"La casa dalle finestre che ridono" (1976) d/ Pupi Avati

Tonight, you get a real treat with Halloween hard on our heels, one of my favorites, an odd, cerebral giallo of the highest order from Bolognese writer/director Pupi Avati, the man who helped script Pier Paolo Pasolini's notorious Salo; o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975)  and later brought you Zeder aka/ Revenge of the Dead (1983). What the film lacks in the conventions of the sub-genre, black-gloved killers or the usual laundry list of gorgeous victims, it makes up for with deliciously subtle moments of genuine terror, an unsettling rural community vibe of Wicker Man or Don't Look Now (1973) proportions, and effective marriage of photography and score with convincing performances from an able cast, headed by Lino Capolicchio, of Antonio Bido's Solamente nero (1978) and Avati's later effort, La strelle nel fosso (1979). This one is a cult gem of rare luster, brilliance, and fire that begs immediate viewing, if not permanent residence on your shelves.


"...what a brutal painting, they even shivved him in the tits ."
In a rural northern Italian community, an artist named Stefano (Lino Capolicchio) receives commission from their half-mayor (he looks to be a squashed hunchback dwarf of some kind) to restore an aging, creepy fresco on the local church wall, depicting two grinning dames sadistically stabbing Saint Sebastian in the stomach (alliteration, anyone?). As it would seem, the disturbing depiction was realized by a right unstable loon named Legnani, who famously pulled pain and suffering from his palate of colors the way Epstein pulled ABC to victory at that fateful Battle of the Network Stars tug o' war so many years ago. It would also seem that this artist of aggression had a pair of sisters so unhinged that they made him...look...like...Spock, in comparison. Slowly, Stefano begins to uncover the villa's villainous secrets and rumors; had Legnani's siblings slain sacrificial citizens for their brother's crimson canvases? As fate would have it, Stefano finds room and board in an eldritch estate at the edge of town, empty but for a bedridden biddy (Pina Borione) and a young mental midget from the church who performs odd jobs , while his friend Antonio, who happened to be investigating Legnani's life at the time, allegedly decides life no longer holds the excitement it once did, and swan dives out a window.
 

"We can't watch The Waltons and Welcome Back, Kotter, they're in the same time slot."
After scoring a choice one nighter with the local nympho-teacher whose bags are packed, Stefano also manages to stumble inside her successive substitute in a chick named Francesca (Francesca Marciano), and it isn't long before they're sharing his living arrangements at Secretive Shanty, and it's even shorter before they're both experiencing the place's evil ambience. Stefano's investigation leads him to a mysterious dictograph tape of a man's voice reading pernicious poetry, a journal dating back to the thirties, and ultimately upon the cruel artist's life residence itself, a weird little house with grinning mouths painted over all the windows, located well off the beaten path. He receives anonymous threatening phone calls imploring him to quit his job at the church, and when his restoration is later mysteriously damaged by acid, he decides to gather up Francesca and vacate the villainous village for good, except that the town's resident sot has decided to reveal to him the titular house's darkest secret, which leads to a far out finale that twists harder than Chubby Checker's sacrum that I couldn't, in good conscience, reveal to you here. See for yourselves.


"Maybe you should check out Buvat's work on idiopathic male sexual insufficiency...there's a great listlessness in your slacks."
For the more attention deficient horror fiends out there (from the current generation of you of the fedora, neckbeard, and skinny pants-wearing clan, no doubt...  not mine, I can assure you that I was already a fully attentive ten year old for the entire run time of Dawn of the Dead in the theater), the deliberately paced suspense might seem a little long winded towards the middle, but for those fanatics whose genre appreciation extends further than a wisecracking Freddy Krueger with a rubbery prop head skewered on his glove-knives, this one will rapidly catapult into your favorites list, or near enough to it for repeated viewings hereafter. Naturally, it merits Wopsploitation's highest rating, four Wops; a mature and intelligent horror-giallo hybrid that'll effect many of you profoundly the first time you screen it. The Euroshock Collection print from Image suits me nicely, though there may indeed be a BD out by now, your call. Recommended.


"That's the best-ah tomato fight I've had-ah in years! Still-ah the fahking-ah champ-ah!"

"5 Bambole per la luna d'agosto" (1970) d/ Mario Bava

From Fulci, we turn to the great Mario Bava, in one of his few mortal moments,  directing an obscure, mostly bloodless giallo that he'd call the worst of his career, methodically churning out what stands in actuality as a quirky, humorous, Christie-inspired,  lounge-soaked lampoon of what audiences had to come to expect from gialli at that point in time, at least prior to Argento's reinvention of the genre. As such, it's not difficult to enjoy Bava's stylish lens in a succulent beach locale, and easier still when it's focus happens to be upon Eurosleaze queen and Maltese-Italian sexpot, Edwige Fenech, and familiar genre faces like Ira von Furstenberg, who you may recall from Giornata nera per l'ariete aka/ The Fifth Cord (1971), and William "Django" Berger, of Mio caro assassino aka/ My Dear Killer (1972) fame, as well. The swinging score was provided by none other than Piero "Mahna Mahna" Umiliani, also responsible for the scores of one hundred fifty other films, covering every imaginable genre, in total. Let's get into it...


"Why won't Jane Wiedlin stop sending me paintings of herself?"
When an industrialist named George Stark (Teodoro Corra') invites five of his opulent business pals to his ultramod beach digs on a Mediterranean island getaway to coerce the formula for a new, industrial resin out of  one Professor Farrell (William Berger), using a scheme of ludicrous leisurewear and  groovy sexy-parties to break down the young chemist's hesitance to sell, the planned decadent weekend doesn't take long to become a kooky murder mystery. This sexy-party method proves fruitless, though it should be noted that Farell's wife Trudy (Ira von Furstenberg) sometimes gets it on with Stark's wife, Jill (Edith Meloni), and swinging tycoon Nick (Maurice Poli) also has a wife named Marie (Edwige Fenech) whose catting about sometimes advances her husband's career, while Jack (Howard Ross) and his girl, Peggy, might have the lone non-problematic relationship of the lot, or one could be lead to think...


Between Edwige Fenech in a bikini and cigarettes, I'm gonna go ahead and call this flawless composition.
It just so happens that Jill discovers the houseboy has turned up, iced on the beach and smothered with sand crabs, and with the motor launch having been sent away to prevent Farrell from leaving before selling the formula and exit for anyone made impossible, the group is forced to wrap his corpse in plastic and hang it in the refrigerated meat locker until the lone phone is fixed (wouldn't ya know it...), and they can alert the proper authorities. Things are destined to heat up when an anonymous killer starts erasing the remaining players, one by one, leaving the survivors to sleuth which of the group, morally bankrupt enough to begin with, has added systematic homicide to their sizable sin sheet. Will the killer or killers succeed in snuffing the competition and securing the formula for their own greedy end? Or will the would be victims be otherwise occupied destroying themselves and each other in the panic? All of this and more will become known to you when you screen this one for yourselves...


"That's some heavy beat poetry you're laying on that reel-to-reel...if you'd make me an eight track cartridge of it, that'd be outta sight."
If you're one of the other Italian directors wondering why your lesser works don't score three Wop reviews, a trip to the mirror should clarify for you, once and for all, really, if you don't see Mario Bava in the reflection. The elder Bava stands along with Argento, Fulci, Soavi, and Deodato at the top of a list of personal favorites, and that he could make such an enjoyable experience for the viewer out of a less than enjoyable shoot such as this one, is just one more tribute to his greatness. So yeah, chalk it up to bloody favoritism. When you've been watching movies as long as I have, you're bound to have quite a few of them, and these have been my favorites for many years, and thus, the reason I pass them unto you with hope that you'll enjoy them as much as I do. I've also been blogging long enough to realize that those of you who've stuck it out with me here over the past eight years through the veritable ocean of trials and tribulations (that have veered me off course on occasion during that time), you're pretty much on the same wavelength as I am, entertainment-wise, and there's still more than a few of us out here to celebrate our fascination with these films.So, let's keep doing it until we can't anymore, huh? Check this one out.


Not concerned with breaking it, Marie (Edwige Fenech) shakes it in gold lame' bells, no less.

"Una sull'altra" (1969) d/ Lucio Fulci

One of the main reasons I decided to keep with the Italian genre motif from last October for the site's return (besides my discreetly extreme favorable prejudice towards it!), was the volume of lesser known, underrated gems I'd lined up for you before my latest computer crash, and I just couldn't ignore some of these for another twelve months or the next gimmicky month I happen to dream up between then. Granted, I've been trudging you through some oddities of little renown and even less concern this month, but tonight, your patience has been rewarded with the first Fulci review I've got on tap.  
A Lucio-verture of lush cinematography, beautiful women in various states of undress, and epic treachery is what you'll be treated to, and just what you'd expect from a film proponent of Fulci's level of mastery while he was at his very best. Helping him to realize his vision are Jean Sorel, familiar to genre fans from his turns in  A Lizard in a Woman's Skin  and The Short Night of Glass Dolls (both 1971), as well as 1973's Day of the Jackal, and Marisa Mell, who'd previously worked with no less than Mario Bava himself on Danger: Diabolik a year earlier, later appearing in giallo fave, Seven Bloodstained Orchids (1972). The excellent score was famously provided by the iconic Riz Ortolani. Let's get on top of this one, shall we?


I see what you did there, Lucio.
It seems there's this doctor in San Francisco named Dumerrier (Jean Sorel), who's anchored to a money pit clinic that he runs with his brother (Alberto de Mendoza) and  prior marriage vows to his sickly, asthmatic wife, Susan (Marisa Mell), which are keeping him from running off for good with his healthier paramour, Jane (Elsa Martinelli). Of course, he's not all conscience, this one, as he's left his wheezing burden in the charge of a nurse named Betty as he leaves on a trip to secure some crucial financial backing for the clinic. Just kidding, he's off galavanting at the casino with his fidanzata, Jane, when news of his wife's sudden death is delivered to him, along with some insurance policy mumbojumbo about a two million dollar policy that he's the sole heir of. Something about sedatives mistaken for asthma medication... Of all the lucky breaks a guy can have...you would think.


Guardate! Eccolo.
Soon afterwards, George excuses himself from dinner with Jane to receive an anonymous call, suggesting he check out the headliner at the local strip club, where the good doctor is taken by a certain female sex performer named Monica, who just so happens to be identical to his late wife, save for eye and hair color. Che coincidenza! Such a coincidence, in fact, that George gets slapped into a jail cell, while Monica is taken in for questioning, herself. As you might have imagined, there are several dizzying directions the mysterious narrative can veer off on from here, and Fulci masterfully explores all possibilities before revealing the true course of the film's script, which he also co-wrote, The formula is successful, and the resulting genre staple twists and turns, which I will leave for you to discover on your own when you score yourselves a copy from the fine folks who've made it available over at Severin, bring it all to a very satisfying climax, thanks to another spoiler-free wrap up here from your pal, Wop.
  

Fulci crea una Godiva moderna. C'e' spazio su di esso per un uomo come tutti gli uomini e nessun uomo? 
I feel like the maestro was at the top of his game during the period in which this film was made, and along with Beatrice Cenci (1969), Una lucertola con la pelle di donna aka/ A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971), and Non si sevizia un paperino aka/ Don't Torture a Duckling (1972), representing the director's strongest work; a perfect introduction to film buffs that might otherwise ignore his vast artistic merits on the notoriety that his later, more exploitative efforts would be met with, outside of the gore crowd. There are touches of that Lucio here to behold, as well, a mere hint of the floodgates of violence he would help to open later in the decade. I'd suggest that One on Top of the Other, Perversion Story, whatever title you choose to refer to it by, is a must-see for anybody interested in catching some top shelf cinema, regardless of what that person's personal cinematic preference might be. On the scale, the four Wops of perfection have again been bestowed upon the genius that is Lucio Fulci. Recommended.


Holy smokes! Jessica Lange could use a V8.

"Le foto proibite di una signora per bene" (1970) d/ Luciano Ercoli

There are a lot of reasons to get behind director Luciano Ercoli's Le foto proibite di una signora bene aka/ The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (1970), the first of three genre films helmed by the Lazio-born filmmaker, the other two being La morte cammina con i talchi alti aka/ Death Walks in High Heels (1971) and La morte accarezza a mezzanote aka/ Death Walks at Midnight (1972). One reason is to gawk at the eye-strainingly gaudy seventies fashions he dresses his actors in, as they grace his frame here. There's a heavy duty dance sequence near the outset that may leave you doubled over with laughter, be forewarned. Prague beauty, Dagmar Lassander, of Bava and Fulci fame, is on board, as is Ercoli's former wife, Nieves Navarro, who appeared in several D'Amato vehicles later on in the decade, as well. Another reason to check his films out, is the female perspective he uses to tell his stories from, unique for the time period and especially effective when juxtaposed against a male populace comprised of cruel misogynists adrift upon a sea of blackmail, sex, and murder. There are plenty more, but you should experience them all for yourselves. Let's check it out...


"You'll never get my funny bone from there, Butterfingers!"
Minou (Dagmar Lassander) is bored housewife to Peter (Pier Paolo Capponi), a businessman who may or may not groove on homicidal extracurriculars while away from the missus. She's delivered this tasty morsel of information by a sex minded would be-rapist/murderer who first assaults her on a lonely beach at night then convinces her to sleep with him, after which he successfully blackmails her with explicit photographs from their tryst for the notion of becoming his sex slave. I like the way this fellow thinks. In the meantime, she learns on the good word of her nymphomaniacal bestie, Dominique ( Nieves Navarro as Susan Scott), that a recently drowned man may have been actually murdered, and naturally, her husband may have indeed been the party responsible for speeding his late creditor from this wild and woolly existence of ours. 


"Hey Q-Tip, what do you say I leave some pecker tracks on your powder blue polyester out on the floor..."
Of course, Peter's secretive business transactions seem increasingly squirrelly and suspicious to the sexually repressed, pill popping woman, who will apparently go to any masochistic length to keep her blackmailer's narrative as far from authoritarian ears as possible, even if that means freeing the sexuality that's been pent up inside her throughout her marriage, and in the clutches of a sadistic stranger, who's seemingly vanished without a trace. Even if Peter has designs of great ill will towards his spouse on the horizon or not, she's got a free-spirited though neutrally minded confidant in Dominique, who might just figure it all out while riding out any waves of pleasure that she might fancy along the way. I like the way this chick thinks.Buckle up for many twists, turns, and red herrings before this one's final reel plays out. See it! 


" 'Fire walk with me'...what the hell's that supposed to mean??"
Though it lacks much of the splashy violence characteristic of other films of it's ilk, Forbidden boasts of some booze soaked Eurokink of the highest order; pills, flesh, intrigue, tension, sex, it's all present and set to an aptly groove-laden score by maestro Ennio Morricone. Lassander also appeared in Mario Bava's 1970 effort, Il rosso segno delle follia aka/ Hatchet For a Honeymoon, and later in Lucio Fulci's Il gatto nero aka/ The Black Cat and Quella villa accanto al cimitero aka/ House by the Cemetery (both 1981). She also shows up in Lamberto Bava's Shark: Rosso nell'oceano aka/ Devil Fish (1984). Besides her husband's other films, Navarro also appears in Massaccesi fare like Orgasmo nero (1980) and Emmanuelle e gli ultimi cannibali aka/ Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977). On the scale, Forbidden Photos receives a well earned four Wops for maintaining giallo excellence throughout, and comes with my highest (seriously, I've done enough painkillers and allergy medication to leave a buffalo drooling at this point) recommendation. Grab a copy immediately!


"Our battle of outrageous outfits has ended in a draw!"

"La dama rossa uccide sette volte"(1972) d/ Emilio Miraglia

One would be justified in saying that director Emilio Miraglia's genre output is hardly prolific, consisting of merely two films, 1971's La notte che Evelyn usci dalla tomba aka/ The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave, and the film he made the following year, which just so happens to be the one we'll be focusing on tonight, but most of his fans would also agree that the caliber of his work far negates the scarcity of it. Nowhere is that more apparent than here, a stylishly framed giallo of the highest order, with plenty of atmosphere and complexity, vibrant colors, beautiful women, and violent death set against the gothic backdrop of a castle with a murderous history that even the most gluttonous genre-gastronomes will find themselves well gorged on by the final reel.


"Teste rotoleranno se non ottenete dalla mia vista!"
After watching adorable little blonde Kitty's unbalanced brunette sister Evelyn gleefully stab up and remove the head-piece of her favorite doll in front of an odd painting of two historical sisters at perpetual war with each other in hundred year intervals, their kindly old grandpa decides that it'd be a good time to lay the castle's well-worn legend of the Black Queen and Red Queen on them, having barely just stopped a crazed Evelyn (who's also been singsong-edly repeating "I am the Red Lady, and Kitty is the Black Lady!", mind you) from turning the ornately decorated blade on her own hysterical sister. That oughta calm them down, for sure. You see, the Black Queen killed the Red one, titularly stabbing her seven times, before she vengefully arose from her grave a year later, killing seven people herself, with her seventh and final victim being her sibling-in-black. You know, I'm no psychic or anything, but I'd lay a c-note on the possibility that something very similar to the legend is going to occur between these two tiny terrors when they grow up...


Damn, you leakin'....brang ambalamps.
Wouldn't you know it,  years later, a beautiful adult version of Kitty (Barbara Bouchet), now a highly touted fashion photographer, stands to gain a large inheritance in twelve months time, except that a pale figure with dark hair in a red cape that many have identified as the Red Queen with the maniacal laugh herself, has begun stalking and offing folks in a savage (yet strangely inventive) manner nearby. Kitty's pretty sure it can't be Evelyn, since she ran off to the States...or she may have been accidentally snuffed during an icy catfight, and possibly by her golden-haired sister, at that. Then, we've got her ambitious beau, Martin (Ugo Pagliai), who's in line for promotion in fashion house management when he's not fighting off the amorous advances of Lulu Palm (Sybil Danning), a model who's even more enterprising than he is, and often quite vocal about her sexual prowess, when she isn't shedding every stitch of gear in a Manhattan millisecond, just to prove her point, Gods bless her. Herrings-a-plenty, and each as red as the titular Queen's memorable hooded cape, follow, and of course, I'm not going to spoil any of the gruesome goings on here for you. See it.


This particular blonde queen(Sybil Danning) kills me innumerable times.
The picturesque blonde Bouchet would appear throughout the decade in genre fare such as La tarantola dal ventre nero aka/ Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971) and  Fernando Di Leo's Milano calibro 9 aka/ Caliber 9 (1972) ,  Casa d'appuntamento aka/ The French Sex Murders (1972), as well as Fulci's No si sevizia un paperino aka/ Don't Torture a Duckling (1972). She'd later represent the "Have's" (versus the "Have Not's", of course) in Scorsese's Gangs of New York (2002), which also features a brief cameo from Johnny Morghen, interestingly enough. Meanwhile, besides her roles in both of Miraglia's genre efforts,  Marina Malfatti was showing up in things like Eugenio Martin's La ultima senora Anderson aka/ Death at the Deep End of the Swimming Pool (1971), Sette orchidee macchiate di rosso aka/ Seven Bloodstained Orchids (1972), Sergio Martino's Tutti i colori del buio aka/ All the Colors of the Dark (1972), and Il prato macchiato di rosso (1973).While we're on the subject, I should probably mention that  Sybil Danning...sigh...would also appear in L'occhio nel labirinto (1972). You could still pick up the famed Miraglia Killer Queen box set from NoShame (which not only includes both films, but a nifty sculpted figure of the Red Queen herself, and was limited to seven thousand copies) on Amazon for fifty bucks, so why wouldn't you. Not on par with Argento at his best,  by any stretch of the imagination, but still... Four wops.


Lei ha molto sulla sua mente...come spuntoni recinzione.

"Il gatto dagli occhi di giada" (1977) d/Antonio Bido

I'm not gonna apologize for my several day sabbatical from the Wop that just so happened to coincide with the weekend of my birthday, which began promisingly enough,  hanging out with several of my favorite genre stars in the so-called Electric City,  but quickly dissolved into another antisocial bender after watching my kicker-less Lions lose one they had under wraps for most of sixty minutes on Sunday. Sure, they're notorious for such heartbreaking shenanigans, but it never gets any easier to stomach for the die hard fan base, especially those of us who've been watching since the late seventies...even if it's like, the five hundredth time it's happened. Linnea still gives the best hugs, and Jeffrey Combs is a trip, in person, as I'd long expected. Cat dead. Details later. Back to the usual rock n' roll...


"Wait until you feast your eyes upon my groovy head wrap...", quips Mara (Paola Tedesco).
After a stage actress named Mara (Paola Tedesco) narrowly misses being an eyewitness to the brutal blunt force trauma/neck ventilation upon a hapless old workaholic pharmacist  as performed by your obligatory shadowy, black gloved killer , she finds herself drawn into a larger, more convoluted mystery, as investigated by her old flame, a cigar puffing, mustached busybody named Lukas (Corrado Pani), who's not at all connected to the police, but thinks nothing of putting his psychedelic head-wrapped  love interest in dire jeopardy, with a rising tide of unsolved murders rushing in, as he focuses his attention on a spindly balding fellow named Bozzi (Fernando Cerulli), who's been receiving some interesting crank calls late at night, that seem to showcase some blood-curdling screams, barking Dobermans, trains, you know, that sort of thing.


"Chi di voi libertini sta per cambiare il mio pannolino di merda?"
Meanwhile, some poor female pawn in the deadly game gets her face cooked in an oven like so much manicotti, leading Lukas to lean on the escaped criminal named Ferrante (Franco Citti), who happened to be incarcerated while the growing list of victims served as jurors. A visibly annoyed Ferrante orders Lukas to chuck himself off of the top of a steep waterfall at gunpoint, which leads to an uninspired punch up on the rocks, after which Ferrante puzzlingly vows to help him uncover the real murderer. I'm on the lam, you alerted the authorities that I might be the killer they're looking for, you know what, why don't I help you find the guy. With an unglued Mara ready to split the scene for keeps, Lukas convinces her to instead travel to Padova with him (Can this guy sell ice cubes to Eskimos or what?) to tie the last few loose ends in the case, but Bozzi gets c.t.f.o.-ed in the tub in an unpleasant manner, indeed, before he can come clean to the would be-detective. Could it be overzealous Nazi-hunting Jews behind the horrible murders afterall? Hmmmm. I wonder.


After Janet Leigh in the shower, Fernando Cerulli in the tub just seems like overkill.
Tonight's review is a decent enough giallo from the guy who'd also later helm Solamente nero (1978), translated as The Cat With Jade Eyes, and re-released in the United States at the dawn of the eighties with a nifty new violent looking one sheet and title (Watch Me When I Kill) that misleadingly disguises the film as a straight slasher flick, which it really never was. I never noticed any jade-eyed cats either, but who really pays that much attention to minor details anyway, right? Bido's leads were Paola Tedesco who'd appeared in things like Alberto Di Martino's Crime Boss (1972) and Dario Argento's La porta sul buio aka/ Door Into Darkness (1973) series, and Corrado Pani, of nothing I can recall seeing, offhand. Mi scusi, Corrado. Bido himself, turns up in a cameo as a dance choreographer. On the scale, this cat scores a pair of Wops, and is always worth a look for any enthusiasts of the genre searching for new/old material to screen. Look for it.


Do those peepers look Schweinfurt green to you? Baby blue, I dunno, I'm no color specialist.

"Mio caro assassino" (1972) d/Tonino Valerii

Though many remember Abruzzi director Tonino Valerii for western fare like Il mio nome e' Nessuno aka/ My Name is Nobody (1973) and Una ragione per vivire e una per morire aka/ A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die (1972), with tonight's review, a complex giallo packed with stylish violence and rare levels of intensity,  he proved himself well worthy of mention among the genre's finest, to be sure. To help him execute such a feat, Valerii enlisted the acting talents of Uruguayan giallo-staple, George Hilton, who'd appear in such films as Lo strano vizio della Signora Wardh (1971), La coda dello scorpione (1971), Il diavolo ha sette facce (1971), and Tutti i colori del buio (1972), among others,  over the years. Also aboard are the likes of Marilu Tolo, Patty Shepard, Salvo Randone, and William Berger. Andiamo...


"Dragare la palude... non mie spalle!"
After a choice decapitation-by-excavator effectively ends the final case (and life) of an insurance investigator named Paradisi, the mysterious death is looked into by a tireless police inspector named Peretti (George Hilton), who soon links the man's murder with the unsolved disappearance of a small girl named Stefania Moroni whose emasciated body was found in the same flooded quarry some twelve months earlier. With each lead he follows, Peretti is also faced with a new murder to cope with, as it seems the sadist in the obligatory black gloves that's responsible for the violent killings is always one step ahead of the frustrated lawman, who's also got an insatiable dame nipping at his heels for some horizontal action to the strains of another damned engaging score by the maestro,  Ennio Morricone.


Nothing to see here, just another well-hung Italian guy.
With broad daylight post office stranglings, staged hangings, bludgeonings with heavy statuettes, and even a POV-style blood-spurting death-by-power saw, the killer eliminates all loose ends tying them to the original Moroni murder, though one of Stefania's school drawings offers Peretti special insight into the horrible deeds, and to the ultra-sketchy Moroni family for answers. There's a one-armed war hero named Oliviero(Tullio Valli), and his wife Carla (Monica Randall), a drug trafficker named Canavese (William Berger), a shack-dwelling garbage rummager named Mattia and his common law squeeze, Adele, a pedophile sculptor named Beniamino (a pubescent nude "model" strolls out while Peretti's questioning him), and a few others in the mix. But who could be secretly monstrous enough to hurt children? Fret not, all is revealed in the dynamic final reel of this one, but not by me, here, good sport that I, no doubt, am.


"Qualcuno mi ha finalmente inviato biglietto di S. Valentino!"
Randone is best known for roles in Salvatore Giuliano (1962) and Fellini's Satyricon (1969), among others, while Berger turned up in things like Bava's 5 bambole per la luna d'agosto (1970), Superfly T.N.T. (1973), and even Shark :Rosso nell'oceano (1984) . Tolo would appear in films like Dario Argento's Le cinque giornate (1973), Bluebeard (1972), and Assassinio al cimitero etrusco (1982). Patty Shepard moved to Spain and appeared in movies like Assignment Terror (1970), The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman (1971) and Escalofrio diabolico (1972), not to mention Hannah, Queen of the Vampires (1973) opposite Andrew Prine. I have to admit, I wasn't always a huge fan of the giallo outside of the Argento, Fulci, and Lenzi output I'd seen, but as I've gotten older I've come to better and more fully appreciate it's many quirky nuances and twists, much like I'd traded the hops and barley of my reckless youth for the taste of a good wine and a comfortable chair. If my reviews spark your interest in the genre, then you might also trust me when I say that this particular example is among the best of its kind, and a damned choice movie to begin your exploration with. Four wops.


"Non potro' mai ottenere queste piastrelle pulito ora!"

"Non ho sonno"(2001)d/Dario Argento

If you're not currently preoccupied with the manner in which that horny mummy in the corner is drinking in the seam lines in your girlfriend's bodacious Harley Quinn costume, then what better way to wrap up a solid spine-chilling and satisfying Italo-ween season this year, than to cover one from the undisputed platinum standard in gialli, the 'Italian Hitchcock' himself, Dario Argento, in the form of his recent, glorious return to sadistically violent form, 2001's Non ho sonno aka/ Sleepless, after having mostly floundered in unfamiliar waters of mediocrity with Trauma (1993), The Stendahl Syndrome (1996), and 1998's Phantom of the Opera, in the years following his blood-splashed magnum opus, Opera (1987). Phew...and Gabriel March Grandos thought his sentence was lengthy.


"Esplodere barattoli di marmellata??!! Chi e' il ragazzo saggio!"
Moretti (Von Sydow) is the police detective assigned to the brutal 'Dwarf Murders' (you hear that, Skittles?) investigation in Turin, promising a young motherless boy justice, after the wee lad sees the woman being force fed her own wind instrument, mind you. Moretti follows a trail of  paper animal cutouts left at the gore-splattered crime scenes to a nursery rhyme by a local reclusive author of children's books known as 'The Dwarf' ( the rhyme itself was actually written by Dario's rather fetching daughter, Asia, who we all should be well familiar with, by now) who's driven to commit suicide by the allegations, effectively closing the case when the slayings cease afterwards, or so it would seem...


Heyyyy, I found a clarinet in the meat sauce...
Only, seventeen years later, a woman is horrifically snuffed on a train in an identical manner to the past slayings, leading Giacomo (Stefano Dionisi) , who's now grown up enough to face his childhood demons and return to the old neighborhood in Turin from Rome on the suggestion of an old school buddy named Lorenzo (Roberto Zibetti), to seek the assistance of the retired sleuth in solving the latest crimes that include an agonizing wall-smashed facepiece and a beheaded ballerina(!), which have the former detective wondering if his deceased dwarfish adversary was responsible for the original murders in the first place. I'll leave the mind-boggling finale for you to experience for yourselves.


"...we'll return to 'Maroon 5: Behind the Music' after these messages..."
Though Sleepless doesn't quite measure up (most of Von Sydow's supporting cast, and some artificial-looking CG effects come immediately to mind) against the vintage Argento gialli forever carved into the memory of genre lovers worldwide, like Profondo Rosso(1975), it's far and away his best effort in ages, a Halloween treat bucket that's overflowing with enough confectionery goodies like black-gloved psychopath hijinks, genre-friendly red herrings deftly woven around some (seriously) exotic murder set pieces by Stivaletti, the usual bang up score from Goblin perfectly complimenting the maestro's signature lush visuals, to bring the viewer back to those glorious eighties, when stuff like this wore the crown over everything. Three wops....oh, and, uh......Happy Hallowe'en.


Ha portato un coltello per una sparatoria...

"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".