Velvet Fog

The heat can make us all go a little bit crazy sometimes... but what happens when the thermometer is ready to pop and you’ve just escaped from the insane asylum? A confined, claustrophobic, sweltering film noir, 1950's Dial 1119, directed by Gerald Mayer (son of Louis B. Mayer), makes you feel the heat. Young, baby faced Gunther Wyckoff (Marshall Thompson) isn’t what he looks, he is, for lack of a better term, bonkers. Having already killed numerous people, it was police psychologist Dr. John Faron (Sam Levene), who was able to save his life from the electric chair.

Picking up several years after the original feature, Don’t Breathe 2 (2021) flips the script, with co-writers Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues (though this time the latter takes over directing duties), placing the audience in the shoes of The Blind Man (rather than those who attempted to rob him in the genesis film). . . following him into a most intense scenario. In a wild, bold, and arguably controversial maneuver, Alvarez and Sayagues attempt to transform the sinister former veteran from the previous movie into something akin to an anti-hero – within the narrative, themes of rebirth and redemption can be found. Now a ‘father’ to his ‘daughter’, Phoenix – no subtlety there (Madelyn Grace), The Blind Man is now humanized with a real name, Norman Nordstrom (Stephen Lang). No spoilers on her backstory.

In the late 1980s, Italian director Umberto Lenzi, best known for his giallo and horror fare – think Seven Blood-Stained Orchids and Knife of Ice, came to America to work with fellow Italian film maker Joe D’Amato (the man had been Lenzi’s cinematographer on 1970's A Quiet Place to Kill). Making four films together in two years, the one to be looked at here today is 1989's Hitcher in the Dark. . . a bizarre flip-the-script hybrid between the recently successful horror movie The Hitcher (1986) and the ever successful Alfred Hitchcock picture Psycho (1960). Following a mentally disturbed man in his early twenties, Mark Glazer (Joe Balogh) has a rather sick obsession (both sexual and violent) with his mother – the whole issue stemming from the fact she abandoned the family when he was only ten years old to schtup the local tennis pro (I’m sure the athlete is still claiming game, set, and match).

Sometimes you just can’t catch a break. As if fate itself is against you, the dominoes fall, one at a time, each bringing with it another problem that places you in a further bind. Increasingly more Desperate (1947), you have to measure every step appropriately, for the tagline dramatically suggests, “MURDER at any moment! SUSPENSE. . . in every step!!!”. A film noir directed by Anthony Mann (he is also co-credited for the story along with Dorothy Atlas), our unlucky man is Steve Randall (Steve Brodie), a vet who has just returned from World War 2. Though he has married and found a job (as a truck driver), the next domino falls when a wily criminal gang, led by Walt Radak (Raymond Burr – yes, Perry Mason himself), reaches out to him for his driving skills and giant vehicle (on his anniversary, no less).

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.

A fascinating combination of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” infused with the daunting question of ‘can you change your own fate?’, Lucio Fulci’s The Psychic (1977) – at least in the US (in its native Italy: Seven Notes in Black. . . other title iterations include Murder to the Tune of the Seven Black Notes and Death Tolls Seven Times), is a parapsychology tinged giallo nonpareil. Virginia Ducci (Jennifer O’Neill) is haunted by the second sight. . . something she horrifically learned when she could sense her mother committing suicide when she was just a young girl. Having moved on from that traumatizing early childhood experience, the English woman has married a wealthy, frequently traveling Italian businessman, Francesco Ducci (Gianni Garko), moving from her native UK to picturesque Italy.