Finishing School

With a retrospective gaze back in time, there is no denying that Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace (1964) is one of the key influences on the giallo. Though it had very little success upon its initial release, and it did not cause a boom for this Italian genre immediately. . . instead, these mystery/thrillers were less focused on the intoxicating style found in Bava’s feature, looking more into the psychosexual realm while pulling from films from other countries (the works of Hitchcock, Clouzot’s Diabolique, the krimi or crime movies out of Germany). It was not until Dario Argento caused a giallo explosion with 1970's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (which was influenced by Blood and Black Lace), that things changed. . . the visual panache of these two pictures giving 1970's Italian film makers something more close to home to serve as inspiration. And boy is this film sumptuous. Usually I wouldn’t start with the opening credits, but they are one of the best you’ll ever see. Creepily beautiful, Bava, along with cinematographer Ubaldo Terzano (the director, though uncredited, also helped with the lighting – after all, he was a director of photography before becoming a director), design a visual menagerie to introduce all of our main actors to us.

Of course, it is a good rule of thumb to never fool around with any zombies – after all, they can really make a mess of your pristine clothing – not to mention the whole ‘eating you’ thing. But here is something you perhaps didn’t know. . . the worst zombie of all – the ancient Etruscan. A gonzo, go for broke, grindhouse motion picture out of Italy, 1981's Burial Ground, directed by Andrea Bianchi (a wildcard, edgy film maker if there ever was one), is not for the faint of heart. Set in a stunning, if slightly shabby country villa (beautifully shot on location), a group of people have the misfortune of having been invited to celebrate a professor’s exciting new discovery. . . only problem, by the time they all arrive, the scientific mind (Raimondo Barbieri), has already been ripped to shreds by these walking dead Etruscans – you don’t have to worry too much, the prof’s fashion sense wasn’t very good.

And suddenly, a new contender arises. . . and by that I mean for all-time great giallo titles. Evoking the very essence of the Italian genre, 1975's The Police Are Blundering in the Dark, directed by one-and-done film maker Helia Colombo, may not have the sheer audacity of a title along the lines of Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, or the more macabre imagination of Death Walks on High Heels, but it is murder mystery cool personified. With the police only arriving for the final few minutes of the film (making it all a bit misleading). . . the title is actually in reference to a newspaper headline highlighting the incompetence of the fuzz in rural Italy. With four nude models having recently been murdered (by way of scissors or some other sharp instrument) – oh, the humanity!!! – all roads somehow lead to the Parisi estate.

A giallo that mostly forgoes the prototypical violent splatters and liberal amounts of nudity for a good old fashioned Agatha Christie style murder mystery, 1972's Knife of Ice, also sometimes known as Dagger of Ice and The Ice Pick (memo: ice does not play any part in this motion picture), is the fourth and final time Italian film maker Umberto Lenzi (Seven Blood-Stained Orchids) and American actress Carroll Baker (Baby Doll; The Game) would work together. Baker stars as Martha Caldwell, a woman who has been mute since she was thirteen (it all stems from the fact she was rescued by her parents during a horrid train crash, only to then witness them burn to death – in many ways, the occurrence has stunted her at that very age). Opening with a fantastic sequence in which she attempts to conquer her fears by waiting at the train station for her incoming cousin, Jenny Ascot (Evelyn Stewart – The Psychic), it very much sets the mood – a tense, classical style intro (somewhat reminiscent of the many works of Hitchcock) that makes us feel for our struggling main character.

It is always an intriguing prospect to watch the one film that doesn’t fit into a genre film maker’s oeuvre. For The Master of Suspense – Alfred Hitchcock, it was the screwball comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith (circa 1941 – no, he was not alive to direct the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie vehicle in 2005), for Martin Scorsese, the master of the crime movie, it has to be the children’s film Hugo, and for Jesús Franco, the creator of stylish exploitation B pictures packed with sex and violence, 1984's Bahía Blanca fits the bill. The master of pumping them out fast, this was Franco’s tenth of ten movies made in 1984. . . a time when the independent industry was losing their avenue with exploitation flicks (and Franco’s famous touch of softcore was being eliminated by cinema being divided into either adult or mainstream), as Hollywood was learning how to create higher budget slasher flicks that blew these little pictures out of the water – meaning that, the writer/director found himself self-producing a lot of his own films (often disappearing or finding their way onto sub-par VHS – like this rarely seen picture).

Expect some lowlifes in the highlands – after all, don’t they say, ‘expect less rather than moor, and you won’t be disappointed’; also, look for some individuals who put the clan in clandestine. Another warning, when dealing with crypts, loch it up and throw away the key. . . okay, enough with all of this wacky wordplay and welcome to one of those intriguing gialli that uproots from their native Italy to a foreign destination (if you haven’t yet guessed Scotland, my kilty pleasure of quirky puns was for naught); namely, Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye (1973). Directed by Antonio Margheriti (though you will see his English name, Anthony M. Dawson, in the credits), we are transported into the gothic world of the Scottish countryside alongside Corringa (Jane Birkin), a young woman that is part of the ancient family of MacGrieff – though MacGuffin might be a better name with all of the trickery found in the plot. Making the trip to her clan’s ancestral home (actually a gothic castle named Dragonstone), what she doesn’t know is that a murder has been committed in the cavernous basement of the abode (a location that would make Bruce Wayne jealous).