02/15/10: KISS, KISS...BANG, BANG (Duccio Tessari, 1966) 
From what I had watched of the so-called “Eurospy” comedy-thrillers which emerged in the wake of the James Bond extravaganzas had always been relatively middling affairs; this is one of the more popular examples and, though still essentially patchy, is admittedly above par for this sort of thing. Director Tessari and co-stars Giuliano Gemma and Nieves Navarro (better-known as Susan Scott) followed the highly-successful two-film series of “Ringo” Spaghetti Westerns with the title under review; interestingly, apart from Tessari, the script was penned by two other future film-makers – namely Bruno Corbucci and Fernando Di Leo – and the same would be the case for the movie’s producer i.e. Luciano Ercoli (coincidentally enough, Navarro/Scott’s spouse)! Anyway, the film is generally entertaining – yet, with a length of 112 minutes, a hectic pace and an anything-goes attitude which actually anticipates that official maligned Bond spoof CASINO ROYALE (1967), it emerges a decidedly overblown concoction! Amusingly, it all starts with the hero in prison and set for the hangman’s noose; however, he will be pardoned by his nemesis – a bald-headed and rotund inspector prone to belly laughs! – if he successfully carries out a spy mission…for which his sole condition involves recruiting the aid of a dashing acrobat, a nimble (if wacky) safecracker and an ageing security-systems wizard. Eventually, and not atypically, both the very man who gave him the assignment (Georges Rigaud) and his own girlfriend (Navarro) turn out to be after the obligatory “McGuffin” themselves!; also embroiled in the intricacies, in the hero’s corner, are a veteran Mata Hari-like spy, her kooky female relative, their parrot (who is entrusted with the all-important formula!) and, on the other side, a karate-practicing heavy (perhaps a nod to GOLDFINGER [1964]’s Harold “Oddjob” Sakata). As with the Bond movies, the climax is an extended chase/fight sequence that goes all the way from a fairground setting to a castle battlements. Finally, while kind of trivial in itself, Bruno Nicolai’s score admirably fits the playful mood on display throughout.
02/17/10: AMUCK! (Silvio Amadio, 1972)
This is one of the better-known giallo titles, if mainly for the presence of two of the more luscious “Euro-Cult” starlets – blonde Barbara Bouchet (whom I saw, still looking good, quite a few times at the Italian B-movie retrospective held during the 2004 Venice Film Festival!) and brunette Rosalba Neri – in perhaps their role of greatest significance; it goes without saying, then, that the film’s piece de resistance is their celebrated slow-motion love scene (which actually occurs very early into the proceedings)! With a generic if definitely attention-grabbing moniker that has no direct bearing on the plot, the movie has been given many an alternate title – such as MURDER MANSION and HOT BED OF SEX, depending on which aspect the respective distributors chose to spotlight (for the record, the Italian original translates to IN THE PURSUIT OF PLEASURE); incidentally, the English-dubbed and regrettably panned-and-scanned VHS-sourced copy (as a result proving soft and occasionally battered) I watched boasted no credits apart from the names of the picture itself, Bouchet and leading man Farley Granger! By the way, the film marked the second of three giallos the American star appeared in back-to-back (I watched the others, which I quite liked, only a few days ago) but, though I felt he delivered surprisingly committed performances in all of them, once again this one afforded him the meatiest characterization. Having said that, it makes for a good transition between SOMETHING CREEPING IN THE DARK (1971) and SO SWEET, SO DEAD (1972) – featuring elements from each, specifically the old dark house setting and a high sleaze factor respectively! The premise is simple enough, with heroine Bouchet insinuating herself into the Venetian household of renowned novelist Granger and his much younger wife Neri, in order (unbeknownst to them) to probe into the disappearance of their secretary – her colleague/flatmate/lover!; it transpires that the outwardly respectable wealthy couple leads a libertine existence, given to stag parties fuelled by drug-taking and the exhibition of snuff movies: starting to involve a dim-witted brute in their exploits, one day things turn sour and it is the secretary who gets the short end of the stick (no pun intended)! The local Police are aware of Bouchet’s undercover ‘mission’ but, soon enough, she realizes that her employer is too – since the plot of his new novel begins to parallel the events that had taken place in the house and, more importantly, indicate what her own fate will be (a blackmailing servant is similarly gotten out of the way)! To further muddle the waters, Granger pretends to fall for Bouchet (thus getting a piece of the action himself for once!) – in fact, two of the film’s highlights involve the depictions (via flashback confessions) of the former secretary’s death and the disposing of the body; another – this time around a recollection by Bouchet – is a skinny-dipping episode (which goes a bit beyond that) involving her and the murdered girl, and yet one memorable sequence is the climax (planned to be a reprise of the secretary’s unlucky demise, the tables are smoothly turned on the perpetrators: Bouchet had met the couple’s unwitting associate during a chance but cringe-inducing encounter where he, a fisherman, had nonchalantly flayed a live eel in front of her and she even treated his injured finger!). As was often the case with the “Euro-Cult” style, one of the lasting ingredients here is Teo Usuelli’s score which is versatile enough to suit the film’s many changes of mood.
02/18/10: THE UNNATURALS (Antonio Margheriti, 1969)
To be honest, despite my more than fair knowledge of the “Euro-Cult” style of film-making, I only recently became aware of this particular title – where it was even described as possibly Margheriti’s best work; having watched THE UNNATURALS for myself now, I would actually be hard-pressed to disagree with that assessment: it certainly ranks among the top three efforts by this major exponent that I am familiar with, along with two other Gothic horror entries i.e. THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH (1964) and SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CAT’S EYE (1973). For the record, this is a German-Italian co-production to which the director himself contributed the script – a highly atmospheric chiller (with a séance figuring prominently throughout) yet boasting an atypical elegance due to its 1920s England setting. Interestingly, the plot more or less harks back to vintage “old dark house”-type pictures (emanating from this very era i.e. the last days of Silent cinema) and which revolved around a gathering at some remote location for the sake of an inheritance that goes terribly wrong, resulting in a murder spree; actually, this takes things a bit further (also taking advantage of the permissiveness of the age with its inclusion of by-now quite mild instances of nudity) – where the vicissitudes of the crime are slowly assembled via multiple flashbacks (unveiling various illicit affairs, both financial and romantic, into the bargain) and the whole set-up ultimately revealed to be an elaborate retribution (incorporating surprisingly neat, i.e. not heavy-handed, apocalyptic connotations) from beyond the grave! Though somewhat undercast, there are still a few familiar faces among the actors recruited for the movie – Joachim (DEAD EYES OF LONDON [1961]) Fuchsberger, Claudio Camaso (a Tomas Milian look-alike but really the younger brother of Gian Maria Volonte` whose life ended in tragedy!), Marianne Koch (from A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS [1964] and exhibiting here lesbian tendencies which prove her undoing in both the past and present time-frames of the narrative), Dominique (FANTASTIC ARGOMAN [1967]) Boschero and, of course, Luciano Pigozzi (distinguished by his uncanny physical resemblance to Peter Lorre) in perhaps the most significant role of his prolific career. For fear of repeating myself (see the concluding statement in my AMUCK! [1972] review elsewhere), the appropriately old-fashioned strains of Carlo Savina’s score provides one further reason to enjoy this – for “Euro”-buffs and adventurous movie fans alike; it goes without saying, then, that this is a title that ought to sustain a lot more than the current semi-obscure reputation I alluded to at the start...
02/20/10: THE WOLFMAN (Joe Johnston, 2010)
This was a long-awaited, thus much-anticipated, remake of a classic monster movie from the heyday of Universal Studios’ reign over the horror genre; the behind-the-scenes vicissitudes which saw a change of director early on were offset by an avowed reverence for the subject/source by its makers (star/co-producer Benicio Del Toro even holds vintage “Wolf Man” memorabilia in his personal collection!) that was clearly absent from THE MUMMY (1999). The decision to transpose the setting from 1940s Wales (or, more precisely, Hollywood’s idea of it) to Victorian England (even incorporating the real-life Scotland Yard Inspector in charge of the gruesome “Ripper” murders) works to the film’s benefit, resulting in an epic scale (where the originals were essentially “B’ movies) and oodles of fog-laden atmosphere (not forgetting shadowy candle-lit interiors). So far so good: the trouble starts when we get to the storyline and the characterization, and while the special effects were reasonably impressive (I honestly felt restless throughout the preliminary exposition as I was anxious to see how these were going to turn out and what the creature’s final look would be) – though I still prefer Rick Baker’s work on the as-yet-unsurpassed AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981) – they fell flat whenever CGI reared its ugly head; I was not bothered by the sight of the monster running on all fours, but the rapid-leaping-across-rooftops scenes did bring back unpleasant memories of the travesty that was VAN HELSING (2004)! It was perhaps inevitable but also unwise to pilfer 75 years of cinematic lycanthropy for this one movie, since this is pretty much done without rhyme or reason (so much for its would-be rigor towards Curt Siodmak’s 1941 script!): if you are to reference the legendary curse, why misquote it (“wolf(s)bane”) and have it come in at the very start and then never again?!; and where is the interaction – which was basically the heart of the old Universal series – between Lawrence Talbot and the gypsy woman Maleva (here played by a wizened Geraldine Chaplin)? That said, the forest sequences are indeed redolent of the Lon Chaney Jr. movies; however, the impossible love story (why does every horror legend have to be re-worked to this end?!), actually harks back to Hammer’s underrated THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (1961). As for the dream sequences, they would like to evoke the 1981 John Landis werewolf masterpiece mentioned above (another nod to it is the casting of tell-tale local David Schofield, now the constable who gets skewered through the mouth during the ill-advised gypsy caravan fracas) but actually come closer to the scare-for-scare’s-sake which typifies much of the recent “J-Horror” style! As I said earlier, there is much that is wrong with the plot: again, what was the point of making Del Toro’s protagonist an actor (unless it was to have Anthony Hopkins play around with the celebrated ‘To Be Or Not To Be’ line from “Hamlet” and, to be sure, the elder Talbot showed much greater flair for performance throughout – in spite of Hopkins’ atypical restraint – than our relentlessly glum hero!) if no association at all is made between this gift and the new-found duality of his nature?! What to make of the whole tragic back-story of the Talbots which, apart from the ludicrous (and apparently nonchalant) propensity for self-destruction, exhibits grave narrative lapses?! The asylum sequences, too, did not belong in this movie (they seem to have strayed in from one of Paul Naschy’s series of “Waldemar Daninsky” werewolf flicks and, who knows, maybe it was a deliberate nod in their direction!) – but, as with the afore-mentioned forest massacre, it is here that we get sole humorous respite from the overwhelmingly gloomy proceedings. The Danny Elfman score, while characteristic enough of his style, feels a bit too similar to Wojchiech Kilar’s powerful/melancholy soundtrack for BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA (1992) – in which Hopkins had gone all-out with an incongruously batty Van Helsing! By the way, one more interesting point I picked up here is how the Welsh thespian’s role ends up being a variation not on the archetypal vampire hunter but rather his stab at yet another legendary figure in THE MASK OF ZORRO (1998)! For a devotee` of classic horror, I did not mind the plentiful gore on display but I could have done without the climactic werewolf one-on-one (all-too-obviously citing the most conventional lycanthrope picture of recent times, WOLF [1994]) – though I would venture to say that the flaming monster was a first within such a prolific genre – and the frankly crap way a sequel is set up (again, how could they bring in the silver-topped cane from the original and not adopt it as the weapon with which to set Lawrence Talbot free?! As often happens with modern films, my overly-critical comments above somewhat belie the “Good” rating I bestowed upon it: truth be told, I considerably enjoyed the experience of watching THE WOLFMAN (which, I guess, is what really matters!) but it also does not seem to bear close scrutiny…
Edited by Mario Gauci - 2/20/10 at 3:49pm
