The Flower with the Deadly Sting

There exist two types of Italian gialli. The coolest type of giallo handles about masked psycho-killers with black gloves butchering people - preferably pretty young models - with sharp objects. The slightly duller but usually more stylish type of giallo handles about convoluted murder conspiracies complete with sexual intrigues, betrayal and triangular relationships. "The Flower with Petals of Steel", belongs in the second category. Even though the plot is wild and wickedly far-fetched, the film contains too many dull moments. The story revolves around Dr. Valenti. Although a busy surgeon, Dr. Valenti still has time to entertain several mistresses. He accidentally murders one in his apartment, with a hideous type of plant-statue, but is cold-blooded enough to professionally dissect her corpse and make it disappear. The girl's sister (played by giallo-regular Carroll Baker) and a sly homicide inspector are on the doctor's tail, and then he's also getting blackmailed. The film has one or two unforgettable sequences (most notably a lesbian scuba-diving highlight) and the bizarre plot is intriguing enough to keep you gazing at the screen until the finish, but overall it's disappointing and not at all recommended to anyone (except giallo-completists)

You don't often get to see a scuba diving lesbian love scene in a film, but that situation is less likely in the crazy world of the gialli, it seems...

Gianno Garko plays a jerk doctor who has just dumped his lover Daniela, perhaps for his assistant who's been making kissy faces at him. Daniela's sister is angry Carol Baker, who seems to also be Daniela's lover and is enraged at Daniela's continuous relationship with Gianni. Things come to a head one night when Gianni comes home to find a strangely silent Daniela there, and accidentally kills her by impaling her head with one of his strange object d'art required by all characters in gialli.

Panicking, Gianni uses his super surgeon skills to dismember the body and get rid of it, not knowing he's being watched all the time. Also, he's not as smart as he thinks as he didn't notice Daniela's car is outside of the building. When Carol Baker turns up looking for her sister, Gianni tells her, rather unconvincingly, that she hasn't been around in some time, and then a cop, who is falling for Carol, turns up looking for the dead girl too...and he's becoming increasingly biased.

Although this is very much a typical 'Carol Baker' giallo with seventies nudity, it is still watchable for Gianni Garko's increasingly unhinged performance and the twists all thrown in at the end (try not to think about them too hard though or you'll get a nose bleed). There are no good characters to root for in the film so it's a case of seeing who'se going to win the mind games that are being played out. Not the most manically paced, however, and I was kind of yearning for that - until the underwater love scene (bizarre

Gianni Garko and the deadly pitfalls of modern interior design

This giallo by Gianfranco Piccioli is about the psychogram of a middle-aged man who finds himself in a very special, exceptional situation.

The wealthy doctor Andrea (Gianni Garko) can be a real prick, but perhaps that's why he's so successful. One day he gets into an argument with his beautiful girlfriend Daniela (Paola Senatore). A scuffle ensues in which Daniela accidentally bumps into a plant sculpture with steel leaves that decorates the doctor's apartment. Yes, modern art can have its pitfalls. Especially when it comes with a seventies design. A short time later, the astonished Andrea realizes that his girlfriend is dead. What to do? Give up everything? For an unfortunate accident? Andrea, who has strong nerves, disposes of the body. Everything goes well, but the difficulties are yet to come. Andrea's ex-lover Evelyn (Carroll Baker), who is also Daniela's half-sister (of all people!!!), is worried and calls in the police (Ivano Staccioli as an inspector). As if that wasn't unpleasant enough, Andrea is suddenly being blackmailed anonymously. How could anyone have found out about the fateful accident? Andrea is at a loss, and then things get more and more serious...

This Giallo is primarily the introduction of the main actor Gianni Garko (*1935), who is otherwise better known from various spaghetti westerns. But he also cuts a good figure as a successful doctor and an unscrupulous bon vivant. Carroll Baker, actually the uncrowned queen of the giallo, is not quite as central here, but is convincing as in all of her Italian films. Umberto Raho and the attractive Pilar Velazquez can be seen in other roles.

You shouldn't necessarily expect logic and a stringent plot from a giallo. The world of giallo is always free of morals and full of tricky twists. The special thing about this film, which is worth seeing, is that the focus is on the psychogram of a successful man who is all too sure of himself.

A surgeon kills a lover by accident when she is impaled by a steel petal from an elaborate sculpture during the course of a physical argument in his apartment. He dismembers and disposes of the body but soon a secret blackmailer starts sending him communications indicating a knowledge of his crime.

Everyone seems to have been sleeping with one and other at some time or other in this obscure Italian giallo. The plot-line, therefore, is quite convoluted like many of the films in this sub-genre. Another characteristic familiar to the genre is that none of the characters are particularly sympathetic with the lead character played by Gianni Garko being an especially unlikable misogynist. So, welcome to the wonderful world of giallo where everybody is amoral and there is no obligation from the film-makers to spoon feed the audience with any nice characters to empathise with!

This one is overall not one of the entries in the genre that follows the classic-style serial killer format and instead focuses on the psychology of the central character and the escalation of events off the back of a murder. We still nevertheless have pleasingly familiar elements such as absurd plot twists, abundant nudity and dark secrets of the past informing the present. It would probably also be fair to say that this one isn't as visually stylish as most, although it does have a couple of beautifully shot underwater sequences which bookend the film, the latter of which culminates with a pretty audacious lesbian love scene! In truth, the gorgeous and evocative underwater opening is so captivating it does mean that the subsequent story pales a little by direct comparison to it but its relevance is confirmed by the end scene; I would probably say that those two distinctive sequences constitute the highlight of the movie overall. The Flower with the Petals of Steel is ultimately another involving giallo. It isn't really an upper bracket entry in the genre or anything but it is a solid movie which will definitely appeal to seasoned fans of the genre.

Being a latter-day entry in Carroll Baker's Italian giallo tenure, coupled with its essential lack of reputation (probably ascribed to the involvement of an obscure director – one of only three he helmed), I was surprised to learn that the title under review was held in higher esteem by the "Cult Filmz" website than the American star's renowned collaborations with Umberto Lenzi; in hindsight, I agree with this estimation, since I had always found that series of movies average at best (though, in all fairness, I still have one more to check out i.e. SO SWEET…SO PERVERSE [1969] and which I will do presently). Incidentally, despite her top billing, Baker is not the protagonist of the film – in fact, she is just one among a bevy of fetching females with whom leading man Gianni Garko interacts (in more ways than one) throughout. This suggests a reasonably convoluted plot line and, in fact, the revelation offered here is among the wildest (as the whole resolves itself with a bit of lesbian underwater sex!) I have seen within this genre…though I felt the added ironic twist (which sees the culprits not getting away with it after all) unwarranted and a miscalculation! For the record, two other unexpected elements here are the sheer fact that a surgeon would allow himself such an impossibly intricate love life, which would surely prevent him from functioning properly within his chosen – and ultra-delicate – profession, and also that the (hardly handsome) cop on the trail of the assassin would fall for one of the suspects, the not-so-young-anymore Baker (whose drop in stature in this case eventually numbers her among the murder victims themselves)! While the film maintains a frustratingly unhurried pace – albeit offset by a good Marcello Giombini score – along the way, like I said earlier, the premise is woolly enough to keep one engrossed trying to unravel it!; by the way, the subject of the Argento-like title is the weapon that unwittingly brings about the original killing (which party's face is cleverly concealed until the climax).