Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971)

While not as deliriously twisted as your usual giallo, Black Belly of the Tarantula has a convoluted plot filled with blackmail, adultery, drugs and a killer ending.

Giancarlo Giannini is excellent as disillusioned police inspector Tellini and the film features enough police procedure to allow it to be classed as a poliziotteschi/giallo hybrid.

Nope-Tober: Random Shit for an Ill-disciplined Mind

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Daughters of Darkness (1971)

Delphine Seyrig vamps it up as a black and scarlet Marlene in this updating of the Bathory/Carmilla tale with some class, gender and sexual politics thrown into the mix.

This film could so easily have been set in 1920's Weimar Germany and been called a Cabaret of Vampires. The colours! The score! Beautiful, sexy, decadent and nasty. Control and submission.

Nope-Tober: Random Shit for an Ill-disciplined Mind

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Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972)

Sure, it's slow but... grubby, crusty, devil worshipping zombie-mummy-vampire-skeleton-templars on fucking HORSES!

WARNING: This film contains the weirdest, most inappropriate and lecherous mortuary technicians ever!

"She was asking for it. Going around flaunting herself. It's as if they want to be bitten." -- Mortuary technician

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Hitch-Hike (1977)

Superficially Hitch-Hike is the story of an arguing couple (Franco Nero and Corinne Cléry) who pick up a hitch-hiker (David Hess) who turns out to be a psychopath with two-million dollars in his suitcase. Rather more interestingly, I think it can also be read as the story of a woman in an abusive relationship seeking empowerment though a crucible of fear and terror and becoming a Nietzschean superwoman (her name is Eve - the proto-woman). Ultimately this reading fails in the last 5 minutes, but that doesn't stop the change in her character throughout the rest of the film. Interestingly the director, Pasquale Festa Campanile, was normally a screenwriter who was previously nominated for an Academy Award, so I don't think this sort of sub-text is unwarranted.

Rather than your average bloody and violent poliziotteschi /exploitation film, Hitch-Hike comes over as more of a character study with exploitation elements. Each of the three main characters are well rounded and essential to the story, with the husband (Nero) being an unsuccessful journalist who relies on his wife's inheritance to survive and treats her as a possession to be protected. The hiker (Hess) is a man used to taking what he wants and treats the woman as a trophy to be won. Hess is honest in his brutality whereas Nero is the typical apologetic wife-beater. The wife (Cléry) slowly gains control over her life and understands that she is not defined by men.

Hitch-Hike is a film in the grand-tradition of "Lonely Road" films such as The Hitcher, Spoorloos (The Vanishing) and Duel where the road and the journey is as important as the characters and propels the plot. This has prompted me to build a list of similar films which I'll add to the review when complete. The photography by Franco Di Giacomo and Giuseppe Ruzzolini is stunning and really captures the wide open spaces with only a few lapses in focus. The cast is great with both Hess and Nero (against type) playing nasty bastards perfectly and Cléry bringing great strength and subtlety to her character. The soundtrack is fantastic with Ennio Morricone excelling himself with a dirty desert influenced score that fits the film like a glove.

There is one particular moment during the film that I would have assumed that the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) would have trouble with passing uncut and that's the pivotal rape scene. Whilst there are various rapes throughout the film this particular scene, if taken out of context, has Cléry's character seemingly enjoy being raped. As the BBFC have passed the film uncut (2015), I think they agree that Cléry does not submit to the rape or actually enjoy it. She instead takes control and says, "this is my body, and I am allowing you to have sex with me". This nullifies the rape, removing control from Hess and taking it for herself. Importantly during this scene, she continually looks at her husband, displaying that he too does not own her. It's an interesting, potentially inflammatory scene and I would be interested to hear what others think.

If there is a fault, I would say the last five minutes, as alluded to above, negate a lot of the preceding character building. Yes, it's a perfect exploitation ending, but it could have been so much better.

I've hitched a fair bit in my life and also offered lifts to hikers and I know that there's always that first few seconds when you get in the car (or vice-versa) where you wonder if the person opposite you is be a nutter. In fact I've only ever had one experience even remotely like that when I once gave a lift to an armed robber going to see his parole officer, and he turned out to be quite a lovely bloke.

Hitch-Hike is a great exploitation film-cum-character study that deserves to be on your watch-list.

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Seven Death's In the Cats Eye (1973)

Set in 1920's Scotland, a young and innocent convent girl moves back to her ancestral castle home and uncovers a trail of dead bodies, money, and vampires.

Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye is a Gothic horror (the castle, crypt, fog, secret passages, candles), heavily influenced by the Hammer films of the period and whilst not a pure gialli it does contain various superficial motifs including black gloves, bizarre dreams, sex and a straight razor. As well as Hammer there are touches of Edgar Allan Poe, with the, admittedly terrible, ape being a nod towards his Murders in the Rue Morgue short story, considered the be the worlds first modern whodunnit, and also the inclusion of the cat as a constant witness (The Black Cat). There are some nice touches of humour; one that jumped out at me, whether intentional or not, was when James mentions that the blood on his palette knife is actually red paint - and we all know that Italian movie blood looks just like bright red paint!

The cast are all pretty good with Jane Birkin standing out as a wholesome young naïf. The photography and lighting is above standard and sometimes rises to the great; the zoomed freeze-frame on James and Corrinda stands out (used to great effect in Tobe Hooper's Salem's Lot), as did the lighting in the dark castle passageways and the crypt. The soundtrack is suitably overblown and melodramatic with kettle drums, quivering violins and crescendoing horns.

The Blue Underground transfer was good with only a slightly muddy soundtrack slightly marring what would otherwise be a great DVD. Although the dialogue is all in English there are three scenes in the original Italian which I'm guessing were cut from the international release.

Agatha Christie crossed with Poe and M.R. James with a dash of Nancy Drew.

If Hammer did giallo then it would look something like Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye.

Je t'aime!

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Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (1970)

Blue Underground DVD with English dubbing.

Just how far would you go to protect your husband?

The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion is a film made at the tail-end of the sixties sexual revolution and portrays a traditional marriage torn apart by domination (both inside by her husband and outside by a sex-crazed blackmailer), and the search for liberation. Everything this "good wife" does is ordered; don't move, stay there, be quiet, stop it. She has no free will and flaps around like a puppet.

As an example of how much of a dick her husband is: his wife is thrown to the ground, has her dress cut open and a knife held to her throat and he says "Yes, but he actually didn't do anything. He just held you down. Threatened you. Probably some kind of prank".

An unusual giallo in that you think you know what's happening but not why; what is the motive? There's jealously, architecture, a spiral staircase, art, dreams, oddles of flashbacks, bondage, mental collapse, an external investigator, there's even some black outfits and gloves although not where you expect them and Carlsberg lager replaces the usual J&B Whiskey product placement. The film is quite noir'ish with flashbacks and voice-overs and good use of lighting and shadow. There is one film that springs to mind when watching this, but don't click on the link if you don't want a major spoiler. The first part moves quite slowly and has a lack of atmosphere and tension but gathers steam towards the end.

The dialogue is pretty poor in places and I don't think an Italian soundtrack would have helped - maybe it's that I've been spoiled lately. It's nicely shot with another groovy score by Morricone.

The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion is chock full of innuendo, suggestion and sex, perversion, and BDSM. A pretty bloodless giallo with a distinct lack of bodies but I quite liked it.

Finally: there's a tortoise in it for no apparent reason! Can anyone tell me why it's there? Did I miss something?

Original letterboxd review

Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971)

As a big fan of "Night Train Murders", Aldo Lado's bloody and shocking treatise on class, I've been really looking forward to this film.

"Short Night of Glass Dolls" is gialli Jim, but not as we know it. There are no black gloves, blood is mostly kept off screen, and a knife is rarely seen here. What we do get is a really interesting mystery story with a macabre edge - the twin foundations of giallo. Rather than a shadowy killer we have a secret organisation, an almost illuminati like cabal and the tale of a dogged reporter's hunt for his missing girlfriend told in flashbacks.

The location is Czechoslovakia; a country under soviet control and the colour red features heavily from the "red curtains" separating the workings of the cabal from the proletariat, to the state newspaper "Rudé právo" (Red Truth) and finally the red blood of the young spilled by the state and by implication, the cabal. The story is full of portents and omens from ravens, to tolling bells and walking over graves stones and as the film progresses Prague's labyrinthine city streets become ever darker, full of uncaring citizens and corrupt police officers and an increasing sense of dread and foreboding colours the film. The image of the butterfly is used throughout to symbolise a fragile freedom that the cabal's machinations seek to undermine. Possibly one particular use of a display of dead and pinned butterflies shows that the only real freedom in Prague is death.

Cinematography is excellent with wonderful high long shots of the city and some Leone-like zooms and tracking shots. Morricone supplies a score that starts and ends with a percussive heartbeat, moves through wistful, to a dark and chilling climax.

In Short Night of Glass Dolls, Lado revisits the theme of class struggle of Night Train Murders but adds a touch of individualism and freewill versus totalitarianism and control.

To quote the film: "Human beings separate all matter into classes. The world isn't made that way." and as some of the Crass stencils I saw on the side of buildings once said "Whoever you vote for, government always wins". Quite an apt film for this week I think.

Original letterboxd review

Contamination (1980)

Studio Exec: Luigi, we need an Alien clone, stat!
Luigi: I'll need £10,000,000, world class actors, a visionary artist and a special effects crew that are second to none.
Studio Exec: Here's $10,000, an ageing American b-movie star, an old cargo ship and a script my son wrote.

An alien cash-in (with a large nod to Invasion of the Body Snatchers) filled with exposition, laugh-out-loud dialogue and a shit load, or should I say ship load, of gore and sticky, gruey stuff. The funniest thing about Contamination is how they realised they needed a strong female lead but just couldn't risk her standing alone and being the hero - at one point McCullock actually slaps her into submission!

The dialogue, oh the dialogue. Here's some choice samples:

• "Put emergency plan number 7 into effect!".
• "Hello, can you give me the number of the local air force please"
• "Help! Let me out! There's an egg!"
• "Yes, he's still up there... on Mars, the Cyclops star"

Looking for parallels with Alien is great fun! Searching the (alien)ship, Ripley, quarantine, the eggs, chest-bursting, acid, the overall, the patch on the overall, the shady corporation, flame-throwers, the cave/ship filled with eggs, Ripley being locked in with an egg, the rainbow bedspreads in the same colours as the Nostromo crew patches, the harpoon/flare gun.

I loved every minute!

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The Toolbox Murders (1978)

Pretty poor excuse for a slasher/serial killer movie. Chock full of logical errors, poor plotting, dreadful acting, dull effects and unnecessary and looooong exposition. I'm giving the film 1.5 and an extra 1/2 star due the entertainment value of the various cock-ups throughout the movie. Maybe, one day, I'll list them all.

Original letterboxd review