Formula For A Murder (Alberto De Martino 1985) DVD Review

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“I must kill a man.” The 1980s were a bit of a lean time for gialli (the heyday of which was the early 1970s) what with splatterific American slasher movies dominating the horror genre at that time, but there was still room for Italian murder mysteries amidst the Jasons and Freddys and Michaels. Alberto De Martino's slow-burn killer thriller combines the priesthood, repressed memories, and that old motivator money in a story about a wealthy paraplegic sportswoman who spirals into a whirlwind of love and murder...

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Contraband (Lucio Fulci, 1980) DVD Review

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“Italy is starting to look like America in the thirties.” Otherwise known as The Smuggler, gore maestro Lucio Fulci's crime epic Contraband mixes old school Mafia romanticism and contemporary cynicism with extreme violence as cigarette smugglers face off with the new tough guy in town: a drug runner with a sadistic streak...

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Four Flies On Grey Velvet (Dario Argento, 1971) DVD Review

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“Seeing all these worms make a living out of death, kind of knocks the fear out of you, right?” Dario Argento's third giallo film and, at the time, intended to be his last, Four Flies On Grey Velvet is a curious mix of murder mystery and offbeat comedy in which a drummer in a prog rock band finds himself framed for murder – but his blackmailer has no intention of calling the cops on him, so what is it they're after?

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Amsterdamned (Dick Maas, 1988) DVD Review

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“Be glad you're afraid – it means you're still alive.” A slasher thriller version of a Dirty Harry movie by way of the canals and 'red light district' of Holland's capital city, Dick Maas' third film combines elements of bloody European murder mysteries with sardonic American police action flicks. Lurking in the murky depths of Amsterdam's world famous waterways is a crazed killer, in what is one of the most uniquely located killer thrillers ever made...

 

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The Washing Machine (Ruggero Deodato, 1993) DVD Review

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“A man, cut up into pieces, and stuffed in there like soiled linen.” Ruggero Deodato – a name synonymous with one film in particular: the utterly notorious Cannibal Holocaust – but what of some of the other highlights from his varied career? His name has also been attached to the likes of House on the Edge of the Park (a spin on The Last House on the Left) and Phantom of Death (Basil Exposition ages disgracefully) … but, like most Italian directors, he also lent his talents to the world of the giallo film. However, in the case of the curiously-titled The Washing Machine (aka Vortice Mortale), the sultry sex appeal of the 1970s had long gone and, in this case, been replaced by a post-Cold War hangover and pastel track suits...

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The Sister of Ursula (Enzo Milioni, 1978) DVD Review

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“Terrible things are going to happen, I see blood.” The 1970s were the swinging heyday of Italian 'giallo' cinema with a veritable glut of gruesome and sexy thrillers filling silver screens far and wide. However, by 1978 gialli were becoming a bit worn out – but meanwhile the market for adult entertainment was exploding – and while many of Italy's pulp thrillers flirted with sexuality and eroticism, few straddled the line this side of full-blown flesh flicks quite like Enzo Milioni's The Sister of Ursula...

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Flavours of the Month: July 2014...

July 2014 has been dominated by GTA V's electro sounds, hard boiled detectives, and crime busting coppers. Horror rockers, horror soundtracks, and horror flicks - plus plenty more.

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The Frightened Woman (Piero Schivazappa, 1969) DVD Review

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“You have a very odd way of spending your weekends.” Piero Schivazappa's The Frightened Woman (aka Femina Ridens, or The Laughing Woman), is an artful examination of sexual politics and the war between the two sexes from a time when the sexual revolution was at its peak. With stunning visual arenas from famous names such as Niki De Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely, it combines cutting edge sixties fashion and design with dangerous games of submission and control.

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Baba Yaga (Corrado Farina, 1973) DVD Review

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“Our meeting was pre-ordained.” Corrado Farina's Baba Yaga (aka The Devil Witch / Kiss Me Kill Me), is based on the comic strip by Guido Crepax, and Slavic folklore. It is the tale of a free-spirited young photographer who falls under the curious spell of a strange woman who increasingly holds sway over her mind and her possessed camera.

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Venus In Furs (Massimo Dallamano, 1969) DVD Review

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“A pleasure that is so great it can be painful.” Massimo Dallamano's Venus In Furs (aka Devil in the Flesh), not to be confused with Jess Franco's Venus In Furs (also 1969, aka Paroxismus), is based on the 1870 novella of the same name by Austrian author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. It was released in the dying days of the swinging sixties – in Denmark and West Germany, at least – but it wasn't distributed in Dallamano's native Italy until 1973, at which point it was quickly confiscated and cut to ribbons, such was the perceived danger of it's carnal sights. The age of the Internet may have dulled some of the film's softer titillations, but even 45 years later its darker passages of voyeurism, submission, and sadomasochism can still inspire shock, even repulsion.

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The Beast In Space (Alfonso Brescia, 1980) DVD Review

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“In space no-one can hear you come...” Under the pseudonym of Al Bradley, director and co-writer (with Aldo Crudo) Alfonso Brescia's post-Star Wars intergalactic sexploitationer has to be seen to be believed. Absolutely defining the term 'trash cinema', The Beast In Space – a semi-sequel to Walerian Borowczyk's 1975 art house grot flick The Beast – is a bizarre and scatterbrained odyssey of diffused lighting, gaudy design, and flesh-jiggling distraction.

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Satan's Baby Doll (Mario Bianchi, 1982) DVD Review

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“Tender young flesh seduced by the ultimate evil.” / “When the Devil calls, she comes...” Mario Bianchi, here credited as Alan W. Cools, directed this lurid film Satan's Baby Doll, sometimes known in America as 'A Girl For Satan', mixing pornographic pleasure with possession and pain. Within the confines of the Aguilar castle, a lushly decorated tomb resting high upon an emerald hill (the same exterior in Antonio Margheriti's Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye), the forces of evil are about to sink their teeth into some delicious revenge.

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Love Goddess of the Cannibals (Joe D'Amato 1978) DVD Review

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“You'll die of pleasure!” Also known as 'Papaya dei Caraibi', Love Goddess of the Cannibals concerns itself with Papaya, a voracious lover and apparent voodoo priestess, who uses the lure of enduring sexual adventure in a tropical paradise to ensnare the male workers at a nearby nuclear reactor. Given a lingering sexual charge by the mucky mind of Joe D'Amato, director of Death Smiles on a Murderer (1973) and the notorious Emmanuelle in America (1977), this is certainly a film for fans of classic European sleaze.

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Watch Me When I Kill (Antonio Bido, 1977) DVD Review

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Otherwise known as “The Cat's Victims” or “The Cat With The Jade Eyes”, Watch Me When I Kill was Antonio Bido's first foray into the world of giallo filmmaking. Coming from a background in art house film, Bido wanted a commercial hit that would appeal in equal measure to film buffs and general audiences. Taking inspiration from the likes of Hitchcock and Argento, and combining the original, artier script with more mainstream adaptations, Watch Me When I Kill came into being.

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Oasis of Fear (Umberto Lenzi, 1971) DVD Review...

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Umberto (Almost Human, Cannibal Ferox) Lenzi toured a variety of genres during his time as a director, bringing exuberant smash & grab style to his films. Interestingly, Oasis of Fear (aka Dirty Pictures), is a more claustrophobic and restrained effort from Lenzi when compared to some of his more famous flicks. That said, the first act is a typically Lenzi opening – all crash zooms, fast cuts, spiralling camera angles and a generally fevered pace (good work from editor Eugenio Alabiso) with a hip-swinging pop soundtrack.

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My Dear Killer (Tonino Valerii, 1972) DVD Review...

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Tonino Valerii's only venture into the world of the gialli flick is as much a poliziotteschi crime thriller as it is a bloody murder mystery. George (All The Colours of the Dark, The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh) Hilton plays Inspector Luca Peretti, the cop who is (typically enough) obsessed with his latest case, which kicks off with a novel use for a dredger – decapitation – one of the films stand-out set-pieces.

As Peretti's case gets ever-more-twisted, he finds himself trapped within a complex web of deceit and a hidden truth that someone is going to murderous lengths to keep a secret. Eventually it becomes clear that at the heart of this growing pile of bodies is the missing child of a rich family, that is populated by an untrustworthy group of liars and cheats – but who is to blame and why are they resorting to cold-blooded executions?

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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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Flavours of the Month: May 2012...

LOOKS:

Shameless Screen Entertainment - "Phantom of Death", "Who Saw Her Die?", and "The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh" - follow the links for full DVD reviews.

Mad Men Seasons 2 through 4 - TV time, and the small hours of the morning as temptation took over, was entirely replaced for a couple of weeks with an obsessive catch-up with Don Draper and the gang. Next up, season five.

Blue Velvet (Blu-Ray) - preposterously, the release in the UK does NOT feature the 52 minutes of newly discovered deleted scenes! Fortunately, the American release is Region FREE on Blu-Ray, so I imported it. For any fan of Lynch's darkly twisted vision of the hell that lies beneath the white picket fences of Americana, it's well worth investing in.

The Real Ghostbusters: Season 1 - I used to adore this show as a child, so having spotted this on the cheap, I decided I'd sprinkle a daily dose of nostalgia into this month.

The Inbetweeners Movie (Blu-Ray)

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The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (Sergio Martino, 1971) DVD Review

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One of Sergio (The Mountain of the Cannibal God, Torso) Martino's earliest films, The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh exhibits a confident grasp of tension-building and exploitable elements, which would be seen just as strongly in his later work (such as the equally superb Torso aka Carnal Violence). This prime example of the greatest the giallo genre has to offer, partly inspired by Les Diaboliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955), follows Julie Wardh (screen siren Edwige Fenech, Strip Nude For Your Killer), the wife of an American diplomat who has been left stifled and unfulfilled by her marriage, and resorts to fantasising about her fiery relationship with the sexually aggressive Jean (Ivan Rassimov, Eaten Alive), who she once again comes face-to-face with when she arrives in beautiful Vienna.

Similar to Torso, The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh kicks off with a first half that is fuelled by frequent sex and violence, with a second half that focuses on the psychological torture of the female protagonist. Ninety seconds into the film and you've already been confronted by bare flesh and a slashing straight razor – the tool of choice for the so-called 'Sex Fiend' killer who is on the loose. During this first half, there's more bared arses and breasts than you can shake a stick at (Martino deliberately shot much of this content so the conservative Italian film censors would have something to edit out – content which has returned for this DVD release, the first-ever in the UK) – and then by ten minutes in we've had four nude scenes.

 

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Who Saw Her Die? (Aldo Lado, 1972) DVD Review

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Opening in the snowy hills of France in 1968, it's not long before Ennio Morricone's eerily memorable score seeps into the film (children singing the title like a nursery rhyme), as we are plunged behind the veil of a killer – a twisted psychopath whose modus operandi relates to red-haired girls – in one of a series of effectively orchestrated scenes of stalking. At these times, and indeed throughout the film, Aldo (Night Train Murders) Lado's tight direction, Franco (Amityville 2) Di Giacomo's gorgeous cinematography, Morricone's score, and Angelo Curi's skilled editing, combine to create a sinister journey through the echoing waterways, canals, stairways, rooftops, and breath-taking architecture of Venice.

Pre-dating the much more widely recognised Don't Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973), which tread similar ground a year later, Who Saw Her Die? details the trauma suffered by sculptor Franco (a rail-thin George Lazenby) and his estranged wife Elizabeth, after their red-haired daughter Roberta is taken by the veiled woman in black and found dead in the waters of a fruit market. However, Massimo D'Avack and Francesco Barilli's script (with help from Aldo Lado and Ruediger Von Spihes) opts to pay more attention – in true giallo fashion – to a civilian's (Franco) quest to find the killer when an ineffective police force can't help (you'll find similar narrative approaches in the likes of Dario Argento's The Bird With The Crystal Plumage).

 

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