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John_l_probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 90.199.0.12
Posted on Monday, May 19, 2008 - 10:15 pm:   

My unwatched gialli are starting to pile up so as I watch them I thought I'd post my thoughts for those who might be interested. First up is:

The Black Belly of the Tarantula

A strong contender for most irrelevant giallo title, this 1971 effort combines all the by-now traditional elements (unseen gloved killer, confused plotting, excess of red herrings) to sadly no great effect whatsoever. Director Paolo Cavara stages his murder sequences with little relish, such that the killer’s bizarre modus operandi (stabbing girls in the back of the neck with an acupuncture needle loaded with wasp venom that paralyses them so that they’re still alive as he kills them) ends up rather pointless since once they are at his mercy all he does is stab them to death. The killer is the usual character probably picked at random from the cast when it was time to write the last few script pages, and the explanation for their misdeeds the usual nonsensical psychological claptrap. Ennio Morricone’s score is far from his best, and in fact his conductor here, Bruno Nicolai, has written much better. The only thing this picture has going for it is a plentiful quantity of pulchritude, with more than the usual share of quite beautiful women. In fact the best bit of the film is a decidedly erotic sequence involving a naked Barbara Bouchet being massaged as the front credits run. After that I’d suggest you switch off and watch something else.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.163.48.60
Posted on Monday, May 19, 2008 - 11:50 pm:   

Still, Barbara Bouchet, eh?

:-)
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.180.121
Posted on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - 08:19 am:   

Thanks for the review, Lord P. My unwatched giallo pile is getting bigger and bigger too - I still haven't watched any of the 4-disc box set I bought years ago (with Night of the Short Dolls and others), and then there are the ones in the lovely Bava box sets that I've been putting off watching for so long.

Have you see Mill of the Stone Women? Not a giallo, but an interesting entry in Euro-horror nonetheless.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.249.146
Posted on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - 08:48 am:   

Keep it up, Lord P! I love these reviews of films I've always wanted to see.

Speaking of which, and I know it isn't a giallo, but I watched Biano's Dark Waters last night. I've been waiting to see this for years, and really enjoyed it. The wonderfully grim atmosphere lent a slight plot some weight, and it was all carried of with a welcome restraint - apart from a couple of well-times gore scenes.

Insane nuns, an ancient amulet, a barely-glimpsed Lovecraftian monster...what more could a horror fan ask for?

In the same set, I also watched Biano's earlier short film Carancula, and was very impressed. The twist was great, and the whole thing had a sense of grotesque humour I found very appealing.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.180.121
Posted on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - 09:57 am:   

Glad you liked Dark Waters, Zed! I haven't watched Carancula yet - maybe tonight...
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John_l_probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 90.203.130.195
Posted on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - 11:02 pm:   

Huw - I haven't seen Mill of the Stone Women - I'll add it to the list. Tonight was :

Death Walks on High Heels

Part of my Luciano Ercoli box set, this giallo is set in Paris & London but everyone (including the Scotland Yard police) speak Italian. Gorgeous Susan Scott plays a nightclub stripper whose eyepatch-wearing dad has just been stabbed to death on an InterCity in the prologue. He's a diamond thief and the rest of the plot is one of those 'where are the diamonds / who stole them / who's murdering everyone and is that really a bloke in s dress' type movies. Screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi keeps you guessing and this is much more stylishly directed than Black Belly. Halfway through there's a really horrible murder that must have been particularly extreme for 1971. Not a brilliant movie by any means but a pretty good timewaster.
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John_l_probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 90.208.214.35
Posted on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - 10:48 pm:   

So tonight's film is:

Death Walks At Midnight

Oh no it doesn't. With a title created solely to make up the other half of a presumed double bill, here are much of the same cast and crew as 'High Heels' in another slightly overlong giallo filled with drug abuse, fist fights, and one of those plots where by the hour mark you wonder what the hell is going on. Again to my amazement writer Ernesto Gastaldi (working from an original story by Sergio Corbucci) manages to make everything work out in the end. The murders are perpetrated with an iron glove with spikes attached to the knuckles and are very gruesome for the time. No nudity this time but there is a crazy yellow waistcoat wearing knife thrower who ends up smothered with cocaine.

And that's the end of my Luciano Ercoli "box set" as the third disk is a CD of Stelvio Cipriani soundtrack music that includes, amongst others, a track from Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City for no real reason
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John_l_probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 90.203.130.34
Posted on Friday, May 23, 2008 - 10:29 am:   

I'm going to keep this thread going as it's helping me clear my DVD backlog.

Late last night I treated myself to:

The House on Sorority Row

More a slasher than a giallo, I know, but there we go. I first saw this under its UK release title of House of Evil (which I still think is better) and the only thing I remember about it was that the music by Richard Band was excellent (you wouldn’t get the London Philharmonic doing this stuff these days). Watching it again after all these years Band’s music does indeed help to make this a slightly better than average slasher picture, as does Mark Rosman’s direction (I understand he was subsequently kicked off Mutant for not being able to handle the action sequences). Working against it are some pretty poor gore effects, the usual bunch of unsympathetic squawking victims and a stupid ending. A mad doctor, a nutter in a clown suit who’s doing the murders, a severed head in a toilet bowl and a haunting music box theme all help but in the end only us slasher/giallo completists will get anything out of this one.
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John_l_probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 90.203.130.34
Posted on Friday, May 23, 2008 - 07:13 pm:   

And I've just found out the soundtrack CD which I bought years ago is selling on Amazon for £92-00!
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 90.203.130.25
Posted on Tuesday, February 17, 2009 - 11:35 pm:   

Yes it's time to resurrect this (very) old thread of mine, all because of:

All the Colors of the Dark

This evening I’ve been thoroughly entertained by this thoroughly depraved giallo from 1974, which is another one of those curious European horror pictures filmed in London where characters drink tea, eat toast , read the Daily Telegraph and look as if they’ve just got off the early morning flight from Rome. Lovely Edwige Fenech is post-miscarriage and plagued by the kind of psychedelic nightmare images only Italian horror movies can really come up with. There’s also a mysterious man with intense blue eyes who’s after her with a big knife. Her psychiatrist (Jorge Rigaud from Horror Express & loads of other gialli) isn’t much help and so her new best friend suggests that what she really needs to clear her head is a black mass in an old country house. Here the movie goes into exploitation overdrive with plenty of blood, nudity and a soundtrack that sounds like a cross between a grooved up version of Komeda’s Fearless Vampire Killers and Ravi Shankar gone insane after watching too much Jess Franco. The first session doesn’t seem to do much good so of course she goes back for some more (!). She finds herself trapped in the house, then pursued by dogs, but then she wakes up in her flat wearing the see-through nightdress she has on quite a lot during this. She goes to stay with an elderly couple who quickly end up looking like refugees from a Pete Walker film, and if you haven’t worked out what’s going on by now you need to go back to giallo school (where you’ll probably have to sit next to Dario Argento), but this is loads of seventies-style fun despite its predictability. In fact I meant to do some work while this was on but I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Best enjoyed with a glass of wine & a depraved ladyfriend. Sadly I only had the wine tonight. And I’ve just remembered I’ve got the soundtrack CD as part of my Bruno Nicolai box set so I can literally drive myself nuts in the car tomorrow.

And finally – can anyone suggest a home for these reviews of mine? I’ve already written far more than I can politely post on this message board and they should be out there entertaining people rather than sitting in a document folder on my laptop.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.188.102
Posted on Thursday, February 19, 2009 - 01:58 am:   

I have several of Morricone's scores for these movies and like them; very much in the avant-garde style he doesn't write in much nowadays.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.137.129
Posted on Thursday, February 19, 2009 - 09:02 am:   

John – write a book? Some basic background info and a few photos, keep it relatively small-scale (e.g. slim trade paperback), could be very nice.

Some people would suggest writing a blog but you won't hear that from me, any more than I would recommend sticking the reviews on the walls of New Street Station toilets.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Thursday, February 19, 2009 - 12:32 pm:   

John - we should get our reviews together and send that book we mentioned ages ago to a publisher.
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.142.241.230
Posted on Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 09:56 pm:   

It's time to resurrect this thread again as tonight Lady P and I treated ourselves to the really rather fine giallo 'Eyes of Crystal'.

Of course anything would be better than yesterday's 'Mother's Day' but this was a very stylish thriller from 2005 that we'd highly recommend, especially as the DVD (on the FrightFest label) is only about £3-00 on Amazon.

There's a mad taxidermist roaming the streets of an unnamed Italian city, busy reconstituting the doll he keeps having flashbacks to from his youth (along with burning nuns and other Italian standbys) from human body parts. Beautiful sets photography and women, Latin phrases daubed in blood on the wall, a glass eye factory and a climax that relies heavily on a homage to Mario Bava that will have all his fans nodding in appreciation, this is really very good indeed. In fact the only thing missing is the J&B, which is the ideal drink to accompany this modern day equivalent to when Argento and the boys were in their heyday good.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.169.183.1
Posted on Friday, June 17, 2011 - 03:44 pm:   

Maybe it isn't! :-(

Has anyone heard of these new horror films, 'After Dark Originals'? Some of them are getting good reviews. Fertile Ground, and one about TWO evil twins.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.169.183.1
Posted on Friday, June 17, 2011 - 03:52 pm:   

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2627706137/
I hope this isn't hijacking your thread, John...
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.142.241.230
Posted on Friday, June 17, 2011 - 07:55 pm:   

It's all right as long as it's a giallo, Tony.

Of course if I find out that it isn't...
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C_j_fenwick (C_j_fenwick)
Username: C_j_fenwick

Registered: 06-2011
Posted From: 2.25.110.223
Posted on Friday, June 24, 2011 - 11:24 pm:   

Any chance of a review of Argento's 'Opera' John? I'd just like to hear what you make of that ending to be honest. I mean, what kind of a cocktail was the man on when he filmed it?
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.24.18.49
Posted on Saturday, June 25, 2011 - 01:06 am:   

Fascinating to re-read this thread and realise you were making all those films up, John – the thread is a condensed version of one of your 'portmanteau film' collections.
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.142.241.230
Posted on Saturday, June 25, 2011 - 09:50 am:   

Joel - As long as it makes you smile!

Last night we went to a rare cinema screening of:

Lizard in a Woman's Skin

...which was weird in itself. The cinema was nearly full and we were probably the oldest people there (and definitely the best dressed which I hope by now goes without saying). But what a strange choice. After some groovy psychedelic music / atonal warped nonsense we launch straight into a weird acid dream featuring two naked ladies cavorting on bed while being watched by two blind hippies. One of the women, the utterly characterless Florinda Bolkan, stabs the other three times and then gets all panicky before waking up in her psychiatrist's office to tell him all about that and the bit where she runs down a railway carriage corridor filled with naked people as well. The psychiatrist tells her it's all because, family girl that she is, she's jealous of the girl who lives upstairs and her wild party lifestyle. Anyway, the girl turns up actually dead, which is the cue for badly whistling and even more badly dubbed Stanley Baker (the film's in Italian, you see) to take on the case along with sidekick Alberto de Mendoza who could possibly be an alien who crash landed here at the beginning of time...oh sorry that's his role in Horror Express where the psychiatrist from this happens to play the count. Euro-horrors are sometimes their own blur of sleazy confusion that obviate the need for mind bending drugs.

Anyway, back to the 'plot'. because there really isn't any. Flo's father is Leo Genn from Die Screaming Marianne who gets so fed up with the nonsenscial pointless story and the terrible way his own dubbing is working out that he kills himself, the pretty girl from Five Dolls for an August Moon gets her throat slashed, and despite Flo's claims the police continually reassure her that 'there are no red-haired hippies in the building'. They organise a hunt for one who eventually reveals the meaning of the title before they 'give him a lot of drugs and he confesses'.

The ending is rubbish, the plot is pointless, Florinda is terrible, both as an actress and a character, and there's not a drop of J&B to be seen. By the end of this we were too tired to hang around for the second on the double feature which was 'All The Colours of the Dark' which is no less mental but rather better. And even after all that I love The Cube Arts Cinema in Bristol for even daring to have a 'Giallo in London' season, God bless them. We'll be there for the next one.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.49.244
Posted on Saturday, June 25, 2011 - 10:05 am:   

Where do you find all this stuff, John? I'm sure some of it must be difficult to locate in Italy . . .
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.142.241.230
Posted on Saturday, June 25, 2011 - 10:27 am:   

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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 82.33.242.34
Posted on Thursday, July 07, 2011 - 01:43 pm:   

Pressing on, last night we saw:

The Card Player

Unfortunately we viewed a rented disk that isn't the new Arrow films release with the original Italian dialogue track. It was a bit of a nostalgia trip though, as the dubbing reminded me of all those old 80s adventures where most of the speaking parts were done by a couple of people improvising often silly voices in a Soho dubbing suite. I checked the end credits and sure enough there was Nick Alexander's name. Many of the people on this board will have seen a movie dubbed by him. Often he actually did some of the voices as well - he was the voice of "Al Cliver" in Zombie Flesheaters amongst others.

Is the movie any good? It's a shame when you think a movie is ok because it's not as terrible as its director's most recent work but it is 10000000 times better than Giallo and 9999999999999999 x better than Mother of Tears. Which makes it ordinary with a couple of flashes of the genius that once was.

In fact the most frightening thing about it was the featurette that made me realise that as he gets older Dario Argenti is starting to uncannily resemble my Dad...
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John Forth (John)
Username: John

Registered: 05-2008
Posted From: 217.20.16.180
Posted on Thursday, July 07, 2011 - 03:06 pm:   

That's funny, John, Esther and I watched The Card Player on Monday night. The same version, I think, although we had the added 'pleasure' of watching it taped off the Horror Channel.

Don't really have much to add to your summary above. Better than Mother of Tears and The Phantom of the Opera, not quite as watchable as Sleepless. Argento as the director is largely anonymous.

I still maintain that Giallo is a deeply misunderstood spoof of the entire genre. Although how aware Argento was of that, I don't know...
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.156.210.82
Posted on Thursday, July 07, 2011 - 03:33 pm:   

Here's my review: http://www.videovista.net/reviews/may10/cardplay.html
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 82.33.242.34
Posted on Thursday, July 07, 2011 - 04:07 pm:   

I forgot to mention that one of the main reasons it really didn't work for us was because it just wasn't daft enough. Also, in the good old days the various bars and gambling halls would have been filled with fabulously daftly dressed individuals - there was one scene like that but overall it felt very drab.
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Kate (Kathleen)
Username: Kathleen

Registered: 09-2009
Posted From: 81.158.78.71
Posted on Thursday, July 07, 2011 - 04:23 pm:   

There was one moment in the film that woke me up: when the police-chick-in-peril looks into the glass dish and sees the reflection of a masked man in the bushes outside. I had a flash of "Hey, that's like an Argento shot!" Then I remembered that I was watching an Argento FILM. And I got sad again.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, July 07, 2011 - 05:02 pm:   

You're actually telling me, John and Kate, that THE CARD PLAYER (which I have seen) is better than MOTHER OF TEARS (which I've not seen)? By a factor of thousands?!? Holy crap, MOT must be bad indeed, because I HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATED THE CARD PLAYER. And I can't believe, I just plain can't believe, MOT could possibly on any planet be worse... though I'm not especially willing to test my beliefs....
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John Forth (John)
Username: John

Registered: 05-2008
Posted From: 82.24.1.217
Posted on Thursday, July 07, 2011 - 08:11 pm:   

It's as bad as you've heard, Craig. Although if it was a standalone film, without Suspiria and Inferno to live up to, then it wouldn't be entirely without a certain stupid charm.

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