(1985)
Dir - Carlo Vanzina
Overall: MEH
Interestingly, the writer/director team of Enrico and Carlo Vanzina deliberately stylized Nothing Underneath, (Sotto il vestito niente, Pele nua, Où est passée Jessica, Modelmordene, The Last Shot, Mannekiinimurhaaja), as a Brian de Palma-esque giallo, which was a genre that de Palma himself adapted a handful of times across the Atlantic. Bringing it back to home base, the film takes place in Milan, concerns a pair of psychically connected siblings, has plenty of T&A, and revolves around the fashion industry where a guy witnesses his sister being murdered via supernatural mental images and then travels to discover the killer. Donald Pleasence also shows up to eat spaghetti at a Wendy's and talk in an Italian accent as the head police inspector, so he at least interjects some life into an otherwise pedestrian offering. The movie was originally to be an adaptation of Paolo Pietroni's novel of the same name, (with famed filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni of all people at the helm), but it eventually fell into the Vanzina brother's hands, with screenwriter Franco Ferrini allegedly reconfiguring the script from scratch. In any event, it disguises its exploitative nature to a point, but all of the elements are merely competently rehashed, so it has little going for it in the end.
(1988)
Dir - Dario Piana
Overall: MEH
The full-length debut from TV commercial director Dario Piana, Too Beautiful to Die, (Sotto il vestito niente II), lumped itself in with Carlo Vanzina's 1985's erotic thriller Nothing Underneath, but like many Italian films which were haphazardly thrown into a franchise after the fact, (and in this case, a franchise that does not exist), it bares little resemblance to Vanzina's aforementioned giallo. It still revolves around the fashion industry and has a police inspector trying to track down the killer, but countless other Euro slashers adhered to a similar jumping off point going all the way back to Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace. The details here are lazily fleshed out, as if Piana and his co-screenwriters were just going on autopilot and throwing in whatever merely serviceable plot nonsense they could in order to tie together one slow montage after the other. On that note, the film is plenty stylish, featuring wet models in Max Max/Rollerball gear doing heaven knows what while the bad guy goes around slicing people up with a nifty medieval-styled device. Nudity, some steamy saxophone music, flashy colors, and dark warehouses provide the alluring scenery, (also a guy plays an Atari-styled porno game on his computer at one point), but the story is instantly forgettable, the dubbing of course sucks, and the kill scenes are both lame and infrequent.
(1989)
Dir - Stelvio Massi
Overall: WOOF
To sum up what kind of giallo Stelvio Massi/Max Steel's Arabella Black Angel, (Arabella l'angelo nero), is, a woman willingly goes into a castle with S&M practitioners having sex, she gets yelled at for not charging money like the rest of them do, then a cop bends her over her car and asks her "Didn't anyone ever tell you its illegal to be a whore in this country?', followed by said cop raping her on said car. Oh, and he rapes her again within the next ten minutes and then gets killed. The proceeding hour and some change of this gutter-level Euro-sleaze continues in a similar vein where naked women cry while being degraded in some capacity, and then someone keeps easily stabbing people to death with a pair of scissors. Sometimes the nakedness and the fornication is consensual, but the murder, (and particularly the genital mutilation), naturally never is. Who any of these people are and why they are all either assholes or emotionally and physically battered women does not seem to be of any importance. Going through the debauchery motions in the laziest manner possible does seem to be of importance. Massi had a steady body of exploitation on his resume at this point and had also been a cinematographer on a hefty amount of equally-to-less gaudy movies, but this would be a bottom-barrel entry on anyone's filmography.
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