"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."

"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...

"Lo squartatore di New York"(1982)d/Lucio Fulci

It gives me great pleasure to painstakingly peruse through one of my fave Fulci flicks of all-time for you here, tonight, a deliciously bleak and violently misogynistic giallo, oft-shrouded in a swirling vortex of conservative controversy over its frank portrayals of violence against women.I shouldn't have to mention this, but such aggression towards chicks is only cool during zesty boudoir roleplay between two consenting deviate adults.Don't kill anybody.Now that we've gotten that outta the way, back to tonight's review.Papa Lucio also co-wrote the De Angelis production, known internationally as "New York Ripper"(as opposed to the Pennsylvanian variety), with Dardano Sacchetti and two others, hiring the late maestro Francesco De Masi to handle the soundtrack duties, while Rosario Prestopino, Franco Di Girolamo, and Maurizio Trani tackled the uber-graphic splatter effects abound in the film.To dress his grim stage this time around, Fulci enlisted the talents of Jack Hedley and Howard Ross, as well as familiar Italian names like Andrea Occhipinti, Alexandra Delli Colli, Zora Kerova, and Daniela Doria, while saving cameos for director Michele Soavi and himself, as always(this time he's the chief of police).Fulci's seedy vision was set upon almost immediately by censors' razor blades worldwide, with an uncut version still unavailable in puritanical Dear Old Blighty(even Blue Underground's bluray and Shameless Films releases have at least thirty-two of the nastiest seconds excised from their respective prints).In being a giallo that sinks unflinchingly lower into perversity than most others of its ilk, Ripper also stands as a cinematic record for all-time of the grittily glorious Forty-Deuce in midtown Manhattan, its porn parlours and grindhouse theaters now a mere memory for those who may have trudged its dirty sidewalks regularly(ahem)during the era.Don't judge me, you dicks...

Must be a cadav-rador retriever.Sorry, kids.
At the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, an old man's dog fetches the disembodied, decaying hand of a murdered hooker instead of the stick he threw, leading Lt. Williams(Jack Hedley) to interrogate the ex-streetwalker's busybodied landlady, who claims she eavesdropped on a phone conversation a week earlier between the whore and one of her johns, who spoke like a duck.Meanwhile, a young bicyclist(Cinzia De Ponti) looking to vandalize the car of an angry motorist aboard the Staten Island Ferry, instead bumps into a mysterious stranger who quacks like a duck as he guts her like so much human tilapia with his trusty switchblade, leaving her eviscerated body in the vehicle for authorities to discover on the other side.After catching heat from the chief(Lucio Fulci) for leaking the threat of a serial killer to the newsmedia, Williams is informed that someone sounding like a duck called and asked to speak with him.Williams enlists the services of Columbia University's own leading psychotherapist, Dr. Davis(Paolo Malco), to help profile the brutal woman-hating murderer on the loose in the Big Apple.That night, a raincoated well-to-do New Yorker(Alexandra Delli Colli) watches a live sex show while tape recording the lovemaking sounds of the couple on stage, while in turn being watched by an eight-fingered undesirable(Howard Ross) who's sitting in the same row.Backstage, the female performer(Zora Kerova) takes a broken bottle from a quacking assailant to her vagina, and is slit open long ways, to her abdomen.Yiiikes.Williams is awoken from the arms of a prostitute named Kitty(Daniela Doria) by a phone call from the quacking ripper himself, confessing that he's struck again.Elsewhere, Dr. Lodge(Laurence Welles) approves of his wife's latest tape recording, settling in to listen to it, as she takes advantage of their open living arrangements to be goaded and sexually harrassed by young hispanics who big toe her pantiless pussy at a bar in a bad neighborhood.

Quack!Quack!Quack!Quack!He broke a bottle and stabbed up her crack.
On the subway, Fay Majors(Almanta Keller) struggles to avoid the creepy advances of the same eight-digit creep from the stroke parlour, only to be attacked by the titular fiend in a dark alleyway, getting her arms and leg slashed in the process.Her boyfriend Peter(David Bunch) is surprised to hear that she imagined him to be the switchblade bearer in her groggy delusions when he visits her in the hospital the next day.Lodge's wife has taken up with the pervert with the incomplete mitt for some hotel room-based sadistic sex when she overhears a radio deejay talking to the 'New York Ripper' while describing the scumbag who's fallen asleep and left her tied to the bed(!).She manages to free herself and slip out unnoticed, only to be gutted by the real killer for her troubles.Williams and company are sure this porn-addicted Greek lowlife is their man, despite Davis' reservations that he doesn't fit the highly intelligent profile that he's built for the Ripper-at-large.Williams receives another phone call from the killer, who boasts that he's about to dedicate a murder to the lieutenant.The police trace the call to a remote phone booth where a two-way radio has been strategically placed, as the Ripper takes a razor blade to Williams' frequent trick, Kitty, splitting her nipples and midsection open before bifurcating her open eyeball with it(!!).Williams arrives just in time to find her mutilated body, but too late for the killer.When the eight-fingered pervert turns up eight days dead, a victim of suicide by suffocation, the authorities deduce that he couldn't have been the killer, since Kitty bought the farm only four days ago.We're then introduced to Suzy, Fay's boyfriend's daughter from a previous marriage, who suffers from a rare bone malady that has caused doctors to amputate her left arm and right leg.The cops speed to Fay and Peter's place, where duck-like phone calls are received and overheard.Fay slashes her beau with a kitchen knife, causing him to start quacking maniacally(ah-HA!), but before he can add her to his growing list of victims, Williams blows most of his grillpiece away with a well-placed bullet.In the ambulance, Davis explains Peter's underlying hatred for promiscuous women, since his ailing daughter would never be able to grow up and enjoy such freedoms herself.From the hospital bed, a tearful Suzy calls out for her daddy to answer the phone...

Waxing or laser removal might be a less painful option.Just sayin'.
I can still remember my next-door neighbor showing up at my patio door with a freshly rented Vidmark pan n' scan VHS tape, and the two of us heartily laughing it up at the quacking, in between gasps at the visceral midsection jabs dearest Lucio took at his audience in delivering radical blame to the very genre medium he happened to be working in here.Ripper is by no means a very nice movie, but it is extremely well-made(perhaps too well) and a neccessary evil for collectors of such savage cinema.Ignore the film's many nay-sayers and detractors, lacking the hindsight to see where Fulci was going with this one, and check it out for yourselves.You'll probably like it nearly as much as I do.On the scale, New York Ripper earns three vividly gory B.W.s, truly a one of a kind film as realized by a master of exploitative cinema.Highly recommended.

"La violenza è arte italiana!"

"Murder Rock"(1983)d/Lucio Fulci

Looks like we're open for biz once again here at the Wop, meine kleinen metzgerjaghunde.The only thing we're guilty of is serving up genre just the way you like it.Lots of arterial spray, bountiful bra-busting bobblers, and jocose jovialities as you're only ever gonna get from ol' B.W.Daddy's home, kiddies, and of course I brought you something...
My introduction to this slasher/giallo hybrid came in the mid-eighties when an unscrupulous company that will remain nameless(if you were around back then, one good guess oughta do it) sent me a bootleg VHS of it as a surrogate for a movie I had actually ordered that they had no business advertising.As much as I loved Lucio Fulci back then, the sight of leg warmers and breakdancing when I hit play really pissed me off for some reason.I ejected the tape about ten minutes in, and hurled the sucker across the room.This was the last of a couple of botched orders they'd ever ship me, although I was more incensed over what I saw on the television screen than anything.What was Fulci thinking?
As I grew older, of course, I gained respect and fondness for the effort, showcasing the acting chops of cult regulars from Olga "twelve inch wooden splinter" Karlatos and Christian "David Hess once used me as a Wing Chun dummy" Borromeo, to the familiar faces of Ray Lovelock and Geretta squared.Be forewarned, the maestro takes the high road here, sacrificing sleazy black-gloved splatter over a gripping Frizzi score for psychological homicide of prancing terpsichoreans in leg warmers to electronic disco from Keith Emerson, though if you're a Fulci enthusiast, there's plenty of his cinematic fingerprint on tonight's review for you, rest assured.

Damsels desperately writhing about on the floor in sweat-drenched skin-tight lycra? Yet another one of my favorite things.
Candice Norman (Olga Karlatos) runs demanding auditions for an obnoxiously narcissist dance troupe at the prestigious New York Academy of Dance when a psycho-killer(Qu'est-ce que c'est, fa fa fa fa fa fa fa ...) removes talented frontrunner Susan (Angela Lemmerman) in the facility rainbox, using a big golden bitch of a hatpin, thrust thusly into her unsheathed sweater cannon.Meanwhile, the brusque Lieutenant Borges(Cosimo Cinieri) and his analytical associate Professor Davies (Giuseppe Mannajuolo) reconnoiter the crime scene, but lack the expertise to stop the sequential murders that will most certainly follow.To further complicate matters, Candice is also recurringly haunted by somnambulistic visions of being pursued then killed by a mysterious hatpin-wielding maniac.She does some investigation of her own, finding that her dream subject's conscious equivalent is a model/actor on the downslide named George Webb(Ray Lovelock).Naturally, she makes the logical decision to start having sex with the guy(!).Next, Janice(Carla Buzzanca) is erased from the competition after wetly flailing around on the floor in a revealing leotard to a receptive crowd(think Flashdance meets epilepsy), yet being thoroughly impotent in avoiding the chloroform rag that awaits her in the showers.Borges dismisses the school as "full of sons of bitches", and after surmising that the killer must hate dancers, offers the following slice of personal philosophy:"He has my heartfelt approval".Yeeeoww.Somebody get turned down for an Italian production of "CATS" or something?Lay back, Holmes.

I get off on pierced titties myself, but this is ridonkulous.
Sleazy characters take the spotlight, only to be upstaged by even sleazier ones.Voice recordings of the alleged killer's threatening phone calls are taken to an analyst(Al Cliver), but all they implicate is a lispy male dancer in the troupe playing sassy games of bedevilment with his female competitors, and after some spirited slap-around backhanders from Borges, he proclaims," I don't like spics!" Borges grumpily sends him off to the tombs, before retreating to his sunflower seeds.Then there's Dick Gibson(Claudio Cassinelli), the suspicious four-eyed studio director, and Willy(Christian Borromeo), creepy boyfriend to one of the dancers, and try wheelchair-bound young ginger she-creep, Molly(Silvia Collatina), who obsesses over photographic insects and their brutal habits, and snaps pictures of her own babysitter getting put down with chilling aplomb, for size.Gloria(Belinda Busato), the last dancer still breathing to audition for the big part, gets slagged off by Jill's distraught boyfriend, Bob in the locker room("A bunch of no good, filthy whores!And that goes for the pimps you dance with!"), before her own boob is run through by the signature hatpin as the timed lights flash on and off.Candice finally relates her sordid nightmare involving her lover to Borges, leading to her emotional, eye bugging breakdown after discovering Gloria's lifeless form at the studio, and a worthy, satisfying climax(although slightly derivative of one of the maestro's earlier works) that you'll have to check out for yourselves.That's it!

"Using a fiber optic probe could damage the Levator veli palatini, that's not a cool muscle to hit.", remarks voice analyst Al Cliver.
After taking a critical battering over "New York Ripper" a year earlier and a split with his creative team of Sacchetti, Salvati, and De Rossi, who he'd enjoyed great success with, an unshackled Fulci uses great production values and a trademark venemous screenplay(women, dancers-in-general, art, take your pick, they all get roasted here)to weave a memorable giallo that doesn't rely upon the red stuff as a crutch.Wakeman's synth pop score still grates on my last nerve(and I dig eighties pop as much as the next guy, really), but I appreciate the effort now as I never had before.Having a cantankerous Fulci tackling subject matter as vibrant and alive as the art of dance is alone, worth the price of admission.The Shriek Show special edition double disc deserves a spot in your collections.Three wops.Recommended.

Candice(Olga Karlatos)has a penchant for leaving calamity under-feigned...in opposite land, mebbe.

"La morte negli occhi del gatto"(1973)d/Antonio Margheriti

To be certain, entirely too much time has passed here at the Wop since we've examined another effort by Antonio Margheriti aka/Anthony M. Dawson, the prolific Italian genre-master, a long-time favorite of mine, and tonight's entry oughta effectively right that wrong.An atmospheric blend of both giallo and classic gothic horror, with enough seventies Euro-flesh, brilliant cinematography with beautifully framed shots and Bava-esque color filters, and solid performances from a stellar cast of cult regulars to sate the belly-rumblings of the most gluttonous genre nut.What's more, the folks at Blue Underground have rendered all those shitty heavily-chopped VHS prints we've had to make do with for the past thirty years or so, with a long-needed gloriously uncut anamorphic print that's bound to rock yer socks.You'll recognize Venantino Venantini, the chap who introduced Johnny Morghen's grillpiece to a drill press in Fulci's Paura nella città dei morti viventi eight years later, as well as Jane "Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus" Birkin and then-husband Serge Gainsbourg, Anton Diffring, and even the late Hiram Keller(or "Earthworm Jim", as he was known in Une Vraie Jeune Fille) among the game cast, with typically mint score provided by maestro Riz Ortolani.The story goes something like this...

These must be the same rats that attacked that city baby.(Whoa, G.B.H. reference)
We begin with an undetermined accoster snuffing the life out of an anonymous gent within the walls of Dragonstone, a massive Scottish castle and ancestral home of the MacGrieff clan.His lifeless cadaver is dumped in the catacombs where the rats immediately proceed to snack on his face(!).The current Lady of the castle, who's having difficulty keeping up the creepy old citadel, finds a ray of hope in the unexpected arrival of the daughter of Lady Alicia(Dana Ghia), Corringa(Jane Birkin), who she plans to pair up with her reclusive oddball son, Lord James(Hiram Keller).James is a weird one alright, having allegedly killed his own baby sister as a tyke, never leaving the castle, painting in his room, and tending to his caged pet orangutan.Wait.What.James' apparent madness is treated by resident doctor, Franz(Anton Diffring), who also sleeps with Lady MacGrieff, and when the good Lady's back is turned, Suzanne(Doris Kunstmann), a sexy Franch teacher who was brought to Dragonstone to seduce James.After offending all the guests at the dinner table, save for the village priest(Venantino Venantini), James spurs Alicia and her daughter to beat a path for the front door the next morning, except someone sneaks into her room that night and pillow-smothers the old dame.Lady Mac convinces Franz to falsify the death certificate and Corringa to remain as a guest at the castle, though talk of the family curse, which states that any MacGrieff that dies at the hands of a relative will return from the grave as a vampire, soon grows more serious in tone.

...and this must be the same pet orangutan..wait, that's just an Italian in a bad monkey suit.
Suddenly, things take a turn for the peculiar, as the titular family cat pounces on Alicia's coffin at the funeral, spurring Lady MacGrieff to seal the pesky feline in the tomb with her sister, and when a servant returns that night to free the beast, he discovers an exploded, empty coffin and is given an extra mouth with a straight razor for his troubles.Cousins James and Corringa take to the sheets to get reacquainted(blech) while Franz asks a bare-boobed Suzanne,"Are you excited by all the blood that's been flowing around here?"(I've gotta use that one sometime), before getting unexpectedly cockblocked by the good Lady, who threatens to throw him out as he threatens to spill the beans if she does so, but the orange tabby appears, signaling an untimely, bloody end for the doctor-turned-gigolo.Someone does in James' orangutan(also named James btw),and Franz turns up in Lady Alicia's death box, while Corringa finds Lord James' cufflink at the crime scene.The plot thickens.Suzanne makes a lesbo play for Corringa as the police investigate Dragonstone for clues as Lady MacGrieff herself is implicated in one of the murders.With people dropping like flies and/or adding themselves to the seemingly endless list of suspects at every juncture, and the supernatural possibilities being discussed, the killer is finally revealed in the final reel.I won't spoil it for you woprophiles here, but let's just say it's none of the above, and the only thing missing is the familiar "I would've gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for you meddling kids!" line, and the flowery-stickered Mystery Machine full of teenage sleuths and their Great Dane.

Heeeeey, you're leaking neck sauce all over my new Trussardi's!
Margheriti followed this one up with a slapstick comedy(!), Schiaffoni e karate(Hercules Against Karate) and Flesh for Frankenstein.After breathing heavily on pop records and her appearance here, Jane Birkin has gone on to score herself roles in no less than eighty(!!) films, including the excellent Hercule Poirot vehicles, Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun.Venantino Venantini, on the other hand, has more than doubled that output to date, with appearances in three Emanuelle movies, La bestia nello spazio, La ragazza del vagone letto, Cannibal Ferox, and Apocalypse domani among his prolific genre work.Diffring, long known for his despicable Nazi characters,and remembered by genre fans for The Man Who Could Cheat Death, Circus of Horrors, and the never-released Jerry Lewis clusterfuck, The Day the Clown Cried among others, allegedly died of AIDS in 1989.Wrapping it up, Seven Deaths is classic stuff, and recommended viewing.Three wops.

Anton Diffring, champion grab-titter for 1973.

"Opera"(1987)d/Dario Argento

I've recently noticed that,strangely enough,I've yet to review an Argento film here,so I deducted that I should probably start with my favorite one(fellow yob Nigel was the only one to guess it,big surprise there),an excellent introduction for anyone looking to feast upon the maestro's body of work,and perhaps his last great giallo.Centered around the notorious Shakespeare play,Macbeth,Argento's production befell several mishaps on the set,including the death of one actor,fueling the legendary notion that the play itself is cursed.Whether you believe in such things or not,here lies Argento at his very best.Nearly every shot is a lush visual feast for the eye,with several innovative camera tricks employed that came to become signature stamps for the director,known worldwide as the "Italian Hitchcock".There are ample inventive gore set pieces,enough to satisfy the most fickle splatter fanatic,and a shroud of mystery,suspense,and tension envelops each frame of this masterpiece.The unforgettable pins taped under the eyes came from Argento,who had grown annoyed by audiences looking away during the scariest moments of his films,jokingly suggesting the theatergoers tape pins under their eyes,so they were forced to view everything he had created.Though he has shown a noticeable decline in the years following this entry(to what degree,of course,is arguable),Argento remains the standard upon which all future genre directors be judged against,his rich catalogue of brilliant,visually stunning films stand as testament to his cinematic genius,rarely rivalled to this day.If you're unfamiliar with his films,I strongly encourage you to sit down and take him in,which may take repeat viewings,especially where this entry is concerned."I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself And falls on th’other."

Betty(Christina Marsillach),opera singer plagued by nightmarish visions,and a bitch on heat.
Betty(Marsillach)is unwittingly thrust into the spotlight during a new production of Verdi's Macbeth when the opera singer she's been understudying is suddenly hit by a car.Unfortunately,this sudden fame draws the attention of a sadistic black gloved killer who ties the young girl up,forcing her to watch his murder spree with strips of tape with sewing needles pasted under her eyes,identical to the methods of the shadowy figure from her oldest nightmares.After the opera's premiere(during which an assistant eats neck-skewering coat hook death),one of the stagehands,Stefano(William McNamara)is brutally slain with a huge knife before Betty's very eyes;the hooded killer cuts Betty's ties afterwards,freeing her,his hands sexually exploring her body for signs of arousal at his heinous crime.The distraught diva runs to the arms of Marco(Ian "Jubilee","Chariots of Fire" Charleson,in his final role),the opera's director who's been taking a merciless beating in the press over his horror movie-esque approach to tackling Verde's cursed opera,using garish sets,fog machines,and a number of trained ravens.Meanwhile,the killer breaks into the costume department and slashes Betty's wardrobe to ribbons,killing several ravens in the process.The next day,Betty and Giulia(Coraline Cataldi-Tassoni),the production seamstress discover an actual bracelet sewn into the dress,as the woman tries to repair the damage from the night before.Just as she's about to read the engraved dates on the jewelry,the killer abducts and binds the young singer,forcing her to watch him perform an amateur tracheotomy on Giulia with a huge pair of fabric shears when she accidentally swallows the bracelet in the struggle with the madman.Afterwards he frees the terrified girl and disappears once again.

One helluva good stabbing.
One of the detectives(Urbano Barberini) puts a guard on Betty's door,but the girl accidentally stabs the cop(Michele Soavi in a cameo),while her vision is blurred by eye drops,allowing the killer to arrive at her apartment,where he fires a bullet directly through the peephole in the front door into the eyesocket of her agent(Daria Nicolodi),killing her instantly(!!).The young singer escapes through an air vent with the help of a little girl who lives on the same floor.At this point the director dreams up a plan to catch the killer at the next performance using the uncaged ravens to seek him out in the audience.The large squawking detectives manage to do just that,pecking one of his eyes out(!!!) in the process.Horribly disfigured,and outed for the world,the killer abducts Betty once again,locking himself into a room in the operahouse with her,blindfolding and hogtying her into a chair with a pistol while he douses the place with gasoline,urging her to shoot him.She frees herself from the binds as the room is engulfed in flames from which Marco rescues her with optimum timing.She retreats to Sweden with Marco,who has returned to directing movies again,but Betty senses that evil has followed her into the lush green mountainside.Who is the maniac and why has he singled out Betty in his own violent subconscious production.I'll leave the answers to this and other questions that arise to be answered by you,dear readers,when you screen this excellent blood-soaked whodunnit brilliantly crafted by the best in the business.

This is sexy for so many reasons,not least of which being Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni herself.
Dario,who modelled the director Marco character after himself,claims that Marsillach was the hardest actress he's ever had to work with.The role of operatic diva Mara Czekova was originally meant for Vanessa Redgrave,but when she dropped out,the character was rewritten as a minor one.Despite the many setbacks,the maestro went on to successfully base his giallo around Macbeth,stating,"...I felt I had started with "Macbeth", so I had to finish. And anyway, there could be no ravens in Cosi Fan Tutte."After completing this film,he went on to direct genre fare like "Due Occhi Diabolici" with George A. Romero,"Non ho sonno","Il Cartaio",two episodes of the Masters of Horror series before unveiling the third of his Three Mothers trilogy,aptly named "La Terza Madre" on the world in 2007.His latest work is 2009's "Giallo",and he has co-written the screenplay for David Gordon Green's upcoming remake of Argento's own classic,"Suspiria"(1976),yet another classic,in my humblest estimation that should never be tampered with.I'll never understand what goes on in the heads of those Lazio supporters toiling away at the bottom of the Serie A table,for the life of me...Milano siamo NOI!Today's film stands as not only one of the greatest horror films ever made,in my opinion,but as one of the greatest films,period.Check it out for yourselves,and if you don't feel the same about it,I'll let Asia and Fiore carry out the penalty phase against me.Well,I'd do that,regardless...

Triumphant!