Grapes of Death

Grapes of Death

Aka: Pestilence

Original Title: La Raisins de la mort

Directed by: Jean Rollin

France, 1978

Horror / Zombies / Psychosis, 85min

Distributed by: Njuta Films / Another World Entertainment.

Often referred to as one of Jean Rollin’s few Zombie movies together with Zombie Lake 1981, and The Living Dead Girl 1982, it's fair to say that Grapes of Death is by far the best of the three movies. Although I feel that Grapes of Death has more in common with Romero’s psychological horror The Crazies 1973, than his zombie classic Night of the Living Dead 1968, because there are really no zombies in the movie! There are buss loads (well a dozen at least) of degenerated psychos that want to kill everyone that they lay eyes on dragging themselves slowly through the movie, with the intent to kill people, but they don’t eat them and they turn before they die.

Grapes of Death has a rather straightforward narrative without any specific complications making it an enjoyable film to wind down to. After a title sequence where we see farmhands spraying the crops at the Roublés vineyard, we are set upon a train where Élisabeth [Marie-Georges Pascal] is on her way to the vineyard run by her boyfriend Michel. The same guy who just told the workers of the title sequence to get back out in the fields as one of them returns to the farm complaining that the pesticide is making him ill. Élisabeth and her travelling companion soon encounter the same worker on the train and he now transforming into a murdering beast due to the insecticide. From this initial kill, Élisabeth’s friend, it’s all about survival, reaching the destination the farmyard and Michel. For as you will realise after the climax, this movie is in a sinister way all about the things you will do for love.

Smaller and larger obstacles are encountered and overcome, with a, for Rollin measures quite small amount of nudity thrown in to keep the audience happy. Élisabeth is constantly surrounded by death and carnage as she sweeps through the wonderful landscapes of Southern France, trying to stay one foot ahead of the infected. She arrives at a farm only to be confronted by the manic farmer, she finds a car and is attacked once again. Up on the woodlands, Élisabeth runs into the blind Lucie [Mirella Rancelot] who is trying to make her way back to the village she comes from. Together they find their way to the village… …only to be learn that the entire village is infected by the strange virus and death comes knocking big time in a really violent sequence which possibly makes this movie the first French splatter flick.

As the infected close in on Élisabeth, she’s saved in the nick of time by a strange ally; Brigitte Lahaie. French adult film star Brigitte Lahaie makes her debut as part of Rollin’s stable of actors with Grapes of Death, and you could consider this movie the breaking point where Lahaie started to shift into movies outside the pornographic sphere. But ironically most parts she ever played after her career in the adult industry where still heavily dependent on her erotic image and saw her on more than one occasion acting in the nude. (Even Fabrice Du Welz has her play on her eroticism in his evocative and disturbing psychological thriller The Ordeal 2004) Jean Rollin at least tried to motivate why she needs to get her clothes of in Grapes of Death as she does it in a semi-seductive manner to prove that she is not infected and has no marks of the disease. Well in reality she has the infection, but no visual scars or gooey boils. But just wait, as she will be hideously disfigured before the scene is over.

After making and loosing new allies along the way, Élisabeth finally reaches the farm, and is reunited with her lover Michel, but in a last twist of fate, tables are turned friends turn into foes, and after the violent climax you find yourself wondering which monster/killer is the most vicious, the ones who do it due to the infection, or the ones who kill for revenge?

With today’s infectious outbreak/zombie flicks, think Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead 2004, Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later 2002, and Juan Carlos Fresnadillio’s 28 Weeks Later 2007, the movie is rather slow, but that’s what you would expect from a Jean Rollin movie, a slow pace that relies more on the hypnotic imagery and atmosphere than dark, menacing urban locations with speedy monsters chasing protagonists down narrow hallways.

Considering that more than thirty years have passed since Rollin shot this flick, it’s fair to point out that this could possibly be the first movie with ”fast” zombies/infected, as there is no slow Romero-esque dragging of the legs here. The infection victims are plain people trying to cope with their new state of being. And this is one of the finer points of the movie, up till Élisabeth reaches the village; everyone she meets is torn between their polarised emotions. On one side the lust to kill, on the other a deep regret and frustration over loosing control. This reaches it’s peak as the infected Lucas, decapitates Lucie and crying begs for forgiveness as he snogs the head. It’s a wonderful little detail that isn’t too common in the genre, as you rarely encounter an antagonist with remorse and sorrow of being the monster.

If you boil this flick down to a concentrated form it is a brilliant idea that Jean Rollin with co-writers Jean-Pierre Bouyxou (yes the actor from several Rollin and Jesus Franco movies) and Christian Meunier (who did sod all after writing and shooting for second unit on this movie) have come up with. If you wanted an infection to spread rapidly and aggressively, how best to transport it but through wine, the national drink of France. At the same time there is a smart critique towards the use of toxins in modern agriculture, much like the themes used by Jorge Grau in the superb Let Sleeping Corpses Lie 1974.

Just like the Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, Grapes of Death has a very interesting and mezmerising score. This one composed by Philippe Sissman, who only ever scored one more film, much later in 1991, but his score to Grapes of Death is interesting because of its minimalistic use of electronica. The almost avant-garde keyboard beep and blips suit the movie perfectly and really bring a futuristic and eerie mood to the film.

Grapes of Death is unlike any other Jean Rollin film, mostly because of the storyline and narrative, that is zombies/infected instead of the usual sexy vampires, and it would be unfair to say that he temporarily shifted away from his usual slow pace and poetic imagery, because in all honesty Grapes of Death is still quite slow, almost meditatively slow, which I why I’m so fond of it. The imagery is still very Rollin-ish, over grown woodlands and castle ruins as the camera almost hovers through the landscapes that he so often returned to. The movie was shot in the Cevennes National Park in Southern France, witch had Rollin and cinematographer Claude Bécognée use the landscapes to the maximum. Shooting under severe cold is never an easy task, and I’m’ sure that you have heard the story of Lahaie being so cold during her nude scene that she couldn’t speak her lines.

You have to keep in mind when you watch Jean Rollin movies, that this is a director that was so terribly shy that he instead chose to focus on themes, imagery and atmosphere in his movies over the acting. Not to say that the actors are bad, but in some way I guess that's why most of his actors are seen in his film only and never again, and the ones he managed to work with, like Lahaie, the twins Catherine and Marie-Pierre Castel to name a few, where used repeatedly in his films. He spent ages researching his movies and drafting the best possible people around him. During the shoots was said to be so shy that he didn't dare direct the actors. Instead he preferred to hide behind the camera, sometimes leaving the set, and letting second unit step in during the adult sequences of his films. There's something in that fragile delicacy and I see a strange paradox to the casts and shyness that fascinates me, as many of Rollin's leading ladies where former adult movie actors whom he offered roles outside of their usual parts in pornography. You wouldn't expect shyness and tenderness from a director so strongly associated with erotic imagery.

The suspense elements are very well composed. Working with great balance Rollin frequently presents the threat, isolates the key characters and keeps the audience in anticipation as he builds the suspense ever so gently, before having it erupt in a gory, gooey and emotional finale in each case. Grapes of Death, is one of my favourite Rollin movies because of this, the threat-build-release schematic works wonders and he really never stays in them long enough for them to grow tiresome, there’s always a new twist or turn as Élisabeth makes new companions that may, or not, help her in her quest to reach her goal and live through it. A wonderful film that definitely should be checked out if you are into that brooding Eurohorror scene of the 70-80’s.

Image:

Anamorphic Widescreen 1.66:1

Audio:

French Dialogue, Dolby Digital Stereo. Swedish, Danish, Norwegian or Finnish subtitles optional.

Extras:

The original trailer for Grapes of Death, trailers for Rollin's The Living Dead Girl, Demoniacs, Requiem for a Vampire and the fantastic Lips of Blood, and a slideshow of stills from the movie and even a few scenes not featured in the movie.

Last Cannibal World

Last Cannibal World

Aka: Jungle Holocaust, The Last Survivor, Cannibal.

Original Title: Ultimo mondo cannibale

Directed by: Ruggero Deodato

Drama/Horror/Cannibals, 92 min

Italy, 1977

Distributed by: Noble Entertainment

Among all the strange and bizarre sub-genres ever to come out of the wonderful world of Italian cinema, the brief, but impactful cannibal genre must be among the most provocative and disturbing. Perhaps the genre itself isn’t such a strange niche as it in many ways is a progressive evolution of the previous Mondo genre perfected by directors like Franco Prosperi, Gualtiero Jacopetti. Gianni Proia and Luigi Scattini.

Say the words cannibal film and two definitive movies come to mind, Umberto Lenzi’s Cannibal Ferox (aka Make them Die Slowly) 1981 and Ruggero Deodato's landmark gut-muncher Cannibal Holocaust 1980 come to mind. Both landmark movies that stand out and still are considered quite offensive and provocative.

Where the nazisploitation traits are sleazy Germans tormenting naked women in their bordello concentration camps, the nunsploitation has sinful nuns engaging in lesbian romps and hailing the forces of darkness, no cannibal movie is complete without loin clothed savages tearing open the stomachs of their victims, cultural clashes between modern and primitive worlds and a fair deal of violent animal deaths. The killing of animals in the genre is still today a sensitive subject, which the directors still are at unease talking about. But in it’s own unique way it’s part of the genre, and it is within here that the movies have their historic debt to the Mondo genre. It’s only a natural progression of the re-enacted rituals and lifestyles of exotic cultures once showcased as documentary footage in the Mondo genre would be brought to life as part of dramatic narrative. This is also what director's of the genre fall back on. I was only showing the primitives everyday hunt and preparation of food, and all animals killed in front of the camera where eaten by the primitives. A rather pale excuse as these scenes of barbaric slaying is still what makes these movies disturbing, but then again so is any footage of slaughter, be it by primitives in the jungle or in your nearest processing plant. Death is a bitch to watch whey you know it’s for real. But no matter how haunting the real animal deaths are there is a vital point to why they are such an important part of the genre’s traits and narrative. The real violence enhances the illusionary violence that the characters are put in front of. We know that the monkey/crocodile/turtle snuffed it for real, there’s nothing but my common sense retaining me from believing that the human deaths on screen are fake. Which is most likely why the cannibal genre was surrounded in controversy and frequently banned as audiences where fooled into believing that the movies could have been snuff films. But for those still in doubt, actors Me Me Lai, Ivan Rassimov and Robert Kerman starred in many more cannibal movies pre and post Last Cannibal World.

Deodato’s Last Cannibal World wasn’t the first of the strange niche, as Umberto Lenzi beat him to it with five years when he directed his Man From Deep River in 1972 which is considered to be the one that set it all in motion. Although Deodato will forever be associated to the genre because of his classic masterpiece Cannibal Holocaust from 1980, a truly disturbing and impactful movie, which leaves no one untouched after a viewing. Directors like Sergio Martino, Mario Gariazzo and Michele Massimo Tarantini also jumped in on the genre, well jumped on isn’t really fair as the majority of these fantastic directors where all “directors for hire” guys, which is why they all followed each others leads when the genre demands turned, but still they all got in to their elbows and went with the flow churning out some savage movies in the obscure niche. Even Jesus Franco, and Joe D’Amato got in on it and brought all their sexploitation traits with the, producing some really weird entries in the subgenre. Who could ever have thought up the movie Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals 1978 but good old Joe D’Amato. During the eighties, the themes once again changed, the cannibal genre was abandoned in favour of the undead zombies, and slasher hybrids which dominated the ever inspirational American scene. A few years ago the late Bruno Mattei tried re-vitalising the cannibal niche with a few low budget attempts, but considering that nobody really noticed, it's fair to say that the genres time has passed long ago.

The producers of Man from Deep River approached Lenzi with a proposal to direct Last Cannibal World, in some ways a sequel to his previous movie, but when Lenzi demanded to much pay, producer Giorgio Carlo Rossi went after the second name on his list, Ruggero Deodato.

Staying with the idea of dramatised realism, Deodato starts his movie by proclaiming that it is based on true events, that this is the true story of Robert Harper and his terrifying ordeal. A group of people Harper [Massimo Foschi], Rolf [Ivan Rassimov who held the leading role in Lenzi’s Man From Deep River 1972 and Eaten Alive 1980], Charlie the pilot and Swan find themselves stranded in the middle of a god awful jungle on the island of Mindano after landing their small airplane on an overgrown landing strip. Charlie sets about repairing the landing gear as Robert and Rolf shoot into the jungle looking for the team supposed to meet them there. In a few minutes they find the remains of the previous teams’ radio, and set off towards the camp location. Obviously it’s abandoned and Ubaldo Continiello’s rather bleak score set’s the tone as flutes taunt us and bring us into a mood of mystery. After finding bloody weapons apparently made by primitives Robert rushes into the jungle and witnesses the first animal death as an anaconda wrestles and chomps down on a large monitor lizard. Nature at work, survival of the fittest, and it is shocking as the snake swallows the giant lizard, which definitely set’s a tone for the movie.

Back at the plane Charlie the pilot starts to curse the two men as it will soon be too late to take off. With this said Robert and Rolf find the rotting remains of the other team… and as night falls the fight for survival begins. Forced to spend the night in the hazardous jungle with the knowledge that the “last cannibals left in the world” are most likely watching them as they speak, taking shelter inside the small airplane. Going out to retrieve herself, Anna is snatched by something sneaking in the rough terrain surrounding the craft. The next morning, the men venture out into the jungle to look for Swan. Charlie finds her dress and grabbing it triggers a deadly trap. Charlie is skewered and dies in front of Robert and Rolf who scramble deeper into the jungle only to come upon a group of primitives enjoying a barbeque. You don’t need any previous knowledge of genre to understand that it’s the remains of the well-done Swan that they are chomping down.

For the next ten minutes Robert and Ralph build themselves as tiny raft and set of towards salvation down the river. But where there are rivers, there’s bound to be rapids and once again the forces of nature strike down man. Climbing ashore on the riverbank Robert tries to come to terms with the fact that he’s the only survivor of their small assemblage. Obviously Robert never watched any nature programmes and is really ignorant as he hungrily binges on some strange mushrooms he finds. After fainting he’s rudely awakened by the savages who drag him along to their amazing camp inside a cave. This is where the movie gets really interesting, as modern man meets primitive culture in a wonderful clash of cultures.

The first thing the cannibals do is humiliate him and reduce him to their level, tearing off his strange clothes leaving him naked just as they are. Screaming and objecting to their treatment of him Robert sees Pulan [Me Me Lai who also starred in Lenzi’s Man From Deep River and Eaten Alive] make her entrance as she pokes his strange white flesh, yanking the elastic in his underwear and finally ripping them off. Robert is now equal to the savages. As the savages saw Robert arrive by plane, they want to see this strange god like entity fly and hoist him up by a rope to the top of the cave. Needless to say Robert can’t fly and as they repeatedly rise and drop him towards the ground he passes out. This scene is reminiscent of the coming of age ritual that Richard Harris goes through in Elliot Silverstein’s A Man Called Horse from 1970. A Man Called Horse is very much the same template and definitely an inspiration upon the cannibal genre, as it deals with the same topic. The savage rituals and crashes between primitive and modern worlds.

The primitives go about their everyday life, as Robert sits starving in his primitive cage but for some strange reason Pulan takes pity, or perhaps it’s fascination, upon Robert and starts befriending him. As we reach half point Deodato reminds us of the cruel and harsh reality of nature as we are shown how the cannibals capture and kill not only a huge snake, but also a crocodile which is sliced open to reveal it’s still beating heart. The obligatory nature documentary footage is here too, as yet another snake snares and swallows a bat whole. The footage acts as reminder of the carnage gone before, and also an effective tool to sell the illusion of reality in the scenes about to come.

Finally Robert get’s his big break, he manages to escape after his cage door is left unsecured and snatching Pulan by the arm the two set off towards the deep deep jungle. The tables are turned in more than one way as Robert is now the predator and Pulan the victim, after all he has kidnapped her. Civilized man plummets deeper and deeper into his repressed primal instincts and as he almost reaches the bottom he rapes Pulan. Robert is now the alpha male and Pulan his subordinate, which is enhanced in the next scene where Pulan hunts for food and serves Robert a delicious meal of fresh caught fish, fruit and berries.

While seeking shelter from a monsoon rainstorm the couple take refuge in a cave, a cave that reveals itself as the hiding place of Ralph! He also survived the ordeal on the rapids, but has a gangrenous knee injury after his bout with the forces of nature. The two friends and Pulan make the most of their safe place as they plan their route out of the jungle. But in any self respecting script, there has to be downfall after joy and happiness, and the script writers of Last Cannibal World [Gianfranco Cleric, Tito Carpi, Renzo Genta and Giorgio Carlo Rossi, yeah the producer] are well aware of this as they unleash the final reel of savagery upon us. Pulan attempts to lead the two men back to their aircraft and obviously they run straight into the cannibals. If you where waiting for mayhem, this is where you will find it in the most disturbing scene of the movie as Pulan is captured, decapitated, gutted and finally roasted before the cannibals consume her freshly grilled flesh.

Coming to it's climax, the movie sees Robert going head to head with the cannibal leader and becomes what he has been fighting against all this time, the civilized man becomes a savage. After beating the leader to death Robert embowels him and frantically gobbles down the tribe leaders innards. Seeing him eating the flesh of their leader, the cannibal let Robert escape and they finally get to see their strange visitor fly off into the skies.

For an early entry into this bizarre subgenre, Last Cannibal World is still an entertaining movie. Its ferocious, disturbing and packs a punch even though it a times is somwhat tedious. Unfortunately the movie was to be overshadowed by the movie magnificent Cannibal Holocaust that Deodato would make a few years later. Daniele Alabasio’s editing is worth pointing out, as instead of focusing on the onscreen violence, he edits his way through the violence towards the cast with such ferocity that the images are almost impossible to see clearly; hence creating mental images that surpass what really was shown. I also have to comment on Paolo Ricci’s special effects, because they are top notch. Keep in mind that in 1976 this harsh violence wasn’t as common as it is in the horror genre these days. It was only a few years previously that George A. Romero showed zombies eating human flesh in Night of the Living Dead 1968, and two years before he unleashed his Dawn of the Dead 1978, setting the guide lines for the splatter genre. People hadn’t really seen stuff like this, and packaged with all that real animal violence, there’s no wonder that the films where controversial. After creating special effects for many of the infamous Cannibal flicks, Ricci later worked with the special effects on Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia 1983. For Deodato and screenwriter Gianfranco Clerici it’s quite apparent that they planted the seeds which they three years later would reap with the masterpiece Cannibal Holocaust, where instead of observing the carnage, they would turn the cameras on themselves and question the genre and it’s origins the Mondo genre in a remarkable way. But Cannibal Holocaust is a completely different movie which apart from being extremely gruesome, also holds a lot of social and political criticism that makes up part of the legacy it brought with it. Although that is a completely different story.

Image: Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1

Audio: Optional English or Italian dialogue, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian or Danish subtitles are available.

Extras: Well unfortunately there are no extras at all apart from the theatrical trailers for each individual film. The trailer for Last Cannibal World is by far the most spectacular as it sees Deodato and Crew paying homage to those great Alfred Hitchcock walking through the set trailers, as they talk about the shoot and the perils they have encountered during it. But considering that this is a rather price worthy collection “The Cannibal Collection” packaged with Lenzi’s Man From Deep River and Mario Gariazzo’s Amazonia: The Catherine Miles Story, I feel that you are getting to great genre pieces and one lesser (Amazonia, which focuses more on Elvire Audray getting her kit off than the horrors of confronting the cannibals) which makes up for the lack of extras.

Skräcken har 1000 Ögon

Skräcken har 1000 Ögon

Aka: Fear has 1000 Eyes,

Sensuous Sorceress

Directed by: Torgny Wickman

Horror / Eroticism, 73 min

Sweden, 1970

Distributed by: KlubbSuper8

If I ever had to single out a bunch of Swedish Exploitation flicks for an uninitiated fellow cineaste, then this would be among the few selected. The movies of Arne Mattson and Bo A. Vibenius in all respect, but Torgny Wickman’s Skräcken har 1000 Ögon (literally, Fear has 1000 Eyes) is one of my favourite Swedish exploitation flicks. Not because it ‘s very scary, neither is it especially erotic either, (there’s more nudity on the TV these days) but I dig it because it holds a magnificent ambience, it is a great document of a very special time in cinematic history and is pretty dammed near the witchcraft/occult/ exploitation flicks that directors like Renato Polselli and Luigi Batazella where churning out a few years later. Perhaps mostly recognised for his 1969 shock/documentary/educational/explicit study Kärlekens Språk (The Language of Love) 1969, Wickman's Skräcken har 1000 Ögon is something completely different, and the first ever attempt at combing eroticism with horror produced in Sweden.

Starting with a close up of dripping blood and the words “I hereby dedicate myself to the devil!” being written with the blood there’s a tone set for the movie which gets right to the point, there’s no need fiddling about and wondering what the heck this movie is going to be about, as it’s all there in an awesome opening sequence. The movie contains a fair deal of witchcraft, occult references and the complementary nudity to go with pagan rituals is all there. But for the most of the time there is more to be asked for, like a short scene where the village doctor’s x-ray plates show one of the villagers wearing an inverted cross. We already know who it is, Hedvig, and there’s nothing made of the find but a shallow “Do you see what I see? An inverted cross!” And there’s no name on the plates…” remarked by the Doctor and his staff. It’s opportunities like this that make the story feel somewhat wasted. Never the less the movie is quite fun anyhow, and sometimes you don’t need a perfect story to enjoy a movie. Especially if the movie holds a great atmosphere, has a splendid cast and a fabulous score to keep the mood flowing.

Sven [Hans Wahlgren] is a vicar in a small village in Sweden, he and his pregnant wife Anna [Anita Sanders, who had a short career in Italy and held both smaller and larger roles in movies by Fellini, Pasolini, Tinto Brass, Alberto De Martino and Pupi Avati] return home from a trip to Spain to be greeted by Sven’s aunt, Barbro [Barbro Hjort af Ornäs, who not only stared in many Swedish erotica movies (keeping her clothes on of course) but also acted in several Bergman movies too] Shortly after, their friend and maid Hedwig [the stunning Solveig Andersson] moves in with them. Andersson who you may have seen in the leading role of Wickman’s previous film Eva – den utstötta 1969 (Eva: Swedish and Underage), which also featured Wahlgren, and Hjort af Ornäs. She can also be seen as Christina Lindberg’s bordello mate in Bo A. Vibenius extraordinary Thriller – En Grym Film 1974 (Thriller - A Cruel Picture, Aka They Call Her One Eye)

Anna is suffering from her pregnancy, she can’t sleep and she’s having strange visions, and hasn’t slept for ages. She can’t stand lying next to Sven who sleeps like a baby all through the night. Hedwig starts her manipulation on a small scale suggesting that Sven could sleep in the library as to let Anna rest in peace. Obviously Anna suggests this to Sven who without any major objections gathers up his stuff and shuffles into the guestroom. Needless to say Anna turns up in her sexiest nightgown (definitely a Jean Rollin moment if ever there was one...) and after seductively slipping it off glides into his bed for a hefty session of lovemaking… but is it really Anna?

The movie ponders on; Hedwig seduces both Anna and Sven. In between sessions of seduction she’s tormenting Anna with fake visions, like the great scene where she exchanges the ordinary baby leggings that Anna is knitting for a three legged version! Anna find’s it screams and faints. The sinister Hedwig, switches back to he ordinary pair and claims that Anna imagined it all. To make things worse Hedwig keeps a bunch of self crafted Voodoo dolls that she uses to torment Anna, and even drives Barbro to her untimely death as she discovers Hedvig’s hidden past. Even the warm homely bread gets used as an ominous tool of Hedvig’s witchcraft. The seduction/mind games progresses until the threesome have a full-blown orgy after Barbro’s funeral where Hedwig going all in makes Sven smash a crucifix and then carves an inverted cross on the naked torso of Anna.

Plot wise the movie is in shambles. In at nutshell the problem is that there is never any real value at stake, Hedwig has no apparent agenda. She just sells her soul to the devil, seduces Anna and Sven the Vicar and goes about corrupting them, which also kind of fails, Anna leaves the house by her own free will with out any major obstacles but crawling up on the kitchen sink. Sure Sven smashes a crucifix and chucks it on the fire to keep them warm during the final orgy, and he’s already been unfaithful to his wife with the Seductive witch, but it’s not of free will as he’s put under Hedvig’s spell and has no recollection of the incidents at all when the firemen pull him from the burning vicarage. There’s never a conscious decision to abandon his faith as its all Hedvig’s doing. The same goes for Hedwig, she never really has that agenda written out, apart from selling herself to do the devils work. But opportunity is there, even though it is completely ignored by Wickman in his script. Was she planning on taking Anna’s child? Did she want to corrupt the vicar? Or what? We never know as the movie ends with the naked Hedwig laughing at the fire brigade and police officers outside the burning rectory, during their feeble efforts. It’s a strange and confusing ending. Neither do any of Hedvig's foes really make any honest threat to her, she easily manipulates Anna into believing that she’s going insane, and every other major threat is taken care of in the next scene. Sure she kills off her antagonists, but that’s all she does, there’s no build or suspense created around it.

Supposedly Wickman based his screenplay on a series of events that happened in a small rural village where he spent his childhood, and that could be the case, there’s nothing to prove the opposite.

Now perhaps the movie doesn’t make much of an impression with today’s standards, as it solemnly finds a spot somewhere in between the nudie-cuties/ roughies of Doris Wishman, Russ Meyer, George Harrison Marks and the wave of innovative porno chic movies that where to be produced a few years later, both in Sweden and outside it. The novelty of porno chic decimated the demand for soft erotic imagery; especially as full hardcore could be seen on the big screen in almost every major city. But there is a certain charming innocence to these movies of the past as they explore how far they can go without crossing the border. Ironically they could have gone much further with the events about to take place.

Skräcken har 1000 Ögon was one of the first really genre specific movies out of Sweden that I saw many years ago after a dear friend gave me a few VHS tapes with Swedish titles he demanded that I watch. (This guy was amazing at locating former starlets of the seventies and getting interviews with them for the magazine we used to work for back then. Christina Lindberg was one of them he profiled in the magazine. He’s still a, finger on the pulse guy, currently working for one of the leading Swedish movie magazines.)

I had always ignored Swedish film, apart from the mandatory; Ingmar Bergman, Vilgot Sjöman and Victor Sjöström, so these tapes really blew me away! Watching stuff like Bo A. Vibenius Thriller – En Grym Film 1974, Arne Mattson’s Smutsiga Fingrar 1973 (Dirty Fingers) and Wickman’s Skräcken har 1000 Ögon 1970, opened my eyes to a complete new world in my own backyard. Yes backyard, as these movies where shot in and around Stockholm, and a ten-minute walk from where I lived at the time. And the basic fact that these movies where shot in the same studios as Bergman used is exhilarating. I’ve said before that a whole bunch of Swedish directors vanished under the shadow of Bergman’s marvel, and that’s where you find these guys.

Although I’m sure that VHS version of Skräcken har 1000 Ögon was longer and contained more nudity, and it’s often rumoured that there was a longer print, which could partially be responsible for the erroneously quoted 99 minute run time. But for there to be an additional almost half-hour there has to be a whole load of stuff missing, I’m only missing a few longer scenes of seduction, especially the one where Sven pulls the wig of Anna only to reveal Hedvig. Then again there could be a whole lot of shagging in 26 minutes of missing footage so perhaps that rumoured longer version could have contained the sex Wickman was accustomed to directing. It’s a teasing thought, but producer Inge Ivarsson says in the interview featured on the disc that he had to hold Wickman on a short leash so that the “erotic” elements didn’t get out of hand. So presumably the longer print is a figment of wishful thinking, and if there were an extra half hour of skin and smut, the movie probably wouldn’t have faded into oblivion shortly after it’s release.

What I find so fascinating about the movie is how obvious the Sweden + Nudity + Horror epithet worked so well as a marketing banner. According to producer Inge Ivarsson the movie regained all it’s costs on the international market alone, which he also claims was the prime target audience for these flicks and the two words Swedish Erotica will even today receive a joyful grin from people acquainted with the genre. There was a huge market for Swedish erotica overseas, and recently this retro niche has been rediscovered with the advent of DVD. I think it would be fair to claim that starlet’s of the seventies, like Christina Lindberg for an instance, have a larger fan base now then all those years ago. Well perhaps not the same kind of fan base at least.

Yeah, in many ways The movie is a kind of cute and innocent flick, and all credit has to go to Wickman and Ivarsson who at least tried to create the first erotic horror ever produced in Sweden, and I say cute in the context to Wickman’s previous movies like Kärlekens Språk and Eva - Den Utstötta and his later ones, as he just like so many other directors that had been dabbling in erotica, ended up directing full blown porno’s at the end of his career. Also to that discussion there’s the fact of the casts of these movies. There are many really great well known and recognizable actors seen through out these movies, many beloved Swedish faces and names, even though there’s some nudity and erotic subplots going on. Even a few international Swedish stars, Stellan Skarsgård to name the most renown of them all, participated in these movies. There’s almost the same type of mentality as the Japanese actors took when they where only offered pinku roles during the pinku era of Japanese Cinema. They took it at face value, a job is a job and you do the work that is requested of you as an actor. This is quite an admirable approach to your acting career, as a few years later actors in movies containing eroticism and sexually graphic imagery where considered porn actors and that brings a complete different set of luggage with it. Eroticism to enhance your story, and a story to motivate your eroticism is one thing, but when fuck scenes after fuck scenes are all that your movie is about it’s no longer interesting

Finally the biggest surprise of the film comes with the soundtrack! The score that Mats Olsson put together for this one is a fantastically suave new-Jazz groove strut that definitely could have been found on Italian Giallo and Poliziceotti flicks of the time. Great stuff that someone should re-release some day, it’s a winner to say the least.

Image: Originally shot in 1,66:1, but brought into some kind of semi 4:3 full screen in the scan.

Audio: Swedish dialogue, Mono. Unfortunately as I have whined about before no subtitles at all are available on the KlubbSuper8 DVD’s.

Extras: Bolmört i mitt öra (Henbane in My Ear - the intended original title), a nine minute short interview with producer Inge Ivarsson and Klinga Wickman about he movie and the actors. A few deleted scenes (once again perhaps from that legendary longer version?) unfortunately without any audio, a whole load of still from the movie and behind the scenes, Biographies for cast and crew and theatrical trailers for Fear has 1000 Eyes 1970, Anita 1973, and Kärlekens XYZ 1971 also available from KlubbSuper8.com

Saturday Special! A - Z Taught By Italian Exploitation Movie Posters.

D is for Django Prepare a Coffin
Preparati la baar!

Directed by Ferdinando Baldi, 1968
[Italian One Sheet]

D is for Due Occhi Diabolici
Two Evil Eyes

Directed by Dario Argento & George A. Romero, 1990
[Italian Photobusta]

D is for Deliria
Stage Fright

Directed by Michele Soavi, 1987
[Italian One Sheet]

D is for Danger Diabolik
Directed by Mario Bava, 1968

[US One Sheet]

Horrors of Malformed Men

Horrors of Malformed Men

Original Title: Kyôfu ikei ningen: Edogawa Rampo zenshû

Directed by: Teruo Ishii

Euo guro (Erotic/Grotesque), 99 min

Japan, 1969

Distributed by: Synapse Films

There’s a popular misconception that Japanese horror movies are a recent novelty that starts with the success of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu 1998. Yes, it’s true, several people recently looked completely puzzled when I noted that J-Horror is in no way a new entry into the horror genre, although the name may be new as we have an anal need to categorize themes and topics into one definable slot, the Japanese horror scene has always been an item. J-Horror and Ringu as we know it, based on Koji Suzuki’s splendid book Ringu, was already shot in two different versions before the international success had genre fans looking to Japan and Asia for the next big thing. In 1995, director Chisu Takigawa directed a TV movie based on Suzuki’s book. The TV movie opted to focus on the sexual relations of the kids instead of the profound terror found in the source material and it comes off more like an episode of O.C., The Hills or even Beverly Hills with a supernatural element thrown in. Following this there was even a sequel produced Rasen, directed by Jôji Iida in 1998, the same year that Nakata revisited the original text only to end up with an international hit on his hands which opened the floodgates for Japanese and Asian horror in the same way directors like Ringo Lam and John Woo shot their way to fame with their ballistic ballets during the late eighties.

J-Horror isn’t new in any way and the tales told within the J-Horror sphere are really folktales modernized for a new audience. The origins of the J-horror iconography, themes and style have their foundation in the Kabuki and Noh theatre of feudal Japan. During the sixties, directors like Nobuo Nakagawa, Kaneto Shindô and Masaki Kobayashi where shooting movies that relied heavily on their ancestors folktales, and just like the J–Horror wave, the antagonist was more than often a bloated woman with long hair hanging over her face out to claim revenge from her frequent male wrongdoers.

It would be a far stretch to say Teuro Ishii’s once banned for decades, Horror of Malformed Men is a horror movie, as it in all honesty won’t scare anyone these days. It is more of a thriller, whodunit movie with elements of horror aesthetics interwoven in the narrative. But that can’t really be discussed without first talking about Edogawa Rampo first. Rampo was the pseudonym of Japanese writer Tarô Hira, who mainly wrote "pulpy" detective stories in the fashion of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Maurice Leblanc. Many of these detective stories incorporated themes and elements of the fantastic, the erotic and on many occasion saw lead character super detective Kogorô Akechi go up against a varied assortment of mastermind criminals set out to succeed with the perfect crime, such as the antagonist in Kenji Fukasaku’s campy pop-art masterpiece Black Lizard 1968. But Rampo also frequented the fantastic and horror scenes, where the influences of the gothic and Edgar Allen Poe are obvious, his pen name; Edogawa Rampo is a Japanese rendering of Poe’s name. (Painfully obvious when you see it isn’t it) These stories often saw disfigured or seriously wounded characters in key roles; the monsters taking command. It is from his original text Panorama-tô kitan (The Strange Tale of Paranormal Island) that the main source to Ishii’s Horror’s of Malformed Men can be found, but Ishii knew his Rampo and used several other stories of Rampo’s to bump the script up several notches. Among them The Twins that later was shot as Gemini 1999 by Shinya Tsukamoto.

Teuro Ishii was no stranger to the genre either, and just like Takashi Miike in later years, Ishii could direct up to ten movies a year! After a few years of working for the Shintoho studio, Ishii moved to Toei Studios, and with declining cinema vsitors due to the novelty of TV, he quickly became the right man in the right spot as the Pinky Violence movies hit the silver screens. With a couple of successful Pinku flicks to his name (The Joy of Torture 1968 and Orgies of Edo 1969 to name two) he finally got to make the movie that all those Edogawa Rampo stories had influenced, Horrors of Malformed Men. But instead of becoming the success that he expected, it soon vanished from the screens banned from being shown and plummeted into oblivion.

Still there's the question why was Teuro Ishii’s Horrors of Malformed Men banned in Japan? It isn’t more sexually explicit than other movies of the time, neither is it more visually violent than contemporary movies… But still it was banned never the less, hence becoming one of Japanese cinemas’ most notorious oddities.

Sure by today’s standards it is quite a gentle movie, but the ban was not due to a public outcry, there where no fainting and vomiting in the aisles, there was no audience fleeing from the theatres disgusted with what they saw on screen… They left the cinemas confused and dazed. Where the title, Horrors of Malformed Men may have led the paying blue-collar audience to believe that they where going to be in for a damned good freak show with loads of smut, gore and violence, they got a suggestive, mystic movie with performer Tatsumi Hijakata’s Butoh dance spastically strutting around on screen. Instead the ban came from the studio itself as Toei, worked up about the movie and the lacking results at the box-office, in their panic that the movie would offend someone put it on the shelf and banned it.

Being a land of stern rules, ethics and strictness, the cultural elite turned their backs on Tatsumi Hijakata’s Butoh during the fifties considering it ridiculous, embarrassing, scandalous an definitely not Japanese dancing. Luckily the western world embraced Butoh and today it is definitely a dance that is strongly associated with Japan. There’s a sweet irony in the fact that western worlds took to too Hijakata’s Butoh, as he initially invented the dance as a protest to the way western dance had evolved.

Tapping into the collective fear of nuclear holocaust that traumatized Japan after the war, showing disfigured characters would in one way or another be provocative then, but with today’s standards it probably wouldn’t create the same reaction… but there are other topics in this grand movie that still today will provoke an audience. Try grave robbing, two gender Siamese twins, incest and necrophillic relations for a starter!

Starting off with a superb collage of some awesome spiders to get your flesh creeping during the opening sequence, Ishii next slings us into pitch black as we hear Hirosuke Hitomi [Teruo Yoshida, the leading man from Hajime Sato’s excellent GOKE – The Bodysnatcher from Hell 1968] tell us that this tale starts in a gray room, an unusual room… The camera pans down from the eyes of a woman, eyes that will get those Asian horror references going trough your mind, it continues down revealing the woman’s naked breasts before finally landing on the protruding blade of a knife aimed at us the audience. A great mix of emotional signals evoked, curiosity, lust and fear.

The knife is a fake and this somewhat summarizes the movie, as the theatrics of the prop knife metaphorically refer to things not being as real as they may seem, something that will be revealed in great magnitude at the end of the movie. Hitomi is in prison for reasons untold, and in his cell he keeps having visions of a strange island, an island he also has drawn perfectly from his confusing memories of the place.

This is where Rampo’s Detective plot comes into action with the horror/grotesque. Hitomi goes about his task to solve the questions concerning the strange island, and at the same time is drawn into a murder mystery after fleeing the prison and meeting Hatsuyo [Teruko Yumi in her only acting part]. Hatsuyo is a trapeze artist at the travelling circus, and she also knows of the strange island Hitomi is trying to find for she has memories of the location too

A knife that is thrown from out of nowhere strikes down Hatsuyo and Hitomi takes to the run. During this escape he reads in the paper about the death of Genzaburô Komoda, a wealthy businessman who looks to be Hitomi’s doppelganger. This is later confirmed twice as the blind masseuse identifies the swastika scar Hitomi has on his sole as identical to one Komoda had, and shortly thereafter as Hitomi plunders Komoda’s grave to check the scar and switch identities with the deceased mirror image.

The switch of identities gives place for some really out of place slapstick tomfoolery that comes across as ridiculous in the context. If I wanted screwball monks reacting to ”ghosts” I’d have chosen a Ricky Lau or Samo Hung Kam-Bo Kung Fu horror comedy instead. But it’s only there for a few moments and then the story straightens out again, as Chiyoko [Michiko Kobata, also in her only movie role], the wife of Komodo tends to her seriously misdiagnosed, now inexplicably resurrected husband. But pulling off his plan isn’t easy as Hitomi thought, as he is constantly near to being exposed as he tries to get away with the masquerade. The traits of Komodo’s everyday life, Chiyodo the wife, Shizuko the lover, [Yukie Kagawa from Nobuo Nakagawa’s Ghost Story of the Snake Woman 1968, and Shunya Ito’s Female Convict Scorpion Jailhouse 41, the sequel to his Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion both 1972 with the magnificent Kaji Meiko] all become obstacles on his way.

Settling into his new persona he continues his investigations, but very now and then weird things happen, snakes attack the maids, disfigured beings sneak around the house, and Chiyodo dies under strange circumstances once again leaving Hitomi with a mysterious murder on his trail.

He has to make a move fast and at midpoint, Hitomi makes the decision that they have to make a trip to the island… On the beach he realizes that his visions have not been dreams, he has been there before. And this is where the movie if possible gets even more cryptic and bizarre, as the enigmatic Jôgorô [here's the splendid Tatsumi Hijikata] greets him on the shore. Hitomi is treated to a grand tour that shows him the strange beings living there, beings that Jôgorô has created. During this first night on the island Hitomi comes upon a strange house where he finds Hideko, a woman that looks just like the dead Hatsuyo! As his lust for her draws him closer he realises that she is intact a Siamese twin, joined at the hip with a hideously disfigured monster.

Eventually the terrifying secret of Hitomi’s background is exposed creating a spiral of emotions, as his world is shook to the foundations. Let me just say that the twist is family oriented! Hitomi’s bond to the horrific island and it’s inhabitants force him to take actions he never thought possible, and to put a terrific spin on the final act, guess who has come along for the ride in a sudden subplot about the investigations into where all the missing girls of Tokyo have gone? Yes, you may have guessed it, Rampo’s infamous detective Kogorô Akechi! The Komodo family manservant Shinhichi [Minoru Ohki who also starred as Akechi in Fukasaku’s Black Lizard] and through as series of flashbacks he renders the mystery, reveals the plot, exposes the culprits and brings light to the story. It’s cunning, unexpected and wonderful twist, as Rampo and Ishii don’t even give the lead protagonist Hiromi the satisfaction of explaining or solving his quest. But he does go out with a bang; I’ll give him that. (There’s even a nod at Akechi’s nemesis Back Lizard in the flashbacks) Now how’s that for a surprising use of sub plot in the last fifteen minutes!

So there you go, a bizarre, disturbing, trippy, stunningly visual, and very enigmatic movie that comes highly recommended. Obviously you should take the banned labelling with a pinch of salt now that you know the origins of that story, but at the same time you will for sure find that the movie is a magnificent piece of film to be finally enjoyed once again in the leisure of your own home. Every now and again you will find yourself thinking of the imagery of Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain 1973 or Hyeon-il Kang’s Mago 2002 to name a few, tantalising and haunting images that you will struggle to make sense of, but that’s part of the reason we watch these trippy movies isn’t it! For those crazy plots, shocking revelations and mind-expanding imagery.

Image:

2.35: Anamorphic Widescreen

Audio:

Dolby Digital Mono2.0, Japanese Dialogue with optional English Subtitles, or a commentary track by film critic Mark Schilling

Extras:

A fascinating half-hour documentary on Teuro Ishii featuring Shinya Tsukamoto (who starred in Ishii’s Blind Beast vs. Dwarf 2001 as Kogorô Akechi, based on a story by Rampo) and Minoru Kawasaki, the director of The Calamari Wrestler 2004. Ishii at the 2003 Far East Film Festival, the Original Theatrical Trailer, a poster gallery of Ishii movies and biographies on Ishii and Rampo.

For more on the iconography of J-Horror check out my article on the ConstructingHorror.com website.

Rabid Dogs

Rabid Dogs.
Original Title: Cani Arrabbiati

Directed by: Mario Bava

Thriller/Drama, 96 min

Italy, 1974

Distributed by: Lucertola Media

(OOP – Now available on Anchor Bay)

Of all the movies Mario Bava directed, this shelved, “lost” movie is ironically enough one of my top five Bava flicks. Sure his early Gialli are great, his Euro Goth flicks, filled with those masterful compositions and vivid colour schemes too, and who can forget the pulp-cool classics Planet of the Vampires 1965 and Danger Diabolik 1968. (Which make up two more on that top five list!) It’s all great stuff! If you still don't know of Mario Bava, then you really need to get away from your computer screen and in front of your DVD to check him out NOW! Bava's movies definitely are among some of the best looking movies ever to come out of Italy, all due to his passionate love of cinematography, lighting and composition. Looking back at his cinematic legacy I definitely feel that this "lost" movie is of his most engaging films ever directed, and it packs an ending so unexpected that it will startle you.

It’s said that Rabid Dogs became the long lost masterpiece since the movie was shelved and hidden away in the vaults after that producer Roberto Loyola died. Well that’s not quite true, it was shelved and somewhat forgotten for decades, but Loyola didn’t die, he went bankrupt, hence his movies being seized and locked in the vaults, along with a decent number of other movies too.

Several years later, in 1996, Lea Lander (Maria in the movie) somehow obtained rights to several movies thought long to be lost, and with the assistance of a young genre lover Peter Blumenstock, who you may remember released those great Beat at Cinecitta albums back in the late nineties on his Lucertola label, did all they could to get this wonderful piece of film back in the public eye. Blumenstock managed to secure the DVD rights - a very bold thing to do for a young cineaste as this still was the early days of Digital Versatile Disc, and there was no real market for Italian genre pieces like this one at the time. Well there obviously was, even if very limited. But who dare’s wins right! Back in the seventies Lander was the girlfriend of an elderly German gentleman whom invested in the movie on the terms that she was given the lead role in the movie. As Bava had worked with Lander previously on Blood and Black Lace 1964, he accepted the offer, luckily for us today!

Through his Luccertola lable, Blumenstock released the movie and in a splendid way DVD history was made as this movie definitely opened the floodgates for further genre title releases.

A few years on, Mario Bava’s son, Lamberto Bava - a director in his own, and long time Bava producer Alfredo Leone, purchased the rights, re-cut and shot new scenes for Rabid Dogs according to notes left by the late Bava putting together what is referred to as the definitive version of the movie now released under the name Kidnapped. Obviously this disc is a must for Bava fan’s that need to have all his movies, but in my opinion, the Rabid Dogs version is the one to hold, as this stays the closest to the material available when it was shelved, apart from the tinted title-sequence featuring Blumenstock’s girlfriend at the time weeping behind a curtain.(But given the chance to hear Tim Lucas discuss this movie on a commentary track, makes the Anchor Bay edtion very attractive too.) There’s something uncanny and disturbing when you try to tail footage shot some THIRTY years later on to a movie like this. Just remember how god-awful the Special Edition of Night of the Living Dead 1968 was when they inserted a load of new bullshit into that movie. That’s one limited edition disc which only got played once before it was instantly sold further at the second hand film store. You don’t mess around with a classic!

The action kicks in straight away as we are literally thrown inside a mans car as drives it rapidly down the road, honking his horn, and looking at something in the back seat, and checking his watch. We will later learn that this man is Riccardo [Riccardo Cucciolla] A delicate edit from Riccardo’s watch to Doc’s [Maurice Poli] watch where he is faking engine trouble as he waits for a designated car to pass by. The car passes and Doc jumps into his car where three other gang members are waiting. They follow the car in front of them and as it pulls up in front of a building, they rush out with their weapons drawn and as Thirtytwo [George Eastman as Luigi Montefiori] lets out a burst of shots, Doc flinches, which perhaps could be interpreted that he is not the most prone to violence of the four, making it clear that he’s the brains, “they” are the muscle. A third gang member Blade [Don Backy as Aldo Caponi] rushes up to the car, grabbing the briefcase from the man in the cars grasp. But not before stabbing him to death with a huge stiletto knife. The cops are closing in, the gang return to their getaway car, and set off only to have their perfect escape shattered as security guards at the building shoot their driver, and also puncture the gas tank (no, this isn’t an American movie, so the car doesn’t explode in an inferno of flames.) Obviously the car chokes to a halt a short while later and the now group of three bail out seeking refuge in a parking lot as the cops start sealing off the exits. Again we see shots of Riccardo driving through the traffic, glancing over his shoulder at the object in the back seat. Meanwhile back in the parking lot standoff, Blade once again gets active with his stiletto and kills one of the two women they now have taken hostage. Repelled in shock the Cops back off as the villains shove themselves into a new car taking the surviving female, Maria [Lea Lander] with them.

By coincidence they come upon a traffic light and in a cunning move to ditch their getaway car and shake off the cops the mobsters all stumble into the car at the red light… It’s no real shock that we find Ricardo behind the wheel, and he is now yet another of their hostages. And the bundle in the back seat? It’s a kid, a sick kid that Riccardo says he’s taking to the hospital. All of this in the first twelve minutes, gives you a concept of how fast this movie rolls.

The band of characters take off for the countryside, Doc says to Riccardo that they will let him take the kid, Tino o the hospital when they are safe. At the same time Blade and Thirtytwo make moves and provocative suggestions towards Maria. This adds to the tension along with the police helicopters swishing over head, police motorcycles driving past, the traffic jams and the toll booths that they have to get though without being bust or exposed by their kidnap victims. Several opportunities for escape are given for both Maria and Riccardo, and when Maria manages to make a run for it she ends up being chased by the manic Blade and Thirtytwo. Eastman by the way, is completely radiant here as the psychopathic and sadistic Thirtytwo, possibly his best villain ever in my opinion. Needless to say the two thugs catch up with her and Maria learns the hard way what it’s like to be a woman on the wrong side of a gritty, Italian exploitation flick. Back in the car their journey across the country via torment and paranoia continues. Riccardo tends and pleads for the child, and constantly battles Doc for the role of dominating male in the confined space.

Finally the tension cracks, the floodgates burst open, the anxiety within the group brings it all crashing down, and in the final reel you will find out why Riccardo is the coldest sonofabitch of them all. Once you think the movie has ended it turns out that it really has just begun.

Claustrophobia plays a large part in Rabid Dogs, as the majority of the action takes place inside the moving car. In many ways you could imagine Last house on the Left trapped in a moving car! There’s nowhere to go but forward, and your every move is scrutinized by doped up maniacs who don’t flinch to whip out their stilettos and slice a serious gash in your body. Then add the finer details, like the abundance of master shots, it’s all half’s, close up’s or extreme close-ups leaving no space to breath within the frame. As the majority of the film takes place inside the moving car where the heat almost can be felt, the sour stench of the constant sweating people in the car smelled, it is a very enticing movie indeed. Set Stelvio Cipriani’s haunting score to that, and you have nerve wrecking tension at it’s finest.

Rabid Dogs is ferocious to say the least. It is dark, it's gritty, it's pessimistic and highly nihilistic. It lacks most of the arty tenderness and gentle flow associated with Bava’s previous works but instead holds a more in your face harsh gritty documentary tone. If his previous movies where delicate bandages, this one is the oozing scab you can't stop picking at no matter how much it stings and burns. And that’s a good thing, as Bava took a step away from his previous lush looking movies to create this real gem of grindhouse cinema. Never the less it did stay on the shelf for almost twenty years making it mature with time like a good wine.

Image:

Being mastered primarily from various sources, the print looks thereafter too, but keep in mind, when this edition was released it was the only way to see the movie. In later years several other releases have been digitally re-mastered and therefore hold better image quality. Although the Anchor Bay version of Rabid Dogs released in 2007, does have an audio commentary track by Tim Lucas of Video Watchdog, (the magazine which any self respecting cineast will read with a passion) and if there is one person in the word who is the official go to guy when it comes to Mario Bava, you go to Tim Lucas. Period. If you are not familiar with his gigantic study and documentation of Bava [Mario Bava – All the Colors of the Dark] they I pity you, and advise you to seek it out before you do anything else.

Audio:

Italian Dialogue, 2.0 Stereo, English or German subtitles optional

Extras:

A trailer for the Luccertola DVD releases, Filmographies, and essays on Mario Bava by the masterful Tim Lucas, a study of the restoration by Peter Blumenstock.

The Frightened Woman

Frightened Woman.

Original Title: Femina Ridens

Aka: The Laughing Woman

Directed by: Piero Schivazappa

Thriller/Drama, 86.03min

Italy, 1969

Distributed by: Shameless Films Entertainment.

Story:

A young woman spends the weekend with a Doctor in an attempt to unveil his evil ways, although get’s more than she bargained for when the erotic game takes a serious turn. Slowly but surely roles are changed and a fiendish plan is set in motion.

Me:

Femina Ridens could easily be viewed as being degrading towards women, as it does deal with a topic that will at first estrange women and could be perceived as objectifying them. This would be an easy statement to make about this movie and many like it in the ”exploitation” genre. But if you where to claim that this movie is an insult towards women, then it’s a fair guess that you have missed the point of the movie (or fell asleep before the final reel) as I would claim that the major plot twist makes this movie a highly feminist movie. After all who is using whom for their own needs here? Who is the protagonist and who is the antagonist?

Maria [Dagmar Lassander] is an eager journalist who get’s an opportunity to spend the weekend with Dr. Sayer [Philippe Leroy, who you possibly saw in Dario Argento’s pale finale to the Mother’s Trilogy, The Mother of Tears, Umberto Lenzi’s splendid Gang War in Milan or Lilliana Cavani’s The Night Porter, yeah the one that jumpstarted the Nazisploitation genre], whom she plans to spend a few nights and days with so that she can get the scoop on him. She suspects that he is a murderer who kills his victims as he climaxes during sex, and she's going to bring him in. Or at least that is her initial plan...

Getting into action, Maria goes home with Sawyer but soon finds that he’s once again setting his sinister plans and sexual fantasies into action as she's lured into a fiendish world of sadomasochistic eroticism. At first she resists, but with time she starts to come around, only to learn that Sayer instead rejects her once she has submitted to him. Maria becomes desperate, and continues to play along with Sayers sadomasochistic games, and in one weak moment he confides in her and shows her photographs of his previous victims…

Now terrified of becoming Sayer's next victim, Maria tries to commit suicide by downing a fistful of pills instead. This is where things start to get really interesting. When Sayers realises that Maria dying would deprave him of his latest sex slave, he saves her. But this rescue isn’t salvation but instead becomes his damnation. He starts to feel emotional towards Maria, after all he shared his secret of the murders with her, and she listened to him tell the tale of his childhood memories, she knows him on a deeper level. (Which could be of use for her invest gory newspaper article!)

Dr Sayer, also grows as a character, in his fear of loosing his sexual play thing, he tends to her and nurses her back to health, and the two find themselves growing closer and closer. But subtly Maria is taking the dominating role instead of Sayer. It is now she who resists his approaches, as he moves in for intimacy, she backs off, taunting him in the same way he taunted her earlier.

Finally the climax to their erotic sadomasochistic game, in a sudden twist that you possibly may have seen coming, but at the same time a highly satisfactory climax, and the same one I claim makes this movie a feminist movie. Ages ago academics like Cynthia Freedland and Laura Mulvey argued that classic filmmaking is dominated by the “Male Gaze”, i.e. Women are only objects on screen for a male audience to google at, hence the starting accusation of this piece that it could easily be seen as a classical movie where females are only there to bring a voyeuristic and erotic element to the movie. But as I also pointed out the roles change and with the final scenes the tables have been turned on “us” the male audience, and if we follow Carol J. Clover’s writings on the female role in “horror cinema” she points out that we actually accept the fact that we identify with the “final girl/women in peril”, hence rendering her an active, valuable character and in no means passive and unimportant. That is exactly what happens here, as the final scene is played out. The rush of insight makes us realise that Maria is not a victim in yet another cheesy chauvinistic exploitation flick, but a strong, determined predator with a very obvious agenda that she is following in a splendid genre piece that plays with traditional gender roles and prejudice inherited from previous entries in the genre.

Trashy, 60’s pop arty, bold and an excellent movie to say the least. The cinematography by Carlo and Sante Achilli is fabulous, often reminiscent of Gialli photography, and relying heavily on symmetrical compositions to create stern images that go hand in hand with the strict and spartan modernism of Dr. Sayer's house of sin.

Producer Guiseppe Zaccariello only produced a handful of movies, among them Mario Bava’s milestone Giallo A Bay of Blood [1971], Rino Di Silvestro’s Nazisploitation Deported Women of the SS Special Section [1976], and Joe D’Amato’s Jungle war/Spaghetti Western hybrid Tough to Kill [1978]. Zaccariello not only produced, but also wrote scripts, and got a screenwriter credit on all three movies which all, by coincidence, just like Schivazappa’s Femina Ridens feature great scores by maestro Stelvio Cipriani.

If you are into that Freudian analysis thing, then you’ll have field day with this movie. It’s riddled with male/female emancipation as it uses archetypical gender roles and the prejudice that lies within those roles, subtle symbolism, especially the fabulous scene where Dr. Sayer walks into the crotch of a giant statue of a woman lying on her back only to have razor sharp sliding doors slam shut behind him in a monstrous Vagina Dentate. Once the doors open, only Sayers skeleton remains… Make what you want of it, but it’s a marvellous scene.

The Sculpture - Installation ”Hon-en Katedral” (literally she-a cathedral) by the artist collective Niki de Saint Phalle / Jean Tinguely / Per Olof Ultvedt was re-produced for the movie, as the original once stood at Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1966. After entering the giant sculpture through the vagina visitors could enjoy a cinema, a rollercoaster ride, gaze upon a goldfish pond or buy soda from a vending machine. Now that should give you an impression of size!

As you may recall from my bit on Luciano Ercoli’s The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion, Dagmar Lassander never really made an imprint on me in any of her movies, (even though she was in two Fulci movies and that first tickling Ercoli Giallo) but this is possibly one of the exceptions, as she really makes this movie work and her acting is top notch as she slowly shifts from victim to perpetrator. She really sells the part perfectly, and instead of the regular “Oh I’m in Shock!” face, she actually manages to act with her facial expressions here too. She is fully believable as she curiously sets foot into Dr. Sayers world, terrified as he starts to enslave and break her down, flirtatious and sexy as she gives in to his plan, only to set her own in motion and stand victorious and content after her triumph. Once again this transition and performance is what sells the shift into a feminist theory discussion held above.

This edition claims to be a restored version, and for a change it’s not a marketing trick (which the UNCUT – UNRATED stamps usually signal to me when I’m choosing editions to buy), as the team at Shameless with the use of a varied bin of source materials, and constant dialogue with director Piero Schivazappa. This all led up to their screening for him, where he held with script in hand, later responded; “It is as faithful as it can be to the original script”, “This IS the version of my film to watch.” Once again Shameless bring a fascinating movie back to the intended vision of the filmmakers and make it available for fans of the genre after a painstaking labour of love is presented.

Image:

1.85 : 1, Remastered for 16:9 Anamorphic Widescreen

Audio:

English Dialouge, Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo

Extras:

The customary assortment of Trailers for other titles available from Shameless: Tonino Valerii’s My Dear Killer, Corrado Farina’s Baba Yaga (which Shamless also restored to HIS vision of the movie, not the butchered version available previously), Lucio Fulci’s Black Cat, Guiliano Carnimeno’s RatMan, and both of Massimo Dallamano’s Venus in Furs, and What Have They Done to Your Daughters. There’s also the Shameless Redux trailer for The Frightened Woman, but below I give you the original grindhouse trailer for your entertainment.

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie

Original Title:

Non si deve porfanare il sonno dei morti

Aka: The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue,

Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue,

Do Not Speak Ill of the Dead,

Don't Open the Window and many more.

Directed by: Jorge Grau, 1974

Italy / Spain, 95min

Distributed by: Anchor Bay Entertainment

Story:

An antique dealer plans on spending a quiet weekend in the countryside but finds his plans shattered when a young woman accidentally crashes into his motorbike at a gas station. Edna offers George a ride to his destination, but on the way plans are changed once again and he ends up driving her to her planned visit to her sister who lives in the countryside. The road there unfortunately takes them the wrong way and as they stop to question at a farmyard a stranger wanders up from the river and towards the car. A stranger who has been dead for a month!

Me:

Jorge Grau's excellent “Undead” (I'll be saying undead from here on, as nobody in the movie ever says the word zombie. But we all know that they are zombies don't we!) movie Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, with all of its many a.k.a. titles is a great piece of genre cinema, and one of my personal favourites of the genre. Following in the wake of the groundbreaking Night of the Living Dead, it's possibly one of the best entries into the genre brought to recognition by George A. Romero in 1969. Luckily it's one of those Italian-Spanish coproduction’s that relies more on story than gut munching effects of the later wave of the zombie genre. Not that those movies are bad, quite the opposite, the apocalyptic world of the flesh eater is a tantalising one to say the least.

Producer Edmondo Amati, (producer of such greats like Fulci's A Lizard in a Woman's Skin 1971, One on Top of the Other 1969, Alberto De Martino's The Antichrist 1974 and Antonio Margheriti's Cannibal Apocalypse 1980) decided that he must to get in on the zombie niche after Romero's movie became a hit, and in Spain he found his perfect candidate, the young Jorge Grau. Grau had a decent background in movies, not the horror genre per say, but a majority of his works had elements of the fantastic in them and had received an overall fine reception. Amati approached him with the question “Do you like Night of the Living Dead?” A movie that Grau indeed was a fan of, but as he was trying his hardest to get his Ceremonia sangrienta 1973 (aka The Legend of Blood Castle) off the ground since 1964 when he first heard of the Countess Bathory legend during a film festival in Czechoslovakia, the two could not collaborate on the project Amati was trying to pitch. Some years later after the completion of Ceremonia sangrienta, Amati approached Grau once again with the Sandro Continenza penned script, asking if he still liked Night of the Living Dead. Giving Grau a free hand to change the script and take the time he needed to make it more realistic, the two started their relationship, which would end up being Let Sleeping Corpses Lie.

Made in an age before the realistic gore exploded onto screens with movies like George A. Romero’s sequel Dawn of the Dead 1978, Andrea Bianchi’s Nights of Terror 1981, Marino Girolami's eclectic Cannibal/Zombie hybrid Zombie Holocaust 1980 and Lucio Fulci’s epic mother of all Euro Zombie flicks Zombi2 1979, Grau chooses, much like Romero to rely heavily on the realism and everyday drama of the people caught up in this strange new world rather than focusing on the specific gut munching and reigning chaos of a zombie infested landscape.

Let sleeping Corpses Lie is a pretty straight forward story, George [the fantastic Ray Lovelock] sets out for a weekend in the countryside, getting away fro the stress of inner-city life, which is made quite obvious during the start of the movie, the citizens walk aimlessly, stare blankly as they await busses, in the heavy trafficked core of modern civilization. People are seen wearing facemasks to avoid breathing in the fumes (which interestingly enough makes one think of the swine flu pandemic and fear that we are living with right now. It makes the movie contemporary even today) the further George gets out of town on his motorbike, cross cut with images of fuming industrial towers, urban decay, dead birds, the imagery lightens up and instead of the close-ups of decay, we start seeing wide shots of open country, fresh air and swaying fields. George is closing in on his safe haven, but when stopping at a petrol station to fill up his bike Edna accidentally crashes him into. Edna [star of Massimo Dallamano’s What Have You Done to Solange? 1972 and Luigi Cozzi’s top notch Giallo The Killer Must Kill Again 1975, and who also won the best actress award for her part in the movie at the 1974 Sitges film festival] offers to drive him to his destination. But they end up going the wrong way, into the middle of nowhere. George gets out at a nearby farm to ask for directions and two important storylines are introduced. The ecological cause of the forthcoming outbreak is established, which has George make a political statement. Don’t mess around with Mother Nature. No sooner has he said his than Edna has her first encounter with the undead, as Guthrie [the recently deceased Fernando Hillbeck], a local tramp tries to attacks her. Edna manages to evade him and runs up to the farm too, but George and the farmer can’t believe what Edna tells them, and laugh off the shocking experience she just had, as Guthrie couldn’t possibly have attacked her. He died almost a month ago.

A subplot with Edna’s sister Katie [Jeanine Mestre] is set in motion. Katie, a recovering drug addict has been forced out into the countryside by her husband Martin, [José Lifante] and Edna is on the way there to convince her to sign into a rehab programme and get of the drugs once and for all. But she just can’t seem to stay of the smack and as she secretly prepares to shoot up in the barn, she finds herself in the dark stood face to face with Guthrie! This encounter leads up to the death of Martin and it’s at this point of the movie that the real antagonist makes his entry, The Inspector portrayed with bravura by Arthur Kennedy. The Inspector quickly makes up his mind that these city folks, these damned hippies with their longhair and drugs, are the real culprits and that they have killed Martin, not the fantasy figure that Katie claims did. Now this in one cop who always gets his man. We can understand that from the way he moves, talks and acts. He isn’t afraid to go out on a limb to bust a case, and his loyal men are always standing by, ready to act on his every demand. Just watch as he lays pressure on Katie, trying to make her confess, not giving a damn that she just watched her husband be killed.

The movie moves forward as George and Edna try to figure out the whereabouts of Guthrie as both sisters now claim he is the real killer After an infant unexplainably in a fit of rage bites George at the nearby hospital he takes Dr Duffield [Vincente Vega] back to the farm where scientists explain the strange experiments they are conducting in the fields outside the village. Using ultrasonic radiation they are fighting off insects and bugs, who instead of eating crops go insane and kill each other instead when they hear the noises the strange machine makes. Really it’s a modified combine harvester, but it looks believable, and it gives a possible reason for the dead rising from their tombs.

George and Edna’s quest leads them to a crypt under the village church, and low and behold, they find him, the undead Guthrie. This is followed by a wonderfully long sequence where they battle their way out of the underground tomb chased by several more undead that Guthrie awakens by wiping blood on their foreheads. Once again their success in the horror narrative is their damnation in the drama narrative as the Inspector arriving at the cemetery finds his officer sent out to trail the suspects gutted and three burned corpses. Yeah, the undead now dead again.

Finally they all gather for a fantastic ending with several shocking events back at the local hospital and the movie comes to its climax with a bang to say the least. In some ways the ending is kind of silly, but at the same time it’s the ending we always wanted for Ben [Duane Jones] in the movie that inspired this one to start with, Night of the Living Dead. Even though the special effects by Gianetto De Rossi are quite restrained, I’m sure that in 1974 they where quite shocking, even the masterpiece from the other side of the Atlantic, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1974 isn’t’ as visually spectacular as this movie is. And the movie is a wonderful time capsule of De Rossi’s realistic effect wizardry only a few years before he really took it to the limit in those splendid Italian genre pieces.

Symbolism and negative counterparts play a part in Grau’s movie. During the very start of the movie we see a fertility stature the symbol of life, a few moments later the camera focuses on a haunting painting which look like a strange blend of the iconic atomic bomb mushroom and a harrowed face of a dead person. Also in a wider perspective it’s somewhat ironic to start a movie that ends on such a down note with a symbol of life. The struggle for human survival is conquered not by the monsters, but by humans themselves. The Cops, who are supposed to be the good guys, turn out to be the bad guys. It’s all wonderfully sinister isn’t it, and one can only imagine the degree of social criticism Grau brought into the movie here, as the idea that the police force represents Franco and his dictatorship over the people of Spain isn’t too far from bay.

Much like The Exorcist 1973, Jaws 1975, and the recent Swedish hit Let the Right One In 2008, it’s the realism of the drama that makes the movie work. The movie is set in a real world and is actually a drama with horror themes and elements. Also i's the very ordinary characters who help drive the movie. George is a simple antique dealer who only wants’ to get to his rural house in the countryside to get away from the hectic tempo of the inner city. Edna is an everyday woman on her way to visit her sister who also lives in the countryside. There are no superpowers at play here, no secret army training, no suitcases full of weapons, just two common people in the middle of a terrifying setting. It’s the simple choices that they make that make them believable characters. Running for their lives, much like you and I would do.

The explanation for the undead coming back to life is also quite reasonable, and in many ways a critical standing point. The human element is to blame, not a freak of nature, but our own need to control our environment. An ecological theme that we are to blame for our own downfall much like in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Jean Rollin’s Grapes of Death 1978. And it works, because we can relate to it, much like we still relate to discussions concerning the environment still today. It’s easier to swallow than radiation from outer space isn’t it?

One of the more sophisticated tools used by Grau in Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, is that George is a sceptic, it’s not until we pass half of the movie that George actually believes that the dead have come back to life, and from then on starts fighting with his life at stake. This is a cunning device as we grow into identification with George as he grows into the believer, his scepticism is the same as ours, there can’t be monsters, but as he changes and develops as a character we go along on the ride with him and he bring us into the story. As he comes to terms of the reality of monsters, so do we.

All of these splendid storytelling tools are used to crate a magnificent movie that still almost forty years later makes it a really disturbing, believable, engaging and highly entertaining movie. A masterpiece of the horror genre to say the least. A definitive must see movie for any fan of early European Zombie Horror.

Finally a word on Giuliano Sorgini’s excellent soundtrack. (Sample above!) It’s honestly one of the most impressive scores conceived for an Italian genre movie because where it starts out as a rock funky jazz thing so typical of the Italian movie scene at the time, it quickly degenerates into a terrifying mixture of primitive growling and guttural sounds which are really disturbing and go perfectly with the images of the undead feasting on the bleeding flesh of mankind. Great stuff, perhaps not as proggish as Goblin or as melodic as the Fabio Frizzi and Alexander Blonkensteiner tunes of the later wave of gut-munchers, but definitely a disturbing soundtrack for a fascinating movie.

Image:

1.85:1 widescreen

Audio:

2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo

Extras:

This version is the limited edition tin boxed set so it has the following extras; A few TV spots, a couple of Radio Spots (which I’d love to have had on CD with the Score! That would have been an extra!) A galley of posters and stills, a novelty Toe Tag replica, a small replica of the German poster! (Surely they could have found a Spanish one, that image is beautiful!) And the best, an interview with Jorge Grau and a 24page booklet, which reproduces text by Nigel J. Burrell from the long out of print Midnight Media book on Let Sleeping Corpses Lie.

And if you really, really want to know… I have no. 1547 of the 5000 limited run.

The Secret Killer

The Secret Killer

Original Title: Gatti rossi in un labirinto di vetro

Aka: Eyeball

Aka Wide Eyed

in the Dark

Directed by : Umberto Lenzi

Italy /Spain 1975

Giallo, 89min

Distributed by: Marketing Film

Story:

A group of American tourists in Spain find themselves having a terrible holiday when a homicidal manic with a passion for chopping out the eyes of the victims strikes among them. Tension and paranoia set in as they try to figure out who is stalking and killing them, and everyone is fast on the hand to point out a assailant.

Me:

Umberto Lenzi, a fantastic director to say the least. I usually say that he’s mostly know for his cannibal movies [Man from Deep River 1972, Eaten Alive 1980, the infamous Make Them Die Slowly 1981] and the rather cheesy, but ever so atmospherical Nightmare City from 1980. But in my opinion I have to put my money on his decent amount of Gialli and Poliziotteschi which are so much more superior to his gut-muncher movies, and if I was ever forced to write a top ten Gialli list, Umberto Lenzi’s splendid Seven Blood-Stained Orchids from 1972 would definitely be one of the selected few. But today I cast my left eye and thoughts on The Secret Killer (or Red Cats in a Glass Maze as the original title really translates as) which Lenzi directed in 1975.

Obviously there is a reasonable amount of doubt as one sits down to a Gialli. Will it be one of the great ones, or will it be a mixed up jumble like so many other have been. The Secret Killer is quite often refered to as a mediocre Giallo which lack

s plot, a critique often aimed at the Giallo genre. A critique that definitely is unjust, as the plot definitely is there; Who is the killer, and what is the killer’s modus operandi and added to that there are all the cryptic subplots that shave the viewer searching high and low for the right answer. And unlike so many other detective or criminal movies you can almost never predict the outcome of the Giallo as it plays with a completely different set of rules opposed to convention, which is why they still fascinate audiences once again on digital media.

The Secret Killer sees a band of American tourists in Spain being driven round and shown the sights in your general touristy manner. At one stop Reverend Bronson [George Rigaud, who’s face will be familiar to genre fans from Luciano Ercoli’s Death Walks on High Heels 1971, Lucio Fulci’s A Lizard in a Womans Skin 1971, One on Top of the Other 1969, Sergio Martino’s All the Colors of the Dark 1972 and Lenzi’s Knife of Ice 1972] is the first to reach the scene after a young woman is brutally stabbed by an offscreen killer who for a change wears red gloves instead of the genre trait black gloves. The cops, Inspector Tudela [Andrés Mejnuto], who only has a week before retirement, and his young assistant Lara go to the autopsy, where Lara drops the classic line “Excuse me Doctor, are you saying that the killer is a sadist?” to which the Doctor replies “I wouldn’t really doubt it!” That’s the sort of tickling dialogue Lenzi and co-writer Félix Tusell come up with in this fine example of the Gialli. Félix Tusell was originally a producer and went on to continue producing movies after writing the screenplay for The Secret Killer, and that’s kind of a shame, as The Secret Killer has a lot going for it as I will point out shortly.

During the autopsy and later towards the end, when they know who their main suspect is, you will also see a policeman played by Fulvio Mingozzi, who frequently had bit parts as detectives, policemen or agents in almost all the great genre pieces. Do check out his resume, it’s an impressive list to say the least!

Anyhow after questioning the Reverend, setting up the first of many red herrings, the cops leave and the group of tourists continue their holiday. During this set up we are introduced to Paulette Stone [Martine Brochard, who had previously been in a few Nunsploitation flicks and Sergio Martino’s Poliziotteschi Violent Professionals 1973.] the secretary and former mistress of Marc Burton [John Richardson, who starred in Mario Bava’s Black Sunday in 1960 and later Martino’s Torso 1973]. Burton, who mysteriously arrives at the scene of the crime to comfort Paulette and try to swoon her back into his arms. But Paulette won’t be seduced so easily, at least not until Marc is divorced from his wife!

This sequence introduces the major mulligan of the plot; in the very opening after the credits we see a woman in an airport rebooking her flight to New York for a flight to Barcelona instead. We will pretty soon realise that this woman is Alma [Marta May], Marc’s wife, and our knowledge that she took a flight to Barcelona definitely sets her up as our prime suspect, especially as the next victim of the gloved killer is one of the tourists. The killer is moving in on the group!

Keeping the confusion high and pointing fingers in the wrong direction is frequently used throughout the first half of the movie, we learn of further connections between the group in Barcelona and Marc’s wife Alma. Gale Alvarado [Silvia Solar] tells friends in the group that she used to go to school with Marc’s wife, and that she doesn’t think Alma would like to learn about his romances with his secretary on the side. Marc gets a note from Reverend Bronson that his wife called and has taken up residence at the Hotel Presidente on the other side of town. As you see there are major forces working towards pointing out Alma as the gloved killer, but do we really want to believe that our leading lady is the killer? Red herrings are renown to shove the audience in the wrong way!

The second killing, the murder of Peggy is a wonderful sequence that takes place inside an amusement park ghost train ride. Filled with creepy masks and sudden shock effects the killer strikes and once again chops out the left eye of the victim. Once again the cops round up the group of tourists and start going though their suspects. This gathering of the group could have been a pace killer if it had not had been used in an interesting way which works in favour of the narrative. Every time the group are assembled after a killing, they start pointing fingers at each other, hence leading us on and planting new red herrings. After the murder of Peggy, there are several threads at play, and Marc goes to the Hotel his wife is supposed to be located at, obviously she isn’t there, but Marc finds a bloodied dagger in the suite which generates the first of a series of flashbacks related to Marc and Alma. He has returning flashbacks to a situation where he found Alma fainted in their garden with the same knife he found in the hotel in her right hand and an eyeball in her left… he can’t put his finger on it, but something is wrong with the image, and his is a subplot that will later have great importance.

It’s quite fair to say that from this point on Marc becomes the primary protagonist of the story, and even tough we don’t completely free him from suspicion, he will be the character who leads us through this mysterious Giallo. As viewers familiar with the genre will know, you can never be determined until the last scene has played out, these movies constantly pull the rug from under our feet and in some cases even the most obvious becomes the opposite in the flash of a knife.

The finest example of the finger pointing occurs after a young woman outside the group is murdered as she feeds her pigs on a farm they are visiting. There are several leads pointing to various members of the group and a great montage showing the whereabouts of our favourite suspects enhances this. The murderer stalks and kills the farm girl and the soon inspector, cursing that he has to solve this case before retiring and handing his position over to his young assistant, comes to the scene yet again. But then the splendid twist is that as the police question those we favour as prime suspects, they flip it around and point towards Paulette, our secondary protagonist. Once again, we have been following the tale through the narrative of Paulette and Marc, and it couldn’t be Paulette donning the red gloves as that would be illogical wouldn’t it. Or would it?

Burton learns that Alma is to catch a flight back out of Barcelona and races to the airport to confront her, but in a last minute decision Alma cancels her flight ticket and once again she slips through Marc’s fingers leaving him non the wiser. Although he does encounter Lisa Sanders [Mirta Miller] a photographer who is part of their little group and uses ever possible moment and location to photograph her girlfriend Nabila [Ines Pellegrini, who starred in a few Pasolini movies, including the infamous Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom]. Marc asks her to keep her professional eye open for Alma, and to photograph her if she sees her in Barcelona. He then goes back to Paulette and tells her about his suspicion that Alma is in town, killing all these people in an attempt to frame him!

Needless to say Lisa becomes the next victim in a beautiful sequence that easily is among the most finest of the genre. Antonio Millán’s cinematography peaks here as composition and pacing climaxes in a stunning sequence utilising deep focus and vivid colour schemes. I could go as far as referring to his as the must see scene of the movie. Nabila walks into the apartment and see’s Lisa’s body, screams waking the rest of the group, once again invoking a wonderful series of mis-en-scene where we are presented with possible suspects. At this point we have a fair idea of our own suspects, but we need to go yet another round before it is all exposed. The group take a trip to Stiges (yes Sitges of the legendary horror and fantasy festival) but as a change the group is separated in yet another cunning subplot to lead us astray. Nablia is in hospital following the attack, and Reverend Bronson stays in Barcelona to visit her, Marc has to check some last details of Alma’s whereabouts, and this is obviously when the killer strikes again! This time it’s a failure, and Nabila escapes once again, but the cops are in the killers trail, and soon their prime suspect will be captured.

Eventually Marc is too close to the killer for his own good and the police, persuaded that he just tried to murder the last victim and not chance the killer as he states himself, take him into custody. Once again I point out the common misunderstanding that Gialli have no plot or comprehensive storyline and only use cheap tricks. But here you go, evidence proving the opposite, in the autopsy scene, the doctor pointed out that the wounds where made by a right handed person which is later in the end of the movie proves a possible suspect to be innocent!

All good things come to an end and even so The Secret Killer. The murderer is exposed and the motif for slicing out eyeballs of the victims too and bizarrely enough there’s even a happy ending for one of the lead protagonists to wrap things up nice and tidy. Ironically there are several small clues and questions that get revealed during the final scenes. Answers to suggestions and questions which I would think may be seen more coherently by an audience perhaps not to familiar with the genre. I say ironic because with knowledge of the genre and the “anyone can be the killer” twists that frequent the Gialli, it’s a rarity that the most obvious killer is there right under your nose.

The Secret Killer has a fabulous score by the late Bruno Nicolai, who composed some of the finest scores ever set to Gialli movies, This one much in the same suave style of his previous scores for Guiliano Carnimeo’s The Case of The Bloody Iris 1972, and Sergio Martino’s Your Vice Is A Closed Room and Only I Have the Key also from1972. But on the down side, this fantastic score is misused and brutally wasted on this film, or perhaps overused is a better word as it keeps coming in every now and again without any regards to what mood the scene is playing for what so ever. Sometimes it’s just plain annoying and distracts from the narrative. But on it’s own it’s a great soundtrack.

Image:

2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen

Audio:

Dolby Digital Mono English, Dolby Digital 5.1 German, Dolby Digital Mono German, no subtitles available.

Extras:

The theatrical trailer, filmographies for Umberto Lenzi, John Richardson, Martine Brochard and Ines Pellegrini, a slide show of stills and promotional materials. Finally a bunch of trailers for other Marketing Film’s releases, but nothing of real genre interest unless you like your Hong-Kong actioners dubbed to German.

Poultrygeist - Night of the Chicken Dead

Poultrygeist – Night of the Chicken Dead
Directed by Lloyd Kaufman
USA, 2006
Comedy /Horror, 103min
Distributed by: Troma Entertainment Inc.

Story:
Life is rolling on for young Arbie as he completes his summer of love by finally laying Wendy and being fingered by Native American Zombies in the cemetery. But in just a semesters time his life is turned upside down when he runs into his girlfriend Wendy, who is back from college to protest the newly erected American Chicken Bunker franchise in Tromaville. Arbie realizes that Wendy has turned lesbian during her time at college and devastated, he takes a job at the same fast food joint that Wendy (and most of Tromaville) are protesting against. But little does he stop to think about the fact that the fast food joint has been built upon the sacred Native American burial ground! Low and behold as Teenage lust, Indian burial grounds, Zombies and Fast food blend into the gore fest orgasm called POULTRYGEIST –NIGHT OF THE CHICKEN DEAD

Me:
Being a fan and friend of Lloyd Kaufman and Troma for a very long time, it’s only obvious that I at one point in time have to slip in the latest offering, Poultrygeist – Night of the Chicken Dead into the DVD and see if it holds up to the previous installments of Kaufman’s celluloid legacy. Keep in mind that Poultrygeist – Night of the Chicken Dead is a movie that I have feared for quite some time…

Well to be honest, Poultrygeist isn’t The Toxic Avenger, it isn’t Terror Firmer, it isn’t WAR, it isn’t Citizen Toxie, and it sure isn’t kosher in any way at all, but then again that’s part of the reason that you turn to Troma; for fast, violent, laughable, gory schlock entertainment, and I mean that in the most positive and respectfull way ever. Nobody can make blood-soaked carnage as hilarious as Lloyd Kaufman.

No matter how wild and crazy these movies get, you can never ignore Lloyd Kaufman’s engagement and statements, as each movie takes the time to criticize, mock and raise awareness for the topic of discourse, even if it's done sublimely and suggestive. Don’t start ranting on about how sexist these movies are and what a shitty view they take on women, because if you do, you are out of your league. I can’t think of a company that makes movies that celebrate sexuality, male, female or in-between as respectfully and interestingly as Troma. The Toxic Avenger was in many ways a poke at the health craze of the eighties, Class of Nuke Em High a raised fist against the dumping of toxic waste (themes also used in Toxic Avenger of course), Troma's WAR was a poke in the eye the arms dealers and US involvement in overseas conflicts, the second and third instalments of the Toxic Avenger series: Toxic Avenger Part II and Toxic Avenger Part III : The Last Temptation of Toxie both shot back to back in 1989 are obviously comments on global corporations and the era of the sharp dressed, backstabbing cold hearted businessmen. And then there’s Terror Firmer which made Lloyd the poster boy for his whole getting off your ass and making your own damned movie mantra as he shows that even a blind man can get his stuff in the can.

And this is why I say that you can't ignore Kaufman’s movies, as he goes after his topics and nails them by the balls to the wall. As the name indicates, Poultrygesist is a comment on the fast-food industry and the franchise globalization of the world. You can’t miss it, unless you are an idiot, and this is one of the finer points of Troma movies, they do have a message, even if it lost on the masses.

Needless to say the movie is effective, I avoid chicken products like the plague, (especially those fast-food grinders and anything that isn’t sliced and diced by my own hand) and this movie definitely makes one even more hesitant to chicken. There’s so much chicken carcasses, ground chicken, chicken slime, chicken sliver and chicken guts that you may never want to eat chicken again. So yeah, this movies message is loud and clear, and definitely comes across without any misinterpretations at all.

Also the fact that Troma have pioneered so many fields and areas that they have been completely ignored for that it is a crying shame.

Years before putting a new spin on the classics, like the recent Jane Austen vs. Zombies / Cthulhu fad of the past year, Troma and Kaufman where already light years ahead of their time., with films like Tromeo and Juliet 1996, at one point in time I recall Citizen Toxie was referred to as The Tale of Two Toxies. That’s TROMA and William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens! You don’t get that reference in your average schlock horror, but Troma knows their classic story telling and that’s why their movies, especially the ones written and directed by Kaufman himself, all rise above the average corny horror that is force fed onto fans of the genre. The last horror/comedy I tried to watch got shut down and slipped back into the case before I even got half way through, and that was the critically acclaimed Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer. But never has a Troma movie been halted by my hand, and probably they won’t either, because as I said, there is a heart and soul to these movies no matter how you twist and shake it.

Secondly, technology! Back in the late nineties when other studios where still writing “animated menu” as an extra feature on their DVDs, Troma where dishing up exclusive audio commentaries, extended cuts, an amazing amount of extras so that you never, NEVER felt screwed buying a Troma DVD. And just look at the DVD titles they release today! The majority of their own movies all come with a complete extra disc of exclusive feature length documentaries giving a full insight into the movie making process and how it’s all done. So for a few bucks you are in fact getting your film school education while you laugh your ass off! Now you can’t complain about that now can you!

In many ways Poultrygeist is a great Troma movie, high on Troma values. Ass jokes, nudity, lesbians, fantastic effects, dorky protagonists and all round cheesiness (what’s not to like about that?) The fundamental narrative is here, the classic Troma storyline: The dorky underdog who comes out on top and saves the day. Yeah, everyone loves an underdog and that is probably why it’s always been Troma's main plot device, but Poultrygeist didn’t quite leave the impression I wanted it too. Sure it is a hillarious movie, all the regular Troma “guest actors” are there, the jokes and gag’s are up to usual Troma standards, and there’s even the craftsmanship of the story, yeah I said story, and even though YOU may not expect to find one in a Troma movie, it’s in there and if you have missed them, then that’s just proof of your ignorance, the underdog and the fight against unfair callous corporation! Remember I pointed this out earlier, there’s social criticism in these movies!

If you want another example of the genius of Mr. Kaufman here you are; all the major characters are named after US fast-food chains! Arbys, Wendys, Paco Bell and so on, and also if you fail to see who Robin Watkins General Lee Roy is supposed to be they you must be blind. See it’s all very sublime and highly effective! Perhaps it was the song and dance numbers that didn't work for me, as I can’t stand S&D numbers (apart from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Grease that is…) and I definitely don’t want singing in my lesbian romp scenes, it just confuses me. But the soundtrack will have you singing the theme over and over again for the next few days after seeing the movie, so it's not all bad is it.

The story obviously focuses on Arbie [Jason Yachanin], yet another Troma underdog fighting for the good stuff and right values in life. It’s a pretty uncomplicated tale of how he tries his darnedest to regain the one true happiness he ever had, Wendy [Kate Graham, possibly the most “Girl Next Door” ever in a Troma movie], and how life constantly has other plans for him forcing him to take actions outside of his underdog, geek character trait.

The subplot of Arbie meeting his “Older self” [played to masterful perfection by director Kaufman himself] is great, and echoes the; if you really want something, “get off your fat ass and make it happen” mentality associated with Troma. A guide line for the entire “Make your own Damned Movie” philosophy that Kaufman and Troma stand for. Do it! If Troma have been able to make movies for 35+ years, then so can you!

And finally the one to bring in the final laughs, the one scene you always will find in Kaufman’s movies, the car flip – explosion scenes that cost them a million dollars back in 1990 when they shot Sgt Kabukiman NY.P.D. Ever since then that scene has been masterfully woven into all of Kaufman's movies and has become almost like Alfred Hitchcock’s cameo, you know that at one point during the movie, it will be there. In Poultrygeist it fills a very nihilistic and ironic function tossing the movie into dark ground and making it the The Unbearable Lightness of Being of horror comedies, as happiness is once again punished with ironic sudden death. Cherish what you have as it may be gone tomorrow.

You can huff and you can puff, but you can not blow down the house of Troma, an impressive institution that has been making independent movies since 1974 that’s over 35 years of real independent film making, 35 years of supporting independent filmmakers, and 35 years of showcasing that anyone who really wants can make a movie. And herein lays one of the inspiring magic of them, their passion for what they do and their ambition to make others get up and be active. Get away from the dronish dream state of fantasy, get off your asses and make your own damned movie. Then give Troma a call, and who knows they may even distribute it for you and give you that break you never thought you would get!

[And buy their movies right now, as even true independance has a price!]

Image:
Anamorphic Widescreen

Sound:
Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo

Extras:
Well as I stated above, Troma DVD’s are packed with extras, this one no exception; There’s the full length commentary track by Lloyd Kaufman and co-writer Gabe Friedman (no stranger to Troma himself), there’s the trailers for all your favourite Troma movies, music videos outtakes and loads of greet stuff, then there’s the stunning disc two with the feature length Poultry In Motion - Truth Is Stranger Than Chicken documentary on the making of Poultrygeist (see here’s the film school Troma style again) and also a shit loads of great stuff to, deleted scenes, further exploration of how to make a movie. Like I said, loads of stuff to keep you happy and satisfied, so go get it now!

J of Cinezilla with the always charming Uncle Lloydie in 2006.

Martyrs

Martyrs
Directed by Pascal Laugier
France / Canada, 2008
Horror, 95min
Distributed by: Pan Vision

Story:
Two young woman become friends in an institution during the seventies. As adults one of them takes her revenge on the people who held her captive as a child. This revenge is the start of an ordeal that will take them both beyond the limits of human suffering…


Me:
There’s been a lot of really great movies coming out of France these last years, and if you start with Haute Tension, and follow the blood line from there, Haute Tension [Alexandre Aja 2003], Calvaire [Fabrice du Welz 2004], ils [David Moreau & Xavier Palud 2006], Frontièr(s) [Xavier Gens 2007], À l’intérieur [Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury 2007], Vinyan [Fabrice du Welz 2008], and now Martyrs [Pascal Laugier 2008] it’s definitely worth calling it the New Wave of French Horror that gets darker and darker, and so much more sinister with each movie that is released. Perhaps much more than the recent wave of Spanish horror, the French stays more on psychological ground where the Spaniards have made some very impressive ventures into the real of the paranormal. And we all know that a realistic psychological driven horror movie will scar you more than the average ghost story does. So yet again a French movie storms the scoreboard and pushes France back to the top of the current European capital of horror once again.

If you have not seen this movie, I will for a change stop you here and advise you to watch this movie, because I have been thinking about this film for the last two weeks, and I’m going to blow this one right open here and now and I will spoil the crap out of it for you if you continue reading. But the choice is yours, you could read on and then watch, or if you have seen it, read on and let’s discuss this amazing movie.

This is a very dark, misogynistic disturbing movie. Really it is. It’s nothing like those other movies claiming to be the most violent horror of the decade and all that bull. This is the real deal and honestly you will be disturbed, you will be affected and you will feel nauseous. But at the same it’s perhaps one of the most fascinating movies of the wave of new nihilistic horror that has been put forth during the last five years, as Pascal Laugier actually manages to tell a story through the disturbing violence and sadistic torture scenes that make up the core of Martyrs.

The movie opens in the late 70’s where a young girl, obviously battered and assaulted, stumbles out of a desolate building and starts running down the street. The further away from the building she gets, the more she starts to realize that she has managed to escape (from an off-screen threat) and starts sobbing in relief in a scene that for sure had me conjuring up mental images of those iconic Nick Ut photographs of the naked Kim Phùc running down the road after the South Vietnamese napalm bombed the hell out of her village. And I can’t say that it’s unintended that Laugier wants these images to be brought to mind, as this definitely is the sort of imagery that will be used in the narrative later on. Anyhow, the young girl, Lucie is placed in an institution with other disturbed children and soon befriends Anna. After the exposition we understand that something really terrible happened to Lucie in that dark house, so terrible that she won’t talk about it. The pre-title sequence comes towards its end, and just as a sense of calm settles around the two young girls, the demon haunting Lucie makes its entrance. Calm bursts into unease once again. Cut forward fifteen years. A family goes about its morning rituals. Effectively the family is established, the good daughter, the dropout son, the proud father, and a wonderful red herring, the strong independent mom who has been fixing the water mains in the garden. As an audience we start looking for identification traits to see which of the two girls from the prologue is here. Is it Anna or is it Lucie who has been adopted into this happy family?

But you will soon understand that neither of the two pre-title girls are part of this family as Lucie [Mylène Jampanoï] makes her dramatic entrance into the house and slays all of the family with a shotgun and her emotional stare. This is also the first of many cunning plot twists that Laugier has written into Martyrs. Deceiving the audience into believing that one of the girls from the prologue is part of the family is a cunning device, and it also plays along with our familiarity with the genre. The poor traumatized child gets adopted and adapts into a new family before all hell breaks loose. But here the hell breaks loose as Lucie storms through the house taking her vengeance on the people she claims to be responsible for her abduction and torture all those years ago. Also we generally think of people who adopt lesser fortunate children to be nice people, so this really makes us uneasy, as we are not prepared for these “Seemingly nice” people to be gunned down. Little did we know, and this is an interesting topic for discussion; how do we define good and evil?

Just as in the pre-title sequence, when the calm returns and the gun smoke settles, Lucie’s demon appears again and this time we take part of the full fledged attack. Despite Lucie putting her hand in the blood of her victims and showing it to the demon, it still attacks, proving that it probably wasn’t the demons blood lust that drove Lucie to killing the family. But something else… The Demon savagely attacks Lucie, slashing at her back and body driving her out of the house and into the arms of her childhood friend Anna [Morjana Alaoui].


Anna arrives at the scene and starts to sort things out. Lucie tells Anna of the unseen demon attacking her again, and Anna indicates that she’s not quite on the same page as Lucie when it comes to the demon. But still, her love for Lucie is her drive and she goes about disposing of the bodies. Anna is the stable counterpart to Lucie’s frenzied psychosis. Anna sends Lucie to bed and starts clearing the bodies from the house. As mentioned in the pre-title sequence Anna has taken quite a mother role towards Lucie, and apparently still does, as she comforts, tends to and cleans up after Lucie. As Anna tries to dispose of the bodies, she also realizes that the mother is still alive!

Torn between her loyalty towards Lucie and her senses and values, she tries to help the mother to escape. A complex problem, as she acts out of empathy, but betrays Lucie at the same time. Once again the question of what is good and what is bad is raised. Should she help the surviving victim even though her lifelong friend was held captive and tortured by her? At the same time makes it known that she doesn’t really believe in Lucie’s motive for the killings. The heart broken Lucie observes Anna trying to aid the mother out, and after attacking the mother and making sure that she is dead this time, she turns her sights to Anna.

Once again the narrative makes a 180 turn and sports the two women against each other. Love and betrayal are strong themes that drive this part of the movie, as Lucie devastated and heartbroken after realizing that Anna has betrayed her, and on top of that exposed the tormenting demon to be just an inner demon of Lucie’s has a final break down. All these years of torment are too much for her and she rushes out of the house only to take her own life! The audience gasps in shock! This is probably the most effective shock death of the lead character since Hitchcock first thought up the device back in Psycho in fifty years ago. It hits really really hard, and the audience never sees this one coming. Once again a brilliant plot device used to perfection by Laugier and this is still only early stages of the movie.

With her best friend and love interest dead, Anna turns to the only person that she has left in the world, her mother. Once again the Love/betrayal/disappointment card is played as the comfort she seeks in her mother is not received. At the same time the mallet that Lucie previously trashed the apartment with topples into a cavity behind the wall revealing an entrance to a hidden underground dungeon. Anna puts down the receiver on the counter and investigates the secret passage only to find that there is indeed a dungeon down below. A rush of insight hit’s us/Anna, as we realize that Lucie was telling the truth. The people she killed where the fiends that kidnapped and tortured her. Ironically the neglect of belief led to her suicide and Anna has to deal with the guilt of disbelieving her friend. But to make things worse, Anna finds a captive woman in the dungeon, solidly proving that this is the family Lucie was searching for all those years.


Anna helps the woman up from the torture chamber, tends to her wounds and tries to communicate with the harrowed figure but in a final twist the members of the cult responsible for the kidnappings, break into the house and seize Anna, imprisoning her in the dungeon.

Finally the movie moves into shocking new ground as it with out resistance moves into the harrowing last third of the movie, an even darker tone that what has gone before. Anna, now a held captive in the underground dungeon, meets Mademoiselle [Catherine Bégin], the ringleader, who explains what the cult are dedicated to; creating martyrs. By showing Anna images of severe death and torture (remember the Kim Phùc reference earlier on? Well here those images come back as part of the narrative), where the victims, have reached an almost trance like state. Mademoiselle explains that these people have overcome their pain and have found peace in their suffering, hence becoming Martyrs. Needless to say the twenty five minutes that follow are horrific and agonizing as Anna is tortured and battered continuously in the cult’s strange attempt to create a martyr. But at the same time there is something rather unique that happens here, as Laugier uses the final torture sequence to tell his story. Avoiding the traditional convention of close-up’s on special effects and shock realism Laugier’s prolonged suffering becomes part of the narrative.


Be warned, this movie is disturbing, very disturbing. And Laugier has said on record that the movie is the result of a severe depression in which he envisioned the movie, which is appropriate, because it is a very dark and depressing movie. But after letting it sink in I started to appreciate the finer details of this movie, the innovative way that Laugier tells his tale and despite the terrifying ending actually gives us a somewhat “Happy Ending” and just how the hell do get to that conclusion you may be asking? Well with the smart and cunning use of a contrast frame which forces us to choose the lesser of two evils you can interpret this movie in the following way, but first ask the following question; Does Anna simply become a victim of the cult and die a terrible pointless death or does she turn into a heroic figure as she becomes a martyr?


Here’s how it works: the cult have been capturing and torturing young women systematically for years, and the chance of Anna escaping is minuscule. We understand that Anna will be beaten and tortured repeatedly until she dies in pain, goes insane or becomes a martyr. (And then dies elevated above the pain. Remember that’s what Mademoiselle told her happens to martyrs.) We come to the insight that Anna gives in to the pain and suffering when she hears the voice of Lucie telling her it’s Ok to let go and rise about the pain. (Lucie is Anna’s inner demon, but instead of a terrorizing one, she is a supportive, loving one. Facing your inner demons is part of the martyr process; Lucie had the caged woman she failed to save upon her escape, meaning that her demon is metaphorically her guilt coming back to haunt and punish her.) The tremendous amount of disturbing imagery we view as Anna is pushed further and further into oblivion, and finally skinned alive, we know that if she becomes a martyr she will be in no pain. So obviously by using the contrast frame we are manipulated into hoping that Anna becomes a martyr, for then she will be free of her suffering and will feel no pain of a continued beating and torment until she goes insane like the woman she freed earlier on in the movie.

So in a sinister and poetic way, by becoming a martyr Anna achieves the ultimate goal, she became free of our world and feels no pain hence escaping the tortures of the dungeon and the cult. Anna wins.

The added ending, with Mademoiselle and the cult is strange, but does offer a wide range of suggestive ending interptetations. Did Anna tell her what the afterlife is like, is there an after life or not? There are many questions to ask, and I feel that this ending, contrary to what many others have said, does not justify the violence towards Anna. This is a simple chance ending with no real logic, and I feel that this small appendix should have been clipped. Keep the ending with the cult gathering to show their respects and worship of Anna the martyr, but ditch this confusing last scene that really doesn’t add anything to the movie. The shock death of Lucie works, but you won’t catch me twice, so as soon as Anna is dead so is the movie. Time to brush off the popcorn, find the remote and flip over to the extra features…

In many ways I feel that Laugier actually manages to achieve what many before him have feebly tried, but only failed. He brings the pain - pleasure, life- death full circle and by using a contrast frame he manipulates the audience to finding relief in the death of Anna. Her martyrdom becomes our salvation too.

In a brief summary the movie can be broken down into three parts with three different approaches to the narrative. All with equally disturbing impacts at the climax of each part. The first sees the back-story of the two young girls which ends with Anna being appointed a “real mother [platonic] to Lucie” and the crazed demon attacking Lucie. We understand that she is still not free of her tormentor.

The second part is the revenge and divergence of the two women Lucie takes her revenge, Anna helps to sort things out, we understand that Anna still is the Mother character in this relationship, and when Lucie takes her life Anna regresses to a child again, and calls her own mother for comfort.

The final third is the horrendous torture and suffering of Anna at the hands of the cult. Abandoned by all, Anna regresses even further, and when Lucie talks to her (through visions) the roles are flipped over, it is now Lucie who is taking care and comforting Anna, by speaking to Anna in her visions, Lucie clearly forgives the previous betrayal and allows Anna to give in to the torture, feel no pain and achieve the martyrdom.

Let me wrap this one up with some fun trivia, during the two weeks I have been turning and flipping this movie over in my head since watching it, I conducted an interviewing with John Ajvide Lindqvist, the author of fantastic book Let The Right One In for the TV show I’m working for. We ended up talking about Martyrs, which he saw at a horror convention in London, and his impression of the film was briliantly summed up the following five words; “Great Movie, Don’t Watch It!”

It’s a fascinating movie that Laugier presents, it’s vile, foul, evil, disturbing and at the same time very poetic, philosophical and existential. We all have a fundamental fear of dying; it’s in our basic programming as humans. So forcing us to participate and by facing that fear and pushing boundaries is obviously part of the reason why people make and fans watch horror movies. And I definitely feel that Laugier manages to turn torture porn into torture art and in years to come I’m sure that the polarized Martyrs camps will still be as far apart as they are today, but Martyrs will have become a landmark movie in gene history.


Image:
Widescreen 1.85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen

Audio:
French Dialogue, Dolby Digital 5.1 Swedish, Danish, Finnish and Norwegian subtitles are optional.

Extras:
An 85 minute long documentary on the Making of Martyrs where Laugier talks about the movie his feelings about the movie, the process of making it. (Although no reference to that depression but references to his previous movie House of Voices) Cast and crew talk on the movie and there’s the equally amazing story of the cursed shoot with its accidents and obstacles to make this a very interesting insight into the film making process. Subtitled in English. Teaser trailers and the theatrical trailer.

Saturday Special! A - Z Taught By Italian Exploitation Movie Posters.

C is for Cat O'Nine Tails
Il gatto a nove code
Directed by Dario Argento, 1971
[UK Semi-Quad - Signed]

C is for Challenge to White Fang
Il ritorno di Zanna Blanca
Directed by Lucio Fucli, 1974
[Australian Day Bill]




C is for City of the Living Dead
Paura nella città dei morti vivanti
Directed by Lucio Fulci, 1980
[UK Quad]



C is for Conquest
Directed by Lucio Fulci, 1983
[US One Sheet]

The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion

The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion
Original Title: Le foto prohibite di una signora per bene
Directed by: Luciano Ercoli
Giallo, 1970
Italy, 96 min
Distributed by: Blue Underground

Story:
A young woman, Minou is lured into a fiendish web of blackmail and extortion as she tries to protect her husband. Slowly but surely she is tangled up in a terrible game which forces her to engage in lurid sexual activity while the Blackmailer shoots photographs of her. When she finally tells her husband all, and they together with the police breakdown the door to the sex fiends’ apartment, it is empty and Minou’s sanity is questioned. But guess who shows up outside their house in the middle of the night in the pouring rain… The Blackmailer. Minou confronts him and the horrific truth is finally revealed in a plot twist that you never saw coming…
…if you never saw a Giallo before that is.

Me: Luciano Ercoli’s first attempt at directing a Giallo proves that you don’t need a bunch of violent killings to keep the story going. All you need is to delicately plant your red herrings here and there along the way to keep your audience guessing where the movie is going. The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion is a great example of this, and although it’s not my favorite of Ercoli’s Gialli, I found it to be a damned fine and entertaining movie.


Having produced a few dramas, some comedies and three movies for among others Duccio Tessari [both his Ringo Spaghetti Westerns and the action/comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang from 1966 ] it is no surprise that Luciano Ercoli wanted to get himself behind the camera and direct a few movies. And you have to give it to the man, of the eight movies he did direct, there are at least half of them really fabulous genre pieces.


The absurd ending to Ercoli’s career is as enigmatic and strange as the Gialli he directed. His final movie, the Poliziotteschi The Rip Off [La Bidonata 1977] was shelved after the producer Niccolo De Nora was kidnapped! De Nora was held captive for an amazing 524 days, and the ransom was supposedly well over four million. Not long after Ercoli came into a large inheritance, packed up his offices and retired from the movie industry. With a mind filled of red herrings and warped plots makes it easy to fantasize about the strange events and their conclusions. Ercoli obviously had nothing to do with the kidnapping, but it’s a fantastic story. Thanks to the age of restored movies on DVD, Ercoli’s The Rip Off, just like Mario Bava’s last shelved project, Rabid Dogs has finally been able to be presented to it's audience.


Often critiqued for his Gialli first and foremost being vehicle for his girlfriend (or wife, nobody knows for sure) Nieves Navarro aka Susan Scott, I still can’t help to find myself feeling that there is indeed more to these movies in Ercoli’s Giallo suite than just showcasing his fabulous wife. Navarro was a decent enough actress even before Ercoli started directing his own movies, and in some way that kind of diminishes the craft that the rest of the crew put into these pieces. I can certainly understand that one may like to claim that Ercoli only made the movies to show off his marvelous partner, but in all honestly there’s no way they could assemble the casts and crew if that where the case.

All three of the Gialli, The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion 1970, Death Walks on High Heels 1971 and Death Walks at Midnight 1972, where all written by the master of the genre, Ernesto Gastaldi (Midnight was co-written by the great Sergio Corbucci). And, The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion is a great script which definitely has an engaging narrative, wonderful plot twists, even if there are no genre typical killings. It builds empathy for Dagmar Lassander's Minou character as she is lured deeper and deeper into a sinister blackmail scheme set to force her into bed with the stalker. Friend and ally Dominique, played to perfection by Nieves Navarro (as Susan Scott) uses her emancipation to trick the viewers into never quite knowing who’s side she is on, is she really concerned for Minou or is she in cohorts with the blackmailer. The sleazy Blackmailer played by Simón Andreu is excellent, (Andreu returned in all three of the Giallo movies) and Minou’s husband Peter [Pier Paolo Capponi – no stranger to the Giallo genre or the Nunsploitation genre for that part…] once again prove that in an Italian Gialli you can’t trust any man at all, unless it’s the old reliable police commissioner of course. The shock surprise end doesn’t really come as a bombshell after seeing a reasonable amount of movies in the Giallo niche, but at the same time it doesn’t really take all that much away from the story as the final twist is held for an as late as possible reveal, and there’s plenty of red herrings along the way to keep you guessing who masterminded the plan against Minou. It’s pretty common Gialli ground, and entertaining enough to keep the steam going all the way through.



The editing on both Death Walks on High Heels and Death Walks at Midnight was performed by Angelo Curi. Ercoli himself edited The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion, with Curi as his assistant, and Curi stayed on as first editor on all the films Ercoli directed from there on. The Cinematography by Alejandro Ulloa on The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion is probably the simplest of the three Gialli, but brooding sinister reds and deep dark blues create some wonderfully lit scenes. Fernando Arribas on the other hand used the frame much better on Death Walks on High Heels and Death Walks at Midnight, setting the camera at low angles and using wide lenses for some really delicious shots that can’t be found in The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion.


Then there’s the soundtrack. Ennio Morricone’s score for The Forbidden Photographs of a Lady Above Suspicion is standard Morricone fare, which is easily summed up in the word fantastic. The music of Morricone does wonders to add to the lush feeling of the Gialli and this one is no exception.

Finally a small reflection on the actors, I’ve never been much of a fan of Dagmar Lassander. She has the same two, three facial expressions in her repertoire and never does much to surprise. (With perhaps Piero Schivazappa’s The Frightened Woman being the exception) and there’s not really any surprises here either, she just get’s the job done. Navarro is almost always fabulous as she constantly wears clothes that look dazzling on her (contrary to Lassander who looks like she got makeup and dressed in the dark), perfect makeup and that stunning smile. I think that if Ercoli had flipped the parts here, had Navarro in the