Hi there. This moviethon is going to be the third chapter of Giallo Meltdown volume 2, a book that is still currently being written! To check out more, be sure to grab yourself a copy of the first Giallo Meltdown right here. I should probably also say that there are some minor spoilers ahead though I never reveal the identity of the killer or major plot twists. I recommend you seek these films out if you can! On with the show…

 

 

Some giallo purists out there say that the heyday of the giallo genre ended in 1972 when the popularity of the films had reached their peak. There’s some great stuff that came after that from directors that didn’t get the memo and thus, some of my favorites didn’t even see theaters until 1975. Personally, I give the glory days of the giallo a much longer shelf life and take it all the way to 1982 when Dario Argento unleashed Tenebre upon an unsuspecting world. But the giallo didn’t stop there! They kept making the damned things for what appears to be kind of forever, often incorporating other genres and trendy film techniques to satisfy audiences. So, I’m headed back to Italy to see just what these latter-day offerings were all about.

 

FRIDAY

 

On the way to work this morning, the lady in the car behind me was rubbing the sleep out of her eyes while eating an ice cream sandwich. I started singing to her, “Girl! I wish I had your life!”, but she couldn’t hear me. Work was pretty humdrum today. Thanks to the pandemic, I only go in one day a week and I work all alone in the big office myself. This is how the killer is going to find me. We just had a tropical storm blow through this week and it left behind some decent weather. But it’s frickin’ November in Florida, so anything under 85 degrees is considered decent.

I picked up a big Italian sandwich for myself and a baked potato for LeEtta from Jason’s Deli and we eat while watching Rick Steves travel through Italy. We love Rick. This moviethon contains an almost entirely “unseen by me” lineup and that excites me! After my ceremonial shot of J&B was tolerated (barely), I proclaimed that it was time to get started.

 

“I don’t want to end up like a larvae!”

5:48PM

BAD INCLINATION (2003)

 

I hated this film so much the first time I watched it that I refused to include it in the first volume of Giallo Meltdown. But my tastes have changed and I’m ready to give this very late entry another go. A woman preparing herself a giant meal of meat is accosted by a black-gloved killer in her home. He gropes her and then stabs her to death with a giant setsquare. There’s some familiar faces in this including Florinda Bolkan, Franco Nero, and Eva Robbins of Tenebre (1982). The acting is all over the place, the script is hideous, and the dubbing is beyond terrible! I’m kinda loving this.

Bolkan plays Mirta, an artist/art historian who’s trying to con a dumb idiot into buying some forged antiques from her. She catches a girl named Donatella breaking into her car but decides to help her out. She confesses to Donatella that she’s dying and guilts her into helping commit suicide. Meanwhile, the lovely detective Rita is on the case of The Setsquare Killer. More importantly, Florinda Bolkan is walking her wiener dog named Van Gogh and she picks up his enormous (fake) turd so that she can put it in the bed of her nosy maid. She’s a stinker.

So much crazy shit is happening that I’m beginning to lose my mind already. One of the freewheelin’ ladies that lives in the building where the murder was committed has Axel Foley’s theme song as her ringtone. It interrupts her trying to bang some random dude who lives on her floor. A cop investigating a second murder with a setsquare says, “As yet, I don’t want to express an opinion.” A lady who wears feather underwear takes her cat for a walk but this cat has clearly never even seen a harness much less actually been walked by a human. And the calls from the killer sound like a little kid trying to sound scary.

Multiple characters living in the very same building are copying the killer’s methods in order to get away with their own murders. That’s just wild. Detective Rita goes on the Internet and uses a search engine called “MetaWeb”. That’s so old school that it probably never existed. Hooker bonfire! Lascivious sex! While I prefer this director’s other film Bugie Rosse (1993), Bad Inclination is a lot of cheesed out fun. It’s impossible to take seriously but the locations are gorgeous, and the camerawork is decent. Bonus: the ending is as abrupt as it is baffling.

 

“It’s best if I don’t think.”

7:25PM

SQUILLO (1996)

 

Carlo Vanzina, director of Nothing Underneath (1985), brings us Squillo. I like to lean out the window and scream “Skweeelooooo!” and the ladies come runnin’. All I’ve heard from folks is that this movie is pretty terrible. I’ll just see about that! The dubbing is also um… hideous! A poor Polish farmgirl named Eva witnesses the fall of the Berlin Wall and then grows up to be a high-class call girl in Milan. Her younger sister Maria shows up from Poland to hang out and then Eva immediately disappears. She goes to cops and meets up with Inspector Tony Ponytail (Raz Degan), a sarcastic pretty boy who looks like a romance novel reject.

In order to find out what happened to her sister, Maria dresses up like a sexbot, pretends to be Eva, and goes on a double date with Barbara, another prostitute. One of their dates looks like Eric Idle. All of this has to do with a company called NEOTECH. They must be the creators of “MetaWeb” which means that Squillo and Bad Inclination are from the same cinematic universe! Please, let Tony Stark be one of Eva’s clients! Well, the two films do have dreadful acting in common, but that’s about it so far. The cinematography on this one is by the amazing Luigi Kuveiller and the score is by musical magician Pino Donaggio.

Maria and inspector Tony have teamed up and are using a baby monitor to stay in contact during her undercover work. Paul Freeman, a fine actor of many, many films is in this as a bigshot client who hires Maria for some naughtiness. Maybe he wants her to pour Jello on his calves or squeeze his throw pillows. Either way, I’m slipping out of my khakis right now just in case things get nasty. Maria is having trouble getting used to the prostituting side of prostitution. After another successful night of giving her sister’s clients blue balls, Tony and Maria hook up. After their romantic talkin’, LeEtta looks at me and says, “Oh, this is so bad. So bad.”

If our lead characters were likeable, that’d be nice. But they’re not. Vanzina sure does like his sepia-toned flashbacks. Oh brother. This is turning into a nightmare. It just goes to show that you can make a big glossy movie with attractive people and it’s still a chore to sit through when the script is torturously bland. I hate to harsh on a movie this badly, but my pet peeve showed up. I hate when characters narrate their thoughts out loud just in case the audience is too dumb to follow along. We’re not! At least Bad Inclination was cheap and bad. The ending of this is a huge letdown as well. Carlo, what happened?

“Normality is his hideout.”

9:12PM

THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE (1986)

 

From the famously bad to the infamous, I go venturing into true crime territory. This is one of at least three films made about the as yet unsolved Italian serial killer case but that’s not important. What is important is that I’m the Monster of Florence. I began my killing spree before I was born and then stopped when I was nine years old because I was scared of getting caught. Please, arrest me. Suave badass Leonard Mann of Death Steps in the Dark (1977) is in this as a no-nonsense reporter with humongous sunglasses. He and his photographer cronies are relentless at getting the gory details even sneaking photos of the corpses when the cops aren’t looking.

Welcome to the moviethon, Gabriele Tinti! He plays Andreas, a writer who’s been working on a book about the case for years. His girlfriend Giulia (Bettina Giovannini), a journalist herself, encourages Enrico to keep working on his book despite how conflicted he feels about it. I love how claustrophobic and haunting this film feels. The dread starts creeping in almost  immediately, and the score by Paolo Rustichelli is kicking ass. Now the film segues into gritty reenactments of the crimes. These are obviously staged because I’m not there.

Andreas and Giulia go see a production of Verdi’s Othello where it looks and sounds as though the actors onstage are lip-syncing to an old record. They run into Enrico and his ditzy lady friend at the opera house, but Andreas is too distracted by the case. He’s getting paranoid and looking for clues everywhere he goes. I’m very happy to report that it feels really good to finally be watching a real movie with a great cast and good writing tonight. The biggest criticism I can make is that this movie is about as subtle as a bullet to the face, especially when we get to see the killer’s life when he’s not out in the night blowing people away.

This movie is brutal and the fact that the killer looks vaguely like Ted Raimi might be my best alibi as no one has ever told me that I look like Ted Raimi. Do I? DO I?! You should call the police and have him arrested. I’m innocent! This is such a strange film and must’ve been really weird for the Italian public to go see a film made just a year after the most recent murders had been committed. So that’s what ties this film in with the first two we watched tonight: tackiness. This is some truly tacky shit and yet, I am digging this movie, y’all.

 

SATURDAY

 

I dreamt too many dreams though nothing giallo-like. The one I remember the best was having dinner with some extended family and doing my Robert DeNiro impression which is just me saying “You had your chance AND THEN YOU BLEW IT!” Did Al Pacino say that? We woke up to cats crawling on us, insisting we get started. After LeEtta’s homemade apple cinnamon and raisin muffins and a tangerine, we jumped right into chores. After that fun stuff, I went out to buy lottery tickets and then drive 16 miles round trip just to get TacoSon. Thanks to a bad accident on Busch Boulevard, I had to cut through a very spicy section of Tampa where a lady was screaming, laughing, and spitting on cars. She was wielding either a broom or a mop. The tacos were worth the hassle and of course, I ate too much. The day was disappearing.

 

“I’ve dragged you into a nightmare.”

12:53PM

TULPA: DEMON OF DESIRE (2012)

 

Extra special thanks goes out to my bud Justin Kosch for hooking me up many years ago with the following trilogy of films. This opens with some very sensual SEXophone music and some kinky sex. A guy who looks like Adrian Brody’s uncle ties a woman to a bed with some very elaborate knots. Ball gags are never a good sign. He doesn’t get to enjoy himself because a black-gloved killer shows up and kills him to death. The killer cuts off his manly bits and puts them right in front of the girl’s face. Now that’s a real ball gag! According to the credits, legendary screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti worked on this badboy.

By day, the lovely Lisa (Claudia Gerini) works for a generic corporation that buys stocks and has intense meetings about stuff. By night, she gets dolled up and goes to an underground sex club to get her freak on. While out with a friend in the park, she sees one of the girls from the club picking up a John. That night, the girl is chased and brutally murdered by the killer with a merry-go-round and barbed wire. Don’t ask. Lisa’s boss can’t keep his hands to himself which hopefully means he’s gonna get his dingle cut off too. We get to see inside the sex club, and it feels like it’s inside the city limits of Twin Peaks.

Another one of Lisa’s lady friends gets killed in a very sadistic way by the killer. That’s not nice. When she reads in the newspaper about the killings, she freaks out and goes to the club to get the contact info of a guy who works there. Marla, Lisa’s bitchy rival from work, follows her there and takes a picture of her going inside. That’s not nice at all. Well, if you’re going to make a throwback to the golden age of the psychosexual giallo, then this is the way to do it. Tulpa is colorful, trashy, ludicrously violent, and sports a decent music score. It’s not earth-shatteringly original or anything but I dig it well enough.

“What a friggin’ mess. Fuck you!”

2:25PM

ALMOST BLUE (2000)

 

I’ve been hearing about this movie for a very long time and I keep forgetting to watch it. I suppose that now is a good time to do that since I have put the DVD on and it is currently playing. A police task force is trying to catch a serial killer who targets college students. They call in a profiler/computer expert named Grazia Negro (Lorenza Indovina) to track him down. We’ve got a techno thriller on our hands here, people. Better check in with my AOL chatroom in Linux and see if I have enough RAM to handle this. A blind hacker named (Claudio Santamaria) Simone finds out the identity of the killer’s next victim and contacts Grazia. Shock of all shocks, they don’t get there in time. Whoa, this film is crazy stylish so far.

I haven’t been this excited about cloned cell phones in a very long time. That must mean we don’t watch NCIS anymore. Every time the killer strikes, he steals the victim’s clothes and identity and then moves on. This color palette is reminding me of Thesis (1996), a film that I’m way overdue for a rewatch of. Since Simone the blind dude knows the sound of the killer’s voice, Grazia and her colleagues take him to a party they suspect that he’s going to attend. Good plan! Everything goes to shit but also, it’s a complete clusterfuck. LeEtta says everything is going to be okay because in gialli, the cops never solve the case themselves anyway. This movie is just crazy. I liked it but I will say no more so I don’t spoil anything.

 

DINNER AND CIGAR BREAK

 

In order to stick to our Italian theme, LeEtta made us quesadillas from some left-over ground beef she had. Tacos for lunch and quesadillas for dinner? Hillsborough County sent over a representative in a gas mask to let us know that we were violating the Fart Ordinance. After dinner, I retreated out to the carpark for a silky smooth El Centurion cigar and a pineapple soda. While listening to giallo soundtracks, I read Stephen Thrower’s giallo introduction in his book, Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci. The sun set crazy early so after a while, I just enjoyed the evening air and watched my neighbors go about their business.

 

“I don’t trust anyone anymore.”

5:53PM

THE VANITY SERUM (2004)

 

And I just made this an Alex Infascelli double feature! After nearly dying during an arrest gone wrong, bitter ex-detective Lucia (Margherita Buy) is now being called in to help her ex-husband/old partner with a new case. A popular live talk show hosted by the popular personality Sonia Norton (Francesca Neri) goes off the rails when a famous psychologist named Dr. Benda gets his comeuppance. He storms off the set and then is drugged and kidnapped. Then a comedian who plays a farting cow on a popular children’s show is also kidnapped. As they investigate these disappearances, they find out more cases are tied to the same episode of the Sonia Norton show.

The cops are running around trying to protect the other guests but they’re not having much luck Another dude from the show is kidnapped after lasciviously biting into a hotdog while naked. I tell you, there’s a fetish for everything. They manage to get to Azzurra (Barbora Bobulova), a former Miss Italy (and now coked up loser) before she too gets gotten. Oops, spoke too soon. The cops screw it up and now Azzurra has been taken as well. Gee, I’m noticing a theme between the two films. All the kidnapped celebs are being held in cages in some weird underground bunker.

After this colossal screw-up, Lucia is thrown off the case and fired (even though LeEtta and I both thought she wasn’t employed). With nothing else to do but wallow in self-pity, she starts looking into the case on her own. I already like this more than Almost Blue. The score by Marco Castoldi is kicking ass and adding to the tense atmosphere of this bizarre and delightfully cynical movie. This is too good to spoil. All I have left to say is you have to seek this one out for yourself.

 

“This is a shitty film anyway.”

7:31PM

MASSACRE (1989)

 

A cool dude in mirrored shades and red mittens is cruising down the street to some bitchin’ 80s video game music. He sees a prostitute by the road, pulls over, and then hacks her to death with a hatchet and a switchblade in broad daylight. The credits read “Lucio Fulci presents… An Andrea Biachi film” and I say to that, “God help us.” Now we cut to a satanic ritual in a graveyard with hooded figures and a lady who looks vaguely like Caroline Munro who’s rather perturbed to be waking up in the middle of it all. Oh dang, this is a movie set. Jennifer is the star and she decides to take the night off. The rumors are that she’s a lesbian but back at the hotel she’s taking a shower with a hunky dude. Frankly, I’m shocked.

The director (Maurice Poli), who isn’t satisfied with the fantasy elements of the horror film they’re making, has decided to stage a séance to achieve maximum realism in their movie. The crew who’ve been working hard on the special effects are understandably pissed off about this change of direction. Meanwhile a handsome young police detective is trying to solve the murder of the prostitute. Apparently, this was the work of a serial killer and the cop’s boss (Paul Muller!) is very angry at him for not having solved the case already.

Not too surprising, this is daft already and potentially magical. There’s been a clumsy offer for lesbian sex, an extended striptease, and a four-alarm gay stereotype already. The kookiest séance I’ve ever seen just happened and I’m feeling very good about it. According to the medium, the wrong spirit guide showed up and it must be a teetotaler because he smashed all the booze at the bar. Drunk hottie Lisa, who might be an actress or not, winds up murdered and her body staged on the strangest merry-go-round I’ve ever seen. And I just found out that the movie they’re making is called Dirty Blood. Holy carp.

The cops consulted a computer and it told them there are two different killers at work. They should ask it to got ahead and solve the case because an important film like Dirty Blood must get finished no matter what the cost. Thankfully, the ghost didn’t destroy the bottle of J&B featured prominently in the big important scene where members of the film crew were being bitchy to each other. The more they show of Dirty Blood, the less I understand what it’s about. This is some seriously cheap and stupid crap. I’m smitten. Massacre might be my favorite of this entire moviethon.

 

“You think I care about your stupid gialli?”

9:30PM

DELITTI (1987)

 

This opens with a woman talking directly to the camera about a traumatic event that happened to her. From what I’ve read about Delitti, I think she might be speaking about working on this film. A double murder at a villa has taken place and the cops are grilling the suspects. When they lift up the sheet covering one of the bodies, the victim’s face looks like a big pile of lasagna. I’m not trying to be funny; it really looks like lasagna. Then the opening credits kick in with a tune that sounds like a cross between Duran Duran and Flock of Seagulls, but in a bad way. This was directed by Giovanna Lenzi who is probably not related to Umberto Lenzi. And the budget appears to be even lower than Massacre’s.

The script is horrid. Here’s an example. Harriette and Susan, two girls who were at the villa the night of the murder, are worried that the killer might come after them. They’re doing mild aerobics together. Harriette starts to strangle Susan, calms down, tries to comfort her even though she was just strangling her, makes a half-hearted pass at her, and then gets in the shower with all of her clothes on. And then we’re off to another scene with people talking about stuff. The detective looks like Great Value Columbo™ played by a bearded Stacy Keach impersonator. When he goes to work, there are not one but two maps on the wall so that the audience knows that it’s a police station. Now he’s chasing a little person who claims to know the killer.

Apaprently, the killer’s method is using a poison that interacts with sugar in a person’s coffee. If they don’t use sugar then nothing happens. But if they happen to use sugar, then the poison is like acid and it turns the victim’s face into a sloppy mess (or “mummified” according to the detective). There is also a healthy dose of music lifted directly from A Blade in the Dark (1982) in the music score. Classy. A lady spends approximately 10 minutes of film time and all of her dignity trying to seduce her lover. Then she runs off to the bathroom so that she can spray deodorant on her thighs. When they finally have sex, he keeps his pajamas on.

If you wanted to make the case that this is the worst giallo of all time, I couldn’t argue with you. But honestly, this is kind of great. It will take me years to figure out what in the world is even going on. Susan runs to a phone booth to call the detective and then she’s menaced by a guy in trenchcoat. He takes off his coat and challenges her to a dance-off. His moves are sick as fuck. LeEtta and I are shook. That dude looks familiar. It’s Saverio Vallone of Antropophagus (1980). And that’s George Ardisson of Date for a Murder (1967). The poor bastards. The detective’s daughter reads gialli and keeps telling him how the cop in her novel is a failure just like he is. I could love this film if it wasn’t 96 damn minutes long. It’s almost bad movie gold. Oh well. Goodnight.

 

SUNDAY

 

This time, my dreams were super cool and full of giallo imagery. Just kidding, no black-gloved killers but they were pretty weird. The one I can remember best is that my dad was Kurt Russell and our family made money by building armor and weapons for collectors. I got in trouble because I was playing with his throwing knives and had screwed them up by breaking the tips off the blades. Dad understood but insisted I work in his shop to pay for their replacements. I got up early and ran out to Einstein Bagels for bagel sandwiches. After that, we got started on the yard work. The hot weather was back and it was pretty awful; though we did see a spider we’d never seen before called a Spiny Orb Weaver. So cute! After we eat a frozen pizza for lunch, it was time to get back to the bullshit.

 

“Oh my goodness! My horoscope said there’d be an exceptional occurrence today.”

12:35PM

APPOINTMENT IN BLACK (1990)

 

Moody opening music over a black screen and t-shirt-style font credits should be troubling, but I’m assured that this is a “REAL Film Production”. Then the movie goes right into the brutal rape of a young girl. I keep waiting for it to cut away. It doesn’t. Somehow, I get through this without shutting it off. After a “15 years later” title card, a sexy woman named Angela, played by Mirella Banti of Tenebre (1982), is driving along, smiling at herself in the rearview mirror, and listening to some strident garbage rock which LeEtta says sounds like the “Beverly Hills, 90210” theme. Angela goes to a porno theater where she insults some hornballs who’re checking her out.

Angela gets attacked offscreen in the theater toilet and a sleazy guy acts suspiciously. While she’s reporting the details of this attack to a female police inspector, played by Sonia Viviani of Nightmare City (1980), her husband John is at home banging Eva, his blond mistress. When he finds out that she was raped, he confides to his lover that he wishes that Angela had been killed by the rapist. As soon as Angela goes to bed, he goes back to sucking on Eva’s panties. John is an animal. The romantic music sounds like an anal trumpeter spitting his butt wind into the audience’s sad, unprotected ears.

The projectionist from the theater approaches Angela to tell her that he saw the whole incident where she faked being raped. He wants money and he starts raping her. Get me out of here. Angela and John throw a fancy party where all of his asshole socialite friends talk shit about her. So she gets a little too drunk and does a striptease. The only moment of light in this dogshit is when Angela asks the band to play something with some sex in it. The band proceeds to play a happy Lawrence Welk-style floppy dong polka. It’s awesome. Now Angela is being harassed by a man claiming to be her attacker. John and Eva are up to some sneaky shit but Angela is beginning to make some plans of her own.

The most giallo-like thing to happen so far is that someone left a bloody doll in Angela’s car with a switchblade stuck in its face. Ooh, the man who raped Angela as a child died a very horrible death. Hell yes! His dick didn’t get cut off and fed to him but I’ll take what I can get. John and Eva have at least a half a dozen sex scenes in this so that same love scene theme music keeps playing. And here come the double crosses and the triple crosses. Who cares? Other than a couple of decent, atmospheric moments, I highly recommend skipping this fucking trash.

 

“Wanna do a porno gig? Just the three of us?”

2:15PM

OBSESSION: A TASTE FOR FEAR (1988)

 

I love how someone ripped this from their laserdisc copy. Thank you, whoever you are. This opens quite strikingly with a giallo villainess menacing a girl with a huge silver 9mm pistol. Diane (Virginia Hey) the photographer is pissed off because the model isn’t good enough at portraying fear on film. Oh brother, this is a high-tech movie with pointless computer screens everywhere. After making her assistant Valerie (Gioia Scola), who’s clearly in love with her, scrub her back in the shower, she meets up with her smug douchebag ex-husband Georges (Gérard Darmon) in his limo. He gives her an assignment to seduce a rich guy for him.

That night, Diane goes to hunt her prey at a fancy nightclub that has little people dancing onstage, people having sex in the booths, and bodybuilders mixing with the crowd. I guess it worked because we see her screwing the guy in the nightclub. At yet another gaudy fashion shoot, Diane is being a dick. When a bodybuilder chick cuts herself, she demands Valerie touch the wound so she can photograph it. Valerie refuses and they shut down for the day. Later, the bodybuilder chick goes to a private videotape session where a killer in black gloves ties her up. She turns up dead and sealed up in a giant bag. Also of note: Diane is narrating this insanity.

Thanks to Diane’s inefficiently sleek car and other weird gadgetry, LeEtta and I just realized that this takes place in the future, as imagined by the people of 1988. That explains the weird sets and everyone acting like aliens. But that doesn’t explain how pretentious this movie is. The police detective looks like he escaped from an episode of “Miami Vice”. Diane gets real sad about the death of the bodybuilder and cries naked while rocking a slammin’ dope jam called “Midnight Blue” by Lou Gramm of Foreigner. This song is so good that I want to rip off my ears and shove them up my urethra. Seriously, this would be a lot better if Diane wasn’t such a jerk. It wouldn’t hurt the movie at all. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t shamin’. I like that she screws everything in sight. She’s just an asshole.

At least Obsession: A Taste for Fear is pretty to look at. There’s so many saturated colors and eye-popping visuals going on that it’s easy to forget that very little is happening. Another bonus is that this is a real movie unlike that lumpy turd called Appointment in Black. Somebody just tried to run over the cop and he shot at their jeep with a gosh darn laser gun. We are on fire in here, bro! Another murder happens and someone yells, “You police pig!” Between the wall-to-wall nudity, the techno gobbledygook, campy soundtrack, and nearly every character acting like a dickbagel, this movie is a lot to take in. It’s certainly unique, I’ll give it that.

 

DINNER

 

LeEtta made bacon and broccoli carbonara and it was delicious. While she was preparing it, I laid in the recliner and rested my eyes. I took an allergy pill before bed and felt totally wiped out. After dinner, I washed dishes so that LeEtta wouldn’t suspect that I was a total waste of space.  With a glass of iced coffee and a bag of black licorice by my side, I was ready for another movie.

 

“You can be a great archeologist and still be a fink.”

4:40PM

THE SCORPION WITH TWO TAILS (1982)

 

I know next to nothing about this Sergio Martino joint other than it’s got Paolo Malco AND John Saxon in it. A New Yorker named Joan (Elvire Audray) has been having weird dreams about the ancient civilization of the Etruscans lately. Her husband is the scrumptious John Saxon, an archeologist who’s been studying the Etruscans over in Italy. These things could be connected. When Saxon is about to ship crates of loot back to New York, somebody sneaks up on him and twists his dang head around backwards! Despite the protestations of her dad (Van freakin’ Johnson), Joan heads to Italy with her husband’s flirty colleague Mike (Paolo Malco).

One of my giallo crushes, Marilù Tolo of My Dear Killer (1972), is here as a rich countess that Joan’s husband was staying with when he got killed. She’s not providing any useful information. A bunch of Fabio Frizzi’s music queues from City of the Living Dead (1980) are mixed into this score. I ain’t complainin’. One of John Saxon’s former colleagues gives Joan an Etruscan pendant of a scorpion with two tails. There’s a fashion shoot with some sexy models happening in some of the ruins. I hope that Diane doesn’t show up and starts screwing everybody. Now Joan’s visions are getting weirder, featuring mysterious Etruscan people and maggots, lots of maggots. I have no clue where this is going but I wish I’d seen it years ago.

Back in New York, Joan’s dad is going through the crates sent by John Saxon and not finding a certain something that was supposed to be stashed inside. Now he’s in trouble with some gangsters and is practically in tears while holding an Estruscan vase. He’s a real Mulligan. Meanwhile, a vagabond flautist tells Joan some cryptic nonsense and tells her she’s the “bringer of gifts”. With all the maggots, fake bats, that music score, and obtuse dialog, I don’t know how this isn’t a Fulci movie. Ruh roh, Joan’s dad just arrived in Italy. but Joan is missing. An assassin in black motorcycle gear sporting a weird pistol shows up and a funny sped up car chase ensues.

More people get their heads twisted and Van Johnson is chewing the scenery and holy heck, we’re only at the halfway mark of this weirdness. Whoa, Claudio Cassinelli of The Suspicious Death of a Minor (1975) just popped up in this as Paolo the archaeologist. He informs Joan that he and his team just uncovered a portrait that looks exactly like her in an old tomb. While Paolo and Joan are out looking for clues, they go see a photographer who has a big honkin’ rebel flag in his studio. The south of Italy will rise again? Holy shit, this has one of the most improbable and bonkers twists in it that I’ve ever seen. What did I just watch?

 

“It’s all a joke, right?”

6:24PM

THE MURDER SECRET (1988)

 

Lucio Fulci presents… another film he had nothing to do with. This one is directed by Mario Bianchi, so you know it’s gonna be totally better than Massacre. Don’t tell Andrea I said that! A woman in an asylum has visions or flashbacks of a man driving a car. She’s got dark circles under her eyes and she’s throwing a fit. I know just how she feels. Oh wait, these are memories of Aunt Martha. Gabriele Tinti plays Richard and he was in the asylum as a kid watching his aunt lose her mind. He and his family are on their way to see his estranged Aunt Martha out in the countryside.

Maurice Poli is back again. He must have owed the Bianchi brothers some money or something. He’s got Aunt Martha’s place spotless and ready for visitors but there’s one room that they must never go in. That’s always a good sign. Richard’s cute and horny wife is played by Adriana Russo of A Whisper in the Dark (1976) and The Face with Two Left Feet (1979). Their eldest son shows up in their bedroom in the middle of the night with a shotgun. No, this isn’t the Amityville murders. It’s just -well, I don’t know what it is. The biggest mystery is why crazy Aunt Martha invited them out here and hasn’t shown up yet. Spooky!

Their daughter Georgia (Jessica Moore) acts like a teenager but she’s built like a woman. She tries on Aunt Martha’s nightgown and gets scolded by a disembodied voice for her transgression. Then her bucktoothed nitwit brother named Maurice (wah-wow!) sneaks in, trying to scare her. Later, Maurice gets up in the middle of the night and stares at the staticky TV like a zombie. When strange stuff happens, Richard looks around with his shifty eyes and doesn’t give a clear answer to anything. Not to worry, a black gloved killer shows up and starts making trouble of the butcher knife and chainsaw variety. I am so into this. And it has the longest man on man non-nude grappling scene ever made.

“Everyone is happy today because someone is going to die!”

8:09PM

FORMULA FOR A MURDER (1985)

 

Here’s another film that slipped through the cracks while I was working on the first book. My only concrete memory of it is that I thought it was too long. Let’s see how it holds up this time. Alberto de Martino, you beautiful son of a gun! I’ve missed you. A priest carrying a creepy baby doll is menacing a little girl on a very steep set of stone stairs. Francesco de Masi is getting freaky with the synths for this opening music. After the stylish slow-motion opening, there’s some priest-on-priest crime.

Wheelchair-bound Joanna (Christina Nagy) is getting some physical therapy from dreamboat Craig (David Warbeck). He’s teaching her fencing, archery, karate, marksmanship, and bomb diffusing. Craig is flirting with Joanna and her sexy assistant pal Ruth isn’t happy about that. Once those pesky American exteriors are out of the way, Joanna goes home and we’re instantly in Rome. Ruth likes to give angry massages, especially when she finds out that Craig has asked Joanna to marry him. There’s a lot of confusing medical stuff with Joanna. She says she can’t laugh without pressing her diaphragm and then she laughs just a moment later.

Her doctor is played by the wildly prolific Rossano Brazzi of Psychout for Murder (1969) and a whole mess of other things. He informs Craig to be careful on their wedding night because as a kid, Joanna was raped by a phony priest and fell down a flight of stairs. Other than her blood curdling screams of pleasure, their wedding night goes exceedingly well. Soon, Joanna begins to see visions of the evil priest holding a bloody baby doll that taunts her with a creepy voice.

Just to add more priests to the mix, Father Davis shows up. It’s Loris Loddi. I’ve seen him before in the wacky Miami Golem (also 1985) and Ruggero Deodato’s Phantom of Death (1988). And now he’s out of the movie. Oops! One thing about this movie is that it shows its cards way too early. I think de Martino and screenwriter Vincenzo Mannino should’ve held off just a bit longer before letting us in on the game. Luckily, there’s lots of style scattered throughout to keep things lively. De Masi, naughty or lazy little devil that he is, inserted the main melody from New York Ripper (1982) into the score when Joanna and Craig are driving to the ferry. Love it. That’s it, I gotta tap out. Later, folks.

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

 

Another moviethon has come and gone. I had a feeling that I shouldn’t have ended on Formula for a Murder and I was right. It’s decent but the movie, even though it’s only 85 minutes, is just one idea is stretched out far too thin to not get dull. As usual, I didn’t get to all of the humongous stack that I always pick for myself at the start of these things. The twenty films I picked out were just never going to happen, but I’m cool with that because it means there’s just more material for even more chapters later. Isn’t that a refreshing attitude? Please clap.