Quotes

I received this morning an email from Semih Tareen, who directed last year a short film called "Yellow". As the name says it is a tribute to Giallo and Mario Bava in particular.

Breaking the editorial and layout rule of this blog (one picture, one point of view, one practical paragraph - never show films), I have decided to share it with you as it is not only very well made, but also a rather entertaining exercise spotting all the "quotes" Semih Tareen put in his film.

Here's what I noticed:
Lighting inspired from Bava's Blood and Black Lace and Argento's Suspiria,
Tree shadow behind windows from the appartment scene in Bava's Girl who knew too much,
Close ups on eyes a la Fulci,
Drawer with gloves and knife from Argento's Bird with the crystal plumage's introducing scene,
Scene with glove on girl's mouth from Bava's Girl who knew too much, Lenzi's Seven blood stained orchids and Argento's Bird with the crystal plumage,
Crime scene music in Goblin's style,
And more surprisingly, checkboard scene and music in typical Thomas Crown Affair's style, by Norman Jewison (soundtrack from Michel Legrand).

There must be some other references I may have missed on, so feel free to add them in the comments section.

Sunstroke

A few days after watching it, Spasmo (Umberto Lenzi, 1974) leaves the viewer under the crude white light of a burning sun, which prevents you from articulating a rather confusing and somehow unconvincing story, yet triggers haunting images and impressions:
A giallo by the sea, hit by sunstroke, overexposed, at the opposite of the usual dark urban landscapes;
A mysterious killer who oddly looks like Dario Argento - could Lenzi do this unintentionally?
Human size dolls hanging from trees, lying on beaches, hidden in the bushes, scattered across the movie like all-too-obvious symbols of death;
Birdcages in a house by the sea;
And red roses portrayed on an ocean background, that someone suddenly cuts off;
Finally, sweet sounds and distorded melodies by Ennio Morricone.

This is all I can remember from this film, strange feelings and visual impressions from a summer dream that would have turned seriously wrong.


Spasmo, a giallo by Umberto Lenzi which is proof that the director has his own visual style, but is not really at ease with making plots credible. Read on Giallo Fever an interesting article about this movie.
Find the French DVD here and the US release there.
Morricone's haunting score is here.
And read more about Lenzi from this blog here.

The Milian Show

In the second half of the 1970s, Poliziesco had taken over Giallo in Italian popular cinema. Amongst the abundant production, two films are worth noticing as a somewhat unsuccessful attempt to mix the poliziesco filone with 'la comedia all'italiana'.

Definitely off-track, Il Trucido e lo Sbirro (aka Tough cops, Umberto Lenzi - 1976) and La banda del Trucido (aka Destruction force, Stelvio Massi - 1977) are in fact more innovative than one could think in the first place: whereas, in Italian genre cinema, characters are most of the time secondary to the intrigue or the set-up, scenarist Dardano Sacchetti tried in these movies to give depth and personality to a central character, shaped up by the writer's knowledge of Rome's working class culture: Monnezza - litterally "garbage" in Roman slang -, a bigger than life thug from Rome, played by the incredible Tomas Milian.

Wouldn't it be for Milian's pretty hilarious and spectacular incarnation of Monnezza, it has to be said that these two films are far from being unforgettable. Yet this misunderstood attempt at hijacking poliziesco to turn it into some sort of violent comedy stuffed with Roman popular humour remains noticeable: in La banda del Trucido for example, Monnezza owns a trattoria called "Alla Pernacchia" (try this on google to understand what it means) and welcomes his clients by insulting them and cracking jokes of utter vulgarity.

Cynicism and bad taste here are sometimes reminiscent of the Italian tragicomedies à la Scola (Brutti, Sporchi e Cattivi, aka Ugly, Dirty and Bad), even if it never reaches the same level because of inconsistencies in the structure of the films, which never really manage to succeed in merging two genres. As a result, the overall impression is that you watch rather mediocre polizieschi interrupted with regular bursts of outrageous comedy, overacted by a decidedly weird Tomas Milian.

This could have been really great, but as Dardano Sacchetti explains in an interview, it seems nobody shared the same vision of the films when they were produced.


The French production company Neo Publishing recently released the rare Il Trucido and its sequel in DVD, in their "Italia a mano armata" collection. Sadly, no English subtitles.
More on filone from this blog here.

Milk

When Kathy Adams (Marina Malfati) heard her three cats crying in the kitchen just after she had given them some milk, she realised something wrong was going on.
Indeed, they sounded like desperate baby cries.
She was to find all three of them agonising on the kitchen floor a second later, poisoned by their own milk.

That disturbing scene which makes you feel uncomfortable, because of its clever ambiguous use of the cat's crying sound, is the only one worth noticing from Umberto Lenzi's "Seven Blood Stained Orchids" (1972). It is by the way reminiscent of the "milk glass" scene from Argento's "Cat o'nine tails" released the year before.

Apart from this, a very bland giallo to which Riz Ortolani manages to give some kind of pace, thanks to a nice jazz-soul score with hints of Morriconesque tonalities.