Dir - Mario Caiano
Overall: MEH
Though it has a misleading and surreal opening where Rosemary Dexter witnesses the would-be murder of her psychiatrist love interest, (spoilers, its a nightmare), the rest of Eye in the Labyrinth, (L'occhio nel labirinto), is a clumsily executed giallo with a detrimentally glacial pace. On the one hand, director Mario Caiano and fellow co-writers Antonio Saguera and Horst Hachler keep things on the straight and narrow for the first two acts as Dexter goes looking for her boyfriend and ends up in a seaside village where a bunch of random people are living a carefree existence in a spacious estate. The monotony sets in quickly though where every character is so lifeless that all of their endless banter with each other becomes a chore to sit through. Things start to get more unhinged eventually, which is where the narrative embraces the incomprehensible and results in a type of melodramatic, pseudy-psychiatry twist that only exists in hack-laden genre screenplays. The jazzy musical score, endless camera zooms, occasional nudity, misogyny, and some off-color sleaze in the fact that one of the people on screen is a man parading as a woman, (and even screaming to the heavens that they are not a transvestite), are typical for low rent Euro-trash, but the story is too catastrophically dull to hinge any of its wackier nonsense on.
Overall: MEH
Though it has a misleading and surreal opening where Rosemary Dexter witnesses the would-be murder of her psychiatrist love interest, (spoilers, its a nightmare), the rest of Eye in the Labyrinth, (L'occhio nel labirinto), is a clumsily executed giallo with a detrimentally glacial pace. On the one hand, director Mario Caiano and fellow co-writers Antonio Saguera and Horst Hachler keep things on the straight and narrow for the first two acts as Dexter goes looking for her boyfriend and ends up in a seaside village where a bunch of random people are living a carefree existence in a spacious estate. The monotony sets in quickly though where every character is so lifeless that all of their endless banter with each other becomes a chore to sit through. Things start to get more unhinged eventually, which is where the narrative embraces the incomprehensible and results in a type of melodramatic, pseudy-psychiatry twist that only exists in hack-laden genre screenplays. The jazzy musical score, endless camera zooms, occasional nudity, misogyny, and some off-color sleaze in the fact that one of the people on screen is a man parading as a woman, (and even screaming to the heavens that they are not a transvestite), are typical for low rent Euro-trash, but the story is too catastrophically dull to hinge any of its wackier nonsense on.
(1975)
Dir - Helia Colombo
Overall: WOOF
The novelty of a giallo from the genre's heyday that is directed by a woman wears off quick when watching the resulting The Police Are Blundering in the Dark, (La polizia brancola nel buio), which is easily the most lethargic i.e. boring i.e. worst giallo ever made. While this may sound hyperbolic, there is a reason that the film lingered in more obscurity than most others of its kind, even being shelved for two years after being shot. The only film credit from Helia Colombo, she unfortunately possesses abysmal skills from behind the lens. There may not be a movie with more horrendous pacing issues as Colombo merely fits everyone into a wide shot and films them partaking of casual chit-chat without any closeups or cuts. These scenes go on for what feels like lifetimes, as can be said about the whole ordeal. A woman's blouse comes undone in the opening scene when she is running away from her attacker, (as blouses of course often do), and this sets up a continuing motif of bare tits being on display in place of any suspense, flashy cinematography, or agile storytelling. Another women who is a dead ringer for Briana Banks walks around her hotel room naked while eating a sandwich, a butler who is a dead ringer for James Keach is revealed to be a secret agent, a guy in a wheelchair who is a dead ringer for Doug Henning nonchalantly invents a machine that can take pictures of people's thoughts, and a couple of people get murdered for reasons that are never explained.
Dir - Gianfranco Parolini
Overall: WOOF
An Italian production that was made in Canada because who can resist those cheap Canuck shooting locations, Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century, (Yeti - Il gigante del 20º secolo), was the penultimate film from director Gianfranco Parolini who mainly worked within Spaghetti Westerns, sword and sandal movies, and the Kommissar X franchise. Even by the low art/high trash standards of Italian cash-grabs, this one is more infamous than the lot of them and for logical reasons. We have a cutesy tone with a dog that befriends Mimmo Crao dressed as Big Foot, the usual back and forth plotting of some people being nice to the giant monster while others just scream and/or shoot at it, horrendous rear projection special effects, and Crao's yeti getting sexually aroused when sixteen year-old Antonella Interlenghi brushes up against his nipples, instantly making them erect. Those Italians sure know how to cinema, amiright? A steady combination of boring, formulaic, incompetent, and batshit stupid, the unintentional entertainment value is inconsistent at best. Money was spent in some areas, (lots of extras, a hefty cast, giant yeti feet and hand props, etc), but it seems hilarious cheap in others, (stock music, stock sound effects, the aforementioned dated and pathetic visual effects, etc). Still solid fodder for bad movie night, but expect nothing more than that.
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