski is, it goes without saying, delightfully deranged as Poe. Poe was obviously added as a character because his name was a major box-office draw but the framing story involving Poe works quite well.

Web of the Spider is enjoyable slightly offbeat gothic horror. Highly recommended.

The German DVD release, with the title Dracula im Schloß des Schreckens, includes the English dubbed version. That’s the release I have. The transfer is very good. Lots of scenes had been cut from the English dubbed version (which probably explains the movie’s poor reputation). They’re restored here, but in Italian (or sometimes German) with English subtitles and from an inferior source. On the whole the DVD is excellent. There is a German Blu-Ray release as well but I am not sure that it is English-friendly. There’s also a hard-to-find Garagehouse Pictures Blu-Ray.

Yor: The Hunter from the Future (1983)

I always get excited when I see the words “directed by Antonio Margheriti” in a movie’s credits. It invariably means I’m in for a good time. I have no problems with profound movies and arty movies but sometimes you just want the cinematic equivalent of a burger and fries. Antonio Margheriti understood this and he would do you a great burger and fries and throw in a thick shake as well. I respect that.

Yor: The Hunter from the Future came out in 1983. I love the fact that we don’t get an introduction explaining what’s going on. Margheriti is confident he can entertain us enough to keep us watching and that it will be more fun to find these things out slowly.

At the beginning we don’t know if we’re on Earth or some other planet and we don’t know if we’re in the distant past or the distant future. We do know that things are pretty primitive.

We’re introduced to a tribe who are more or less at a Stone Age level of culture. They are however reasonably peaceful and friendly. They’re certainly friendly towards a mysterious stranger named Yor (Reb Brown). He’s just saved the life of Kalaa (Corinne Cléry). She’s a total babe and when he returns to her village with her and sees her dancing and sees the way she moves her hips he’s comprehensively smitten. She thinks he’s pretty nice as well. She knows a hero when she sees one and Yor is definitely a hero.

Yor has a medallion that he wears around his neck. He has no idea what it is but he’s certain that it’s important.

Disaster is however about to strike. There’s another tribe, a tribe of beast-men, and they’re not the least bit peaceful or friendly. They raid the village of Kalaa’s tribe, slaughter the men and carry off the women.

There are lots of dangers to worry about. The dinosaurs for starters. But there are worse things than dinosaurs.

There’s another tribe living out in the desert. Their queen is reputed to have magical powers. They worship her as a goddess. She’s blonde and beautiful. Yor falls for her in a big way.

Yor might be a hero but he doesn’t know too much about women. He doesn’t know enough to realise that these two chicks are going to be trying to scratch each other’s eyes out. Kalaa is a very jealous woman and as far as she’s concerned Yor is her man.

Yor has always had a feeling that there is something important he must do. There is a secret that he must unravel. He has a Destiny.

There’s yet another tribe living by the sea, and sure enough there’s another babe anxious to throw herself at Yor. And there’s a Mysterious Island, which might provide the answers for which Yor has been searching.

I’m being very vague about the plot because it’s ingenious and rather cool and it’s more fun to see it unfold gradually (although the posters give some of it away).

Suffice to say that this is not quite the prehistoric adventure movie it seemed to be at the beginning.

There are people on the island and they’re very different from the other inhabitants of this world. They’re definitely not Stone Age people. There are robots and rayguns. There’s also an insane and very twisted villain. He is Overlord. He has minions, and very nasty they are too.

This movie started life as a four-part Italian television series. It was edited down to less than half its original length for feature film release. The plot is still perfectly coherent (rather crazy but it does make sense).

This film may not have had anything like a Hollywood budget but it’s visually very impressive. Imagination and flair (which this movie has in abundance) always count for more than money. Best of all this was 1983 so there’s no CGI. The special effects are old school but they work just fine.

This film is fast-moving and action-packed. It has a big dumb but likeable hero. It has feisty sexy females. It looks terrific. It boasts some great location shooting (in Turkey). It has monsters and villains. It has crazy twists and turns as Yor figures out what’s going on. It’s lots of fun. A total blast from start to finish. Very highly recommended.

Reb Brown isn’t much of an actor but he’s energetic and has a certain naïve charm and you can’t help liking him. John Steiner oozes slimy evil menace as Overlord. Corinne Cléry is a fine heroine. She is best-known for The Story of O (1975), one of the best erotic movies ever made. She’s also in Lucio Fulci’s The Devil’s Honey (1986) which is an absolute must-see movie.

I’ve reviewed a number of Antonio Margheriti’s films including his giallo Naked You Die (1968) and his amazing science fiction films The Wild, Wild Planet (1966) and The Snow Devils (1967).

The Long Hair of Death (1964)

The Long Hair of Death is a 1964 Italian gothic horror film directed by Antonio Margheriti and starring Barbara Steele.

The main story takes place in the year 1499 but there is a prologue dealing with important events a few years earlier. Count Franz had been murdered. The murderer had diverted suspicion on to an innocent woman, Adele Karnstein. Adele was accused of being a witch and burnt. Another young woman had in her possession important evidence. This young woman also came to an untimely end. Both Count Franz’s brother Humboldt and Humboldt’s son Kurt (George Ardisson) were involved in these nefarious plots. Adele vows that retribution will seek out Humboldt and Kurt, in the last year of the century.

We then jump forward to 1499. The region is being devastated by plague, which may or may not be the result of Adele’s dying curse.

Kurt is obsessed by Lisabeth Karnstein (Halina Zalewska), the daughter of Adele. He is determined to marry her. She finds him repulsive. He marries her and he is able to possess her body but she vows he will never have her heart.

Then a mysterious young woman (played by Barbara Steele) appears at the castle. Her name is Mary. Kurt takes a more than passing interest in her. She seems to reciprocate his love, or at least his lust.

Lisabeth’s feelings towards Kurt seem conflicted. On their wedding night she was horrified by the thought of being touched by him. Despite this she is certainly not going to let any other woman have him.

A romantic triangle develops but we know from the start that it’s not a straightforward romantic triangle. Those events in the past are casting their shadow on the present. We also suspect that something supernatural is going on. This is one of those gothic horror movies that keeps us guessing until the end about whether this is really a supernatural horror story. If supernatural elements really are involved we may have our suspicions about how those elements will play out, but we can’t be quite sure.

There is also the possibility of madness playing a part as key characters start to unravel.

Romantic triangles do tend to get messy and can lead one or more participants to consider the possibilities of murder. More than one participant in this particular triangle might have reason to contemplate such a step. In fact all three might have such motives.

There’s plenty of sexual tension as Kurt’s obsession with Mary grows.

This is a fine part for Barbara Steele. She looks perfect in Renaissance-period gowns and she exudes dangerous eroticism and mystery.

George Ardisson as Kurt has a demanding role. Kurt is tortured by love, lust, guilt and fear and he slowly begins to fall apart. Ardisson doesn’t seem to have had a very distinguished career but he’s effective here.

Halina Zalewska is fine as Lisabeth but she is inevitably overshadowed by Barbara Steele’s stellar performance.

The original story was by Ernesto Gastaldi, one of the great Italian screenwriters of this era (and a highly acclaimed novelist as well). Tonino Valerii and Antonio Margheriti were responsible for the screenplay. It’s a good story with some reasonably nasty and effective twists.

I’m quite an Antonio Margheriti fan. Yes, some of his movies are schlocky and trashy but they’re never less than entertaining and he did make some wonderful movies in a variety of genres, including one of my all-time favourite science fiction movies, The Wild, Wild Planet (1966). He also made a pretty decent early giallo, Naked You Die (1968). Margheriti was very competent and had the ability to get good results on low budgets. The Long Hair of Death is one of his best efforts as a director. Margheriti deserves more attention as an important figure in European cult cinema.

The film was shot in black-and-white and Riccardo Pallottini’s cinematography drips with gothic atmosphere.

This movie ticks all the right gothic horror boxes and it’s creepy and moody and suitable doom-laden. The pay-off at the end is perfect. Add the excellent performance by Barbara Steele and you have here a very very fine gothic horror movie that deserves a lot more love. Very highly recommended.

The Long Hair of Death was available for years in very poor quality DVD transfers. Raro Video have released in on both DVD and Blu-Ray and their release looks terrific.

The Snow Devils (1967)

In the mid-1960s Antonio Margheriti teamed up with a couple of American producers to make four space operas, beginning with The Wild, Wild Planet (1966). The Snow Devils was part of this series, appearing in 1967. All four of these space operas take place in the same universe, much of the action takes place in space station Gamma One, sets and props were sometimes re-used. Today we’d call this a franchise. In fact I’d refer to it as the Gamma One franchise.

These movies are often patronisingly referred to as camp classics or sneered at as “so-bad-it’s-good” movies. This is rather unfair. Margheriti was perhaps no auteur but he was a professional who turned out good well-crafted entertaining movies in many different genres. He was not a hack. And he was not an Italian Ed Wood Jr. either. The Gamma One movies were low-budget productions but the people involved were doing exactly what Mario Bava did in movies such as Planet of the Vampires - they were trying to stretch limited budgets as far as they could whilst making movies that looked striking and interesting. These Gamma One movies do have an outrageous 60s Pop Art sensibility to them, but that’s a feature not a bug. They really are visually arresting. This was the 1960s vision of a science fiction future.

The special effects are crude but that’s just the nature of low-budget movie-making.

The Snow Devils is available on DVD in the Warner Archive series.

The Snow Devils opens in a weather station in the Himalayas. The crew have picked up some truly startling temperature readings. So startling that they’re reluctant to report them for fear of being thought crazy. And then all hell breaks loose at the station.

Commander Rod Jackson (Giacomo Rossi Stuart) and Captain Frank Pulasky (Goffredo Unger) from United Democracies Star Command are sent to the Himalayas. Young Star Command scientist Lisa Nielson (Ombretta Colli) wants to accompany them. She was engaged to be married to the commander of the weather station and she’s convinced he survived the disaster. Jackson vetoes her request but of course you know that she’ll find a way to join the expedition.

When their helijet is destroyed Jackson and Pulasky set off into the mountains on foot, with a native guide and several porters. And yes, Lisa Nielson has managed to tag along.

Given the fact that the weather station had been located in yeti country there are of course jokes made that what they’re looking for is the yeti, the Abominable Snowman. The locals refer to the yeti as Snow Devils.

Jackson and his team find the Snow Devils but they’re not all what Jackson (and the audience) might have expected. At this point the movie changes gears somewhat, moving into more overt science fiction territory. I’m not going to tell you what they actually find in the Himalayas because it’s supposed to come as a shock revelation (and it is definitely a surprise).

Now Jackson has a real fight for survival on his hands.

The movie will then switch gears again. This was promised as a space opera but so far all the action has taken place on Earth. That is about to change. We are going to get spaceships and space battles.

The acting is what you expect from this type of movie although since the Warner Archive disc includes only the English dubbed version it’s difficult to make a real judgment on the performances.

Since this is 60s Italian space opera you’re going to be hoping for outrageousness and craziness and you get plenty of both. You get cheap but cool sets as well. And the ultra-groovy bubble cars, which appear in other Gamma One movies as well.

There’s zero sex or nudity. These were clearly movies aimed at a family audience. There’s a very slight hint of romance - the glamorous Lieutenant Teri Sanchez (Halina Zalewska) obviously thinks Commander Jackson is pretty hunky.

The Warner Archive DVD offers a reasonably OK transfer with no extras aside from a trailer.

I reviewed the first of the Gamma One movies, The Wild, Wild Planet (1966), a while back. It’s one of the grooviest sci-fi movies of the decade and is very highly recommended. The second of the Margheriti space operas, The War of the Planets (1966), is also enormous fun.

The Snow Devils is a crazy ride but I don’t see that as being due to any lack of ability of the part of the people who made this movie. They set out to make a fun popcorn movie and they succeeded. Highly recommended.

Naked You Die (1968)

Naked You Die is a 1968 giallo from Antonio Margheriti. A heavily cut version was released in the U.S. as The Young, the Evil and the Savage.

It’s generally considered that Mario Bava invented the giallo and there were some other obvious influences at work - Hitchcock’s Psycho, Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, the West German krimis. Bava’s Blood and Black Lace established the basic giallo template in 1964 but it didn’t have too many immediate successors. It wasn’t until 1968 that the giallo really started to take off, with movies such as Romolo Guerrieri’s The Sweet Body of Deborah. So Naked You Die (the Italian title was Nude... si muore) counts as an early example of a full-blown giallo.

Margheriti doesn’t get a huge amount of respect as a director. He worked in lots of different genres and if you like to view movies through the lens of auteur theory it’s not easy to see Margheriti as a full-blooded auteur. His movies don’t have that personal signature that the movies of Bava and Argento have. I doubt that Margheriti would have greatly cared. I suspect he was just trying to make entertaining movies.

I’ve had a good time with Margheriti’s movies over the years. They may not reach great cinematic heights but they’re always enjoyable.

Naked You Die has a classic giallo setup. It’s the beginning of term at a girls’ boarding school and some new teachers have arrived. When we see the schoolgirls lounging by the pool we get the message that this is a very expensive girls’ school and these are very rich girls.

Then one of the girls, Betty Ann, disappears. We know she was murdered because we saw the murder but nobody at the school knows what happened. She just vanished.

Lucille (Eleonora Brown) will find the body but then the body disappears. She has no proof that Betty Ann is dead. Nobody is going to believe her story. They’ll think she’s just an hysterical schoolgirl.

Lucille has fallen madly in love with one of the new teachers, Richard Barrett (Mark Damon). He instructs the girls in horse-riding. He’s terribly good looking which explains why Lucille (who has never before shown the lightest interest in horses) has suddenly developed a passion for riding. Much to the amusement of the other girls.

Jill (Sally Smith) likes to fantasise that she’s a crime writer or even a spy. Jill is not the slightest bit crazy. She’s just a normal healthy schoolgirl with an overactive imagination.

One thing that’s nice is that all the girls are likeable. They’re not bratty. They’re not mean girls. They squabble occasionally and there are a few jealousies concerning handsome male teachers but on the whole they’re nice normal girls.

Another murder follows. The police (in the person of Michael Rennie as Inspector Durand) are called in. Durand is confident that normal investigative procedures will solve the case but his confidence seems misplaced when yet another corpse turns up.

This being a giallo and the victims being young women we naturally suspect that these are sex murders but Lucille isn’t so sure.

There are quite a few suspects. Richard’s behaviour is at times difficult to explain. There’s the gardener, La Foret, who likes to watch the girls while they shower. There’s Professor André, whose domain is the “bughouse” where he keeps his collection of birds and insects. He’s wildly eccentric but apparently a nice old chap. But naturally in a giallo we can’t be sure. There’s gym teacher Di Brazzi who often seems to be wandering about in a mysterious fashion. And that’s not taking into account the remote possibility that the murderer might be a woman. One or two of the female staff members are a little odd.

All we really know about the killer is that he wears black gloves when he kills.

This movie doesn’t have the wildly extravagant murder scenes that you get in later giallos but several of the murders are very effectively staged, especially the one with the murderer wearing scuba gear and the bathtub murder.

There’s no blood. This killer is a strangler. There’s very little nudity.

There is a decent story which turns out to be a very giallo-esque plot. Interestingly enough Mario Bava and Tudor Gates had a hand in the screenplay. This was originally intended to be a Bava film. There’s some effective misdirection, a wide choice of suspects and some colourful characters.

The acting is very solid. The standout performance is Sally Smith as Jill. She’s amusing and adorable and great fun when she decides to play amateur detective.

Dark Sky’s DVD is uncut and offers a very good 16:9 enhanced transfer (the movie was shot in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio). The only extra is a trailer.

Margheriti was an honest journeyman director, he builds some decent suspense and he delivers a fine ending.

Naked You Die is not a top-tier giallo but it’s a well-crafted entertaining second-tier effort. It’s definitely recommended, and worth seeing if you’re interested in the evolution of the giallo genre.

The Wild, Wild Planet (1966)

The Wild, Wild Planet (originally released in Italy as I criminalia della galassia  or Criminals of the Galaxy) is a 1966 Italian science fiction movie. If you’re not familiar with 1960s Italian science fiction movies then you should take immediate steps to rectify that omission and this is a pretty good place to start.

If you are familiar with Italian cinematic science fiction then you will already have a fair idea of what to expect - this is a shiny plastic and chrome vision of the future with flying cars and a huge rotating space station (called Gamma One) and rockets shuttling back and forth between the planets. This was the 1960s, so everything in the future was going to actually work. Everything in the future was going to be very cool. The men would be handsome and, more importantly of all, the women were all going to be gorgeous.

It’s not actually explicitly stated but this is a future of very advanced biotechnology so it’s possible that the women just stay young and beautiful forever. Or maybe the producers just wanted lots of hot women in the movie.

This is not Star Trek however, where sordid details like politics and business never intrude. This is a future in which real power seems to be in the hands of giant corporations. They’re not just transnational corporations, they’re transplanetary corporation. And it seems that the big money is in post-humanism - which means there’s a huge market in replacement organs. One of these corporations, CBM, has plans to grow artificial organs.

This kind of medical technology raises obvious ethical questions but CBM doesn’t seem too worried about such things. In fact CBM isn’t the least bit concerned about ethics and as will discover their chief scientist is both evil and insane.

So in some ways this movie actually does a better job of predicting the future than most British and American TV and movie sci-fi of its era.

The future might be cool but it’s not trouble-free. People are disappearing. Lots of people. And in increasing numbers. There’s a suspicion that these disappearances might be connected with flocks of girls hanging around the city. The people who have disappeared may have been kidnapped by the girl. There’s also a weird sinister guy in sunglasses who keeps popping up and then vanishing.

There are some macabre touches. Like miniature people. And people with too many arms.

Commander Mike Halstead of Space Command thinks there’s a connection with the mysterious planet Delphus. Which is a bit of a worry since his girlfriend Lieutenant Connie Gomez (Lisa Gastoni) has accepted an invitation from Mr Nurmi to take a vacation on Delphus. Mr Nurmi works for CBM.

There are no space battles but there are spaceships and they look the way people in the 60s knew spaceships should look. This is the future that we never got and it looks much better than the future we actually did get. The evil robot girls are a nice touch. I’m not sure that they’re actually robots but they do seem to be an artificial maybe semi-organic life form which is actually more interesting. And the evil artificial guys are actually quite spooky.

There is some action, and even some definite hints of horror (the bad guys are up to some pretty nefarious tricks and the results are not pretty). Margheriti had spent the preceding couple of years making gothic horror movies so he had a sound understanding of creepiness.

The acting is adequate for the type of movie this is. In other words it’s enjoyably terrible. Look out for Franco Nero in a small rôle.

I’ve never understood why producer-director Antonio Margheriti doesn’t have a bigger following among cult movie fans. OK, he was no Mario Bava and you aren’t going to get the kind of visual genius that Bava could provide. But by the standards of European low-budget/exploitation film-makers Margheriti was quite competent and he had a very clear understanding of what sells - his horror movies (like The Long Hair of Death starring Barbara Steele) have some reasonable chills and some hints of sleaze and his science fiction movies have glamour and a certain amount of enjoyably cheesy style. His movies are undemanding fun. He went on to make three more Gamma One movies.

While the very low budget is evident the special effects and miniatures work is generally at least witty and fun even when it’s ludicrously unconvincing. Antonio Margheriti had a background in those areas and obviously loved using miniatures. It might be a cheap movie but it’s colourful and filled to overflowing with 60s visual style. The production design is original and impressive.

The plot is goofy and outlandish and basically crazy but it does make a kind of sense, and this is after all a mad scientist movie so the craziness is a feature rather than a bug.

The Warner Archive release offers a very nice anamorphic transfer (the movie was shot in colour and widescreen). The colours look pretty good. There are of course no extras.

The Wild, Wild Planet is not by any objective standards a great or even a good movie but as a silly outrageous popcorn movie with a lot of 60s style it’s gloriously entertaining if you’re in the right mood. And as it happens I’m always in the right mood for this type of movie! So I’m not going to apologise for giving it a highly recommended rating.