The Case of the Scorpion's Tail (Sergio Martino, 1971) DVD Review

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“You know I'm dying to see you.” Sergio Martino – one of Italy's finest journeymen filmmakers – helmed an impressive run of giallo films during the early 1970s. Following on from the sublime The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (1970) came The Case of the Scorpion's Tail, a densely-plotted thriller/morality play packed with infidelity and greed – as well as a some particularly flashy murder sequences...

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Your Vice Is A Locked Room And Only I Have The Key (Sergio Martino, 1972) Review

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In the year following his masterpiece giallo The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (1971), Director Sergio Martino returned to the genre with this sordid tale of the Italian aristocracy gone wrong.

“Of course, you'd much rather be drinking from my skull.” Kick-starting under the oil-painted gaze of the recently deceased matriarch of the Rouvigny family, Martino introduces us to the excesses of the Italian aristocracy, housed within a crumbling and hollow mansion. As free-loving guests from a nearby commune enjoy the free booze, and a grope of slave/servant Brenda, the bitter marriage of Oliviero (Luigi Pistilli, The Good The Bad & The Ugly) and Irina (Anita Strindberg, Who Saw Her Die) is laid bare to all without a care in Oliviero's mind.

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Almost Human (Umberto Lenzi, 1974) DVD Review...

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Umberto (Cannibal Ferox, Man From Deep River) Lenzi's brash poliziotteschi crime thriller kicks off in grand style, with a botched bank robbery that leads to a frenzied car chase filled with screaming rubber and battered metal – a sequence that best demonstrates Eugenio (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) Alabiso's tight editing. Blamed for ruining the score, Giulio Sacchi (Tomas Milian, Syndicate Sadists, full of twitchy energy) is introduced as an unreliable low-level hoodlum on Italy's crime-ridden streets, a man with enough chips on his shoulder to fill-out a fish supper. What's more, he's not above killing a policeman for a mere 600 lira stolen from a cigarette machine, in this film where the usual Italian glamour is replaced by uncompromising grit.

Written by Ernesto Gastaldi's (The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh), we are presented with a vision of Italy exposed as a society ruled by a totally corrupt legal system which fails to enact the basic intentions of law and order. Criminals are routinely let off the hook due to a lack of evidence, and it is with this knowledge that Giulio crafts a scheme to yield him some fat cash: half a billion lira, to be precise.

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