Overall: GOOD
Sergio Martino's second giallo outing The Case of the Scorpion's Tail, (Tail of the Scorpion), came out before the superior All the Colors of the Dark which upped the typical knife-stabbing stalker plot with some occult details. This one still prevails as a more conventional giallo, if not necessarily a landmark in the genre. There is plenty of wonderful scenery around Athens, Greece and Martino and cinematographer Emilio Foriscot utilize a hefty amount of claustrophobic and killer-point-of-view camera work that flash things up a bit. The murders are not Argento level ridiculous/awesome, (nor should they be exclusively expected to be), but a few are rather brutal and inventive enough. A nasty eye-gouging takes place as well as a guy hanging from a roof for dear life who looses his grip in a slicey way. The script effectively has every character and audience member guessing as to who the black leather clad murderer is and depending on how much of a genre expert you are, you may or may not see the obvious/not obvious/back to obvious twist coming. Even without going too overboard, (which is certainly welcome where giallo is concerned), this one is plenty sexy and contains a high body count to pretty fairly cross it over into recommendable terrain.
(1973)
Overall: GOOD
Giallo or otherwise, perhaps Sergio Martino's most well-known movie Torso, (I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale), has a deserving reputation as a slasher-pre-curser and one of the finer ones at that. So much that has sadly become cliche is front and center here, particularly the misogyny that is oozing in nearly every scene. It is one thing that women who show their boobs get brutally murdered and then have those very same boobs sliced and diced up at a steady rate, but it is another that nearly every male in the entire film is audibly gawking at every woman on screen, licking their lips whilst creeping on them, or simply beating them up. This is all more laughably inappropriate than offensive in a modern context and no one could mistake that there is a direct line from this to all the countless, slasher nasties that came in droves starting around the early 80s. What is excellent about it though is not the gore and copious amounts of naked ladies on the screen, but how stylishly directed it is. Martino has a flair for racking up the tension and toying with his audience, keeping the killer's identity misleading and killing-off main characters by means of great set-pieces. Even something that seems eye-ball-rollingly stupid like a clumsy girl falling down the stairs actually comes back into play later in a major plot point way. Slasher movies need not be a thing anymore and certainly need not follow any of the "rules" that beautifully work here, but this is a borderline-excellent example of when this stuff was still exciting and intelligently done.
(1978)
Overall: MEH
The jungle cannibal tribe horror sub-genre was in high swing around the late 70s when Sergio Martino got the chance to make an entry into it with The Mountain of the Cannibal God, (La montagna del dio cannibale, Slave of the Cannibal God, Prisoner of the Cannibal God). Stacy Keach and a forty-two year old Ursula Andress are this movie's version of A-listers and the latter gets lathered in goo while naked, so it certainly delivers the exploitative sex appeal. Speaking of exploitation, there is also some horrible animal mutilation, bestiality, and one guy's gentiles get forcibly removed. This is all on top of the standard orgy and human organ feasting moments such movies are required to have. So it hits all the marks, plus a few extras for the audience who goes for these gross-out things. Unfortunately (or not depending on one's tastes and stomachs), most of these nasty moments come within the last twenty-minutes, leaving the near hour and a half before it to plod and plod along. Martino does his best to keep the pace up when you could fit the script for this movie on one page probably, such as with some nice handheld camera work during some jungle rapids scenes. Still, it does not keep the film from being disastrously boring until we get to the actual cannibals. Still, the shock value near the end nearly makes the whole ordeal worth it.
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