"Macchie solari" (1975) d/Armando Crispino

Tonight's movie, whose title translates to "Sun Spots" ( misleadingly released as Autopsy here in the States two years later), stands as an odd entry in the gialli sweepstakes, missing the trademark black gloved killer so prevalent in other films of the genre, but what it lacks in convention it more than makes up for with heaping dollops of sleazy sex, hallucinatory nightmare sequences, and the usual stellar evocative soundtrack from Ennio Morricone, not to mention one of the more delirious premises you're ever gonna find in movies like this. Director Crispino handles the frantic workload with lurid zeal, as though he himself had been affected by the magnetic activity on the star's surface, with an able cast that's headed by usual genre suspects, Mimsy Farmer and Ray Lovelock.


"Let go of my hand already, hippie, my nipples are getting fenceburn."
After opening with a disturbing montage of a sudden rash of suicides attributed to the titular solar phenomena, we head to the Roman morgue, where Simona ( Farmer) hallucinates the reanimation of a chunky female stabbing victim while other corpses come to life and copulate amid the limp come-on's of her assistant Ivo (Ernesto Colli), before her boyfriend Edgar (Lovelock) surprises her on a slab. Later, the body of a leggy redhead (Gaby Wagner) turns up on one of the young pathologist's gurneys just a day after meeting her, the victim of an apparent gun-inflicted suicide on the beach, with Ivo lustily squeezing her dead boobs like a package of ass paper on a supermarket shelf, and just as Simona is laboriously working on her thesis paper on real and staged suicides, what luck. While dining out with her playboy father, Lello (Carlo Cattaneo), she has a sun-induced migraine that tunes her into a clue about the deceased ginger, leading her back to the morgue, where she meets Father Lenox (Barry Primus), the dead girl's brother and a race car driver-turned-priest(!), who believes his sister's death was no suicide...


Empty a bottle of limoncello at the morgue, and this is what happens.
Lenox pummels the superintendent's face in the stairwell with his holy mitts, using the same reckless abandon in investigating his sister's death that forced him to prematurely retire from the racing circuit. As Simona gets closer to the truth at the criminal museum, a booby trap nearly erases her from the equation. Edgar walks away from his accident at the speedway, and shows  Simona a vintage pornography slide show that ends in tears and a non-bj (the worst kind, I tell you). Lello does a high window flopper that leaves him mute and paralyzed while his daughter, who never bought a blouse with buttons, parries an attempted morgue-rape by Ivo with a fork. Finally, she goes in for some nudie prod games with Edgar, only realizing mid-coitus that she's in love with Father Lenox. Lello flatlines in the middle of answering a question about his attempted suicide, and in the end, surprise... it's Edgar, who's the right homicidal bastard, scheming with Lenox's sister to rob Simona's father of his fortune. After narrowly escaping a staged double suicide, the priest and doctor rush to the square for a high scaffolding intervention that naturally goes badly. Cue: stock footage of solar flares and Morricone.


...because"Wet Mimsy" doesn't need a witty punchline, at all, really.
Crispino's other directorial efforts include his first attempt at giallo, 1972's L'etrusco uccide ancora aka/ The Dead Are Alive, John il bastardo aka/ John the Bastard (1967), a western, and 1968's Commandos, a war movie starring Lee Van Cleef. The Chicago-born Farmer was no stranger to gialli, herself, appearing in no less than Argento's 4 mosche di velluto grigio aka/ Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) and 1974's Il profumo della signora in nero aka/ The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974). Lovelock, always a favorite, regularly worked with directors like Fulci, Deodato, Grau, Di Leo, and Gariazzo throughout the sixties and seventies. On the scale, Autopsy garners a solid three wops, and comes recommended for anybody with a taste for the lurid side of genre film from the boot. Check it out!


...looks like another case of "Irish Sunglasses".

"Il gatto nero"(1981)d/Lucio Fulci

It's been a decalescent sixty ticks since we covered Fulci at the Wop, so I figured we'd remedy that here tonight with an underrated effort that often gets lost amidst Lucio's other films of the period, like L'aldila(1981), Paura nella città dei morti viventi(1980), and Quella villa accanto al cimitero(1981), and wrongfully so.Unlike those other titles, Gatto relies more on atmosphere and tension than perspicuous levels of grue, with an opulent gothic British setting and a cast led by excellent Irish actor Patrick Magee of 'A Clockwork Orange' fame, and supported by Mimsy Farmer, David Warbeck, and Italian genre regulars Al Cliver and Daniela Doria(who doesn't regurgitate animal entrails or get her nipples razored here).Not to say tonight's review is bereaft of Fulci's trademark violence, mind you, there's just less of it here than usual.One signature flair the maestro didn't cut back on for this production is extreme close ups of eyes, as there are numerous to be found.Maybe it had something to do with Magee's woofing eyebrows or the attempted hypnotism in the plot, loosely based on the zeugmatic short story by Poe of the same name, but I thought the peeper shots were actually pretty effective in this instance.While showing constraint in serving up bucketloads of claret to his diehard gorehound following, Fulci instead displays artistic skill in moving Sergio Salvati's camera like never before while setting up beautiful frames worth of eerie unease, and I swear there's even a choice crane shot in there, as well.Enjoying a renaissance of sorts thanks to a recent Anchor Bay release on dvd(I've never been patient enough to wait for such things, scoring the 1999 EC print years earlier), The Black Cat might not be Fulci's crowning cinematic achievement, but it's required viewing, and a satisfying one, notwithstanding.

Worst of all, his policy didn't cover flaming heads through the windshield.
After witnessing his black cat stow away in a car to hypnotize the driver into slamming headfirst into a parked car at high speed, we meet Miles(Patrick Magee), the eccentric town psychic, as he sits at home, intently listening to weird latin recordings spoken in a whisper, before being interrupted by the aforementioned cat violently clawing his hand.We're next introduced to American photographer Jill Trevers(Mimsy Farmer) as she documents the ruins of a local cemetery, finding a small microphone at a crypt that's been broken into.That night at the pub, she overhears the locals dismissing Miles as mad for his graveyard excursions to communicate with and record the voices of the dead.She takes the opportunity to visit Miles and return his microphone, also noticing that his feline seems to despise him, savagely clawing his hands.Later that same night, the cat follows Ferguson(Bruno Corazzari), one of Miles' detractors, as he stumbles pissed from the pub, cornering the sot in a warehouse and causing him to plummet from a gangplank to a spiky death below.When Inspector Gorley(David Warbeck) of the Yard enlists Jill to photograph the crime scene, she notices the same clawmarks on the corpse's hand as on Miles'.The cat then manages to trap an amorous young couple, Stan & Maureen, in a storehouse on the docks, where they ignominiously suffocate, half-naked.The girl's mother(Dagmar Lassander) visits Miles, begging him to use his psychic intuition to locate Maureen(Daniela Doria), even offering to re-ignite their own old flame, if need be, and gets pointed towards the storehouse, where the already decaying corpses are discovered, as well as a curious set of cat tracks in the air conditioning vent.

Accupuncture.Wait, that doesn't look right.
The cat then pays a visit to the grieving mother, knocking over a kerosene lamp and setting the room and woman ablaze, causing her to swandive, engulfed in flames, to the street from the third story window.The feline drops in on Gorley, too, clawing his face multiple times before influencing him to walk in front of an oncoming car.It turns out that Miles has been using the cat as a tool of vengeance against any and all who he feels have wronged him, and, confident that his enemies have been effectively smited, feeds his pet a sedative-heavy meal, throws it in a burlap bag, takes it out into the woods, and hangs it from a tree, causing a psychokinetic furniture explosion at Jill's place.Aware that Miles' cat has been responsible for all the recent gruesome deaths, she ties the remaining loose ends while snooping around the psychic's estate(she's even attacked by bats in the catacombs a la Fulci's earlier Una lucertola con la pelle di donna), earning her a wooden plank to the domepiece from the murderous senior with the wild eyebrows.He hurriedly packs a suitcase at her flat, then returns to brick her up in her cellar, when the local police pay him a visit with Sgt. Wilson(Al Cliver) and a bandaged Gorley in tow, still alive.After denying everything and claiming his cat has passed on, he and his visitors are startled to hear the echoed moan of a cat coming from downstairs.After pinpointing the location of the sounds, they take down the fresh bricks with a pick to reveal an unconscious Jill inside.The black cat also jumps out and stares down his master, who he's turned the tables on after having been used for nefarious misdeeds for so long, as Miles had earlier predicted he would.Credits.

Sorry to burst in on you like that, before you've had a chance to put your face together...
Also conspicuously missing from tonight's review is Fulci's obligatory cameo, though a scene where he plays a doctor ended up on the cutting room floor.The effective soundtrack is provided by Pino Donaggio, marking the only time the composer would ever work with Lucio.Magee, who lent his presence to genre films like Dementia 13(1963), The Masque of the Red Death(1964), The Skull(1965), and Tales From the Crypt(1972), would appear in The Sleep of Death(1981) and The Monster Club(1981) before succumbing the following year at the age of sixty.Mimsy Farmer appeared in Argento's Four Flies on Grey Velvet(1971), Armando Crispino's Macchie solari(1975), and Deodato's Camping del terrore(1987) before retiring from acting, while Warbeck scored roles in Twins of Evil(1971), L'aldila(1979), Margheriti's L'ultimo cacciatore(1980) and L'isola del tesoro(1987) before dying at the age of fifty-five in 1997.Daniela Doria turned(her toes) up in Paura nella città dei morti viventi(1980), Quella villa accanto al cimitero(1981), Lo squartatore di New York(1982), all for Fulci, and even appeared in Di Leo's Avere vent'anni(1978).Though I can see hardcore Fulci-ites balking at the lack of red stuff here, this is one cat I'm not the least bit allergic to(probably the only one), and as such, it scores an impressive three Wops on the ratings scale, and comes highly recommended.Snag yourself a copy!

"If you even think of making me into a cutesy FB meme, I'll scratch your fucking eyes out."