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Thursday, March 20, 2008Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankhamen Release Year: 1968Country: Italy Starring: Mauro Parenti, Lucretia Love, Gordon Mitchell, John Karlsen, Carla Romanelli, Cyrus Elias, Charles Miller, Mario Cecchi, Agostino De Simone, Teresa Petrangeli, Spartaco Battisti, Bernardo Bruno, Mario De Rosa, Pieraldo Ferrante, Enrico Marciani. Writer: Ruggero Deodato Director: Ruggero Deodato Cinematographer: Roberto Reale Music: Bruno Nicolai Producer: Mauro Parenti Original Title: Fenomenal e il tesoro di Tutankamen Availability: Buy it from Amazon  Like many people, I find that there are certain types of films that appeal so strongly to me on a conceptual level that I tend to cut them considerable slack when reviewing them. Often times, even the very worst of these films, like when Santo is old and fat and spends half the film driving a station wagon to the grocery store, muster enough of the elements I like to keep me satisfied. And one of my very favorite genres is the Eurospy film and the various offshoots and influenced tributaries -- among them the Italian fumetti-inspired films. As we covered in some weird and convoluted fashion in our review of Kriminal and the three Turkish Kilink films, as well as Danger Diabolik, fumetti were saucy Italian comic books populated by sexy, violent anti-heroes and villains. Super-thief Diabolik became the flashpoint for a whole series of comics and related films that drew both from Diabolik and the James Bond movies. Diabolik himself was a throwback to the old pulp heroes like The Shadow, The Spider, and European counterparts like Fantomas -- with a bit of Batman thrown in for good measure. Most of the heroes and villains of fumetti did not possess super powers. They simply liked dressing up in outlandish body stockings and kicking people in the head. Needless to say, the combination of gratuitous sex appeal in the form of various Eurobabes slinking around in mod 60s mini-wear, combined with garish space-age sets and amoral violence really speaks to a sophisticated man like me. So I tend to gravitate toward these fumetti-inspired films whenever I can find them, and I'm always happy to discover new ones (such as the ones from Turkey). However, it ain't all steak and onions, and if the 1968 fumetti film Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankhamen proves nothing else, it proves that it is possible to make a film that will disappoint even someone like me with my incredibly low standards.
Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankhamen may be infamous to some for squandering an awesome title and the lovely Lucretia Love in a movie that, in its best moments, manages to be a middling affair. To others, it is infamous merely by association. Wait, let's backtrack. To most people, it isn't infamous at all, because they've never even heard of it. But among people who keep track of movies with titles like Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankhamen, the film is notable as the debut (or very close to it) directorial effort from Italian exploitation filmmaker Ruggero Deodato. Deodato is a man who has built his entire career on the shoulders of the controversy generated by his infamous cannibal gore films -- specifically Cannibal Holocaust, a film that amazes me in its ability to be simultaneously disgusting and boring, shocking and banal. Cloaked in the taboo surrounding the film's content -- Deodato was put on trial by a prosecutor who was convinced the film contained actual human snuff footage, instead of just actual animal snuff footage -- Cannibal Holocaust has passed into the rarefied airs of the best known and most infamous cult films in the world. What gets lost amid all the stone dildo rape and ass-to-mouth impaling is that stripped of these few Grand Guignol scenes of brutality, Cannibal Holocaust is a really boring film helmed by a largely pedestrian director. Hell, even with them, the movie is still kind of dull, though if nothing else, it serves as a very useful intellectual exercise for twenty year olds in film studies classes, wanting to prove how shocking yet insightful their reading of the film is. And yes, shamefully I speak from first-hand experience. Deodato's short-comings as a director are made more obvious when you have to watch one of his films that doesn't benefit from several minutes of controversial cannibal torture footage. As I am a sucker, I have seen pretty much everything he's done short of the various TV movies he directed, and then something about a washing machine full of dead people or something, and there's really only been two times that Deodato kept me entertained from start to finish. In my younger and more formative years, I admit I was a booster for films like Jungle Holocaust and even Cannibal Holocaust (actually, I admit I still sort of like Jungle Holocaust), but once the initial gee-whiz shock wears off, you're left forcing yourself through a really boring couple of movies.
Really, the only times Deodata succeeded for me was with the outlandish Raiders of Atlantis, which propels itself along under power of its own brain-twisting looniness, and Barbarians, a sword and sorcery clusterfuck that is as infamous for being idiotic as Cannibal Holocaust is for being disgusting and boring. I guess my big problem with Deodata is his need to intellectually justify the basest of his works by casting them as "cautionary tales" of the hoary old "who's the real savage?" vein. Sort of like the endless string of films that teach me heroin is bad for you, or that absolute power can corrupt you. Thanks, movie makers of the world, for these news flashes. I never would have thought to question the brutality of modern man if Deodata didn't force me to, just like I never would have dreamed that people with untold amounts of power might go mad with it until Caligula taught me otherwise. But heck, at least Caligula is funny, and it has even more film school intellectuals attempting to rationalize and justify its excesses. Even with the Deodato films I've enjoyed, it's often been despite his direction, rather than because of it. Raiders of Atlantis gets by on weirdness, and on hot pink-haired Filipino Road Warrior chicks. Barbarians gets by on the astounding yet affable ineptness of its twin bodybuilder stars. Neither of these films could ever be taken seriously -- unless you see Barbarians as a cautionary tale about letting annoying jugglers and mimes have free passage throughout your kingdom -- and that's probably what makes them tolerable Most of Deodato's other work is just as incompetent, but with the added bonus of having a pretentious moral forced in to make the film seem more palatable and smarter. Given that Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankhamen has the title Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankhamen, and given that it was a comic book movie supposedly cut from the same cloth as Diabolik and Kriminal, I expected to enjoy the hell out of it despite a rookie Deodato being behind the camera. With any luck, his penchant for making boring movies out of intriguing topics would not yet have kicked in. Alas that being boring seems to be the core competency he showed right out of the gate, and rather than ending up being cut from the same cloth as Diabolik and Kriminal, Phenomenal is more assembled as an elementary school art class project out of the scraps left over. Against all logical presumptions based on the title and the subject matter, Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankhamen ends up being a barely watchable bore that is notable only for its ability to turn a movie about villains trying to steal King Tut's treasures being foiled by a dude in a featureless black pantyhose mask into something fairly uninteresting.
Things start out fairly promising, as we join a drug smuggling operation already in progress. Unfortunately for our dastardly ne'r-do-wells, mysterious superhero Phenomenal has smuggled himself onto their smuggling boat, and as they approach the docks, he sets about kicking some ass. Notable is that Phenomenal, unlike most of the other fumetti heroes who made it onto the big screen, is actually a hero. Diabolik and Kriminal were thieves, and certainly not above the occasional murder. But Phenomenal is expressly on the side of the good guys, operating with the blessing -- or at least with the appreciation -- of the local police. Also notable is that Phenomenal has the lamest superhero outfit I've seen in a long time. He wears the aforementioned featureless black mask, which he somehow manages to see out of despite the lack of eyeholes, and this mask he accessorizes with...a long sleeve black t-shirt and a pair of plain black dungarees. Seriously? Diabolik took the time to buy himself all sorts of cool latex suits, and Kilink spend a whole week knitting himself skeleton themed bodystockings, and Phenomenal shows up in jeans and a turtleneck? That's like being the obnoxious kid who shows up on Halloween wearing a cardboard box and says he's a cardboard box when everyone else has awesome Frankenstein and Dracula outfits. Unfortunately, Phenomenal's lame outfit pretty much embodies the thrill level of the movie as a whole. To be fair, the opening is good stuff, and exactly what I wanted from the film. And if you, like me, enjoy it, I suggest you watch it a couple times, because that's pretty much the last you'll be seeing of Phenomenal or of action for a long time. The drug smuggling foiled, Phenomenal dives into the bay, and the plot proper kicks in. A priceless collection of treasures from the tomb of King Tut are on display at the local museum, so naturally security is skittish since every criminal gang in Europe is plotting to steal the treasures. Since, you know, that's what criminal gangs spend their time doing, rather than running prostitution and extortion rackets. Seriously, when was the last time you picked up a newspaper and read the headline, "Mafia Steals Tut's Mask! Scotland Yard Baffled!" Maybe I wouldn't have put it past John Gotti -- he liked to be flamboyant, and has a jacket made from the skin of unborn wolves (or so I was once told). But besides him, I think Tut's treasures are safe from any gangs of guys in gold chains and jogging suits. But they are not safe from big Gordon Mitchell, who leads one of the criminal gangs intent on stealing King Tut's treasures. Of course, they're not the only ones after the goods, and things are further complicated by the fact that cheap but convincing copies of the treasures were made for security reasons. Also thrown into the mix is the standard issue fu-loving, Bruce Wayne style rich guy, Count Guy Norton, played by Mauro Parenti. We are immediately lead to believe that maybe he's Phenomenal, but of course, the most obvious character is never revealed to be the masked man -- unless the film is exceptionally clever or exceptionally dumb. In the end, I'm not even sure why the film played coy with Phenomenal's identity, as it never becomes crucial to the plot, and it never manages to make the viewer give a damn one way or the other. I will say that if you do have a secret identity and a signature costume, no matter how lame, you probably shouldn't carry it folded neatly on top of everything else in your luggage when going to the airport. Most of the film revolves around Gordon Mitchell's thugs plotting to steal the treasure, getting double-crossed, and then plotting again to steal the treasure. Seriously, man, you're a super-powerful gangster. Surely you can hire better help, or I don't know. Beat up old people who run delis and make them pay you protection money. Or just open a casino. There are lots of ways for thuggish mobsters to get rich without having to concoct elaborate plans to steal stuff from natural history museums. But maybe I'm being crass and shallow, assuming that it's all about the money. Maybe it's the thrill of cat burglary, or the beauty of the objects d'art. Or maybe Gordon just wants to put on King Tut's mask and run around town making groaning noises and scaring Lou Costello and Buckwheat. I guess I can see the appeal in that.
Eventually, Phenomenal shows up to stand on the rocks along a winding country road, where he can put his arms on his hips and laugh at people. This was Kilink's specialty, but he usually followed it up by doing a plancha onto a gang of bad guys and starting a fist fight. Phenomenal is in it mostly for the standing around with arms akimbo. But at least our title character is finally back in the movie, leading us on what should be a wild chase across Europe and northern Africa as the various sides steal and re-steal the treasures. Unfortunately, by this point, the film has pretty much drained the viewer of any energy and good will at all, so the globe-trotting final half-hour fails to make up for the previous sixty minutes of uninspired tedium and long shots of Gordon Mitchell's living room. My standard disclaimer applies: I hate hating movies. Teleport City has never been about "ripping bad films a new one." I genuinely enjoy enjoying movies, and if my taste is somewhat suspect, that's really only bad for the people who read these reviews and then get fooled into thinking they want to watch Asambhav just because I liked it. And if there's anything I hate more than hating movies, its hating movies I really thought I was guaranteed to like. It never occurred to me, before viewing the film, that I would be anything but overjoyed by Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankhamen. So about half way through, I was more than bored; I was genuinely distraught, like something had gone horribly, horribly wrong. "No!" I yelled earnestly and confused at the television as I watched yet another scene of Gordon Mitchell sitting in a recliner. "No! You're supposed to be a great movie! Come on! Quit messing with me!" but by the time the credits rolled, I had to hang my head in sadness and admit that, despite all the rooting I'd done for it, despite the fact that I believed in it, Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankhamen let me down like a politician six months after getting elected on appealing campaign promises. My opinion of Deodato, already low as you know, was made even worse now that he had wandered into one of my favorite genres and stunk the joint up. But I try to be positive, and so let me first mention some of the few good things Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankhamen delivers. That first scene was short but cool, with Phenomenal wearing that dress sock on his head and punching out a lot of guys. The music that accompanies that scene, and plays throughout, is far better than the movie in which it appears. Bruno Nicoli was one of the stalwarts of Italian film music, and he's rarely not on top of his game, even if the movie for which he's writing music leaves a lot to be desired. And although it's too little too late, the finale is sort of fun, including a great little fight that stumbles into a women's steam room -- a scene for which there exist several stills featuring the women doing nudity. That was either done for some unseen "international" version, or purely as titillation for the promotional stills, because when the fight actually happens, the women all manage to keep their towels wrapped around them, since even a giant guy beating up a dude in black dungarees with a black toboggan pulled over his face isn't enough to make a proper lady forget her modesty. Not that gratuitous boob shots would have helped this movie -- they just wouldn't have hurt. But a couple fun fights and the coy promise of flesh aren't always enough to salvage a film, and Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankhamen has more problems than can be compensated for with those meager table scraps. Phenomenal himself is an obvious rip-off of Diabolik, minus the menacing cool streak, hot girlfriend, awesome lair, and cool collection of cars. Where as Diabolik makes love on a rotating bed covered in stolen hundred dollar bills, Phenomenal seems more likely to find a penny stuck to his ass after he's finished jerking off on the couch. He may stand like Diabolik, and laugh like Diabolik, and wear the Wal-Mart Halloween costume version of Diabolik's outfit, but Phenomenal is certainly no Diabolik. But that's OK since Ruggero Deodato is no Mario Bava. Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankhamen never achieves that phantasmagoric, sprawling, big budget feel that Diabolik managed without a big budget. Everything here feels small and uninspired.
The performances of the actors deserve a better movie. No one here is bad at all, though Gordon Mitchell does at times look like he's completely forgotten he's in a movie and is thinking about something else. Still, are you going to pick on Gordon Mitchell? He'll kick sand in your face and steal your girl, leaving you in the lurch to contemplate purchasing a "Charles Atlas Secrets of Dynamic Tension" informational package. As Count Norton, Mauro Parenti is serviceably bland. He lacks the smoldering hotness of John Phillip Law, who played Diabolik, and the impish charm of Kriminal's Glenn Saxson, but if nothing else, he's too dull to be bad. It's no big shock that he never became a big star. It's also not a big shock that he was the producer of this film, not that I'm suggesting he made this film purely as an exercise in vanity. Lucretia Love, who shows up as a love interest/possible criminal/possible good guy, is always a welcome sight, but amid a flimography that includes Battle of the Amazons, The Arena, From Istanbul: Orders to Kill, and Seven Blood-Stained Orchids, a lump of a movie like Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankhamen tends to just get forgotten. There are probably worse fumetti movies out there, but right now, this one is the bottom of the barrel for me. Doedato disappoints on every level and fails to deliver pretty much everything you'd want from a fumetti inspired film. It's a shame a title like Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankhamen was wasted on a movie that can't live up to its promise. You really shouldn't be calling yourself Phenomenal if you aren't. Labels: Action: Superheroes, Country: Italy, Eurospies, Fumetti, Year: 1968 posted by Keith at 6:17 PM | 6 Comments Saturday, January 26, 2008Shark Hunter Release Year: 1979Country: Italy/Spain Starring: Franco Nero, Werner Pochath, Jorge Luke, Michael Forest, Patricia Rivera, Mirta Miller. Writer: Tito Carpi, Jaime Comas Gil, Jesus R. Folgar, and Alfredo Giannetti Director: Enzo Castellari Cinematographer: Raul Perez Cubero Music: Guido and Maurizio DeAngelis Original Title: Il Cacciatore di Squali Alternate Titles: Guardians of the Deep Availability: Buy it from Amazon What is it, to be a man? This is the question, indeed, many of us ask ourselves. In this, our post-macho, post-feminist, post-metrosexual era, what then becomes the measure of a man? What is it that defines his life, gives him meaning, makes him a man? Indeed such a question is difficult to answer, at times perhaps even seemingly impossible. And so we enter an era of confusion, of aimlessness, until at last something emerges from the chaos to point the way, to illuminate us, to help us along on our journey and, at long last, make the answer as clear as the crystal blue waters of Cozumel. What is it, to be a man? Let Franco Nero tell you. No, no -- let Franco Nero show you. The first fifteen minutes of Enzo G. Castellari's Shark Hunter play as follows. We meet the titular shark hunter, Franco Nero, looking like he just stumbled out of the jungle and fell into a puddle of crazed hippie biker, while perched on a rock overlooking the ocean. Suddenly a shark catches his eye, causing him to leap up, run down the beach while accompanied by the sounds of Guido and Maurizio DeAngelis, and struggle to haul the thrashing beast to shore. He then retires to his open air beach bungalow to make love to his beautiful Mexican senorita, then goes to a bar where he beats the crap out of half a dozen thugs. Happy that Franco has whooped ass on the goon squad, a local takes him out for a bit of parasailing. I know, I know. You're thinking to yourself that while hauling in a fishing line hooked to a man-eating shark is tough, and making love on the beach to a sexy gal is tough, and beating up half a dozen hired bruisers is tough, there's not much tough about parasailing. That's what sunburned fat Americans do when they visit resorts, right? What's so tough about that? Well, nothing. But Franco, while he does admittedly get a kick out of the parasailing, what makes this tough parasailing is that, while in mid-air, he spies a shark in the water below, let's out a primal whoop of excitement, cuts himself loose from the parachute harness, plunges into the water, and immediately starts punching the shark in the face.
Although everything about the movie, from the title to Franco Nero's seemingly unquenchable thirst for punching sharks in the face, would lead you to believe that this is going to be another in the brief but highly enjoyable line of Italian Jaws rip-offs along the lines of director Castellari's own L'Ultimo Squalo, a film that so closely aped (or sharked) Jaws and Jaws 2 that an injunction was issued against it, spoiling big plans to unleash it in American movie theaters and, in fact, even going to far as to ensure that it would never see the light of day even on home video. However, after the insane opening and Franco Nero's lesson on how to be a real man, Shark Hunter settles down into being a rip-off not of Jaws, but of another American film, 1977's The Deep starring Nick Nolte and Jaqueline "Miss Goodthighs" Bisset as scuba divers who stumble across a fortune in sunken drugs. That film was remade in 2005 as Into the Blue, starring Paul Walker and Jessica Alba. That movie was completely idiotic, but I enjoyed it if for no other reason than it had cool scuba scenes and lots of shots of Paul Walker and Jessica Alba being scantily clad. Plus, it's not like doing a dumb remake of a movie that was pretty dumb to begin with was any great crime against cinematic art. Of course, I also like The Deep, and it used to scare the crap out of me as a kid. You see, I come from a long line of scuba divers, and by "long line" I mean my dad and, later, my sister. But I grew up around diving and diving equipment, and as a kid I used to get into my old man's trunk full of equipment and get gussies up in the way-too-large for me wetsuit and flippers, mask, and dive knife, which I referred to more dramatically as the shark knife. I'd then stomp around the basement, playing Thunderball and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and trying to throw the knife into the bare 2x4s of the unfinished walls. When I got to watch The Deep on our brand new Betamax video machine, it enthralled and terrified me. I loved all the scuba stuff, and even at a young age I know there was something special about Jaqueline Bisset in a bikini. But the one thing anyone remembers about that movie is the moray eels. My dad used to tell me outrageous tales about moray eels, and how the way their teeth curved in meant that once they bit you, it was impossible to remove them. You just had to pull out your knife and amputate your arm. The Deep certainly backed those stories up, and for years, the sight of sharks and barracuda did little to phase me, but I was always wary of eels. Even after I learned that moray eels are basically docile so long as you don't go shoving your arm into their hidey holes, I still get antsy when I turn around underwater and see one of them floating there, staring at me inquisitively with that horrible, evil grin they all have.
Shark Hunter, however, is better than either The Deep or Into the Blue, and Franco Nero looks less like Nick Nolte in The Deep and more like Nick Nolte in his more recent mug shot. But the gist of Shark Hunter is that Nero's character, Mike di Donato, gets pressured by a local gangster into helping salvage a downed plane full of loot. Franco and his parasailing buddy try to figure out a way to get the gangsters off their back and outsmart them. Despite the expectation generated from a title like Shark Hunter, there isn't much shark action in this film other than the beginning and the very end. Most of the action revolves around Franco Nero in his ratty shirt and bell-bottom dungarees getting into fights on the beach, only to have his beloved Juanita (Patricia Rivera) threatened by the gangsters. And there's a lot of scuba diving, sometimes with sharks present, which is a touchy subject for a lot of people. Scuba scenes usually get a bum rap in movies for being somewhat slow moving and boring. They do happen underwater, after all. I actually think a lot of scuba diving scenes are kind of keen, owing to my enjoyment of scuba diving, and depending on how they are filmed. Thunderball, for example, has pretty thrilling scuba scenes. All those Jacques Cousteau documentaries have cool scuba scenes. The Incredible Petrified World does not succeed as well with its many scuba scenes of guys sort of doing nothing for like ten minutes at a time. Anyway, point is that scuba scenes don't have to boring, even if they frequently are. Shark Hunter has pretty good scuba scenes, though one wonders why Nero spends so much time diving in his blue jeans when he later reveals he owns perfectly good shorts and a wetsuit. I don't know if you've ever tried to swim in blue jeans, but it's not pleasant. The scuba scenes are also aided by the fact that Castellari was fond of slow motion action scenes anyway, so you hardly even notice the diving is slow. At least he didn't film them in slow motion.
Castellari and Nero worked together several times before most notably on the superb 1971 poliziotteschi thriller High Crime. Among the many, many directors who made a living in the murky waters of Italian exploitation films, Castellari was one of the best when he was on his game. Like Umberto Lenzi and Antonio Margheriti, Castellari managed to direct some really great action films. He also managed to direct some really awful ones. Castellari, however, directed fewer truly awful films than did Lenzi and Margheriti, possibly because Castellari managed to avoid having to make crappy cannibal movies. Where as other directors skipped from one genre to the next based on whatever trend was at the forefront of exploitation cinema that week, Castellari stayed pretty well grounded in action films. He avoided horror almost entirely. Even when he ventured into the realm of other genres -- most notably a few post-apocalypse Road Warrior rip-offs in the 1980s -- he treated them more or less like action films. The one time he worked almost completely outside the realm of what he was familiar with was 1989's Sinbad of the Seven Seas, and we can see how that worked out for him. By the 1980s, there was no doubt Castellari knew his stuff, even if he wasn't exactly what you might call a visionary artist. He did have his style though, and he seems interested in Shark Hunter, which he keeps moving along nicely and crammed full of action both above and below the ocean surface. If there's anything to criticize in Castellari's direction, it's the choice to use footage of real sharks being caught and killed. This only happens once or twice, and I suppose scenes of shark fishing are more defensible than other scenes of real animal cruelty that pop up in Italian exploitation films, but it's something to warn people about. I understand why they used real footage, though I don't necessarily agree with the decision. But then, I used togo fishing, and lord knows we used to take pictures of ourselves with our fish, so I guess that's why I can't see to getting too worked up about the scenes of a hooked shark in this movie, as opposed to the far more frequent and far more abusive animal killing that goes on in those cannibal films.
Franco Nero is in good form here, looking completely deranged and badly in need of a shower. You'd think a dude who constantly went swimming and shark punching in the clear waters of Cozumel, Mexico, wouldn't have so much soot and crap smeared all over his face, but then you'd also expect that a guy with a girlfriend that pretty would have at least two pairs of clothes. But the only thing he has is his outfit, and then the same outfit with a hat and sunglasses. Nero throws himself headlong into the role though, lending it gravity and a great intensity, and the look is pretty spectacular. Nero made a career out of playing bad-asses, and while he's not as bad-ass here as he was in some of his old cop films, he still punches sharks in the face and jumps out of parachutes to wrestle them. Eventually, the movie gets around to explaining why sharks piss him off so much, but it's pretty uneventful and predictable. He goes on to have family members killed in a traffic accident, but he doesn't run around Mexico punching cars and trying to drag them back to his bungalow. And given how much the guy hates sharks, and how he seems to spend all day sitting around just waiting for a change to sock one in the jaw, you have to wonder they come to his aid all Aquaman-style during the underwater finale. I guess they respect his predatory, killer instinct and knotty tangle of blond locks.
Helping the movie be that much cooler is the music by Italian exploitation film staples Guido and Maurizio DeAngelis. Blending rock, prog, and film orchestration, G&M, who also worked under collective name Oliver Onions for some reason, turn in a great score that perfectly matches the action and fires up the blood. Pairing all that with nice location work in Cozumel -- my dad's favorite dive spot, incidentally -- makes for an all-around thrilling action film that is far different than the Jaws inspired title would otherwise lead you to believe. Labels: Action, Country: Italy, Director: Enzo Castellari, Stars: Franco Nero, Year: 1979 posted by Keith at 11:21 PM | 3 Comments Wednesday, December 12, 2007Strip Nude for Your Killer Release Year: 1975Country: Italy Starring: Edwige Fenech, Nino Castelnuovo, Femi Benussi, Solvi Stubing, Franco Diogene, Lucio Como, Erna Schurer. Writer: Andrea Bianchi and Massimo Felisatti Director: Andrea Bianchi Cinematographer: Franco Delli Colli Music: Berto Pisano Original Title: Nude per l'assassino Availability: Buy it from Amazon  You wouldn't think that a movie with a title like Strip Nude for Your Killer would turn out to be among the sleazier, trashier, less redeemable Italian thrillers -- or giallo -- but what do you know! Strip Nude for Your Killer turns out to be among the sleazier, trashier, less redeemable Italian thrillers, and if you know anything about gialli, you know that sleaze, trash, and irredeemability are practically requisites for the genre. Strip Nude for Your Killer is also probably not the best film to use as a primer on the tropes and history of gialli, but at the same time, perhaps the fact that it slavishly caters to the lowest common denominator expectations of giallo films and never exhibits much in the way of style or ambition beyond fulfilling the base formula requirements make it the perfect, if not respectable, candidate for the following brief -- and possibly wildly inaccurate in spots -- history of what fans loving refer to giallo. Giallo is, like pulp fiction in America, a loaded and often misrepresented concept that takes on various attributes and boundaries depending on who is doing the defining. Pulp, for example, was used to cover everything from romance to cowboy to crime to sci-fi and horror stories, though in time it became more specifically identified with crime and fantastic literature. And then, in the 90s, pulp started being used as a description of outrageous action cinema from the 70s, applied interchangeably with "cult film," "drive-in movie," and most recently, "grindhouse." Pulp thus became an adaptive term, and even though it no longer meant what it used to mean, just as "drive-in movie" could have been any movie (I saw Jaws and Star Wars at the drive-in in the 70s, after all) but now has a very specific exploitation-oriented definition, "pulp" has an agreed-upon (more or less) pop culture definition that most people live with.
The history and evolution of giallo in Italy is very similar. Giallo originally referred to a series of pulp novels published by a company called Mondadori. The name "giallo" arose from the bright yellow covers that identified books as part of the series. As with American pulps of the same era (the first giallo was printed in 1929), the subject matter of giallo varied wildly, but in time they seemed to settle down into a steady pattern relying predominantly on murder mysteries, horror, and lurid tales of wanton sauciness. From time to time, the stories of well-established and well-respected mystery authors like Edgar Wallace and Agathie Christie showed up as part of the giallo series. Thus, like pulp, giallo became a much more specific phrase, irritating some (as does the abuse and rampant application of the descriptor "pulp"). Making any claim regarding which film was "the first" of any type of film is pretty silly. No matter what you pick, someone is going to find an earlier film that fulfills the same basic requirements of whatever genre you've chosen, and then they'll start claiming that movie was the first. Sort of like, "who was the first punk rocker," a debate that includes everyone from Iggy Pop to Joey Ramone to the MC5 to Mozart. Or, to relate it to film, there's the endless debate over "the first slasher film." With "first" being nigh impossible to nail down, what becomes more important is the first film to act as a major cultural touchstone. So, while nailing down "the first slasher film" may be almost impossible, nailing down "the film that inspired the slasher movie boom of the 80s and defined the tropes of that trend" is much easier. The exact same problem exists in determining "the first giallo movie." Considering that Edgar Wallace and Agathie Christie books were part of the giallo series, you could reasonably argue that one of the movies based on those was the first giallo. What is more pertinent, again, and at least for our purposes here, is to define the film where the giallo trend really arrived, and the film that served as the template for the movies that would follow this trend. Regarding this, most people agree that it's Mario Bava's 1963 thriller The Girl Who Knew Too Much (which even features the lead character reading a giallo novel), with a major assist from Bava's Blood and Black Lace in 1964. It is in these two movies that we see most of the "rules" of the genre established, sort of like how George Romero's Night of the Living Dead certainly wasn't the first zombie film, but it was the zombie film, and it set forth a template that is followed to this very day. Bava's two early murder mysteries laid the foundation for what would come after them. And of course, just to dirty the martini further, from that start point forward, you can spend plenty of time endlessly debating which films are or are not gialli, or which films are or are not zombie films. So on and so forth. After all, us film nerds gotta debate something, and some of us are tired of arguing about whether or not Star Wars was awesome or sucked.
Bava's two movies give us the framework and the common themes that define giallo: the unreliable eye witness and the general unreliability and subjectivity of observation, the international jet set flavor (including frequent use of American and British leads), the obsession with fashion and photography (another form of observation) and the industries that exist around each, prolonged and often fantastically complex murder sequences, highly stylized lighting and cinematography, and perhaps most famous of all, the black-gloved killer. Giallo simmered through the 60s, but it was in 1970 that things really exploded. That year, a former scriptwriter and assistant director named Dario Argento made the film The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. Here, what started with Bava became crystal clear and fully realized. From 1970 on, the always zealous Italian exploitation market began cranking out all sorts of films that fit the giallo bill, more or less. Adding a dose of 1970s libertinism to the Bava formula, the giallo directors of the 70s were able to heap on more gore, nudity, and general sleaze. The films also showcased an increasingly cynical viewpoint of the morality of man, often featuring victim characters who were only marginally less rotten than the mysterious killer. Some of these films were incredibly good. Some wallowed in their own filth. A few were just plain awful, but most were enjoyable in a wild Grand Guignol fashion that demanded you abandon logic, accept often wildly improbably plot twists and resolutions, and concentrate instead on the imaginative style and outlandish setpieces. In other words, if you are going to be upset about disappointing revelations and idiotic, illogical behavior on behalf of the victims, giallo is not the genre for you to play in, and you will find little, even in the best films, that will convince you otherwise. These films take place in a world that appears similar to ours and involves characters who resemble humans, but ultimately, the world of the giallo film and the people who inhabit it resemble humans and the human world only superficially. Gialli operate under their own set of rules, and dealing with it can often be irritating -- especially since that leads to the age-old battle over when something is an intentional artistic vision and when something is just incompetent crap. In the case of Strip Nude for Your Killer, the debate is pretty one-sided. This movie is definitely incompetent crap. It's largely unimaginative, always seedy and mean-spirited, and laughable in its attempt to build the central mystery. That said, it's also horribly fun in a way you should be maybe just a little bit ashamed of, and it stars the queen of 70s giallo and one the most perfect and beautiful women to ever walk the planet, French Algerian actress Edwige Fenech.
To be fair, Strip Nude for Your Killer may be scummy, but it wastes no time letting you know exactly where you stand, as the first shot is a full frontal nude shot of a woman in a doctor's office, legs up in medical stirrups, with a doctor's face firmly planted between her legs. If this image -- and keep in mind that it is quickly revealed she's in the middle of an abortion -- offends or insults you, then it's best to just skip ahead to some other movie. I recommend Dario Argento's Deep Red. It's really good, and as far as gialli goes, it's pretty clean. At least it doesn't start off with a close-up of a chick getting an abortion. From this auspicious opening salvo, Strip Nude for Your Killer has the woman suffer a heart attack, causing the doctor and his pal to bring the woman back to her home and leave her in the bathtub in hopes that the police will just chalk it up to a heart attack without noticing the abortion thing. From there, the film picks up at a photography studio staffed primarily by snide, condescending people who all seem to hate each other. Among them are star photographers Carlo (Nino Castelnuovo) and Magda (Edwige Fenech), who are involved with each other though Carlo is by no means a one-lady man. The other cast members all have names too, but there's not much point in remembering them since, 1) they're all basically the same character, and 2) they're all going to die anyway. And sure enough, it doesn't take too long before someone is stalking the employees of the studio and killing them off. Signature murders include the stabbing of a woman who, upon realizing a prowler may be in the house and all her co-workers are getting murdered, investigates while completely nude except for a pair of clunky platform clogs; and then there's the one where, after charmingly attempting to rape a co-worker before going impotent, we get ample shots of an enormously fat man in his sagging tighty whities and black dress socks, clutching a deflated blow-up doll in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other while he cries uncontrollably. Tasteful! Eventually, the cast is whittled down to a few potential suspects, including Carlo, Magda. Carlo and Magda take it upon themselves to investigate the murder, though it's possible on of them is actually the culprit, and for some reason, any time they turn up a clue, they make a big fuss about how they couldn't possibly go to the police with it, even though there's no actual reason they couldn't go to the police beyond the fact that the giallo film depends on the concept of the amateur sleuth, and writer-director Andrea Bianchi sort of blows at writing stories. When the killer is finally revealed...well it's best for this movie and for many gialli to master the use of the phrase, "Oh, come on!" Strip Nude for Your Killer isn't quite so bad as to have the killer be someone that hasn't been in the movie until the point they are revealed to be the killer ("Why, it was his brother we've never seen all along!"), but it's really close. And there's plenty more "Oh, come on!" moments to keep your eyes rolling. Like the part where Magda goes to retrieve film from Carlo's studio that presumably has pictures of the killer on it. While there, the lights go out, and Magda hears someone else sneaking around. So, knowing that everyone who works at your studio is being murdered, knowing that you have a piece of evidence that could reveal the killer, and knowing that the killer knows you have this and also knows where it is, when you are in this place, and the lights go out all of a sudden, do you instantly think, "Goodness, it is entirely likely this killer who has been stalking us has now arrived here!" Or do you think, "Aw, it must be a blown fuse!"
In fact, there are three distinct points at which you will need to master the use of "Oh, come on!" if you are ever going to get very far into the world of Italian murder mystery horror fun. The first is used pleadingly and comes when you engage in the following exchange with a friend: You: Let's watch Strip Nude for Your Killer. Your Friend: That looks like crap. You: Oh, come on! You will also find the phrase handy to use in a sort of "just roll with it" use. For example: Your Friend: Wait! Why can't they go to the police? Man this movie is idiotic. You: Oh, come on! And finally, there is the point at which you and your friend can finally agree on the proper application of the phrase. This comes at the end, when the killer is revealed to be someone you can't even remember if they were in the movie before. It is here that you can both roll your eyes and exclaim, "Oh, come on!" Strip Nude for Your Killer definitely requires a healthy sense of humor to get through. Director Andrea Bianchi does not possess the stylistic flourishes that make many other bad gialli worth watching even when their plots are of dubious merit. What Bianchi lacks in terms of inventive direction he attempts to make up for with sleaze, and at least on that level, he's a Viking. Before you even start the movie, you can guess what sort of ride you're in for. And while some titles may make lascivious promises the movie can't keep, Strip Nude for Your Killer definitely is not one of them. I mean, here's a film that plays a botched abortion for cheap titillation and ends with a joke about a guy strangling his girlfriend and sodomizing her against her will. Oh, the hilarity! In between, you get near frequent male and female nudity (often in the form of people you never wanted to see nude), plenty of slasher gore (usually in the form of the aftermath of a murder), and an all-around level of scumminess that becomes so thick it takes on the properties of camp excess. I'm sure John Waters would appreciate the ludicrousness of it all. It's that gleeful willingness to reel about in the muck with such reckless disregard for even the most frayed threads of decent taste that keep Strip Nude for Your Killer from being offensive. It's far too idiotic to be taken with that degree of seriousness. This movie is like stumbling upon a hobo jerking off behind a dumpster. Sure you can get offended, but honestly, what's the point?
One of the fun things about gialli is that they actively invite psychoanalysis. Regardless of how shoddy and shallow the product may be, if it just follows the template close enough, it can piggyback on the psychological groundwork of Bava, who himself was nodding to Hitchcock. It's like buying meaning wholesale, or shopping at Hot Topic instead of making your own punk clothes. For example, I have no doubt that Bianchi had absolutely nothing to say with Strip Nude for Your Killer. He wanted to make a sleazy murder mystery and get Edwige Fenech naked as often as possible, plus show a fat guy in saggy underpants. And that's exactly what he did. But because, by 1975, so many gialli had been made and the cliches of the genre were so well established, he didn't have to put any thought at all into having things us film nerds could pick up on in our never-ending quest to artistically justify even the basest and greediest of crap. Strip Nude for Your Killer is rife with the standard giallo themes, the most obvious of which is the deceptive nature of observation. You could even justify the tasteless opening by saying that Bianchi is intentionally duping the audience into thinking they're getting a bit of cheesecake right off the bat, only to spoil it by introducing a dramatic and tragic revelation regarding the nature of the nudity we are observing. You would, I think, be full of shit if you did this, but it's still fun. Later in the film, the roll of film with the killer's identity is brought into play, under the assumption that a photograph of a murder in progress is irrefutable proof. Once again, however, very little is what it appears to be. Edwige spends much of the movie poring over photographs of the victim, an old magnifying glass plastered to her face as a visual homage to the dime store detective novels from which the giallo film grew (and also as a fine example of how magnifying glasses aren't designed work). In Strip Nude for Your Killer as in many other far superior gialli (specifically Dario Argento's Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Deep Red), the protagonist spends a great deal of time examining and re-examining something that seems perfectly clear but is later revealed to hold a significance no one recognized. Bird with the Crystal Plumage is one of the most obvious indictments of the notion of eye witness, but Deep Red is my favorite for playing off the lead actor, David Hemmings, and his role as a photographer obsessed with the grainy, minute detail of a photo in Anonioni's Blow Up. In the case of Strip Nude for Your Killer, Bianchi is obviously just copying what he's seen before, but it's still kind of fun and one of the reasons bad gialli are often still enjoyable to dissect. Bianchi is no stranger to sleazy thrillers. His filmography includes Cry of the Prostitute, The Malicious Whore, and Burial Ground, infamous for casting an obviously older midget as a child, and then having him bite off his mom's breast while she lovingly breast-feeds him. I ain't talking no Harry Earles looking guy, either, where you could almost believe the illusion that he was a little kid (still way too old to be breast feeding though, at least off his mom). No, this was more like a cross between Dustin Hoffman and Chris Kattan. Anyway, Bianchi isn't much of a director, and whatever style exists in Strip Nude for Your Killer is most likely the product of Bianchi aping those who came before. The direction is competent and professional, but not much else.
Of course, for most viewers, there is one big reason, at least above the simple blanket "because it's Italian giallo," to watch Strip Nude for Your Killer, and that's the appearance, usually nude or in little more than panties and an unbuttoned men's dress shirt, of Edwige Fenech. Fenech was a staple of both Italian sex comedies and the giallo film, and she brought to the game a wicked combination of actual acting talent, comedic timing, a willingness to drop her robe for pretty much no reason, and some of the most devastating good looks I've ever seen. She split her time evenly between exceptionally great gialli like All the Colors of the Dark and other films with director Sergio Martino, and dodgy nonsense like this and The Case of the Bloody Iris. She was always game, though, and never looked to be half-assing it, even when her primary role was to show half her ass. In Strip Nude for Your Killer, she's about as close as you're going to get to a likable character, even though she's kind of condescending and nasty to people. But when you're surrounded by the likes of mean-spirited S&M lesbians, a guy who thinks anal rape is hilarious, a fat crying guy who also thinks rape is the way to a woman's heart, and someone who is killing a bunch of people -- well, it's not hard to look like the good guy. If you are looking for a good and proper introduction to the world of Italian murder mysteries, Strip Nude for Your Killer is not your movie. You want to be watching Deep Red or Blood and Black Lace or All the Colors of the Dark. Still, if you are already prepared for the peculiarities of sloppy Italian filmmaking, Strip Nude for Your Killer is surprisingly enjoyable. Even though it's poorly written, even though it's relentlessly tasteless (actually, because it's relentlessly tasteless), even though it has very few points you could single out as being good other than Edwige, and even though it's packed full of gratuitously seedy garbage (once again, what I mean is because it's packed full of gratuitous, seedy garbage), it ultimately comes across as harmless. I think it's because you never get an opportunity to take the thing seriously for even a minute. Compare it to, for instance, Lucio Fulci's New York Ripper, a film that is marginally less sleazy, almost as absurd, but a whole lot meaner. The hatred for mankind is palpable in that film, and if you make it through to the end, all you really want to do is take a shower. Conversely, Strip Nude for Your Killer comes across as little more than a bunch of drunk Italians wanting to make a movie with a lot of nudity in it. If you go to the shower after watching it, you're doing something, but it's not because you feel grimy and depressed. Sure, the film is mean, but it never seems serious about it or committed to its misanthropy. This could just be my perception as a horribly twisted and dark individual, but Strip Nude for Your Killer just doesn't have that visceral kick you would need to really be offended. It was preposterous anyway, and I was having too much fun reveling in the filth alongside it to worry about the many faults. Labels: Country: Italy, Horror: Giallo, Stars: Edwige Fenech, Year: 1975 posted by Keith at 7:21 PM | 4 Comments Tuesday, January 15, 2002Convoy Buster
1978, Italy. Starring Maurizio Merli, Olga Karlatos, Massimo Serato, Nello Pazzafini, Mario Feliciani, Mimmo Palmara, Marco Gelardini, Attilio Duse. Written by Gino Capone and Teodoro Corra. Directed by Stelvio Massi.
It's rare that I will watch a supposed tough action film star and feel compelled to yell, "You da man!" In fact, I can't think of any point in my life that I would feel compelled to yell that. But I will get close in the case of Italian action star Maurizio Merli, for whom I will nod, smile, and quietly say, "You are a bad mother fucker, Maurizio." The sum total of movie stars I consider to be "bad mother fuckers" is small. Pam Grier is a bad mother fucker. Bruce Lee is a bad mother fucker. Jet Li is cool, but he's not a bad mother fucker. And you know they say that cat Shaft is a baaaad mother ... shut your mouth! They pretty much stopped making bad mother fuckers in the 1970s, with only a precious couple being made since then. By far the number one, if not only, bad mother fucker of the 1990s is Takeshi Kitano, a Japanese actor (among other things) who, in many ways, reminds me of one of the greatest bad mother fucker of them all, Maurizio Merli. Merli is best known, at least to readers of this website, as the star of one of my very favorite films, and one of the best action films ever made, Violent Napoli. In that, he played a tough as nails police inspector who beats ass on every criminal within a hundred mile radius. In Convoy Buster, he makes a dramatic departure. This time around, he plays a tough as nails police inspector who beats ass on every criminal within a two hundred mile radius. The basic lesson you learn from any of these poliziotteschi films is don't fuck with Maurizio Merli. It's like those When Animals Attack videos. If you put your head in a lion's mouth while you shove a wolverine up its ass, there's a good chance either the lion, the wolverine, or both will take your soft pink simian hide to wilderness school. Similarly, if you threaten Maurizio Merli, he will kick you in the teeth, break your nose, and look like a million bucks while he's doing it. I don't remember his character's name in this movie, and I'm too lazy to look it up, but in any poliziotteschi film, there's a 75% chance that the main character's name is Inspector Nico. Anyway, Merli plays the baddest cop in the crime-torn city of Rome, circa the mid 1970s. When he isn't beating the shit out of criminals, and it's rare that he isn't beating the shit out of at least some criminal (probably even when he is taking a shower), he spends most of the movie doing what all rogue cops are required to do, which is give angry impassioned speeches about the sorry state of police affairs and society. You can pretty much sum up each of these conversations with the following bit of dialogue. "Inspector, your methods are too controversial." "My methods get results!" "Your methods get us in trouble with the press, with citizen's groups -- do you know I was getting chewed out by the mayor all morning." "I'm sorry about your political problems. I have a bigger problem, and that's this system. Your system protects the guilty and punishes the innocent. Citizens are prisoners in their own homes while criminals and lawyers run wild." "Damnit, inspector! You go too far! You work for the judiciary system!" "I work for justice, not for the system." At which time, the inspector will walk out, leaving the beleaguered chief to eat the dust of righteousness. Slight variations may occur, but the spirit is always the same. Cliche as they may be, no one delivers the "indignant public servant" spiel as Merli. He don't take no shit from The Man. Merli always plays an interesting figure. He works for the system without being part of it. In Violent Napoli, I compared him to John Shaft or Kojak, and the comparison still stands here. Probably more like Kojak than anyone else -- the warrior with a broken heart. The man who wants to help society, to protect the innocent, but is frustrated at every turn by corruption, incompetence, politics, and bureaucracy. His role as Rome's number one ass kicker gets him on a lot of Mafia shitlists, and before too long, Merli finds he can scarcely walk down the street without someone trying to assassinate him. When he mistakenly shoots and kills an innocent man he thought was an assassin, Merli realizes he'll never be the victor in a place as twisted and corrupt as Rome. He vows to never fire his gun again, resigns his position, and leaves the city. He takes a post in a small town by the ocean, where the biggest crime seems to be the occasional drunken ass grabbing by some local louts. Once Merli kicks their asses across Europe and back, they fall into place and everything seems good. He even gets himself a fine woman. Life, it would seem, couldn't be more perfect. At least until Merli starts snooping around some strange happenings down at the fishing docks. He soon uncovers a gun smuggling operation right in the middle of his idyllic ocean hamlet and, with weary dedication to his job, realizes he must break out his ass kicking shoes one more time. The convoy he busts, incidentally, has nothing to do with Kris Kristoferson. It's the string of trucks that drive to the beach to pick up all the illegal guns. Make no mistake about it, though, if I found out there was a movie where Maurizio Merli did beat the unholy Hell out of Kris Kristoferson, I'd be first in line to see it. Convoy Buster isn't as vicious as Merli's Violent Rome but it's a better movie, and it's not as good as Violent Napoli but it's a little less brutal. Merli shines, as usual. I compared him to Takeshi Kitano earlier. Both men make similar movies and play similar characters -- tough, quiet guys who can do more acting with a simple flicker of the face or move of the eye than most stars can do with their whole body. Both men are subtle and understated, but when the time comes for fisticuffs, explode in violent whirlwinds. I think any fan of Kitano films like Violent Cop and Hana-Bi should definitely be sinking their teeth into Maurizio Merli films like Convoy Buster and Violent Napoli. Violent Napoli is his best film, and one of the bets action films of all time, but Convoy Buster runs a close second. It is packed with tons of action and violence, a fast pace, and a healthy dose of wit and charm. The message here is a somewhat bleak one. Merli leaves Rome to escape the corruption and violence only to discover it can exist anywhere so long as people are willing to turn a blind eye and put up with it. Even in victory, the inspector learns a harsh lesson and is forced to reload his gun one last time, much like Ling the swordsman in Swordsman II, who was a man who simply wanted to retire to the mountains to sing and drink but kept finding himself pulled into the petty squabbles and power struggles of the world, forced to draw the sword he swore he would never again use. One thing is certain. Put together a force including Ling, Kojak, and Maurizio Merli, and the world would be a better place. They may sigh about it and mourn the state of the troubled world, but they'll still find time to beat you silly. Labels: Country: Italy, Poliziotteschi, Stars: Maurizio Merli, Year: 1978 posted by Keith at 12:36 AM | 0 Comments |
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