1970s Italian Horror Part Thirty-Three

FIVE WOMEN FOR THE KILLER

(1974)

Dir - Stelvio Massi

Overall: MEH

 

The third full-length from cinematographer-turned director Stelvio Massi, Five Women for the Killer, (5 donne per l'assassino), understandably has some inventive camerawork, but it follows the giallo framework in an unremarkable manner.  This comes down to the screenplay by Jacques Barclay, Gianfranco Clerici, and Roberto Gianviti which concerns the bog-standard, black-gloved killer who makes phone calls without saying anything and this time slices up women that are pregnant.  The structure is relentlessly dull as we follow around too many unnecessary secondary characters, find out one of them is with child, and then said victim gets predictably knocked-off shortly thereafter.  In between these sporadic kills, the police sit down and interview the same people over and over again and J&B bottles are in full display virtually everywhere.  Three women on screen sport reddish hair and look exactly the same and at least twenty minutes could have been cut from the run time to streamline things as Francis Matthews' protagonist takes a backseat at regular intervals.  The killer reveal is as easily foreseeable as all of the switch-blade slashing murders, but Massi and fellow director of photography Sergio Rubini do stage some adequate shots and atmosphere here or there.

 

REFLECTIONS IN BLACK

(1975)

Dir - Tano Cimarosa

Overall: WOOF

Tough guy character actor Tano Cimarosa took his first of only three cracks at directing with Reflections in Black, (Il vizio ha le calze nere, Vice Wears Black Hose); a giallo that is easily in the top running as one of the most unnecessary and boring ever made.  Redundant to the point of parody, Adriano Bolzoni and Luigi Latini de Marchi's script makes sure to put in the switch-blade-using/cross-dressing/black-gloved murderer, a flaming homosexual, sinister phone calls, endlessly monotonous banter between police inspectors, soft-focus sex scenes, and an expository dialog dump at the end to explain the killer's disturbed motivation.  There is also a repetitive musical score as decreed by Italian law apparently to be in all giallos and the entire structure is so hack-laden as to be borderline insulting.  This is further unforgiving due to Cimarosa's noticeably inept directing style which is nothing more than "point the camera at the actors until they've finished saying all of their lines".  Never once is any sense of momentum made paramount and it is visually ugly at worst and merely inconsequentially dull at best.  Cimarosa seems to be the only one slightly enjoying himself on screen as a gruff detective, since almost all of the other performers come off as if they are just as uninterested as the viewer is.  Even with the spicy detail of all of the murder victims being women who engage in lesbian affairs, (which in this universe is every woman shown on screen), the end result could not be more lifeless.

CRAZY DESIRES OF A MURDERER
(1977)
Dir - Filippo Walter Ratti
Overall: MEH

A giallo by-way-of Agatha Christie mystery, Crazy Desires of a Murderer, (I vizi morbosi di una governante, Morbid Vices of a Housekeeper), has copious amounts of nudity, detailed taxidermy, and eyes getting cut out of people's already dead faces, but it is still a mundane watch.  The last film to be directed by Filippo Walter Ratti and scripted by frequent Emmanuel screenwriter Ambrogio Molteni, it uses the ole gag of a bunch of hip young people having a weekend shindig at an isolated mansion, this one belonging to one of the gang whose father is a wheelchair-bound curmudgeon that likes Chinese art.  People sit around a talk, dance while buzzed on Jim Bean, take their clothes off and fornicate with each other, and then one of them gets murdered in their sleep which brings in Corrado Gaipa's overweight and limping, yet crafty police inspector to hang out there until discovering the culprit.  Of course it ends up being a poorly thought-out, elaborate scheme on the bad guy's part that is further exploitative in nature for involving a dim-witted young boy who is locked away after killing a guy that was banging his now dead mother, (long story there), but the presentation is too sterile to enjoy.  The actors all seem bored as Gaipa has endless conversations with them and says that he knows that they are all hiding something several dozen times, but for Euro-trash fans who do not mind boring, flattly-shot sex scenes one after the other, this may be passable.

1970s Italian Horror Part Thirty-Two

THE DESIGNATED VICTIM

(1971)

Dir - Maurizio Lucidi

Overall: MEH

 

For his first film of the 1970s, director Maurizio Lucidi reworked Alfred Hitchcock's seminal Strangers on a Train with The Designated Victim, (La vittima designata, Slam Out); an adequate giallo variation to one of the most seminal works from the Master of Suspense.  Though visually stylish with some loud, dated set design and wonderful location shooting, Lucidi is no Hitchcock or even a non-union Italian equivalent thereof.  The entire film is thoroughly lacking in thrilling set pieces, save for the final couple of minutes where Tomas Milian's duped protagonist finally cracks under the pressure of Pierre Clémenti's disturbed, befriending manipulation.  Some of the details inherent in Fulvio Gicca Palli, Fabio Carpi, and Luigi Malerba's script are well-thought out, but the story lacks the proper momentum to keep the viewer from losing interest.  It is mostly an overly-talky affair where Milian has variations of the same conversation with everyone that he encounters, from his ill-tempered wife, to his doting mistress, to the suspicious police inspector, to Clémenti's charming sociopath.  Far from a failure, but still an unmemorable offering.

DEATH WILL HAVE YOUR EYES

(1974)

Dir - Giovanni d’Eramo

Overall: MEH

The only existing directorial effort from screenwriter Giovanni d'Eramo, Death Will Have Your Eyes, (La moglie giovane), has an unorthodox structure and some recognizable faces, but its dour story gives way to stagnant pacing issues.  Marisa Mell plays the doomed heroine; a down on her luck woman who theoretically hits it big by marrying Farley Granger's much older, wealthy doctor who for whatever reason is unable to perform sexually, leading Mell to fall in love with an attractive, far less wealthy man that is closer to her age.  Things get far more complicated in the second half though when Francisco Rabal decides to blackmail her, at which point the movie becomes monotonous in their bitter dialog with each other, which of course results in rape and murder because this is an Italian exploitation film after all.  Genre regular Helga Liné shows up in a supporting role as well, (naked of course in the very first scene), plus character actor Luciano Pigozzi makes a blink and you'll miss it appearance early on.  Very little happens throughout the running time and the more dramatic moments spring up out of nowhere, making for a confused effort, what with the non-linear storytelling in tow.

 

DR. JEKYLL LIKES THEM HOT

(1979)

Dir - Steno

Overall: MEH

On the one hand, Italian filmmaker Steno's, (Stefano Vanzina), comedic take on the Jekyll/Hyde formula is a refreshingly clever one, yet the humor itself is largely on the embarrassingly juvenile side.  The title of Dr. Jekyll Likes Them Hot, (Dottor Jekyll e gentile signora), may allude to it being a straight-ahead boner comedy and while such lighthearted horndog elements are still present, it serves better as an on-the-nose satire of corrupt capitalism.  Here, Paolo Villaggio's title character is a cartoon-villain bad guy who comes up with an elaborate scheme to maximize the profits of a drug conglomerate that he advises.  The world that everyone inhabits has become so cynical and cruel that his over-the-top vileness is not only seen as perfectly normal, but actually applaudable.  The role reversal between his two psyche manifestations occurs where his grandfather's formula turns him into a native, bumbling pacifist, at which point he sets about undoing every diabolical plot that his evil half has set in motion.  His docile demeanor is of course considered "queer" by all parties involved, which is not helped by the fact that Villaggio portrays him as an effeminate sissy who would rather read Bible verses than get in the eagerly-willing pants of sexpot scream queen Edwige Fenech.  The jokes are consistently annoying and of the "man falls down" and/or crude, terribly-aged sex gag variety, but one can at least give it props for tweaking the mythos and having a sardonic edge.

1970s Italian Horror Part Thirty-One

SHADOW OF ILLUSION

(1970)

Dir - Mario Caiano

Overall: MEH

A kind-of/not-really giallo from director Mario Caiano, Shadow of Illusion, (Ombre roventi), has more of an interesting history surrounding it compared to how enticing it is as an actual movie.  Partially shot in Egypt during the latter part of the War of Attrition, the cast and crew were given military escorts in order to get through their scenes.  Caiano claimed to have never seen the completed project, leaving after principal photography wrapped up.  Also, lead actor Daniela Giordano was a last minute replacement for a still unofficially confirmed Luciana Paluzzi dropping out, plus American William Berger decided to hop on out of convenience since he was already in Egypt shooting another movie at the time.  One of several cultural reactions to the Manson Family murders, it has a "hippies from hell" premise where Giordano's largely unemotive fashion model finds herself at the manipulation and mercy of a group of drug-taking scoundrels who conduct human sacrifices, as well as an older gentleman who is either the reincarnation of Osiris or simply claims to be as an effective pick-up line.  It has some trippy sequences, boobs, and wonderful location scenery, but it is mostly an underwritten and sluggish excuse for some slightly evocative sleaze.

 

LA MORTE SCENDE LEGGERA
(1972)
Dir - Leopoldo Savona
Overall: WOOF

 

The penultimate film from director Leopoldo Savona and released the same year as his Byleth: The Demon of Incest, La morte scende leggera, (Death Falls Lightly), is one of the most glacierly paced and moronic giallos in existence.  Convoluted plots were a prerequisite for such movies, but this one pushes plausibility to a breaking point with the police themselves conducting a laughably ridiculous scenario in order to edge Georgio Darica to the point of confessing to the murder of his wife.  Every minute feels like a hour as he and his mistress hold up in an empty hotel in the middle of the city, doing naked things together and eventually screaming at each other.  This is all before random people start showing up and playing with Darica's mind; random people who deliver their inconsequential dialog as if they are in no hurry whatsoever.  Once the ludicrous scheme is divulged, the audience will only have more questions, but the movie stops there with its brand of arbitrary nude/violent/surreal scenes that play the Scooby-Doo twist in the most unsatisfying of manners.  A slow hard rock song by Mack Porter is the only highlight, but Savona's direction is unforgivingly slow and he and Luigi Russo's script, (while differentiating itself from the heard), also insults the audience while asking them to both stay awake and give a shit about something so lazily thought-out.

 

THE FORBIDDEN ROOM

(1977)

Dir - Dino Risi

Overall: GOOD

As he had previously done with 1974's Scent of a Woman, Italian filmmaker Dino Risi adapts yet another literary work from author Giovanni Arpino, this time with the novel L'anima persa.  The Forbidden Room, (Anima persa), stars heavyweights Vittorio Gassman and Catherine Deneuve as an aloof, wealthy couple living in Venice who as it turns out, house a disturbing secret in their sprawling abode that their nephew Danilo Mattei innocently uncovers throughout the course of events.  For a thriller, the plot is uniquely void of intense set pieces.  Instead, the mysterious details unfold almost nonchalantly over conversation as Mattei gradually becomes more inquisitive, both investigating and picking up on the increasingly unhinged behavior of his Aunt and Uncle, finding out where the truth lies within the details that he is given.  The movie is photographed beautifully by Tonino Delli Colli, capturing a naturalistic, age-old Venice, plus the home where it is set gives off haunted mansion vibes as if they people living there have spiritually "died" long before the story starts and are merely taking up space now.  There is a twist of course in the film's final moments that may not seem surprising after all things are considered, but it is nevertheless a somber and dark one that leaves a lingering impression.

1970s Italian Horror Part Thirty

THE FOURTH VICTIM

(1971)

Dir - Eugenio Martín

Overall: MEH

Scheming women up to heaven knows what in Eugenio Martín's The Fourth Victim, (La última señora Anderson, Death at the Deep End of the Swimming Pool, The Fourth Mrs. Anderson); an Italian/Spanish co-production and one of several giallos to star Carroll Baker.  While it is as convoluted in its mystery as any from the sub-genre, it actually adheres to few other giallo trademarks.  This also renders it almost vacant on action as there are only two deaths, neither of them are murders, and they bookend the roughly ninety-minute running time. In between all of that we have Michael Craig acting indifferent over the fact that his wives keep dying while José Luis López Vázquez's police inspector, (equipped with an Irish accent in the English dub), persistently suspects him of foul play.   Of course this proves to be red herring as Baker and Euro-scream queen Marina Malfatti are the actual ladies that have either dubious or mentally unbalanced intentions, though neither of them are given convincing motivation for such traits.  The plotting is dreadfully sluggish as well as awkwardly rushed and confused in its final moments, plus Martín's direction is completely void of flare.

 

THE FRENCH SEX MURDERS

(1972)

Dir - Ferdinando Merighi

Overall: MEH

 

The second of only three directorial efforts from Ferdinando Merighi, The French Sex Murders, (Casa d'appuntamento, House of Rendezvous, The Bogey Man and the French Murders, Meurtre dans la 17e avenue), is sleazy and unremarkable despite some interesting details.  Star power wise, horror regulars Howard Vernon and Rosalba Neri are significantly featured, Euro bombshell Anita Ekberg has a minor role as a brothel owner, and professional Humphrey Bogart look-alike Robert Sacchi plays the police inspector with trench coat and cigarette in tow.  Merighi's direction is nothing to write home about and is mostly flat and lacking in energy, plus some of the shot construction and editing is sloppily handled.  Plenty violent, the gore is a mixed bag as the severed limbs and tomato soup blood look hilariously cheap and gaudy, yet the murders have a brutality to them that is amusing in an exploitative sense.  The final kill scene of the film sees the murderer beheading one woman, stabbing another, and then strangling and eye-gouging a third all in rapid succession of each other.  Otherwise though, it is flatly structured and offers little to the well-worn giallo formula.

 

LA PELLE SOTTO GLI ARTIGLI

(1975)

Dir - Alessandro Santini

Overall: WOOF

On paper, the pairing of a Nazi-atrocity-inspired mad scientist scheme, police procedural, and a budding romance between two doctors, (all of which is done under the guise of a giallo), should wield something less insufferably dull than writer/director Alessandro Santini's third film La pelle sotto gli artigli, (The Skin Under the Claws).  The problem lies almost entirely on the shoulders of Santini's wretchedly uninspired direction.  Brimful of stagnant wide-shots, Santini makes the common mistake of amateur-level filmmakers by simply setting up his camera and letting the actors say all of their lines before cutting to the very next scene where either the same characters or a few new ones also stand in frame so that they can say slight variations of the same dialog again.  This goes on and on with the grisly details of character actor Gordon Mitchell's murders are merely talked about instead of shown, until the last few minutes where we finally witness his laughably stupid torture dungeon which is all in the name of science and mating live people with dead body parts or something.  The final scene is a hoot for anyone unlucky enough to still be paying attention, but the movie is a lazy embarrassment for all involved and one that comes off as if the entire personnel in the production was barely interesting in what they were even doing in the first place.

1970s Italian Horror Part Twenty-Nine

THE DEVIL HAS SEVEN FACES

(1971)

Dir - Osvaldo Civirani

Overall: MEH

 

Osvaldo Civirani's The Devil Has Seven Faces, (Il diavolo a sette facce, Bloody Marry, Nights of Terror), ends up being a bog-standard crime-caper instead of a sensationalized giallo as both the title and Carroll Baker's involvement would otherwise suggest.  The gimmick here is that Baker plays a set of identical twin sisters, at least on paper as neither are shown together and it all ends up being a masquerade anyway, involving diamond theft and a series of thugs chasing her around.  Most of the plot twists are easy to divulge from miles away and despite the fact that she is in the lead, Baker does not get to do much besides wear a couple of wigs and act frightened once or twice, (including an early psyche-out scene where an Asian man scares her with a gorilla mask on for no decipherable reason).  Other genre regulars George Hilton and Luciano Pigozzi are present as well, plus the movie has a zippy musical score from Stelvio Cipriani featuring the common motif of a female vocalist scatting over breezy jazz.  Light on the murder and void of nudity, it serves better as a sleeping pill than as an engaging bit of Euro-thriller mayhem.

SMILE BEFORE DEATH

(1972)
Dir - Silvio Amadio
Overall: MEH

Director Silvio Amadio churned out two giallos in 1972 with Rosalba Neri, both similarly silly and focused on a small number of characters who mostly hold up in a single location.  Stylishly decorated though lacking in flashy cinematic tricks, Smile Before Death, (Il sorriso della iena, Smile of the Hyena), presents a convoluted love triangle if ever there was one.  A man in an open, bitter relationship with his wealthy wife has her killed by his mistress, only for his stepdaughter to show up and seduce both him, (eeewww), and said mistress, only for another murdering scheme and then a blackmailing one to each fall through due to double-crosses upon double-crosses as well as some good ole karmic fate.  A ridiculous story to be sure and one that is endlessly enhanced/ruined via more montages than a Rocky movie by the obnoxious song "Iena Sequence" which features giggly scat vocals by Edda Dell'Orso and creates a comedic tone from the offset; a tone that may or may not have been intentional.  While Neri amazingly keeps her clothes on throughout almost the entirety, Jenny Tamburi steps in with the heavy birthday suit lifting, so there is still the standard quota of erotic, Italian sleaze to delight genre fans.

 

THE EXORCIST: ITALIAN STYLE

(1975)

Dir - Ciccio Ingrassia

Overall: WOOF

The second of only two films that Ciccio Ingrassia of Franco and Ciccio fame directed, The Exorcist: Italian Style, (L'esorciccio, The Exorciccio), is a straight-ahead parody of the William Friedkin movie and is about as groan-worthy in its stupidity as one would expect.  Considered one of the worst films of all time in its native Italy, it is not as wretched as such a reputation dictates, yet its dated hijinks and pacing lulls leave much to be desired.  Opening with a scene straight out of the original where Ingrassia is at a digging site in Iran where a worker excitingly notifies him about a demonic amulet that looks enough like the mini Pazuzu statue to get the point, this is the only moment in the movie that is not played for juvenile, "people run around in fast motion and/or make wacky faces" nyuck nyucks.  The plot hinges upon said amulet that goes from person to person, possessing them in unique ways including making a Mayer dance like Elvis, having his child son gain superhuman strength, turning his teenage daughter into a stripteasing seductress, and allowing for his wife to grow a beard that she cannot shave off.  Plenty of Neanderthal-brained mayhem ensues, but it is more obnoxious than funny with Ingrassia and his bumbling sidekick Mimmo Baldi having only the most grating of chemistry together.  Too much screen time is also dedicated to Lino Banfi's Mayor chewing the scenery in his plea to not have a public scandal ruin his reputation and all of the set pieces go on for a torturous amount of time.

1970s Italian Horror Part Twenty-Eight

THE RED HEADED CORPSE

(1972)

Dir - Renzo Russo

Overall: MEH

 

The final film from director Renzo Russo, The Red Headed Corpse, (La rossa dalla pelle che scotta, The Sensuous Doll, Sweet Spirits, The Redhead with Hot Skin), is a curious one centered around Farley Granger's alcoholic, insecure painter who inexplicably brings a mannequin to life.  A strange story to be sure, one could assume that it is either supernatural or psychological in nature, yet it may in fact be both.  Granger's is not the only character to interact with his newfound model/obsession/love interest as several other men become infatuated with her as well.  At other times though, it seems as if Granger is living in a demented fantasy as people witness him interacting with a dummy, perhaps raising the idea that Erika Blanc's seductress only "comes alive" for those that fall for her bewitching beauty.  Another actress plays her as both mute and docile before Granger makes love to her, at which point Blanc takes over and behaves more in accordance with a traditional succubus.  The film is neither creepy nor suspenseful and it is also void of murder, (unless we look at Blanc as a legitimately flesh-and-blood creature), but it has an odd, sinister undercurrent all the same.

DEATH CARRIES A CANE

(1973)

Dir - Maurizio Pradeaux

Overall: MEH

 

A giallo-by-numbers from director Maurizio Pradeaux, (and his first of only two that fall into said genre), Death Carries a Cane, (Passi di danza su una lama di rasoio, Dance Steps on the Edge of a Razor, The Tormentor, Maniac at Large, The Night of the Rolling Heads, Devil Blade), has little to offer besides providing yet another on-screen pairing of Luciano Ercoli regulars Nieves Navarro and Simón Andreu.  Compared to Ercoli's three giallos with the aforementioned actors, this one is exasperatingly dull and formulaic.  Of course the killer has to have a murdering gimmick, (hence the walking stick of the title), of course the main protagonist has to be suspected as the murderer, and of course the police choose to condescend a woman instead of taking her insistent eyewitness testimony seriously.  All of the beats are in place with none of the flare that other filmmakers routinely utilized.  Instead, Pradeax merely goes through the motions and the results are pedestrian enough to regularly lose interest in along the way, to the point where the killer reveal may cause more of a "Who?" reaction than the intended gasp.  Worry not though, Navarro is naked a few times and pretends to be a prostitute during a failed sting operation, so there is that.

 

THE SISTER OF URSULA

(1978)

Dir - Enzo Milioni

Overall: WOOF

Writer/director Enzo Milioni's first time behind the lens was with the blabbering, incoherent snore-fest The Sister of Ursula, (La sorella di Ursula).  One would think that a sleazy giallo with soft pornographic inserts and a premise of a killer who murders women with a wooden dildo would at least be occasionally amusing, but alas, this movie is hellbent on proving otherwise.  The first act establishes two miserable sisters who head off to a seaside resort after their father dies, where the hotel manager introduces them to a night club singer, at which point the first random, naked woman succumbs to death-by-phallic-device.  Things go off the rails quickly from there as the narrative constantly switches protagonists, introducing far too much lackluster melodrama to even bother paying attention to, before coming back to characters that you barely remember meeting in the first place.  As usual, the sex scenes go on for only a few minutes yet feel as if they are nine hours long a piece, plus the sensationalized murder gimmick is underplayed to the point of being inconsequential.  The film even fails to land a satisfying, rug-pull killer reveal as it just ends up being the one person who acted more deranged than everyone else the whole time.

1970s Italian Horror Part Twenty-Seven

SO SWEET, SO DEAD

(1972)

Dir - Roberto Bianchi Montero

Overall: MEH

Leaning more on the police procedural side of the giallo spectrum, Roberto Bianchi Montero's So Sweet, So Dead, (Rivelazioni di un maniaco sessuale al capo della squadra mobile, The Slasher is the Sex Maniac, Penetration), is one of several Italian films that Farley Granger appeared in after moving to Rome for a number of years.  It also features Nieves Navarro, (Susan Scott), in a smaller part, doing what she usually does in such movies, namely getting naked and getting murdered.  The killer here is picking off promiscuous women who are all cheating on their prominent husbands, leaving photographs behind of their adultery to spice up the crime scene.  Granger is the frustrated police detective who is not only several steps behind the black hat/black trench-coat/black pantyhose-masked murderer, but also has to deal with the press taking regular pot-shots at his department.  Nothing unique to such movies and Montero's direction is largely lifeless, utilizing the usual slasher tricks of cutting out the soundtrack to readily announce the next kill scene.  Luigi Angelo's script is laughably infantile as well, featuring such things as a woman who witnesses the killer, the killer noticing he is being witnessed, and then said woman not even contemplating telling anyone in law enforcement as well as nonchalantly refusing her boyfriend's escort to her apartment later.

 

FOOTPRINTS ON THE MOON

(1975)

Dir - Luigi Bazzoni

Overall: MEH

 

The final full-length from filmmaker Luigi Bazzoni, Footprints on the Moon, (Le orme, Primal Impulse), adapts co-screenwriter Mario Fenelli's novel Las Huellas into a strange, psychological thriller of a disturbed woman dealing with traumatic bouts of amnesia and delusion.  Shot in both Turkey and Rome, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro captures the remote scenery of an off-season, island beach resort in a gorgeous manner, similar to Eduard van der Enden's photography on Harry Kümel's Daughters of Darkness from four years prior.  The isolated setting comes off as its own foreboding presence in this respect, as Florinda Bolkan seems perpetually frustrated there with her identity in question the entire time.  The plot line is vague and repetitive, yet this may be intentional as to mirror Bolkan's confused ordeal.  Both black and white as well as sepia-toned images of Klaus Kinski and suffocating astronauts regularly haunt her, so it can all mean some diabolical, experimental conspiracy or just the unhinged state of our protagonist.  The presentation is too aloof to fully captivate and the deliberate pacing gets the best of the movie, but it is a visual triumph at least that may wield more intellectually stimulating rewards upon further viewings.

 

DEATH STEPS IN THE DARK

(1977)

Dir - Maurizio Pradeaux

Overall: GOOD

By 1977, giallos were overdue for parody and though efforts in the past afforded plenty of silly plot points and exaggerated performances, Death Steps in the Dark, (Passi di morte perduti nel buio, Death Steps Lost in the Dark), leans into the comedy as much as it does black-gloved killers slicing victim's throats up.  The penultimate film and only the second giallo to be directed by Maurizio Pradeaux, it concerns Leonard Mann's reporter who gets mixed up with a murder on a train; a murder that gets uncovered by ridiculous ruses being played by the police as well as the surviving passengers who stage a "catch the killer" scheme that could only be conceived of by Italian screenwriters in the 1970s.  While the movie meanders during its second act by following around the less-than-gripping personal lives of secondary characters, the tonal balance of sleaze, bright-red-bloodshed, and intentionally silly pitter-patter between everyone on screen is sufficiently handled by Pradeaux.  Vera Kruska is delightful as Mann's Swedish, airhead model girlfriend, as is Robert Webber who prefers complaining about having indigestion during a crime scene investigation and arresting a casual coke dealer instead of the person who he has a warrant out for when given the chance.  Low on suspense maybe, but it is also light on its feet with tongue-in-cheek performances, some brutal slayings, and a refreshingly humorous take on well-worn tropes.