The Suspicious Death of a Minor (Sergio Martino, 1975) Blu-Ray Review

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“There's one death too many in this story.” The top two names associated with giallo cinema are that of its creator Mario Bava (Blood and Black Lace) and that of its master Dario Argento (Deep Red), but another director whose name should be closely associated with those two is Sergio Martino (The Mountain of the Cannibal God). In the first half of the 1970s, Martino, along with frequent collaborating screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi (Almost Human), produced a slew of all-time greats in the feverish onslaught of Italian murder mysteries: The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (1971), The Case of the Scorpion's Tail (1971), All The Colours of the Dark (1972), Your Vice Is A Locked Room and Only I Have The Key (1972), and Torso (1973).

That's quite an impressive resume in itself, in careers that spanned 66 directorial efforts from Martino and 123 writing credits for Gastaldi. However, there is another gialli that was produced during their time working together, but one which has flown somewhat under the radar while the aforementioned titles have taken the lion's share of viewers' attention: 1975's The Suspicious Death of a Minor. Crafted with Martino's eye for style and Gastaldi's acerbic storytelling, it arrived at a time when the giallo (lurid tales of sex and death) was beginning to cool off and the poliziotteschi (gritty urban crime thrillers) were attracting audiences with rough 'n' tumble rogue cops tackling the sort of criminal conspiracies that were happening everyday beyond the cinema's doorstep...

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Syndicate Sadists (Umberto Lenzi, 1975) DVD Review

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“I'm not scared now that you're here.” All the boys admire Rambo (Thomas Milian, The Cynic, The Rat, and The Fist), the rogue with a scuffed heart of gold, as director Umberto Lenzi (Nightmare Beach) mashes Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy with The Godfather for this well-crafted poliziotteschi where a drifter rides in on a (steel) horse and gets entangled with two criminal gangs. Italy in the 1970s was a hotbed of headline-grabbing violence from high profile kidnappings to home-grown terrorism, and it was against this backdrop that 'Eurocrime' films dashed onto silver screens in a cacophony of squealing tires and blazing guns...

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Barbed Wire Dolls (Jess Franco, 1975) DVD Review

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“I'm the Warden of this prison, you're lucky to have been put in my care.” Teaming up with the 'European Roger Corman' Erwin C. Dietrich, on what would be the first of fifteen pairings, Jess Franco was up to his typically mucky-minded antics with the inventively titled Barbed Wire Dolls. Classed by the Catholic Church as a “most dangerous film maker”, Franco's fast and loose style pre-dated the infamous and short-lived Dogme '95 movement – a venture that the mammary-mad auteur dismissed as “a very good publicity thing for a moment”. The use of natural light, a hand-held and self-operated camera, and other things may have been cheap, but it also added a twisted sense of reality to his films, and Barbed Wire Dolls is certainly one of Franco's more warped efforts...

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Autopsy (Armando Crispino, 1975) Review

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Otherwise known as “The Magician” or “Macchie Solari” (“Sunspots”), this is a review of the uncut version of the film which clocks in at 100 minutes, as opposed to the 85 minute cut.

“People have been knocking themselves off like flies.” Thrust into the boiling hot, blinding white light of the sun – as solar flares erupt and moans of sexual ecstasy call out – Armando Crispino's giallo gets off to a fast-paced and violent start. A rash of suicides plague the beautiful city of Rome as it bakes in the August sun – a woman slits her wrists, a man wraps a bag over his head before diving into a river, another blows himself up in his petrol-drenched car, and a father shoots himself to death after slaughtering his own children.

“It seems sweet to die in August.” There is a blood-soaked madness spreading through the populace, and the morgue is jam-packed with mutilated cadavers – but is every single one of these apparent suicides what they appear to be? Might this be the ideal time for a killer to strike and hide their devious deeds under the guise of suicide?

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Eyeball (Umberto Lenzi, 1975) Review

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Umberto Lenzi is best known for such violence-spewing film fare as Nightmare City and Cannibal Ferox, but as a director who dipped his toe into numerous pools, some of his other work has faded into the background. Lenzi's optic-bothering giallo Eyeball is one such obscure effort.

“The flowers of death? I'm far from ready.” A bus-load of American tourists are in Barcelona to see the sights but, for some, the glint of a raised dagger will be the last image to flash across their moist little peepers. The holidaying ensemble are a motley bunch – the unhappily married Alvarados, a grandfather with his bored granddaughter Jenny, shifty-looking Reverend Bronson (George Rigaud, The Case of the Bloody Iris), letchy photographer Lisa and her lesbian muse Naiba, all leaving secretary Paulette (Martine Brochard) looking positively dull by comparison.

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