Death Walks at Midnight

Italian/Spanish co-production dealing with a killing spree with several suspects . It concerns on Valentina (Nieves Navarro and Susan Scott) a gorgeous and spunky fashion model living in Milan . Valentina proofs an experimental hallucinogenic drug and while influenced by the doses , she has a vision of a woman being cruelly killed by an ominous murderous . Valentina finds herself pursued by the same murderer with a spiked glove . It begins with the mysterious death of a woman and continues spirals into the killing . Meanwhile a journalist (Simon Andreu) becomes companion and protector the cover-up who is being continuously stalked .

This Giallo contains suspense , thrills, chills , intrigue and plot twists . Luciano Ercoli's great success is compellingly directed with well staged murders plenty of startling visual content , though was submitted to limited censorship in Spain . This is a customary slasher where the intrigue, tension, suspense appear threatening and lurking in every room , corridors and luxurious interior and exterior . The picture packs atmospheric blending of eerie thrills and creepy chills combined with a twisted finale . It displays lots of blood but it seems pretty mild compared to today's gore feasts . It's a solid movie , a thrilling story plenty of suspense and intrigue in which the victims seem to be continuous . The staged killings are the high points of the movie , they deliver the goods plenty of screams, shocks and tension . The intriguing moments are compactly made and fast moving ; as the film itself takes place from various points of sights . It packs tension, shocks , thrills , chills and lots of blood . There're brief moments of gore as the killing with the spiked glove and a number of scenes that are quite thrilling , resulting to be definitely the spotlight of the film the surprising ending situation . Written by the usuals , Ernesto Gastaldi and Sergio Corbucci , a good director of Spaghetti Western . Good ambiance design and acceptable production design by Eduardo De La Torre Fuente. Luciano Ercoli's so-so direction is well crafted, here he's less cynical and more inclined toward violence and lots of killings . It's a co-production Italian-Spanish filmed in Alfonso Balcazar studios (Barcelona)and De Paolis (Rome) , for that reason appears Spanish actors as Nieves Navarro , Simon Andreu and Italian players as Ivano Staccioli, Luciano Rossi and the recently deceased Peter Martellanza or Peter Martell , both of whom ordinary baddies in Spaghetti Western . Colorful cinematography by Fernando Arribas who photographed splendidly city of Milan where is developed the action . However , the photography is washed-out and for that reason is necessary an urgent remastering . Atmospheric and commercial musical score by Gianni Ferrio .

The picture is regularly directed by producer/filmmaker Luciano Ercoli. Talented and versatile Ercoli has produced/directed a vast array of often solid and entertaining films in all kind of genres as horror, Giallo and Western, in a middling career . He produced a trilogy for Duccio Tessari formed by two Western as ¨A pistol for Ringo¨, ¨The return of Ringo¨ and ¨Kiss, Kiss , Bang , Bang¨ , the latter is set in modern times and deal with a heist . All of them are amusing and entertaining and starred by similar cast as Giuliano Gemma , Fernando Sancho , Lorella De Luca and Nieves Navarro who married the producer Luciano Ercoli . He also produced the Giallo trilogy starred by Simon Andreu and his wife Susan Scott formed by ¨Death walks on high heels¨ , ¨The forbidden photos of a lady above of suspicion¨, and ¨Death walks at midnight¨. Rating: Acceptable and passable , this is one imaginative slasher picture in which the camera stalks in sinister style throughout a story with acceptable visual skills though contains some flaws and gaps . This is a bewildering story , funny in some moment but falls flat and it will appeal to hardcore Gialli fans

If you have a daughter make sure she's not dumb enough to end up with a partner like this. Valentina is a fashion model (this is a giallo, after all) whose journalist boyfriend manages to talk her into taking an experimental LSD-like drug for the sake of a magazine article. He assures her she'll be wearing a mask and a doctor will administer the drug, but once she's high as a kite he takes the mask off and starts taking pictures of her. While she's ripped to the nines and well muntered, larging it the 'nth' degree and chewing her cheeks, she also has some sort of vision where she sees a man punching a woman in the face over and over again with a spiked glove.

Thinking it was all part of the trip, the next day she gets sacked from her job and finds her face plastered all over her boyfriend's magazine. She also finds out the 'doctor' was a doorman, goes mental, and throws a brick through her boyfriend's window. Then she starts seeing that killer around the place, and it seems that not only did she not hallucinate a murder, but the drug might have triggered a repressed memory of murder she may have witnessed six months before – and it gets even more complicated than that!

We know the killer right from the start, but we have no idea who he is, what he's up to, or why someone is in a loony bin for a murder he seemingly committed! Many other characters turn up to badger Valentino, and two very shifty gentlemen, including a knife throwing, giggling Luciano Rossi, roll into town for some reason too. The police are pretty much useless in this one, so can she turn to one of her two boyfriends for help? That's right, two, and one of them is a sculptor looking after two Japanese kids, for good measure.

Just like Ercoli's previous film Death Walks on High Heels, this one is a bit too long, but the pay-off is well worth it! Just about every character that makes it to the end of the film ends up on the roof of an apartment block for a final fight/punch up/stabbing/gun fight, and this is where Ercoli finally unleashes the nastiness. One character even ends up splattered across the pavement with his brains lying next to his head and his cigarette holder poking through his face. Kinds of wakes you up a bit when that happens in a film.

So then, another good, solid, beautiful looking giallo from Ercoli. I can't wait to watch the next one: Open the Door, Get on the Floor, Death Walks the Dinosaur!

Following such marvelous gialli as 1970's "Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion" and 1971's "Death Walks on High Heels," director Luciano Ercoli, screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi, and actors Susan Scott and Simon Andreu reunited one more time, and the result, 1972's "Death Walks at Midnight," although perhaps the least of the three films, is another winning entertainment, nevertheless. In this one, Scott plays a gorgeous redheaded model, Valentina, who becomes the willing test subject of a new hallucinogen, H.D.S. During her trip, she sees a spike-gloved killer mutilate a young girl across the way...a murder that, as it turns out, actually transpired six months earlier! Holy flashback! And from this bizarre setup, things get progressively stranger, as said killer starts to stalk Valentina all over the streets of Milan. Anyway, perhaps I'm a little slow on the ol' rebop, but I had to watch this picture almost three full times before it began to make a bit of sense to me. The plot is a bit convoluted, to say the least, and whereas in most gialli I make an attempt (usually a fruitless one) to spot the killer, here, I was hard pressed just to barely keep up. Still, brain twisting as the film is, it did, ultimately, kinda sorta make sense to me (just don't ask me to explain it out loud!). And the picture does have a lot going for it: stylish direction, beautiful photography of the city of Milan and its countryside, yet another supersexy performance from Susan Scott, a catchy score by Gianni Ferrio, several (not overly) gory homicides, and a furious rooftop dukeout to cap off the film. Drug dealers, a mental institution, a pot party, groovy discos, a couple of cute little Japanese kids, a murder attempt in a cemetery, and a bloody cat all, ultimately, get thrown into the mix. Yes, this IS one heady giallo. And the great-looking DVD from No Shame that I just watched does it justice indeed.

A fashion model agrees to do a shoot in her swank apartment building while high on a powerful new psychedelic drug called "HDS" (why this would make for an interesting fashion shoot is never really adequately explained). While under the influence of the drug she witnesses a brutal murder in an adjoining building. Obviously, the beginning of this film is very similar to "Rear Window" (if you replace a crippled Jimmy Stewart with a sexy Spanish model hopped up on mind-bending drugs that is), but then the film goes off in its own totally unique direction. Even more than your usual giallo this film is pretty much a series of hysterical chase scenes and gory murders with little coherent plot to get in the way.

It's not really that good, but it has several things going for it. The first is Nieves Navarro (aka Susan Scott). Navarro was generally considered to be a second-rate Edwige Fenech (and she actually appeared as Fenech's sister in "All the Colors of Darkness"). She actually makes for a spunky, appealing heroine here, spending most of her time fighting off various loutish males including two sexist boyfriends, a guy who picks her up hitch-hiking and demands sex five minutes later, and FOUR different murderous male villains. Strangely though, she keeps her clothes on throughout the film (this is the same actress who in her late 30's was making borderline-hardcore sex films for the notorious Joe D'Amato). The movie also features a very unique murder weapon--a giant spiked metal glove (or "armored fist" as Navarro keeps calling it)which makes mince-meat of the faces of the various female victims (like many gialli this film is a strange mixture of feminism and misogyny). Finally, there is the upbeat score which probably should be in a better movie, but does serve to keep things rolling along. I wouldn't go through the expense and trouble of buying the imported British DVD (like I did), but I guess this is worth watching if you get a chance.

There is a lot of charm to early 70's European films that you don't find now. One of those charms is the music, and another is the way people used to dress, and their attitude. It was so quaint. The fact nobody relied on mobile phones back then and just ran to call boxes, and the turning dial phones was old fashioned and pleasant. Parts of the film here was just funny, the big smacks in the faces, the name calling insults, tantrums and the characters a bit goofy. Valentina, the main character has horrid visions of a scary man killing a woman after taking an experimental drug. Ever since then she's been followed and I always had suspicions. Pleasantly made gory crime film.