I’m most familiar with our next film as Murder In A Blue World, though IMDB lists it as To Love, Perhaps To Die, its UK VHS release was as Clockwork Terror, and a German release called it Dead Angel. The original Spanish title is Una Gota De Sangre Para Morir Amando – A Drop Of Blood To Die Loving (Spain / France, 1973). It’s a Spanish/French co-production, but it’s undeniably informed by giallo narratives, visual styles and psychology. The Stanley Kubrick homages are laid on fairly thick, but writer/director Eloy de la Iglesia is frying some bigger fish here as well.
Early on we learn that a large city has a serial killer at large, one that prefers male victims 17-25-years-old. This is seen on a television report in the home of Ana Vernia (Sue Lyon – Kubrick’s Lolita, of course, and an acceptably capable older performer as well)) the night before she receives a big award from the hospital at which she works. Usually given to a doctor, Ana is a particularly dedicated nurse (or “health officer), and is the first nurse-recipient of the award. Beaming proudly next to her on the dais is her aspiring boyfriend Dr. Victor Sender (Euro-journeyman Jean Sorel), who argues, over dinner later, for more practical, dispassionate treatments. Ana loves being a nurse for its emotional, nurturing aspects, and doesn’t shy away from helping patients deal with difficult or discouraging scenarios.
But the serial killer isn’t the city’s only problem – roving bands of ultra-violent youth in uniforms and ATVs are terrorizing supposedly safe neighborhoods as well. A Clockwork Orange is the obvious source here (and George Garvarent’s musical score draws on Kubrick’s classical music usage), but de la Iglesia is using these specific references and transplanting them to later-20th-century Spain under fascist Franco rule, thinly disguised, like Clockwork Orange, as a fictional near-future.
Dr. Sender, we learn, is working on de-programming violent behaviors with combinations of surgery and electro-shock, a la Alex DeLarge, Malcolm McDowell’s character in A Clockwork Orange. Ana’s methods are more subtle, but equally effective – she disguises herself in various ways, picks up young men – a disabled man, a self-doubting male model, a sexually-questioning teenager – has sex with them, and then murders them. Like a few other giallo malefactors, she feels like she’s saving them from greater pain and disappointment. In this “blue world,” De la Iglesia narrows down his sociological problem-solving options to the fascist basics – eugenics and torture or murder-euthanasia. Or you can just watch TV.
The plot thickens when one of the members of a pillaging gang of “droogs,” David (Chris Mitchum, Robert’s boy) is thrown out by its leader, Tony; roaming around alone and breaking into houses, he stumbles across and witnesses one of Ana murders, and her disposal of the body. Stopping by Ana’s on another night, he convinces her to let him in, then proceeds to blackmail her. She agrees to payments with little resistance, but David’s newly-monetized lifestyle draws the wrong kind of attention from Tony and his boys, who wreck David’s new motorcycle and beat him senseless. Guess whose hospital David ends up in…?
Director Eloy de la Iglesia was an avowed socialist and an outspoken gay filmmaker, though he seems pretty skilled at weaving those concerns into his larger narratives rather than hitting you over the head with them. His only other film to make it out of Spain was his previous horror film Cannibal Man (1972), but most of his films seem well-regarded in his Spain, and his Madrid home. Murder In A Blue World, despite its obviously small budget, is well worth seeing. The Kubrick stuff, as I said, is pretty heavy-handed, but not a dealbreaker. The major problem here is the functional but flat English dubbing job; there’s no original-language-with-subtitles version, but that’s sadly typical for these films with an international cast. Much of the dialogue is dubbed-in-post anyway, so there’s always one language or another that gets short shrift. De la Iglesia’s distributors, in this regard, did him no favors.
The basics of an admirable smart and sexy giallo thriller are present in Sex Of The Witch (Il Sesso Della Strega) (Italy, 1973). But writer/director Angelo Pannacciò has more ideas than talent to structure them sensibly, and his film just turns into arbitrarily messy nonsense.
It starts with the death of an elderly patriarch, Thomas Hilton (Simone Santo), surrounded on his deathbed by nieces and nephews. He’s estranged from his other surviving sibling, Evelyn (Jessica Dublin), and wants nothing to do with her. He dies, the will is read, and all of the younger relatives, and his secretary/bookkeeper Simon (Gianni Dei), will split the estate equally, in yearly payments after their thirtieth birthday. As they eventually start dying off, each survivor’s share will increase. So, it’s no surprise in giallo-land when those deaths commence almost immediately.
The servants, Tony and Gloria (Franco Garofalo and Marzia Damon) conspiratorially nuzzle up, while Anna (young-yet-seasoned exploitation veteran Camille Keaton) and Johnny (Giovanni Petrucci) sneak off to the woods for some furtive intimacies as well. The hated sibling, Aunt Evelyn, lives in town, and has befriended her niece Ingrid (Sergio Ferrero), who visits after the funeral. Evelyn declares that the secret of the Hiltons is now known only to the two of them (Hmmm…). We see Johnny partying at what looks like a basement/happening/ritual/orgy/rock concert (reeking of “found footage”), then returning home only to be set upon and bludgeoned to death. (Tough to keep track of who’s who – the younger characters seem to be so disposable that they rarely address each other by their names in the film). Now enter the trademark® ineffectual police investigation to unimaginatively eat up more screentime. The inspector learns from sculptor/niece Susan (Susanna Levi) that her ancestor, Lord Conan Hilton, learned how to scientifically “transform” living cells. (Hmmm…). Susan is also romantically involved with Simon, her Uncle’s secretary. (Whoops, spoke too soon – now she’s canoodling with cousin Edward [Augusto Nobile]. I’m starting to need a scorecard here…). But let’s not forget that transforming idea, because Anna starts getting nightly light S&M visits from a mysterious tall, dark and handsome male stranger. (Hmmm…). The police eventually nab Anna’s brother Nat (Maurizio Tanfani) for Johnny’s murder, but that’ll turn out to be a small pyrrhic victory – the mysterious tall, dark and handsome male stranger then proceeds to carve a widely lethal swath out of most of the heirs. Who IS that guy?!
It’s not tough to figure the killer, but Pannacciò adds a number of distractions and red herrings – most notably the involvement and or complicity of the servants Tony and Gloria – that just muck up the works. The messy plot isn’t usually a problem if the style in which its presented is noteworthy, but that’s just not the case here. This is the kind of narrative carelessness where the investigating detective gets frustrated by the meaning of a mysterious note ostensibly left by the killer and throws it away. Umm, evidence…?
The eventual body count is somewhat impressive, and there’s a fair amount of sexy-sexy, but overall, the film is kind of an unimpressive and unpleasant slow blur. Pannacciò just has too many balls to keep in the air, and doesn’t do any real cinematic justice to any of them.
At the start of Claudio Guerin’s A Bell From Hell (La Campana Del Infierno) (Spain, 1973), our handsome but melancholy protagonist John (Renaud Verley, whom the camera likes very much) is being released (after three years) from a long-term psychiatric facility which, pointedly, is indistinguishable from a prison. Finding work on the killing floor of a rural slaughterhouse, he abruptly quits one day, declaring “I’ve learned enough.” A woman stops at the cottage he’s staying in to say hello – “I got married… I’m glad you’re well again.” We learn the cottage is his late mother’s house, abandoned now; living nearby is a grizzled old shepherd who ominously intones poetic warnings and omens, and a young girl – a granddaughter, presumably. Late mom’s sister, Marta (Swedish stage veteran Viveca Lindfors), lives nearby with her three daughters, who each have mixed feelings about their cousin’s return.
He, however, knows exactly how he feels – he’s returned for vengeance. The small country town put his late mother through an ordeal, and, after her passing, Aunt Marta had John committed to, allegedly, take control of his inheritance. Many in town suspect John’s clear intentions, but, through a series of macabre practical jokes, he keeps them guessing about what he’s realistically capable of. And the ancient old church, run by one of his mother’s last and only friends, is getting a brand-new bell.
Guerin draws from a number of giallo influences; Luigi Bazzoni’s existentialist environments, Lucio Fulci’s small-town betrayals and cruelties, and Argento and Bava’s character eccentricities masking potential atrocities. And he’s clearly familiar with Luis Buñuel’s darkly sly criticisms of Spanish Catholic piety. The newlywed onetime girlfriend married a much-older local construction contractor who terrorizes the shepherd’s daughter in the woods with his hunter pals. Marta’s oldest daughter, Esther (Maribel Martin) is soon to be married as well, but has no problem rekindling past affections with Cousin John. And Cousin John is game for having his way with Maria (Christina von Blanc) and Theresa (Nuria Gimeno) as well, but he has intentions well beyond simple seduction for all three of them.
Prolific Spanish cinematographer Manuel Rojas worked on My Dear Killer and Two Faces Of Fear for Italian giallo directors, so his atmospherics and visual narrative are solid, and clearly in the service of a director who knows what he’s doing. Sadly, though, in astonishing irony, director Claudio Guerin actually fell from the bell tower on the last day of filming, and was killed. Many viewers find the film’s ending to be a bit of a cop-out, but they may have softened it out of respect for Guerin as well. But this is 95% of a superbly-done macabre thriller. There’s room to find John to be a sympathetic character overall, despite his seemingly-deserved cruel streak and genuine sociopath tendencies, and the ending confirms that somewhat. But I’ll certainly understand if, like most of the genre, you were looking forward to the far nastier options.
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