(1970)
Dir - Sergio Bergonzelli
Overall: MEH
A particularly ridiculous bit of Euro-trash from co-writer/director Sergio Bergonzelli, In the Folds of the Flesh, (Nelle pieghe della carne, Las endemoniadas, La Folle, Mansion Sangriamente, Felicity),
also serves as the final screen appearance from Eleonora Rossi Drago.
Abusing camera zooms as if he has a quota to fulfill, Bergonzelli and
fellow screenwriters Fabio De Agostini and Mario Caiano, (the latter
contributing the story outline), concoct a deliciously sleazy scenario
where a family of traumatized, beheading murderers go about their
business in their spacious, seaside villa. Practically everyone who
visits Drago and her two adult children ends up dead, (usually with
their heads cut off), but not before cackling incessantly while raping
or robbing them. The film has an "everything but the kitchen sink"
feel, throwing in inconsistent character behavior, naked, Nazi gas
chamber flashbacks, expository dialog dumps, bad guys with guns, asinine
plot twists, the same trumpet musical cue appearing every fifteen
seconds, and again just so many zooms. In any event, there is certainly
enough tastelessness and unintentional hysterics to please exploitation
fans who crave badly dubbed, camped-up, melodramatic mental illness.
(1972)
Dir - Romano Scavolini
Overall: MEH
Director Romano Scavolini entered the giallo game with the lackluster Spirits of Death, (Un bianco vestito per Marialé, A White Dress for Mariale, Exorcisme Tragique). Featuring genre regulars Ida Galli, Ivan Rassimov, and Luigi Pistilli, the screenplay by Giuseppe Mangione and Remigio Del Grosso has a remarkably predictable killer reveal, yet the plot earns some points for its unique set up which only reveals itself to be a murder mystery well into the second half. Gathering a bunch of degenerates together in a Gothic mansion by way of a not-so-mysterious invitation, it is inevitable that they will eventually get picked off and indeed they do, occasionally in stylistic, brutal ways. Shawn Robinson, (whose non-whiteness also serves as a means for her boyfriend to smack her around despite the usual Italian tendency to treat women deplorably on screen anyway), meets a particularly gruesome fate by getting her head repeatedly smashed while in a swimming pool. The performances are of the standard, melodramatic variety, the misogyny is very much in place, there is a tame and random lesbian sex encounter because naked women, there is also a weird dinner party where everyone dresses in silly costumes, and its depiction of mental illness is about as nuanced as in any other Euro-trash vehicle.
Dir - Mario Gariazzo
Overall: WOOF
Euro-trash movies from the 1970s suffered from vegetative pacing as frequently as they did poor dubbing and Mario Gariazzo's Eyes Behind the Stars, (Occhi dalle stelle), is guaranteed to whisk away viewers to slumber land. A UFO conspiracy movie, there are a handful of ominous POV scenes sprinkled around where the heavy-breathing extraterrestrials, (who are all just actors wearing costumes that look like they were made out of gray blankets), slowly stalk a few people and abduct one of them so that he can stare wide-eyed in a brightly lit set that looks as frightening as the inside of Tom Baker's Tardis. While these moments provide the film with some much needed atmosphere, everything else that happens is boring enough to constitute as a war crime. A fashion photographer takes some pictures of aliens in the woods and the rest of the movie bounces between the people who have the photo negatives going up against a shady organization that wants to keep the existence of outer space visitors from the public at all cost. Characters talk and talk and talk and goddamn talk about this until everyone watching would prefer to be anally-probed by these blanket aliens than to listen to another second of talking, then the whole thing ends in as anti-climactic of a fashion as possible. That is the good part though; it eventually ends.
Overall: WOOF
Euro-trash movies from the 1970s suffered from vegetative pacing as frequently as they did poor dubbing and Mario Gariazzo's Eyes Behind the Stars, (Occhi dalle stelle), is guaranteed to whisk away viewers to slumber land. A UFO conspiracy movie, there are a handful of ominous POV scenes sprinkled around where the heavy-breathing extraterrestrials, (who are all just actors wearing costumes that look like they were made out of gray blankets), slowly stalk a few people and abduct one of them so that he can stare wide-eyed in a brightly lit set that looks as frightening as the inside of Tom Baker's Tardis. While these moments provide the film with some much needed atmosphere, everything else that happens is boring enough to constitute as a war crime. A fashion photographer takes some pictures of aliens in the woods and the rest of the movie bounces between the people who have the photo negatives going up against a shady organization that wants to keep the existence of outer space visitors from the public at all cost. Characters talk and talk and talk and goddamn talk about this until everyone watching would prefer to be anally-probed by these blanket aliens than to listen to another second of talking, then the whole thing ends in as anti-climactic of a fashion as possible. That is the good part though; it eventually ends.
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