**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B- starring Jack Hedley, Almanta Keller, Howard Ross, Paolo Malco screenplay by Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino, Lucio Fulci, Dardano Sacchetti directed by Lucio Fulci
by Bryant Frazer The box art for this Lucio Fulci sleazefest describes it as "The Most Controversial Horror Film Ever Made," which is a stretch. "Notorious" would be a better word. The New York Ripper's main claim to fame is its reputation as a sadistic, gory, and generally misogynist giallo--the Italian term referring to a combination of the crime and horror genres (basically a whodunit with slasher elements) that became popular in the 1960s and endured through the 1970s. Released in 1982 and styled after the psychologically ambitious thrillers of Hitchcock, it bears roughly the same relationship to the gialli film cycle that, say, Touch of Evil does to film noir. If the Fulci film isn't exactly as self-aware as the Welles one, it still functions as a capper, a fitting culmination of a particular form.
**½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B starring John Cassavetes, Britt Ekland, Peter Falk, Gena Rowlands screenplay by Mino Roli, based on the novel Captive City by Ovid Demaris directed by Giuliano Montaldo
by Bryant Frazer Tough, simple, and bereft of nonsense, Machine Gun McCain is the bare quintessence of the crime movie. Bound to and thus defined by its generic elements--the ex-convict on the make, the gangster's moll, the double-cross, the triple-cross, and the shadowy mob bosses pulling the strings--it takes a basic but unpretentiously stylish formal approach that makes the most of several terrific performances at the film's core.
a.k.a. Vampyre Orgy, Daughters of Dracula ***/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B+ starring Marianne Morris, Anulka, Murray Brown, Brian Deacon screenplay by Diane Daubeney directed by José Ramón Larraz
by Bryant Frazer SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. One of the hallmarks of Eurohorror is brightly-lit sex scenes. Rather than reveal nudity in chiaroscuro, or in the kind of colour-gelled Hollywood glow meant to suggest candlelight or moonlight, cinematographers working in this mode step right up and wash light over their actresses to ensure that no detail is lost in shadow. This tableau looks a little strange from a contemporary vantage--off the top of my head, I don't think anybody but Paul Verhoeven and maybe the mumblecore crew shoots sex scenes so plainly these days--but it's a stylistic disconnect and a marker of a sense of time and place that makes these films a conduit for nostalgia among cinephiles of a certain age. José Ramón Larraz, a Barcelona-born director working in England, doesn't let Vampyres out of the gate before staging a bedroom scene involving two young, completely naked women. The sleepy brunette Fran (Marianne Morris) and the pale blonde Miriam (Anulka, a former PLAYBOY centrefold) are rolling around in bed before a killer in a top hat arrives in silhouette and fills their nubile bodies with bullets. (Were the title not Vampyres, you'd be forgiven for assuming the film had just announced itself as a giallo.) With that violent flourish, the opening credits begin.
Suor Omicidi **/**** Image B Sound B- Extras C+ starring Anita Ekberg, Joe Dallesandro, Lou Castel, Alida Valli screenplay by Giulio Berruti and Alberto Tarallo, from an idea by Enzo Gallo directed by Giulio Berruti
by Bryant Frazer It sounds like a grand old time, all right. First, there's that title. Killer Nun. Adjective noun, conveying irony and promising subversion. Then there's the cast. How can you not want to see Anita Ekberg star with Joe Dallesandro in a killer-nun movie? And the premise (dope-addled sister at a convent hospital starts abusing patients) does not disappoint--imagine a season of "Nurse Jackie" under showrunners Dario Argento and Abel Ferrara. Yet somehow, director Giulio Berruti blows it: A derivative slasher pic and an only mildly lascivious sex film, Killer Nun is the sort of sleepy-eyed misfire that could give nunsploitation a bad name.
L'ultimo treno della notte *½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C+ starring Flavio Bucci, Macha Méril, Gianfranco De Grassi, Enrico Maria Salerno screenplay by Renato Izzo, Ettore Sanzò and Aldo Lado directed by Aldo Lado
by Bryant Frazer It's feeding time for the monsters again in director Aldo Lado's 1974 quasi-giallo1Night Train Murders, which sees the young and lovely Margaret and Lisa (Irene Miracle and Laura D'Angelo, respectively, making their film debuts) cross paths with violent criminals while travelling overnight by rail from Germany through Austria to Italy. The stage is set as Pacino-esque stickup man Blackie and his harmonica-blowing sidekick Curly (Flavio Bucci and Gianfranco De Grassi) mug an alcoholic sidewalk Santa Claus in Munich's Marienplatz. Menace! With that kind of element loose in the cities, why would two girls choose to ride some skeevy midnight train into Italy instead of opting for a sensible air flight? From one mother to another, via telephone: "Planes are never on time these days."
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