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Ladies of Giallo #1: Rossella Falk by Richard Glenn Schmidt
Note: The following contains some spoilers from the plots of gialli that
Rosella Falk lent her talents to but I tried to keep them to a minimum so as
not to ruin any of the mentioned films.]
With features sharp enough to cut glass and dark, fathomless eyes that
always betray a quivering vulnerability, Rossella Falk (no relation to
Peter) is not an easy actress to forget. While aging hippies may remember
her as the bisexual mother of Jane Birkin in May Morning, Falk is best known
for her role in Federico Fellini’s 8½. With a relatively small number of
film and TV roles under her belt, this accomplished stage actress has stayed
in the theatre throughout her career where she has worked in productions of
Tennessee Williams, Henrik Ibsen and Jean Coctueau plays.
I first noticed Rosella Falk in Umberto Lenzi’s Seven Blood-Stained Orchids,
where she plays the insane Elena Marchi, an institutionalized woman who is
near the top of the killer’s list. It’s the classic Boy Who Cried Wolf
scenario or in this case, the Paranoid Schizophrenic Who Cried Wolf. Elena
spends her days at the funny farm blaming her fellow inmates of plots and
conspiracies against her. When a real killer actually shows up, she is so
overwhelmed by the terror of her deepest fears coming to life, that she
faints dead away at the sight of those black gloves coming towards her.
Falk excelled at playing the victim in her thriller appearances. She has
been strangled, drowned, driven to suicide, and even fallen to her death.
The most painful of these death scenes takes place in The Fifth Cord where
she, playing the handicapped Sofia, becomes a plaything of the killer who
takes away her wheelchair and makes her crawl around on the floor shortly
before ending her life. This is a cruel end to a pitiful life in which her
husband (played by Renato Romano) is an idiot who cannot make love to his
ailing wife but instead spends all of his time on other perversions.
Of course, being more than just fodder for the murderer in a convoluted
genre takes a great deal of skill. For instance, Falk breathed life
(briefly) into the tortured Franca Valentino of Black Belly of the
Tarantula. In a moment of weakness, this woman succumbed to the pleasures of
the flesh only to be blackmailed by her scumbag lover. When Inspector
Tellini (played by Giancarlo Giannini) arrives on her doorstep to inform her
that the blackmailer is no more, Franca is so mortified by the entire affair
that she sends the police inspector away thus sealing her fate.
Though she has only appeared in five gialli and one horror film (the ultra
obscure Run, Psycho, Run), I’m of the opinion that this fascinating actress
should have (or still could (she’s only in her 80s!)) portrayed the killer
at least once. While technically Rosella did turn out to be the mastermind
who hired the assassin (played by Telly Savalas) in The Killer is on the
Phone, I still desperately want some forgotten thriller to resurface where
she is slicing away at fashion models with a straight razor. The proof that
she would make a superb giallo villainess can be seen in the 60s spy flick
Modesty Blaise where Falk plays Mrs. Fothergill, an evildoer with a harem of
boy toys. When Mrs. Fothergill tries to kill Monica Vitti (as the title
character) we get to see Falk’s evil and twisted side that I suspected was
there all along.
Her grand return to the world of the giallo came in 2001 when she joined the
cast of Dario Argento’s Sleepless. In it, Falk plays Laura de Fabritis, the
mother of Vincenzo de Fabritis, the cruel dwarf who may or may not be dead
and may or may not be committing some seriously vicious murders. Hers is a
haunting performance and Falk proved that at the age of 74, she could still
serve as an interesting victim (and even a red herring, for a change) in a
genre that sorely missed her nearly 30 year absence.
Rosella Falk’s Giallo Filmography
1971 – Black Belly of the Tarantula
1971 – The Fifth Cord
1972 – The Killer is on the Phone AKA Scenes from a Murder
1972 – Seven Blood-Stained Orchids
2001 – Sleepless
Resources
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rossella_Falk
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0266194/
http://www.cinemorgue.com/rossellafalk.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9YtgGMMWdM
===========================
Ladies of Giallo #2: Marina Malfatti
[Please note: While there are a few spoilers below, I have tried to keep
them vague enough so as not to totally ruin the plot of any of the films
mentioned.]
Whenever Marina Malfatti is frightened, she gets this look on her face as
though she has just swallowed a live frog. And even though she can be a
little cartoony in her performances, Malfatti has always been a favorite of
mine. Her pale skin and large and expressive gray eyes make her lovely while
her slight overbite makes her cute and unique. She is always stylish on
camera and is usually sporting (or removing) some chic 1970s getup. Blessed
with long legs and gorgeous everything else, Malfatti is rarely shy on
camera and can often be found in various stages of undress. Having worked in
comedies, spaghetti westerns, crime drama and even horror for 30 years, this
renowned stage actress’s film career kind of fizzled out and after making a
few TV appearances, she now works exclusively in the theatre.
In her giallo career to date, Malfatti has been drowned, poisoned, shot, and
stabbed. My favorite of these often sumptuously filmed death scenes is in
The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave. In this very odd thriller by Emilio
P. Miraglia, Marina plays Gladys, the young and sexy wife of Lord Alan
Cunningham (played by Anthony Steffen), a whip-cracking psycho who cannot
get over his previous wife who died during childbirth. After her scheming
doesn’t pan out and things go awry, the not-so-innocent Gladys is poisoned
by one of her co-conspirators. She then, while slowly dying, proceeds to
drag herself agonizingly across the floor while attempting to stab her
murderer. This entire sequence is breathtaking in its beauty and brutality.
Though featured prominently in some gialli, I can’t help but wish that this
odd beauty had been given more lead roles. Unfortunately, in Umberto Lenzi’s
Seven Blood-Stained Orchids, his finest contribution to the genre, Malfatti
is little more than a glorified setpiece with very little to do but make
that froggy face and then die prettily (which I am totally not complaining
about). In Sergio Martino’s excellent All the Colors of the Dark, her role
as Mary Weil, a woman doomed to be a human sacrifice, is a brief yet
haunting one. Though it isn’t a giallo, Malfatti did get the lead role in A
Black Ribbon for Deborah, a supernatural thriller very, very inspired by
Rosemary’s Baby.
A few directors did notice how much sexier Malfatti gets when she’s being
evil. Her most insane portrayal is in The Fourth Victim where she plays
Julie Spencer, a suicidal woman who has completely lost touch with reality.
When Julie discovers another woman (played by Carroll Baker) impersonating
her, she transfers her suicidal tendencies onto the impostor and then tries
to kill her. The entire plot of this mediocre film hinges on this psychotic
behavior which is a little confusing, highly improbable and totally awesome.
Marina Malfatti’s Giallo Filmography
1971 – The Fourth Victim
1971 – The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave
1972 – Testa in Giù, Gambe in Aria*
1972 – Seven Blood-Stained Orchids
1972 – All the Colors of the Dark
1972 – The Red Queen Kills 7 Times
*(A very obscure giallo which may or may not be about a killer yoga
instructor.)
Resources
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0539455/
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Malfatti
==================================
Ladies of Giallo #3: Annabella
Incontrera
[Please note: Once again, I have besieged you with another barrage of mild
spoilers but I have tried to keep them vague so as not to ruin any of the
films mentioned.]
When the names of the ladies who have contributed to the world of giallo
come to mind, Annabella Incontrera is not usually at the top of the list (if
she makes it at all). This stunning brunette has a gorgeous and often
naughty smile and dark, probing eyes. With an impressive six titles to her
giallo legacy, Incontrera has yet to return to the genre. In fact, her last
acting credit is a 1980 horror film directed by José Ramón Larraz where she
received ninth billing in the cast list (which cannot be a good sign).
Annabella is oddly obscure and the only information I can find is her brief
marriage to critic and “friend of the cinema” Guglielmo Biraghi in the early
seventies.
What Miss Incontrera does best is play doomed ne’er-do-wells and characters
of questionable moral standing such as her role in Riccardo Freda’s Liz &
Helen starring Klaus Kinski and Margaret Lee. In this 1969 giallo based on
an Edgar Wallace novel, she portrays Liz, a scheming lesbian who brazenly
steals the wife of a rich industrialist (Kinski) though it is revealed that
she is after more than just another man’s woman.
Annabella’s most memorable performance is in The Case of the Bloody Iris. In
it, she plays Sheila Hendricks, a rather voracious lesbian hell bent on
scoring with Jennifer (played by Edwige Fenech). Come to think of it, Sheila
wants to score with every pretty chick within a fifty mile radius of her
apartment. She writes lascivious notes to Mizar (Carla Brait) and even makes
a pass at professional dingbat Marilyn (Paola Quattrini). Of course, the
good times come to a particularly horrifying end as Sheila gets blasted in
the face by a deadly steam pipe while trying to help Jennifer sort out her
issues with a scalpel-wielding maniac.
Annabella Incontrera does have a couple of very bizarre death scenes
including getting scratched by a cat with poison on its claws in The Crimes
of the Black Cat starring Anthony Steffen and the aforementioned steambath
of death in Bloody Iris. She is rather underused in Crimes of the Black Cat,
a mostly forgotten though decent giallo by Sergio Pastore, and does not have
any memorable scenes before she is offed. Extra points are awarded however
as she does get to portray the most typical profession of giallo victims:
the fashion model.
It is in The Black Belly of the Tarantula where Incontrera meets her most
beautiful and intense end. In this classic giallo from director Paolo Cavara,
she plays Mirta Ricci, a fashion designer who takes part in some drug
smuggling on the side to make ends meet. After she is closing up shop one
night, Mirta is assaulted by the knife-wielding killer. She catches the
blade in her hand as it swings towards her, slicing her hand open. Mirta
screams as the blood flows from her palm and makes a break for it through a
maze of fabric and mannequins. The killer sticks her in the neck with a
syringe of a paralyzing toxin and she falls slowly to the floor leaving a
bloody smear on a smiling and unsympathetic dummy. When a curious cop
interrupts her murderer’s handiwork and it seems as though she may be
rescued, Mirta still meets her maker at the end of the knife.
Annabella Incontrera’s Giallo Filmography
1969 – Liz & Helen AKA Double Face
1971 – The Black Belly of the Tarantula
1972 – The Crimes of the Black Cat
1972 – The Case of the Bloody Iris
1972 – So Sweet, So Dead
1974 – Clap, You’re Dead
Resources
http://www.cinemorgue.com/annabellaincontrera.html
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0408480/
==================================
Ladies of Giallo #4: Anita Strindberg
[Warning: Spoilers ahead.]
One would have to be as blind as a bat to confuse Anita Strindberg with any
other giallo starlet. She has one of the most striking faces in the genre
and her characters, whether they are sultry, evil or innocent (or all three
in some cases), are always masterfully portrayed by this Swedish born
actress. Pouring a mountain of emotion into her roles, Strindberg is a
commanding and unforgettable presence on the screen. She has worked in
excellently crafted thrillers like The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail, sleazy
trash like Tropic of Cancer (no relation to the 1970 adaptation of Henry
Miller’s book) and halfhearted genre junk like Riccardo Freda’s Murder
Obsession.
Her super cheekbones and hard jaw look as though they were sculpted out of a
hunk of marble that one magical day turned to flesh. Yet her lovely and
large eyes that are sometimes blue and sometimes gray give off a hypnotic
vibe that is nearly impossible to ignore. Anita Stindberg also has something
quite rare for a giallo actress: fake breasts. One gets used to seeing very
natural women in early 1970s films so to spot a pair of augmented boobs is
pretty special. Unfortunately, Strindberg’s super slender frame doesn’t
really lend itself to that kind of work but who am I to complain?
The most frustrating thing about Anita Strindberg is finding any
biographical information on her. After searching and searching, all I can
find out about her outside of her film roles is that she is from Sweden and
was born in 1944. And yes, she also appeared in Playmen (the Italian version
of Playboy) in the early 1970s. I highly doubt that there would be anything
in the form of an expository interview from that publication so I’ll just
leave that one alone. In interviews with fellow actors George Hilton and
Edwige Fenech, Strindberg is remembered as being friendly and pleasant to
work with but they don’t offer a shred of anything substantial. After her
last known film role in 1981, she seems to have dropped off the face of the
Earth.
The first time I ever caught sight of the fetching giallo princess was in
Aldo Lado’s Who Saw Her Die?. In it, she plays Elizabeth Serpieri, a woman
coping with the murder of her only child. Strindberg’s performance is great
but the script calls for George Lazenby, playing her husband Franco, to do
all the fun stuff like chasing and roughing up suspects. Elizabeth gets to
plead with Franco, leave the city, return to the city and then get menaced
by the killer. This is not the first time she would be woefully underused in
a film. In Duccio Tessari’s Puzzle, Anita plays a supporting character only
memorable for her terrible perm.
Her sexiest role is in Lucio Fulci’s psychosexual masterpiece A Lizard in a
Woman’s Skin where she plays Julia Durer, a blackmailing bisexual hippie who
seduces an upper class lady played by Florinda Bolkan. There are some
seriously steamy moments between these two statuesque actresses. Of course,
it all ends in bloodshed and Strindberg gets an incredibly staged death
scene. This key role opened the doors for her to snag parts in several other
gialli, the Fulci directed sex comedy: The Eroticist, and a women-in-prison
flick among other things.
Anita’s finest hour is in Sergio Martino’s Your Vice Is a Locked Room and
Only I Have the Key where she plays Irina, a mentally and physically abused
woman married to Oliviero, a drunken letch played by Luigi Pistilli. As
Oliviero’s humiliations become more and more cruel and some unexplained and
seemingly supernatural events take place, Irina begins to lose it. Finally,
she comes unglued and goes batshit crazy. Or does she? Suddenly,
Strindberg’s character shows a new side. A manipulative and ice cold persona
emerges from the wreckage and the audience realizes that we never really
knew this woman in the first place.
Anita Strindberg’s Giallo Filmography
1971 – A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin
1971 – Case of the Scorpion’s Tail
1972 – Who Saw Her Die?
1972 – The Two Faces of Fear
1972 – Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key
1972 –Tropic of Cancer AKA Death in Haiti
1974 – Puzzle
1981 – Murder Obsession AKA Fear*
*This one is more of a supernatural slasher than a giallo.
Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Strindberg
http://www.cinemorgue.com/anitastrindberg.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_in_Playmen_1970-1979
“Unveiling the Vice” NoShame Films, 2005
“Creepy Crawl: The Scorpion’s Shadow” NoShame Films, 2005
=======================
Ladies of Giallo #5: Marilù Tolo and
Carla Brait
[Some minor spoilers ahead, folks.]
For this edition of Ladies of Giallo, I want to take a look at two very
different actresses: Marilù Tolo and Carla Brait. The one thing these two
beauties have in common is that neither of them starred in enough gialli for
my taste. Marilù Tolo made several very naked appearances in Playmen
magazine and even graced the cover of the Italian edition of Playboy
magazine in 1983. It is no surprise either since this raven-haired Roman
vixen is a magnet for the eyes and has an incredible screen presence.
Appearing in almost every genre in Italian (and sometimes international)
cinema, Tolo scored over 70 film and TV productions (including an episode of
“Charlie’s Angels”) before retiring from acting in 1985.
I was first dazzled by Marilù Tolo in My Dear Killer, one of my favorite
gialli of all time, where she plays Dr. Anna Borgese, the emotionally
abandoned and sexually frustrated girlfriend of Police Inspector Luca
Peretti (played by George Hilton). This is a very unrealistic to me. How
could Luca ever leave this foxy lady wanting for attention? I like Tolo’s
role in My Dear Killer a great deal but director Tonino Valerii cheats her
out of both a stalking scene and a death scene by leaving her at home while
Luca runs out to solve the case. Valerii even teases the audience by showing
the killer peeping through Luca and Anna’s window while they are discussing
the case and making love. Plot be damned; the killer knows where she lives
yet doesn’t take the opportunity to menace one of the hottest chicks in the
movie. Pathetic!
In 1973, Tolo appeared in Dario Argento’s short-lived series Door into
Darkness where she started in the episode titled “Eyewitness.” In this
nearly hour long offering, Tolo plays Roberta Leoni, a woman who witnesses a
murder while driving home one night. She is harassed by the killer through
the entire episode and it is a great performance. That same year, Argento
cast Marilù in his historical epic The Five Days. Speaking of flops, her
last giallo role to date is in the miserable giallo fantastico Scorpion with
Two Tails. I’m assuming that Argento just forgot to cast her in Tenebre
(released the same year).
Much like Anita Strindberg (Ladies of Giallo #4), I had very little luck
tracking down any biographical information on Carla Brait. I do know that
she is one of the few black actresses to appear in multiple gialli and that
she was criminally underused in Armando Crispino’s The Dead Are Alive. In
that film, also titled The Etruscan Kills Again, she is relegated to a very
small cameo as a dancer in an unflattering leotard and tights combo. I can’t
believe the killer could resist that! Now I’m not saying that Brait doesn’t
have an amazing body but not everyone can pull off that look.
In The Case of the Bloody Iris, one of the greatest gialli ever made, Brait
plays Mizar Harrington, a nightclub performer who wrestles with select
patrons while wearing a skimpy bikini (which tears off very easily). If the
patron wins then they get to make love to her in front of the audience.
Everyone wants Mizar! Sheila the ravenous lesbian (played Annabella
Incontrera) writes her naughty love notes, Andrea the real estate mogul
(George Hilton) wants her for his ad campaign (yeah right!), and the killer
wants her too, but not for anything good. It is in her death scene that
Carla Brait gets cheated. All of Mizar’s fighting skills disappear
completely when the killer cuts the lights in her apartment and she ends up
drowned in her own bathtub.
Director Sergio Martino certainly understood how to display Brait’s charms
by pairing her with the lovely Angela Covello for a gratuitous lesbian love
scene in his grindhouse classic Torso. Unfortunately, her character is
killed off screen and (even more unfortunately) this was her last role in a
giallo. The rest of her career is, well, kind of nonexistent although she
did some TV work in Italy as late as 2000. Speaking of complete wastes of
talent, I have to rag a little on Marilù Tolo’s first giallo, Trumpet of the
Apocalypse. Even though I had seen the film twice before, I didn’t even
realize she has a starring role. Revisiting Trumpet, I see that while she is
lovely, Tolo’s character is so sweet, innocent and terribly dull that it is
no wonder she is so forgettable in it.
Marilù Tolo’s Giallo Filmography
1969 – Trumpet of the Apocalypse
1971 – The Double
1972 – My Dear Killer
1973 – Door into Darkness: “Eyewitness”
1982 – The Scorpion with Two Tails
Carla Brait’s Giallo Filmography
1972 – The Dead Are Alive AKA The Etruscan Kills Again
1972 – The Case of the Bloody Iris
1973 – Torso
Sources
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0866186/
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maril%C3%B9_Tolo
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0104069/
http://www.cinemorgue.com/carlabrait.html
===========================
Ladies of Giallo #6: Florinda Bolkan
[Who likes spoilers? We all do. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya!]
Brazilian born Florinda Bolkan may not have the longest list of giallo
credits but her contributions to each are staggering. A former airline
hostess, Bolkan’s film career began after being discovered midflight by a
film producer. After only a few years of acting, she landed her breakout
role was in Elio Petri’s Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion as
Augusta Terzi, the lovely mistress of a police inspector who kills her to
see if he can get away with the crime.
What I’m finding more and more common as I move from one giallo starlet to
the next in these articles is their surprising propensity to appear in
Playmen magazine. This sleek and sultry woman lent her talents to the
Italian Playboy rip-off four times in three years. But what is quite unique
about Florinda is her sexual preference. This is the first Lady of Giallo in
the series (to my knowledge) that is openly homosexual.
In Lucio Fulci’s A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, Bolkan plays Carol Hammond, an
upper class married woman whose real passion is reserved for her hippie
neighbor, Julia Durer, played by Anita Strindberg (Ladies of Giallo #4). One
night Carol dreams that she murders Julia in a hallucinatory freakout
sequence as only Lucio Fulci could have come up with. When it turns out that
Julia has actually been stabbed to death as her dream predicted, Carol is
thrust into a nightmarish world where her dreams and real life mingle with
tragic results.
The following year, Fulci would call upon Bolkan once again for a smaller
yet vastly more complex role in Don’t Torture a Duckling. Here she plays
Maciara, a simple-minded witch accused of murdering young boys in a small
town. Because she believes her black magic spells are real, Maciara
confesses to being the cause of the boys’ deaths. The rage she feels towards
the dead children who teased her and disturbed the gravesite of her
stillborn baby isn’t enough to convince the police that she is actually
responsible for the crimes and she is set free. Unfortunately, the ignorant
and superstitious townsfolk decide to take the law into their own hands and
rid themselves of the witch once and for all.
This is where the film comes to a complete stop as Maciara is chased into a
graveyard by some local yokels who then proceed to beat the tar out of her.
Next, she is whipped with chains in unflinching detail in one of the most
brutal death scenes in the entire giallo genre. The viewer’s heart is ripped
out as the lovely voice of Ornella Vanoni plays over this devastating scene
as this woman’s miserable fate plays out agonizingly slow. Maciara’s final
moments are her climbing up a hill toward the highway where she dies
watching the callous motorists drive past.
At the time of writing this, I am still waiting for Footprints, a 1975
genre-bending giallo with cosmic overtones (that’s what I’ve read anyway)
and which will be on DVD in the UK very soon. That is not nearly enough
giallo film roles! While her presence in the well-intentioned but awful 2003
giallo Bad Inclination was a bit of a waste, I am happy to report that
Florinda Bolkan is not only still sexy but may be even sexier in her 60s.
She continues to act but has branched out into both writing and directing.
Florinda Bolkan’s Giallo Filmography
1971 – A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin
1972 – Don’t Torture a Duckling
1975 – Footprints
2003 – Bad Inclination
Resources
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0093030/
http://www.cinemorgue.com/florindabolkan.html
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florinda_Bolkan
http://florindabolkan.com/eng/
=================================
Ladies of Giallo #7 – Barbara Bouchet
[As usual, I ruin everything. Spoilers ahead, yo.]
The only Lady of Giallo gorgeous enough to threaten Edwige Fenech’s title as
Queen of All Gialli is the one and only Barbara Bouchet. This Czech-born
(and San Francisco raised) vixen has the powers to melt me with her bluish
gray eyes, sensuous mouth, and a supple body that just won’t quit. With 85
film and TV roles currently under her belt, this former model has sustained
quite an amazing acting career for over 40 years. Bouchet was in especially
great demand throughout the 1960s and 70s starring in numerous sex comedies
and crime flicks. She was also in high demand in men’s magazines, appearing
extremely nude in Playmen 7 times in 12 years (a new Ladies of Giallo
record) as well as popping up in both Playboy and Penthouse.
Bouchet’s best death scene is in The Black Belly of the Tarantula. In the
film, she plays Maria Zani, a woman whose lover turns out to be a
blackmailer and her jerk husband ain’t too happy about it. Early on in the
film, after her very intelligent and intuitive German Shepherd barks his ass
off trying to warn her that the killer is skulking about in the yard and she
ignores him, Maria is attacked. The killer jams an acupuncture needle into
the back of her neck to paralyze her and then goes to town on her body with
a big sharp knife. She is sliced up most unwholesomely and is discovered as
the first victim in a sicko rampage that Inspector Tellini (played by
Giancarlo Giannini) must try and stop.
One theme I noticed in Barbara Bouchet’s roles in gialli is that her
characters are never very bad but are rarely innocent either. Bouchet
portrays women who, through some unfortunate circumstance, are damaged in
some way. This is especially the case in Lucio Fulci’s Don’t Torture a
Duckling where Bouchet plays Patrizia, a spoiled rich girl who is trying to
kick a serious drug habit by hiding out in the boonies. The first time we
see Patrizia she is sunning herself in the nude under a heat lamp. The kid
of one of her servants shows up with some lemonade and he gets the thrill of
his short (thanks to the killer) life. Not only does Patrizia remain
completely uncovered, she half-seduces this ten-year-old before mocking him
for being a mama’s boy. This simultaneously sexy and perturbing scene is
what notable film scholars have referred to as “freaky” and “fucked up”.
Though Don’t Torture a Duckling is a true classic of the genre, my favorite
Bouchet gialli are The Red Queen Kills 7 Times, a candy-colored slashfest by
director Emilio Miraglia and Silvio Amadio’s underappreciated Amuck!. In Red
Queen, Bouchet stars as Kitty Wildenbrück, a young woman set to inherit a
big estate but there’s a whole convoluted conspiracy to drive her insane and
steal her cash. A supposed curse on her family is the least of Kitty’s
problems after she accidentally kills her sister (or so she thinks), gets
raped by a junkie, falls several stories into a bale of hay, and nearly
drowned in the catacombs of her own castle. This is the quintessential
Bouchet giallo performance. With all this crazy shit being thrown her way
and no one that she can trust, Kitty’s sanity is nearly torn asunder. But
with a little luck and a whole lot of hotness, she somehow manages to get
through it all.
In Amuck!, Barbara plays Greta Franklin, a young woman in search of Sally,
her best friend who has gone missing. The trail leads her to the home of
Richard Stuart (played by Farley Granger), an eccentric writer and his
oversexed wife Eleanora (Rosalba Neri), both of whom she suspects of foul
play. These suspicions are confirmed and sweet (but also kind of naughty)
Greta puts herself into a retarded amount of danger in order to get to the
truth. In a 2001 interview about the film, Barbara (who still looks
gorgeous!) discussed working on the 1972 film and her lesbian love sequence
with Rosalba Neri (who she is still friends with). According to Bouchet, her
biggest concern was with how the scene would look. Well, she had nothing to
worry about. It looks stupendous!
So how come Barbara Bouchet didn’t grab an old rusty straight razor and
start slashing away at the competition? In all of her gialli, not once did
she turn out to be the killer which is sad because I found out that she can
tap into some seriously mad energy and could have ruined some bitches (and
bastards) in a most giallo-like manner. In the crime film Milano Calibro 9
(which I highly recommend by the way), Bouchet plays a conniving psycho
biznitch with an unsettling and demonic grin which only comes when she’s
being very, very bad. But all is not lost. At the time that I’m writing
this, Barbara has been at work in several horror and thriller films in the
last few years that have yet to reach the States. Let’s hope that she gets
her chance to spill some blood.
Barbara Bouchet’s Giallo Filmography
1971 – The Man with Icy Eyes
1971 – The Black Belly of the Tarantula
1972 – Amuck!
1972 – The French Sex Murders
1972 – The Red Queen Kills 7 Times
1972 – Don’t Torture a Duckling
Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Bouchet
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0099054/
http://www.cinemorgue.com/barbarabouchet.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygo_6AuSvA0
=================================
Ladies of Giallo #8: Seeing
Triple
[There are spoilers ahead, my friends. Normally they are pretty mild but I'm
going to totally ruin Umberto Lenzi's Eyeball. You've been warned.]
This week I must tip my hat to some fine ladies whose contributions to the
world of gialli may be small in number but are very important nonetheless.
Starting alphabetically, I present Ewa Aulin, a former Miss Teen Sweden who
had a very brief acting career but managed to secure spots in some excellent
gialli including Tinto Brass’s pop art thriller Deadly Sweet and Giulio
Questi’s surreal Death Laid an Egg. This unbelievably cute nymph has huge
eyes, a pouty and luscious mouth and always seems to have a look of
perplexed innocence on her face that is simply spellbinding. I’m still
trying to track down a giallo she starred in with Jean Sorel and Marilù Tolo
(Ladies of Giallo #5) called The Double (AKA La Controfigura). All in due
time, I’m sure. And even though it is so not a giallo, my favorite role for
Aulin is in Death Smiled at Murder where she plays an undead woman with a
penchant for taking straight razors and shotguns to people’s faces. So much
for innocent.
Next up is Martine Brochard, a disturbingly thin but gorgeous actress who
took a break from spaghetti westerns, nunsploitation and women-in-prison
flicks to flirt with gialli. My heart melted and then froze when I first
caught sight of this Parisian vixen in Umberto Lenzi’s Eyeball. It is so
easy to be distracted by the cheese of the film that one may not predict
that she is the killer who has been snatching people’s eyeballs out of their
dang heads. Brochard plays Paulette Stone, the other woman for Mark Burton
(played by John Richardson) whose crazy wife is totally a red herring. When
the big reveal comes and Paulette finally gets to show her true colors, it’s
pretty unnerving. Brochard relishes her role as the bad girl and with her
gaping eye-hole and mad grin she is not one to be toyed with.
Both of Giovanna Ralli’s giallo appearances are plagued with her bad perms.
She’s got some serious helmet thing going on in both Cold Eyes of Fear and
What Have They Done to Your Daughters? and let me tell you, it is
distracting. Unfortunate hair aside, Ralli is an incredible actress with a
gorgeous smile and voluptuous curves. She somehow makes Cold Eyes of Fear,
one of my least favorite gialli (which actually gets better with multiple
viewings), interesting from beginning to end. In What Have They Done to Your
Daughters? Ralli plays Vittoria Stori, the tough-as-nails assistant district
attorney trying to expose a teenage prostitution racket that has turned
deadly. When the leather clad killer comes after her with a big machete,
Vittoria crushes his skull with her big ass hair. Not really.
There you have it, folks: three lovely ladies of the most yellow of genres
with their only common being that they all appeared in Playmen (the Italian
Playboy) magazine. I run into this little tidbit so often with these giallo
sirens that I don’t even know what I mention it anymore. Oh yeah, I mention
it because it’s trashy and awesome! Martine Brochard even graced the cover
of the October issue in 1980. Italian eBay, anyone?
Ewa Aulin’s Giallo Filmography
1967 - Deadly Sweet
1968 - Death Laid an Egg
1971 - The Double AKA La Controfigura
1973 - Death Smiled at Murder*
Martine Brochard’s Giallo Filmography
1975 - Eyeball AKA The Secret Killer
1981 - Murder Obsession AKA Fear**
Giovanna Ralli’s Giallo Filmography
1971 - Cold Eyes of Fear
1974 - What Have They Done to Your Daughters?
*(More supernatural horror than giallo.)
**(More slasher than giallo. Damn, I’m really pushing it this time.)
Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewa_Aulin
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0042046/
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martine_Brochard
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0110496/
http://www.cinemorgue.com/martinebrochard.html
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanna_Ralli
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0707728/
http://www.cinemorgue.com/giovannaralli.html
Giallo Trailers Featuring Aulin, Brochard, and Ralli
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFnAhf1DyNM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFhgkvYhK3g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgS0-Fo4Jik
==============================
Ladies of Giallo #9: Ida Galli AKA
Evelyn Stewart
[A couple of juicy spoilers await you. You will never forgive me.]
What is up with the severe faces of giallo actresses? I won’t go so far as
to call them harsh but I’m noticing a trend with these women. Giallo cinema
in Italy was calling for a type of dichotomous woman: one with hard features
but who could also be as delicate as a flower and who is slender yet
voluptuous. These lovely ladies all seem to have striking features that
could cut right through the screen and Ida Galli certainly fits that bill.
With hypnotic eyes and pouty full lips, Galli can look impossibly cool or
completely terrified at the drop of a hat.
Hailing from Sestola, Italy, Galli, usually credited as Evelyn Stewart, is
all over the genre map with credits in peplum (sword and sandal epics),
spaghetti westerns, police and spy thrillers, and horror. In gialli, she
usually plays supporting characters that either disappear before the end of
the film or get killed. Romano Scavolini (Nightmare in a Damaged Brain) did
correct this grievous error and directed Galli in the starring role in
Spirits of Death, a meandering but intriguing giallo. In it, she plays
Mariale, a woman tormented by the memory of her father gunning down her
adulterous mother. Mariale gathers together all of her scuzzy friends and an
old flame (played by Ivan Rassimov) to slaughter them all and keep her date
with destiny.
Ida Galli dies most spectacularly in The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail. In the
film, she plays Lisa Baumer, an adulterous skeez who gets a million bucks
when her husband dies in an airline disaster. Director Sergio Martino lets
us believe that Lisa is the focus of the film but when she’s trying to make
off with the insurance money, the killer breaks into her hotel room and
slices her up most unkindly. For an excellent non-giallo role, check out
Galli in the Spanish/Italian horror flick Maniac Mansion.
Ida Galli’s Giallo Filmography
1968 – The Sweet Body of Deborah
1969 - Strada Senza Uscità AKA Dead End*
1970 – The Weekend Murders
1971 – The Bloodstained Butterfly
1971 – The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail
1972 – Knife of Ice
1972 – Spirits of Death
1975 – Footprints
1977 – The Psychic AKA Seven Notes in Black
1989 – Black Angel
*(This may or may not be a giallo.)
Sources
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0302837/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Galli
Clips
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-BpI8LWQ18
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