Tessari: Puzzle - starring Senta Berger, Luc Merenda.
Pretty damn good, with a gruesome chainsaw sequence.
After a short break, I picked up the giallo trail with this very sexy outing:
AMUCK! (Alla Ricerca del Piacere - 1972, Silvio Amadio)
Barbara Bouchet is a young American woman called Greta Franklin, who becomes the secretary of a successful novelist, an ex-patriate now living, with his wife and over-sexed friends, on an island near Venice. What the author doesn’t know is that Greta was the friend (and lover!) of the previous secretary, who dissapeared without leaving a trace.
A giallo that hardly qualifies as a giallo, but probabably has more nudity and steamy sex scenes (most of them lesbian) than any other example in the same genre. Full, frontal, back, top, bottom, this movie has it all. Understandably it’s not dull, but not too much energy was spent on developing the mystery plot. Good cast, with the exception of the ever so dull Farley Granger.
The film is available on You Tube, so those who want to see Barbara Bouchet, Rosalba Neri and Patrizia Viotti in the nude, know where to go. And before I forget: the movie also offers a raunchy version of Red Riding Hood.
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BUT, as far as I know 88 Films and either Camera Obscura or FilmArt are releasing it on blu-ray in the forseeable future and at least I will postpone my rewatching of it until I get my hands on one of those releases. I got the dvd release from EuroVista which is in full frame as far as I remember which only redeeming feature is that it is signed by both Barbara Bouchet and Rosalba Neri 
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The version on You Tube is also fullscreen, but it’s a VHS copy. Video quality varies a little, but it’s not too bad.
Trauma (1993)
I’ve read imdb comment that the line between what is generally consider “good Argento” and “bad Argento” is actually pretty thin, and I agree. This is considered lesser Argento, but it is actually exactly what you would expect from him. That weird, unsettling stye, over-the-top gore, bizarre plot, downright ridiculousness (if you think that “last image taken by the iris before death” in Four Flies was ridiculous, in this one there is a severed head that is still able to mumble last words), and genuine creepiness. It was OK, better than Opera IMO.
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This weird idea is actually based on reality. I’ve read police tried to examine one of Jack the Ripper victim’s eyes if they had captured the image of murderer. I think there might have been more recent studies around the time Four Flies was made which might have inspired Argento.
In A History of Italian Cinema, Peter Bondanella writes the following about “this weird idea” in Four Flies on Grey Velvet (p. 384):
Like The Cat o’ Nine Tails, this film rests on the false claim of forensic science folklore that the police are capable of testing with a laser the eyeball of a murdered victim, since the retina supposedly will retain the killer’s image (an idea inspired by untested hypotheses of nineteenth-century studies of the eye).
Continuing my journey through Giallo Land, I stumbled upon a couple of wonderful titles:
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OMOCIDIO PER VOCAZIONE / L’ASSASSINO HA LE MANI PULITE (Deadly Inheritance - 1968, Vittorio Sindoni)
A proto-giallo, made in 1968, several years before the genre was codified by the likes of Argento and Bava. It’s set in the countryside (most gialli would be city-bound) and for some reason it’s also set in France, not Italy.
The film tells the story of a deceased railroad worker whose inheritance is far more impressive than expected: the simple man saved up a small fortune! But there’s one unpleasant surprise: his three daughters won’t get a single penny until their foster brother, a mentally handicapped boy who was adopted by their father, has turned 21. Of course the girls (and their respective husbands/lovers) aren’t willing to wait that long: the boy is soon killed in what looks like an accident, and it’s only the first in a series of violent deaths …
The script is a wonderfully convoluted whodunit-mystery-story in the Agatha Christie vein with a twist-double-twist ending that is as surprising as it is far-fetched. It’s not giallo yet, but we’re getting there. In relation to violence and nudity the film is rather restrained, but Femi Benussi has a fairly exciting shower scene and one of the killings is filmed from the perspective of the killer, a device often used in later genre outings. Apart from Benussi, American C-actor Tom Drake is probably the biggest name in the cast. Not bad for a B-movie.
For those who live in the London area this might be of interest.
http://www.barbican.org.uk/film/series.asp?id=1604
16mm and 35mm prints apparently.
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I SWEAR next time I am in London we will go to the Barbian, Phil!
Amazon Prime Video has several gialli or vaguely related to gialli available for streaming, at least here in the USA. Watch while they’re still available.
Black Belly of the Tarantula
The Bloodstained Butterfly
Case Of The Bloody Iris, The
Don’t Torture a Duckling
The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave
Stendhal Syndrome, The
Strip Nude For Your Killer
THE THIRD EYE
What Have You Done to Solange?
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Good movies, including some all time giallo classics (Tarantula, Duckling, Solange) . I know them all except from The Third Eye. Out of the others only Strip Nude For Your Killer is rather weak.
Just watched My Dear Killer, Tonino Valerii’s only giallo. It’s regarded as one of the best of the genre but it was the first giallo film that has ever bored me. Shall have to give it a another watch just to make sure it wasn’t my mood.
LA MORTE RISALE A IERI SERA (1972, Duccio Tessari)
A giallo by Duccio Tessari, the director of the Ringo movies. Tessari’s westerns were sophisticated but rather traditional genre entries, showing all characteristics the subgenre is associated with, albeit often with a slight satirical edge; his giallo movies are, quite on the contrary, eccentric, defying genre conventions. La Morte risale … is no exception.
Gialli are usually typified as a cross between mystery and horror, combining whodunit plots with strong shock effects and voyeuristic tendencies. There are no black gloves, stalkings or blood-spattered slayings in this movie and the mystery is not of the familiar whodunit kind. The central plot element is the kidnapping of the daughter of an ordinary Milanese citizen (played by Raf Vallone). The victim is in her early twenties but is mentally handicapped: unable to understand and control her own sexual desires she’s submitting herself to every male person available. For this reason the police officer investigating the case thinks she might have been abducted to turn her into a prostitute (for customers with a partical preference) and starts investigating the Milanese underworld. But then the girl’s body is found …
For about two thirds of its running-time, La Morte Risale … feels more like a psychological study in sexual aberrations and the effect they have on both individuals and society. In the final 20-25 minutes - after both the police and the father have discovered the identity of the kidnappers - it turns into a sort of revenge movie with a twist. The satirical edge of the Ringo movies is completely absent. The film is not sexually explicit, but the scenes featuring Gillian Bray as Donatella, the girl with the body of a woman and the mind of a child, may feel a little uncomfortable to watch. This is an intruiging movie, a bit dragging in spots maybe, but well-written, well-acted (especially by Vallone as the disconcerted father), but I’m not sure the average giallo fan will like it.
The film is available on You Tube, in good image and sound quality, in Italian, with English subtitles:
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4 BLOOD-STAINS ON YELLOW SCREEN (aka 4 blood-stained gialli)
I have watched 4 gialli which make the blood-stained “tetralogy”. Well, they are actually linked only by english versions of their titles which all contain something stained in blood. Two of them are more or less literal translation from Italian original, one is pretty close (‘Butterfly with bloody wings’ would be more correct) while The Blodstained Shadow has nothing to do with Solamente Nero which would translate as something like ‘Only Black’.
The Bloodstained Shadow (1978 ‘Solamente nero’, Antonio Bido) is sometimes mentioned as one of the better gialli, but to me it was rather dull and predictable. Score by Stelvio Cipriani is good though. Duccio Tessari’s The Bloodstained Butterfly (1971 ‘Una farfalla con le ali insanguinate’) belongs among more serious gialli. Most of the movie relies more on police investigations and courtroom drama, than on lurid killings and scares. I liked it, but it stalled at the moments, which prevented it from being elevated among true favorites of mine. True favorite in this quartet is Umberto Lenzi’s Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1972 ‘Sette orchidee macchiate di rosso’). It has everything: black-gloved killer, great score by Riz Ortolani, stylish death scenes, likable leads, interesting puzzle to solve, beautiful scenery, enough but not too much camp, sexiness, very strong Lenzi’ directing and plenty but not to much genre cliches (casual chauvinism being one of them: “police broke him during the investigation, what do you think they’ll do to a woman like you”). Off course, if you are familiar with genre cliches, you’ll know the killer the moment he/she appears, but this was still very fine and recommendable giallo that is now in my Top20 list. The one I’ve seen last is The Bloodstained Lawn (1973 ‘Il prato macchiato di rosso’, Riccardo Ghione). It’s not really bad, but it is the dullest of them. Early promise of scary things to come is never really fulfilled and despite promising setting, movie is not very eventful. It probably says something about how the privileged are draining the blood from the unprivileged ones: the poor, the weak, the misfits, but this is not laid out in very skillful manner. The late great Italian singer-songwritter Lucio Dalla sings the main song and appears in the role of the drunk.
Marina Malfatti appears as one of central characters in …Lawn and is also one of the Orchids.She sure liked those low-cut dresses.
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The titles of these Gialli are often more perplexing than the movies or their scripts. They also make it hard to make out if you have seen a particular movie in the past or not: the titles are all a bit alike, it’s machiato here, blood-stained there, etc.
I’m sure I watched this one, it’s one of the better genre examples imo. probably a bit un-typical, but that’s not a bad thing per se in this aspect. Here’s my review of it:
The House of the Yellow Carpet (1983 ‘La casa del tappeto giallo’, Carlo Lizzani)
Unusual 80s giallo, obviouslly based on the stage play, with couple of twists up its sleeve.
Finally saw Profondo Rosso, but I am a bit underwhelmed
Longer or shorter cut? Many people prefer the shorter version, not quite sure myself.