Oasis of Fear

I watched this for the first time on DVD last night, at 84:34 minutes it is apparently the longest available version. The picture quality was pretty weak at times and occasionally the language switched from English to Italian but hey, this is all part of the joys of being a fan of Euro sex, sleaze, thriller and horror movies. Directed by Umberto Lenzi, the man who started the notorious cycle of gory Italian cannibal movies, Oasis of Fear is a much different genre, it does contain one or two suspenseful moments (the one in the bird aviary is good) but I would not call this a proper Giallo movie. More of a sexy and fun thriller. Ray Lovelock and his gorgeous girlfriend Ornella Muti play a very young couple (I make her a mere 16 when she filmed this) travelling across Italy, selling pornographic photos of themselves but when their delightful little British MG sports car runs out of fuel they seek refuge at a large villa, owned by the strange Irene Papas. This is where things start to get interesting. The movie is sexy, groovy, fun and at times suspenseful, I wouldn't call it a classic by any means but for anybody who enjoys Euro movies from this period then it is worth seeing. The sex and nudity aspect is quite tame. Watch out for the crazy guy on a motorbike who speaks an curious and amusing mix of English and Italian!

I found Oasis Of Fear to be a good movie. It is about a young hippie couple that are trying to sell illegal pornography whilst they are in Italy. There is not too much nudity in the film, They drive around in a yellow open top sports car. they manage to break into the garage of this womens villa, and try to steal petrol from her car. she agrees to let them stay in her villa for the evening she then gets tortured by the young couple and they get involved in a murder case. I noticed that during some parts of the film. some sences were done with Italian subtitles, where there was no dubbed English. i thought that it was a good made exploitation film.

Posto ideale per uccidere, Un (1971) aka Oasis of fear aka Dirty pictures 7/10

A young free loving hippy couple Dick (Ray Lovelock) and Ingrid (Ornella Muti) buy a car load of porn in Copenhagen to help fund their holiday in Italy. Once in Italy they find plenty of takers for their product and soon find themselves very flush with cash which they spend like there's no tomorrow, soon they find they are broke again and Dick has the idea to take porno photos of themselves and flog them, but they approach the wrong person and are soon in the custody of the local police who confiscate the pics and give them 24 hours to leave the country. On their way home, their car runs out of petrol and so they knock into a nearby large house, where having received no reply decide to siphon off petrol from a car in the garage. They are confronted by Barbara, the apparently flustered lady of the house who threatens them with the police, but then on hearing their story changes her mind and invites them in for some food and to stay the night. It turns out she is the lonely wife of a NATO colonel and soon all three are involved in some flirtatious sex games, but who is taking advantage of who? Next morning we find out……

Another fine early Giallo from the diverse Lenzi, a rather bloodless and character driven film that doesn't really follow the Giallo tradition or for that matter let on where its going until the end, Lovelock and Muti are very good as the young sexually charged couple, who never hesitate to get naked, although Muti's nude scenes do seem to have been taken by a body double, Irene Papas as the very hospitable host takes most of the acting plaudits and portrays her characters vulnerability to perfection in a role that also requires her to show a sense of sexual frustration in a multi layered character and despite the fact not a lot happens in the first half of the film, there is a nice tension built up between the three leads. Lenzi also captures a fun frivolous swinging sixties full of flower power hippies, gypsies, sitars, swinging clubs which is defined by a very funky score with some horribly catchy songs by Bruno Lauzi. Although there is more than a slight overuse of the zoom lens throughout the film, Lenzi again proves to me he was a fine film maker. There's also a sting in the tale, in what is a rather muted and downbeat ending as Lenzi finally reveals his hand. Recommended

It's ironic sometimes how a film doesn't turn out quite like its director intended, but the end result still outshines much of his other work; Lenzi reportedly wanted to make something akin to EASY RIDER (1969) but producer Carlo Ponti requested "the usual giallo" – besides, the drug-trafficking angle was changed to an even more lurid (and commercial) one involving pornographic material (hence, the alternate title DIRTY PICTURES)! Anyway, this is an atypical {sic} – thus interesting – effort from the genre's heyday: for once, too, the tone isn't overly glum (Bruno Lauzi's score, in fact, is infectiously upbeat most of the time) while being, as ever, a very stylish film.

The plot concerns two English kids (Ray Lovelock and under-aged Ornella Muti) traveling through Catholic Italy selling uncommon 'brochures' (Muti is perhaps too Mediterranean-looking to convince as an English girl, but she's sexy and generally delightful all the same). Being reckless, they never save what little money they make – when it's not stolen by those who 'befriend' them along the way (including a real-life motor-cycle dare-devil, dubbed "Crazy Tony", popular at the time!) – so the couple are forced to keep up the act…until they're betrayed to the Police by a potential customer who run them out of town. However, on the way, their car (stolen, of course) runs out of gas and the only nearby 'oasis' is a secluded villa they at first believe to be uninhabited; it transpires that rich American(!) Irene Papas (a curious presence in this type of film which, to my mind, definitely works in its favor) is inside and she catches them in the garage just as they're transferring petrol from one of the cars within into their own vehicle.

The woman's first reaction is to send the kids away, but she soon changes her mind and they're invited to feed and even stay the night. The couple's freewheeling antics seem to liberate the stiff lady of the house, too, and before the night is out, the trio are having themselves a party (cue some crazy zooms on the dancing participants – something I forgot to mention, by the way, in my review of Lenzi's A QUIET PLACE TO KILL [1970]) for which Muti also contrives to dress up in exotic fashion. Papas and Lovelock spend the night together but not before she's sent him to the garage to fetch her some cigarettes: looking in the glove compartment of her car, he finds a gun and instinctively picks it up. This, as it turns out, was a deliberate move on her part as the young man now has his fingerprints on the weapon – when the kids first arrived, Papas had been acting strangely and we soon discover why: her husband's body (whom she herself shot, being in cahoots with a lawyer who's intermittently seen trying to make contact with her) is stashed in the boot of the car! To add more conviction to her fabricated story – that the kids assaulted the household – Papas feigns an attempted rape…

Typically, the picture is filled with solid suspense touches and clever narrative twists: when the Police finally arrive, as Papas had predicted, it's her they believe; the kids, thinking otherwise (having drugged the woman and 'planted' the gun in her hands) take it easy as they're reaching the border, even deciding to go for an impromptu swim. However, as they're departing once again, the Police bars their way and, as was the case in the afore-mentioned Lenzi film (which I watched on the very same day as this one), it all ends with the kids running the car off the road and tumbling to their death – still, the director gives the whole a cynical conclusion this time around (accentuated by the reprise of the jaunty theme tune) as there's no redeeming last-minute stroke of irony here!

By the way, this too emerged to have the dual audio syndrome I encountered during my recent viewing of some of the "Euro-Cult" titles I've been going through. At first, I was disappointed that the Italian-language track was missing from this copy but, actually, it makes perfect sense here – since all three protagonists are foreigners anyway; then again, many of the Italian supporting characters do speak in their native tongue. Even so, some of the dubbing is unintelligible (particularly Umberto Raho's Police Inspector, who only appears towards the end) while, for about five straight minutes around the one-hour mark, the dialogue reverts completely to Italian for a scene which presumably was cut from the U.S. version of the film!

Umberto Lenzi, undoubtedly one of Italy's most diverse directors, directed a handful of Giallo's in his career, which ranged in quality from absolutely superb (Seven Blood-Stained Orchids) to rather silly (Eyeball), but Oasis of Fear was made while Lenzi still had a lot of respect for the genre, and as such it stands tall as one of his very best films. The first thing that struck me about the film was the happy pop soundtrack, and this ends up offsetting the nihilistic tone of the film beautifully once the first big twist hits. The film starts out by introducing us to two amiable British hippies, who travel to a foreign country to buy pornography. After spending all their money, the pair decides to begin making their own pornography, and it's not long before they find themselves on the run from the local coppers. After breaking down outside a lavish manor house, they decide to enter and steal some petrol. However, the lady of the house catches them and after initially wanting them to leave, she changes her mind and invites the pair in for a little three-way party...

This film doesn't adhere to the usual Giallo rules and traditions, and at first it's difficult to see where it's going. Lenzi does a good job with creating his characters, however, and although the first half of the movie is all about setting up the second half, it's interesting thanks to the handling and decent performances from all concerned. When the twist in the tale comes about, it's amazingly shocking because it appears to come out of nowhere, although Lenzi does a good job of ensuring that it doesn't feel superfluous to the plot, and the change of direction certainly suits the film. Oasis of Fear benefits from a good cast, which includes prolific Italian cult film star Ray Lovelock and future Italian beauty Ornella Muti. The pair interacts well, and provide good impressions of their characters; even though they're clearly not British. The real standout, however, is Irene Papas who is handed the meatiest role in the film (the one usually given to Carol Baker), and gets to have fun with a character who is anything but what she seems. The standout sequence of the film takes place in an aviary full of owls, and the nihilistic conclusion manages to be sad despite the lightweight nature of the movie, and overall; this is a Giallo definitely worth tracking down.