70's Italian Horror Part Twenty-Six

SLAUGHTER HOTEL

(1971)

Dir - Fernando Di Leo

Overall: MEH

 

A lackluster and sleazy giallo with an underused performance from Klaus Kinski, Slaughter Hotel, (La bestia uccide a sangue freddo, Asylum Erotica, Cold Blooded Beast, Les insatisfaites poupées érotiques du docteur Hitchcock), has an occasionally wild soundtrack yet little else going for it.  The first film of the 1970s to be directed by Fernando Di Leo, the location was previously used in the 1966 film The Murder Clinic and its gets an exclusive work out here as the entire movie unfolds there, with a clandestine killer haphazardly murdering women in such a leisurely structured sanatorium.  Practically every woman on screen takes her clothes off at some point, especially Lady Frankenstein herself Rosalba Neri who portrays a nymphomaniac what will writhe around on her bed or frantically run back in forth in the shower if not in the warm embraces of a man.  Everyone else on screen is otherwise interchangeable though and equally horny, so the audience is naturally uninvested in who gets picked off and for what reason.  The killer reveal is as nonsensical and unimportant as any from such movies and the plotting is horrendously repetitive, but the avant-garde music and sound design prove memorable, plus Franco Villa's cinematography is more atmospheric than the brain-dead material deserves.

 

CRIMES OF THE BLACK CAT

(1972)

Dir - Sergio Pastore

Overall: GOOD

 

A rare stab, (pun intended), at giallo from director Sergio Pastore, Crimes of the Black Cat, (Sette scialli di seta gialla, Seven Shawls of Yellow Silk), is an above average one with some much appreciated pizazz from behind the lens.  Genre mainstays Anthony Steffen and Giacomo Rossi Stuart are both present with the former playing a blind man who keeps annoying the police with his of course completely correct assumptions about the killer that he believes to have overheard and/or smelled at the beginning of the film.  Such a gimmick is well utilized, particularly in the final set piece where Steffen thwarts his pursuer, a scene that ends in one of the most hilarious, "nothing more to see here" freeze-frames in giallo history.  There is no repetitive musical score to keep one annoyed and it is also refreshing that Pastore and cinematographer Guglielmo Mancori keep the camera work on the flashy end, also structuring atmospheric, eye-popping shots on occasion.  It is not as stylized as Dario Argento's more wacky work for obvious comparison, but it has just enough convoluted plot details to keep the pace snappy instead of overbearing, plus the kills feature somebody throwing a cat at people so that is certainly something.

 

THE PYJAMA GIRL CASE

(1977)

Dir - Flavio Mogherini

Overall: MEH

Based on a 1934 Australian cold case of a woman whose severely burned body was found inside of an abandoned car on a beach, (a woman who was wearing distinctly designed pajamas), the apply titled The Pyjama Girl Case, (La ragazza dal pigiama giallo, The Girl in Yellow Pyjamas), is a fragmented, kind-of giallo from co-writer/director Flavio Magherini that focuses on two parallel narratives.  On the one hand, it is an interesting idea to split various factual elements from the real, true crime inspiration into two different stories, but it makes for a confused watch that takes some getting used to.  Due to the double narrative, the one-hundred and three minute running time feels bloated as neither story links up, making this almost like an anthology movie if both segments were bounced between throughout.  An elderly looking Ray Milland is fun as a retired detective who is pleased to be back on a case in order to have something to do, but Dalila Di Lazzaro has a more difficult time in the equally convoluted and underwritten other story as a troubled young woman with three different lovers.  The music is typically repetitive, including two songs by Amanda Lear; the slow disco "Look at Her Dancing" and the romantic theme "Your Yellow Pyjama".