Few Italian writer / directors have cranked out more B-grade filone product than Umberto Lenzi. From pirate swashbucklers, historical mini-epics, a few spaghetti westerns and peplums (Samson and the Slave Queen, Sandokan the Great) in the sixties, Lenzi went on to romantic thrillers and giallos in the seventies (including a few with Carroll Baker, which we’ve already covered), created a few masterful poliziotteschi (Almost Human, Tough Cop and Brothers Till We Die) and some high-gore-quotient horror and zombie films (Eaten Alive!, Cannibal Ferox). He finished out his career as an unspectacular but reliable journeyman, hopping back and forth from genre to genre in film and TV in the eighties and early nineties, effectively retiring in 1993.
Between the Carroll Baker vehicles Paranoia (1969) and Knife of Ice (1972), Lenzi created two nicely done giallos, Oasis Of Fear (1971) and Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1972), then a nice police thriller (Gang War in Milan,1973), and followed those up with Spasmo (1974) and Eyeball (1975). A very nice run, but let’s sort out those tasty giallos, shall we?
Oasis of Fear (Un Posto Ideale Per Uccidere, or An Ideal Place To Kill) (also Dirty Pictures and Deadly Trap) (Italy, 1971) is a variation on the free-spirited-post-teens vs. the older-monied-privileged-establishment motif, where we discover the latter to be far more corrupt, and corrupting, than the former would ever aspire to. Lenzi explored some of this in the earlier Paranoia, where Carroll Baker indulges herself with a young couple, and is then betrayed and held hostage by them. The young couple here are Dick (Ray Lovelock) and Ingrid (Ornella Muti), who are travelling throughout Europe by selling pornographic pictures of themselves. Low on walking-around money? Pull out the camera. But in Rome, they accidently offer their wares to an undercover cop, are busted, and they’re given 24 hours to leave Italy. On their way through the countryside, out of money, they also run out of gas. Somewhat luckily, though, they’re stranded just outside a ritzy house owned by Barbara Slater (Irene Papas), the beautiful wife of a military Colonel stationed nearby, and, after a few awkward overtures, Barbara takes the couple in to help them out. She keeps insisting her husband will return soon, but, of course, he doesn’t. Will the young free-love hippies take unfair advantage of this lone rich woman, or is Barbara plotting her own nefarious scheme to involve them in something much bigger?
Over the course of the usual psychological chess-games, nude inserts and double-and-triple-crosses, the film definitely keeps our interest. The casting is better than many of these films, with Papas, Muti and Lovelock all having workmanlike nasty fun at their characters’ expense. Reportedly, Lenzi wanted the film to be more Easy Rider-ish, a more straightforward tale of youth and liberation. But producer Carlo Ponti wanted a giallo, hot on the heels of 1970’s Bird With The Crystal Plumage, the box-office flavor of the month in Italy. (I suspect that’s why Lenzi brought in three other writers.) A bit lighter on sex and violence than Ponti might have preferred, Lenzi’s work here is good nonetheless – it’s one of the few films where, despite being shot in a studio, the layout of the house makes logical sense, and you always know where people are in relation to each other; that pays suspenseful dividends. Alfio Contini is the veteran journeyman cinematographer, and the seldom-used Bruno Lauzi wrote the inconspicuously good music score (with the exception of his Hollies-like earworm theme song.) Not necessarily a film to seek out, but it’s a period pleaser for 70’s B-movie aficionados.
A bit below the classics, but definitely a textbook giallo, Lenzi and co-writer Roberto Gianviti wrote Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (Sette Orchidee Macchiate Di Rosso) (Italy, 1972) as a variation on a story by Cornell Woolrich, Rendezvous In Black, where a tragic accidental death leads to revenge taken on a series of supposed possible perpetrators. The film opens with the beating death of an Italian prostitute known as ‘La Toscana’ (Gabriella Giorgelli), followed soon after by the death of an American painter in her studio, Kathy Adams (Marina Malfatti). A third attempt is made on Giulia Torresi (Uschi Glass), the fiancée of clothing designer Mario Gerosa (Antonio Sabato), while they’re on a train trip. The M.O.s don’t seem similar, but each victim was left with a crescent-shaped zodiac medallion. Giulia recognizes a photo of La Toscana as Inez Tamburini, an honest and hardworking girl who worked at her family’s hotel a few years back. She also recognizes the medallion as one left by an American guest those same few years ago. Returning to the hotel, Giulia and Mario discover that the victims all stayed at the hotel during a particular few days, along with other guests who may be next on the killer’s list. A missing page in the register almost assuredly bears the killer’s name. What the hell happened on that day?
In typical giallo fashion, Mario embarks on his own inquiries concerning the mystery hotel guest, while the police track down the other potential victims (with mixed results). Mario’s trail sends him to another hotel guest with, supposedly, a perfect memory, and a hippie party house where he’s given a name to pursue. There’s a nice sense of escalating complexity to the mystery, as leads seemingly disappear and then lead to other intrigues. The eventual identity of the killer is a logical reveal – even as he throws us a few curve balls, Lenzi gives us everything we need to know, and it’s still a surprise. (Although viewers of Don’t Torture A Duckling or Seven Deaths In The Cat’s Eye will already know whom to suspect early on.) Riz Ortolani delivers his usual swingin’ musical score, and Angelo Lotti’s cinematography is stylish, if a bit workmanlike.
Spasmo (Italy, 1974) is a bit of a puzzle film, more concerned with psychology and mind games than black leather and spurting blood. But, while it proceeds in problematic fits and starts, the concluding scenes are well worth waiting for.
Christian Bauman (Robert Hoffman, bland but functional) encounters a weird but intriguing series of coincidental events – he and a female friend, Xenia (Maria Pia Conte) encounter what they think is a body on the beach, but the body awakens, revives none the worse and quickly spirits away. A clue left at the scene leads them to a yacht owned by a friend of the mystery woman’s, Alex (Mario Erpichini), where the woman herself, Barbara (Suzy Kendall), is hosting a party. She and Christian eventually sneak off to her hotel, where she insists on his shaving his beard before intimacies. But while Christian’s in the bathroom, a man from outside, Torres (Adolfo Lastretti) bursts in through the window and attacks him at gunpoint – a struggle for the gun results in the death of the would-be assassin. Barbara convinces Christian to flee the scene, with some unexpected help from a lurking Alex. Back on the yacht, Christian realizes he’s got to go back to the motel for a neckchain he left behind, and leaves Barbara with Alex. Back at the motel, he finds the neckchain but discovers the dead body missing. Improbably, Barbara leaves Alex again and catches up with Christian, now suggesting that they hide out at her painter-friend’s house and studio, which will be deserted for two weeks while the artist is in Brazil.
The clichés and half-hearted symbolism fly fast and furious, and it’s by design that we think this is impossibly contrived. Not only do we have this storyline, but we occasionally get glimpses of inflatable-rubber female dolls, scantily clad, scattered around the landscape, most bearing signs of knife-wounds. The film opens with one, and we suspect Barbara-on-the-beach may be one as well – it’s an admittedly effective red herring. Christian goes on and on about contacting his brother, Fritz, but never quite manages. And there’s more seeming nonsense, potential violence and kinky flourishes to come.
Most surprises here become no surprise at all, as we discover the artist’s house isn’t deserted at all, but has been let by Malcolm and Clorinda (Guido Alberti and Monica Monet), a philosophical older man and his lovely companion. For vague reasons, Christian decides to confess to shooting his attacker at the motel, but Malcolm thinks he’s hallucinating and isn’t altogether sane. A new character crops up – we keep meeting a lurking man in a red shirt. Now Clorinda wants to seduce him. Now the ‘dead’ assassin reappears. Christian keeps investigating, creating tighter circles of doubt, looks for the yacht again, but it’s gone, and now real bodies, rather than dolls, are starting to appear. But who is doing the killing?
In some ways, it seems Christian’s regular life is being deliberately steered towards something, a gaslighting of a sort. But there are also hints that Christian may be genuinely unstable himself. The truth ends up being a blend of the two; when we inevitably meet the mysterious brother, Fritz (Ivan Rassimov), many threads converge, but we don’t really know if the killings will necessarily stop, even if Christian, Fritz, Torres or anyone else we’ve met is no longer around.
Lenzi (and three other writers here) take a step towards full-on Argento territory here, more concerned with weaving a set of unsettling scenarios rather than a purely logical narrative that beguiles or fools you through outright deception or omission. Lenzi reportedly took over for Lucio Fulci, and Fulci might have had a surer hand with the fetish-as-metaphor aspects than Lenzi does here. None of our primary characters festooned the countryside with those mangled sex-toy dolls, but there they are, standing in for those we discover are the genuine victims. In truth, the film is kind of a mess – it feels like important chunks were written on the fly by Lenzi, inserted and then filmed in haste. I think our editor, prolific veteran Eugenio Alabiso, was more sinned against than sinning. It’s no fault of cinematographer Guglielmo Mancori, though, either – his work is lovely. Ennio Morricone provides some lovely soundtrack music, but it isn’t one of his more memorable scores.
It’s not a great movie, but Lenzi ultimately brought so many good ideas that it’s an interesting and watchable near-miss.
What ended up as Lenzi’s final giallo film, Eyeball (Gatti Rossi In Un Labirinto Di Vetro, or Red Cats In A Maze Of Glass) (Italy, 1975), is a more conventionally plotted serial murder mystery, with a structure that could have been workable. But Lenzi didn’t bring much enthusiasm to it – it’s the flattest and least committed of these four, and squanders the few good things that show up in the otherwise paint-by-numbers effort.
An American tour group, apparently from Burlington, Vermont (!), is on a tour of Barcelona, Spain, a very beautiful European city by all accounts. But except for an early tour-bus montage, Lenzi doesn’t capture much of it, and ends up chasing his own story’s tail throughout. There is, of course, a killer among them – the first murder is of a local woman, not a tour member. But that changes pretty quickly, as the teenaged Peggy Randall (Olga Montes) is murdered in a carnival funhouse. Both victims display the same M.O. – they’re repeatedly stabbed, then their left eye is gouged out. The remaining tour features both viable suspects and potential victims: Paulette Stone (Martine Brochard) is on her own, taking a break from her job and her paramour boss, Mark Burton (John Richardson), who nonetheless shows up in Spain after a troubling week in Paris with his wife Alma (Marta May). Lisa Sanders (Mirta Miller) is a professional photographer on location with her model/lover Naiba (Ines Pellegrini). Hamilton (John Bartha) is a cigar-chomping cowboy-hat wearing good-ol’ boy taking the tour with his own teen daughter Jenny (Verónica Miriel). A middle-aged couple, the Alvarados, Robby and Gail (Daniele Vargas and Silvia Solar) intend to return to a site where Robby sustained a wartime wound near Madrid. The Reverend Bronson (George Rigaud) seems to be there because every giallo needs a suspect priest – it’s the scriptwriters’ law. And Martinez (Raf Baldassarre) is the wisecracking, prank-pulling tour guide.
The police investigate, of course – the lead detective (Andrés Mejuto) is a week away from retiring, but his young protégé (José María Blanco) is earnest, eager and follows orders. In fine giallo custom, they’re intense, humorless and not much help. Mark Burton, still birddogging Pauline, keeps getting messages that his wife is in town, but his attempts to track her down turn out to be someone’s strategy to frame him for the murders. Lisa, the photographer, is the next victim, but Naiba narrowly escapes harm.
Things definitely bog down from there – a few subsequent failed stabbage attempts, including another on Naiba, interweave with some seemingly meaningful (but not really believable) photo clues, but in the end our killer is caught red-handed, or red-eyed, as it were. The killer could have been a nice twist, but Lenzi just couldn’t be bothered by this point. Years afterwards, Lenzi would gripe about lousy scripts and low budgets to gloss over his lesser efforts, but he never had trouble taking co-screenwriting credits anyway. Dyed-in-the-wool gorehounds can proceed to his early-80s big-box-office zombie travesties, but I feel pretty Lenzi-ed out at this point. The Carroll Bakers are good trash, and the first two here are watchable, but the rest are only for geeky completists (like, umm, me…)
Periscope In The Bathtub 