"E tanta paura" (1976) d/ Paolo Cavara

A mere glimpse of Corinne Clery gives me an impossible testosterone boost, and I'm suddenly compelled to stealth-creep on a game animal dressed in an Enter the Dragon tracksuit, gut it from underneath with a butterfly sword before it can even notice, grill it (slightly) over an open flame, chew the freshly charred flesh between my teeth, swallow and digest it, while pounding my chest like a tattooed Tarzan. Or maybe some push ups. Either way, Clery is surely the living embodiment of sensuality, as clearly evidenced by her top ten inclusion in the Wop's Top Twenty Sex Sirens of Cult Cinema post last year. She demands full attention in every frame she appears in during E tanta paura, aka/ Plot of Fear, the 1976 effort from the man who brought you La tarantola dal ventre nero aka/ The Black Belly of the Tarantula, an excellent 1971 giallo that featured the likes of Claudine Auger, Barbara Bach, and Barbara Bouchet. Besides the aforementioned beauty, this one has a lot going for it, including solid performances from Michele Placido and Eli Wallach, a groovy rock-driven score from Daniele Patucchi, and an engaging screenplay with plenty of violent twists and turns, as co-written by the director himself.


It's always hard coming to a realization that your wife fancies a gallop upon a strange pony now and again.
Detective Lomenzo (Michele Placido) investigates the recent brutal murders of a pair of members to a secretive social club known as the "Fauna Lovers", with the each of the crime scenes decorated by torn out pages from a German children's book called "Shock-headed Peter". His assistant (Enrico Oldoni) recollects a case involving the club from five years prior, only the file has mysteriously disappeared, and the disgraced Inspector Del Re who handled it seems to have gone missing, as well. When he's not rolling between the sheets with his busty black girlfriend (or jokingly reminding her how black she is), he theorizes that Villa Hoffman, the estate where the club held their meetings and Hoffman (John Steiner) himself housed several big game animals in a menagerie, some for later sale to zoos and circuses, must be involved in the current evil doings, after serving as the center of the former case. The author of the children's book whose pages turn up at murders? Also Hoffman, it should be noted. Neither his frazzled superior officer (Tom Skerritt) nor tech-mad independent investigator, Peter Struwwel (Eli Wallach) offer much in the way of assistance.


...that's all the time we have this week, on "Cook a Hooker".
Black Ruth (Mary Ruth League) flies the coop for a flamboyant photographer with a woman's name at the same disco that Lemenzo encounters Jeanne (Corinne Clery), the striking model who's not averse to turning rich tricks and the subject of his recent carnal obsessions. In exchange for some artsy, erotic sex, Jeanne fills him in on the events of the earlier case, that the Fauna Lovers was little more than a thinly disguised elite swingers' club, where a young hooker named Rosa (Sarah Ceccarini) in attendance of one of their high brow sex parties dropped dead after the drunken group mock-fed her to one of the caged tigers. Meanwhile, other members of the secretive group are dropping like flies; men receiving Dwyer headshots on live television while being interviewed about the very case, women tied to trees and burned alive, and other brutal deaths begin to pile up. Naturally, things aren't always as they seem, and this effort only reaches conclusion after several hair pin turns, which you should enjoy greatly if you're a fan of this sort of movie, and decide to screen it for yourself.


Open mouthed Clery kisses with a tongue that's tastier than tiramisu. Place my order. 
Cavara got his start co-directing the legendary 1962 Prospero and Jacopetti shockumentary. Mondo Cane aka/ It's a Dog's World. He'd also helm 1963's La donna nel mondo aka/ Women of the World with the duo, though uncredited for his work. Sadly, tonight's review would stand as his last foray into gialli, and he'd pass away at the age of fifty-six in 1982. Placido also appeared in things like 1977's Kleinhoff Hotel and even the rarely seen 1973 giallo Mia moglie, un corpo per l'amore aka/ My Wife Has a Body to Die For. Speaking of which, Clery would also appear in Kleinhoff Hotel, as well as Pasquale Festa Campanile's Autostop rosso sangue aka/ Hitch Hike (1978), the following year. Of course you remember John Steiner from Argento's Tenebre (1982). Three Wops for this one, it's a good time to be had, for sure. Check it out!


"Yeah, ya done good dis time, Hoffman. Dose are some nice gams...bring her closer to muh cage...yessssss."