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“With this razor you won't feel the pain right away,
but it will leave your body covered with horrible scars.” Luciano
Ercoli teamed up again with his Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion
(1970) stars Nieves Navarro (aka Susan Scott) and Simon Andreu,
and giallo screenwriter extraordinaire Ernesto Gastaldi, for Death Walks On
High Heels – a deeply fetishistic thriller. A strip tease artist flees Paris
with a Doctor, but soon finds the quaint English countryside is nowhere near as
safe as she had hoped...
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screenshots…
“If you don't talk, I'll kill you!” Opening on
a mysterious scene aboard a sleeper train, a one-eyed man with a gun tucked
into his belt answers the door expecting a porter, but instead has a knife
plunged into his throat. The unknown killer, with their exceptionally blue
eyes, frantically searches the room – but what are they looking for? Whatever
it is, it's nowhere to be found. Meanwhile in Paris – sunshine and smiles in
the city of love – Nicole (Navarro, All The Colours of the Dark)
and Michel (Andreu, Death Walks At Midnight) cuddle up in the
back of a car on their way to the police station. It transpires that Nicole's
father was the one-eyed man on the train – and a diamond thief to boot. She
pleads ignorance on the whereabouts of the stolen goods, but the Inspector
warns that she may now be the next target for whoever it was that murdered her
father.
“Let's get something straight, I do a strip act but
only on stage, so you'd be wasting your time with me.” Nicole and
Michel may be in love in the midst of Paris' most hip locales, but she is the
sole breadwinner in their relationship. Everywhere they go, his pride and shame
riles him – he believes he is seen by others as a pimp and a parasite – while
she endures his frequents bouts of drunken sorrow and jets from one strip tease
to another in order to earn a crust. Sure enough, just as the Inspector warned,
Nicole receives a call from a stranger – disguising themselves with a voice box
– demanding to know where the diamonds are. That night the killer – clad in
black and wielding a straight razor – attacks and menaces her in one of the
film's more unsettling scenes. Suitably scared – and having found a pair of
bright blue contact lenses in her bathroom – Nicole, believing Michel to be the
killer, runs off with Dr Matthews (Frank Wolff), an Englishman who has
taken a firm and fast fascination with her.
“I need to get away from Paris, and that's why I'll do
anything.” Swept away to the shopping and dining hot spots of London,
Nicole's self-assurance and sexual energy makes Dr Matthews swoon like a
schoolboy, and so he takes her to his coastal getaway near a small village
where he wastes no time introducing her to the gum-flapping locals as his wife;
never mind that he's already married. However, as events spiral out of control
– with murder, bribery, and kinky boots – the diamond-hungry killer stalks
closer and closer.
“Her body moved like a snake, she'd wriggle and writhe
on the floor half-naked and then she'd go into a rhythmic motion until I
thought I'd go mad every night.” Beautifully photographed by Fernando
Arribas, Death Walks On High Heels is an exquisite looking picture. Each
set is more elaborately decorated than the next, while the screenplay by
Ernesto Gastaldi (The Case of the Scorpion's Tail) and May
Velasco contorts itself into increasingly sordid knots. Conversely, there are
frequent instances of curious humour throughout, such as a policeman being
vomited on from on-high, to the strange relationship between the foppish
Inspector Baxter (Carlo Gentili) and his young mentee Bergson (Fabrizio
Moresco) – just check out those lingering eyes as one lights the other's
cigarette – with one particular moment playing like a precursor to Austin
Powers. The film may have a low death toll, but whenever the killer appears
startling scenes of explosive violence are sure to follow. One stand-out murder
set piece is surprisingly graphic, as a knife carves into flesh with remarkable
relish. Arguably it is one of the most visceral moments in gialli beyond Dario
Argento's high watermark for bloodthirsty spectacle. Indeed, even the occasional
fist fight packs a bloody punch to rival the more lurid milestones in the grand
tableau of Italian thrillers.
“They never pull the blinds, so everyone can see.”
As it progresses, Ercoli's film becomes increasingly fetishistic. There are
obvious targets, such as those above-the-knee suede boots, Navarro's body, and
a none-too-subtle scene where Nicole sensuously eats fish with her fingers, but
the film dives much deeper. Close ups of feet – both living and dead – mingle
with audio recordings of Dr Matthews' intimate encounters with Nicole (and
her boots, naturally), and that doesn't even account for all of the film's
kinks! Meanwhile the seaside town is riven with gossip, providing
intergenerational titillation as randy young men whisper salacious details to
old ladies who are just as dirty-minded as everyone else. This quaint slice of
rural Britain is struck by Nicole as if she is a sinful bolt from the blue,
sent to enliven the vices bubbling under the surface. The allure of what goes
on behind closed doors – viewed through a telescope or from the shadows –
paints a picture of a village populated by peep show connoisseurs. Indeed, the
juxtaposition of small town voyeurism and free house whispers contrasts
satirically with the honest 'sex for sale' of London's Soho with all its neon
signs and saucy displays.
“I'm just a poor middle class sod who married just as
his mother told him, and after years of a stupid, monotonous marriage, he finds
the first girl he ever liked.” Considering the killer's schism between
being a lover and a hater of women, Ercoli's film assumes a nature afforded to
the most visceral examples of gialli. These frequent and assorted themes of
fetishistic behaviour dovetail with the wider stylistic trappings of gialli as
a whole. Gleaming razors in the moonlight, stiletto knives slicing through the
frame, and anonymous figures dressed in black are all present and correct as
the typical globe-trotting plot ebbs and flows with sexuality – both pure and
complicated. As with many giallo thrillers, there is a sexual dimension to the
violence, and no truer has that been than in Death Walks On High Heels.
A home invasion takes on a sinister tone of sexual threat as a straight razor's
dull edge traces over perfect skin on one end of the scale, while on the other
Dr Matthews reveals that Nicole has awakened a sense of love and beauty within
him that he never knew existed. As if the film wasn't already chock-full of
themes, Gastaldi tosses in a little dose of (not necessarily literal)
impotence, neglect of the heart, and marriage for money.
“The first time I saw you I said to myself – there,
there goes something really beautiful in this world, there's something I
missed.” Arrow Video's 2016 premium box set – featuring Death Walks
On High Heels and Death Walks At Midnight (both in HD and SD)
– is another example of the distributor's commitment to high quality releases
for specialist viewing fare. Even the physical presentation of the set is
gorgeous, with both Blu-Ray/DVD cases – and the lush hard-spine booklet –
housed within a firm box featuring some of the wonderful newly commissioned
artwork by Gilles Vranckx, who almost gives master-of-the-form Graham Humphreys
a run for his money. Specifically regarding Death Walks On High Heels,
the picture – preserved here in its 2.35:1 aspect ratio – is pristine, while
the sound – in the original mono mix in your choice of English or Italian (with
optional subtitles) – is clear throughout and only exhibits a handful of
pops and clicks on rare occasions. Extras wise you get: 'From Spain with
Love', a March 2012 interview with the late Luciano Ercoli and his wife
Nieves Navarro, while 'Death Walks to the Beat' is an October 2015
interview with composer Stelvio Cipriani, and 'Master of Giallo' is a
November 2015 interview with screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi. The three
informative pieces are all in Italian with English subtitles and come to a
total of 82 minutes in length. Additionally there are two trailers and a
commentary by regular Arrow chat-track contributor Tim Lucas.
“If you're determined about anything it's bound to
come out in the way you walk.” At 108 minutes in length, Ercoli's film
is a bit over-long, but the regular injections of sex and violence keep Death
Walks On High Heels a spirited example of the Italian thrillers that were
so prevalent in the early 1970s. Nieves Navarro is afforded a strong part to
play, mixing intimate allure with forthright assurance, and despite one or two
predictable elements, the screenplay manages to muddy the waters with enough
red herrings to keep the viewer satisfied. Indeed, one particular plot point
stands as an unusual twist on audience expectations – but that shall remain a
secret here. Visually sumptuous, and scored by the talented Stelvio Cipriani (What Have They Done To Your Daughters?), Luciano Ercoli's second giallo
venture is a gorgeous piece of cinema bolstered by an impressive cast who cover
the gamut from sinister to sexy to oddball. Recommended viewing for fans of the
genre.
N.B. Screenshots are taken from the DVD copy of the film.
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