What is Giallo Really?

I checked the post listing and realized that I have written about Giallo movies for over a year now, and it has been a blast. Some of these movies have been amazing while some have been awful. I don't write about the bad ones, just to make that clear, but overall, I have loved every minute of this journey.

On occasion I have tried to succinctly explain what Giallo is, but it is a bigger subject matter than what can be described in a paragraph.

Luckily, I have found someone who can explain it, and that's what we're doing this week.The Youtube channel TheKingInGiallo has two videos the chronicle the rise of the Giallo literature as well as the movies. How they came about, how they worked under Mussolini's regime, what influenced them and what they in turn influenced. If anything I've written about these movies has made you curious, do check these videos out.

But beware, there are some very gory images and some spoilers for a large amount of movies. Overall, the spoilers aren't that bad, they drown in a flood of information, but in all fairness, I have to warn you.

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD6Svl7tcO8

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Val-dy4yBDc

I'll embed them below, for you convenience as well, but that's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!

 

 

The Psychic

Fueled by last week's entry, The Lizard in a Woman's Skin, I watched another Fulci Giallo;

Seven Notes in Black, a.k.a. Murder to the Tune of the Seven Black Notes, a.k.a. Death Tolls Seven Times, a.k.a. The Psychic (1977).

We begin the movie with a woman leaping to her death from the cliffs of Dover while her daughter back in Florence sees it happening. We cut to the current day (back in '77) and the now adult daughter, Virginia (Jennifer O'Neill) is happily married to a rich Italian businessman, Francesco Ducci (Gianni Garko). He departs on a business trip and while she's driving home, Virginia starts having vivid visions. She sees a room in red, a hole hacked in a wall, a woman murdered, a magazine cover, someone being walled up alive and more. Deeply disturbed, she visits her parapsychologist friend Luca Fattori (Marc Porel) to get some advice. Later, Virginia decides to renovate an old palazzo that her husband owns in order to distract her from the visions and as a nice surprise for him. To her horror, she recognizes a room in the palazzo and frantically hacks a hole in the wall. What she finds sets in motion a long investigation and series of horrific events.

That's pretty much what I can reveal without spoiling too much.

Like his other Gialli, The Psychic is beautifully shot. I have been so impressed with Fulci's cinematography in his Gialli that I may have to revisit some of his horror movies to see if it was always there, but I have been too distracted by all the buckets of blood and the hordes of zombies to notice. Time will tell on that one.

The Psychic actually has two plot lines that intertwine. One is Virginia's psychic visions and the other one is everything else. The visions are well done and don't cheat. Everything you see is relevant, whether you and Virginia understand what is shown or not. The other plot is a bit muddled. There were a few scenes where important things were mentioned but it's so quick that if you sneeze, you might miss it. That annoyed me as when I read a synopsis after I was done watching, I realized that what I thought was a bit of fluff was actually a super important clue. This might be an issue with this version of the movie, or just a bit of a screw up.

My other big criticism is that most of The Psychic is really slow. A movie being slow isn't automatically a bad thing, but the sense of mystery and doom doesn't manifest until we get to the “endgame”. At that point everything makes sense and I got the feeling that it wasn't just all worth it but that The Psychic is actually a good movie. Before then, I wasn't so sure.

Besides the lovely cinematography, the rest of the movie is also competent. The actors are very good, particularly Jennifer O'Neill, who's piercing eyes work perfectly for the role of Virginia. I realized while watching this movie that Fulci had a real talent for making people seem sinister so that it was absolutely impossible for me to solve the mystery. I did pick up on a couple of important clues, but not the most relevant one.

At one point, Virginia is gifted a watch that plays the titular tune, and I just knew that I had heard it before. Then I read that Quentin Tarantino wanted to remake The Psychic, but that project failed to materialize. However he used the tune in Kill Bill Vol. 1 and that's where I had heard it.

So, do I recommend this movie? Yes, it is good, at least when you get to the end. It's not really up there with The Lizard in a Woman's Skin or Don't Torture a Duckling, but it is absolutely worth watching.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!

 

A what in who's skin?

This week we're talking about:

A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971).

This Giallo is directed by Italian horror Maestro, Lucio Fulci, who also directed Don't Torture a Duckling (1972), which we've talked about before. Interestingly after Duckling was released, Fulci was accused in court of corrupting a minor until he could prove that it was an adult little person. In Lizard, he was accused of excessive animal cruelty until he could prove, again in court, that it was all special effects. Fulci had bad luck with Gialli and the law.

The story is this: Carol Hammond (Florinda Bolkan), her husband Frank Hammond (Jean Sorel) and Frank's teenage daughter Joan (Ely Galleani) live in an expensive flat in London. Frank, a lawyer, works for Carol's father, Edmond Brighton who is a wealthy lawyer and politician. Carol sees a therapist in order to come to grips with the vivid and disturbing dreams that torment her. Most of these dreams are about her being seduced by their neighbor Julia Durer (Anita Strindberg). Julia is a bit of a pest in the building as she likes to host drug fueled orgies that are very loud.

One night Carol dreams that she stabs Julia to death, and soon after, Julia is found murdered. Things get worse when it turns out that she was killed in exactly the same way as in Carols dream. The question becomes, did Carol kill Julia? If so, was she even aware that she did it? Was it someone else trying to frame and destroy her by driving her mad?

A Lizard in a Woman's Skin is set and shot in London, presumably because, like with The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire, it was a bit fancier than filming in Italy. Fulci does a great job with the scenery here. He fully uses the fancy old buildings and the rolling green fields that are so unlike Italy. In fact, it lends the movie an almost Hammer Horror feel that other Gialli don't have.

Something that confused me at first was how Fulci mostly uses steady shots that allow you to take in everything, but then suddenly uses a handheld, shaking camera with closeups. Then it dawned on me that this only happens when Carol is extremely agitated. The shaking camera mimics her shaking hands as she lights a cigarette to calm her shattered nerves. There is also a brilliant bit when a person is breaking down a door and every time the door is struck, the camera quickly zooms in on Carol. Annoying at first, but effective at hitting us with some of the stress she feels. One could perhaps accuse Fulci of being gimmicky, but it's done well, and I call it clever camera work.

The actors are all really good, no complaints, and the music by Ennio Morricone is... there.

Besides all that, the standout part for me is the story. Sure, the theme of the heroine loosing her mind as she tries to escape the clutches of a deranged killer is not only a regular theme in Giallo, it's pretty overused, but Fulci does something a bit different with this tired trope. I completely failed to solve the mystery and I had a blast doing so. This is an extremely well crafted movie in every aspect. It doesn't cheat, it actually tells you everything, but putting all the clues together in the right order, and from the correct perspective is the tricky bit.

So, do I recommend this movie? Absolutely! A Lizard in a Woman's Skin rocketed up into my top list of Gialli. It is in my opinion one of the best in the genre. Just be warned that there is a lot of nudity, some simulated sex and while the gore overall isn't that bad, the scene that landed Fulci in court is extremely disturbing and gruesome. Be careful who you watch this movie with and you'll be fine.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!

 

A Lizard with Hot Breath

This week I watched a Giallo with the amazing title:

The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire (1971).

This is one of those Gialli that was filmed abroad because that was considered more sophisticated than just filming at home in Italy. Iguana is set in Ireland, but apart from that it is a fairly typical Giallo. Which isn't a bad thing at all.

We start with a woman being brutally murdered as she waits for her lover. Her corpse then turns up in the trunk of the Swiss ambassador Sobiesky's (Anton Diffring) Rolls-Royce. The police chief is aware that diplomatic issues could be a problem so he gives the case to Detective Norton (Luigi Pistilli) who is a bit of a dark horse due to his history of brutality. Like in most Gialli, more people are soon killed, with Norton hot on the killers heels, when he's not going out with Helen Sobiesky (Dagmar Lassander), the ambassadors pretty daughter. With the murderer even threatening Norton's aging mother and his teenaged daughter, it becomes a high stakes game of cat and mouse.

I was warned that trying to figure out who the killer is in Iguana is impossible, and I agree. All the suspects act incredibly suspiciously, almost to a comical degree. There is a hint early on, and I picked up on it but promptly forgot it as it isn't mentioned again. I wouldn't say that The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire cheats, it's just not interested in being a solvable mystery.

Since the movie is filmed in Ireland, the scenery is amazing, and makes for a welcome change from Italy. The shots are competent, but not mind blowing and the effects are gory but clumsy. You can always tell that it is a dummy being hacked open, which is fine, but one of the victims has a red line going across her clavicle, yet everyone acts like she had her throat cut. A bit sloppy in other words. There are some continuity errors that would have been easy to fix, but there isn't really anything majorly wrong. A special mention must be made about the dubbing in Iguana. All Italian movies were dubbed, and this is no exception, but when we meet Norton he has a ridiculously broad Irish accent, yet three scenes later it's gone, only to appear sporadically. Almost as if the voice actor couldn't be bothered to do it too often.

I have on occasion talked about Gialli with strong elements of comedy and how rare it is that it works. The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire does this surprisingly well. Norton's mother, a gray haired lady who is half blind and fairly deaf is mostly played off as comedic relief, but because it is isolated to her and not over used, it actually works! The rest of the movie is suitably grim and bloody.

So, do I recommend The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire? To Giallo fans, absolutely. Other movie lovers will probably be a bit too confused at the goings on, as this is pretty much a Giallo for Giallo lovers. The director, Riccardo Freda made a lot of odd decisions, but the end result is good. It shouldn't work, but for some odd reason it does. The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire is not, and never will be one of my favorite Gialli, but I had a great time watching it.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!

 

Force 10 from Navarone

Today we're looking at:

Force 10 from Navarone (1978).

This is a sequel to The Guns of Navarone and is also based on a novel by Alistair MacLean. When I say based on, I really mean that. The script is so different from the novel that MacLean modified it into another novel, that's how different the novel and the movie are.

Like in Guns, we again have Mallory and Miller, then played by Gregory Peck and David Niven respectively. There was some thought given to having the original actors return but since they were already too old seventeen years earlier, they recast the roles for Robert Shaw and Edward Fox.

This time they are on a new mission to kill a double agent in Yugoslavia. A US Army Ranger, Lieutenant Colonel Barnsby (Harrison Ford) is on his way there anyway for a different mission and is ordered to give the British commandos a ride. They accidentally pick up a US sergeant played by Carl Weathers and the heroes are off!

Things go wrong, people get killed, stuff blows up and it is a dramatic roller coaster of a ride through the war!

Force 10 is directed by Guy Hamilton, who also directed Goldfinger, Live and Let Die, Diamonds are Forever and The Man with the Golden Gun. Besides these four Bond films, he made a few Agatha Christie movies and a bunch of other stuff. I think you can recognize the Bond style here, even though it is a very different kind of movie. It's something in the way he made adventure/action movies.

Actor wise, this is pure gold. Robert Shaw (From Russia With Love, Jaws), Edward Fox (The Day of the Jackal, Ghandi), Harrison Ford (Star Wars, Indiana Jones), Barbara Bach (The Spy Who Loved Me), Carl Weathers (Rocky franchise, Predator), Richard Kiel ( The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker) and the list does not end there. Brilliant cast and everyone does a good job. Richard Kiel is even scarier here than in Bond, and that's without his metal teeth.

In fact, I have nothing technical to complain about. It is a beautiful movie from beginning to end. My biggest gripe is the lack of continuity from Guns. Especially the fact that in the previous movie, Mallory is said to “speak German like a German”, but in Force 10 he doesn't speak a lick of German. I have a real problem with that since the book keeps this skill intact. For some reason, they decided to change that when there was no need to! Very annoying, but not a deal breaker.

Force 10 is almost two hours long, but so much happens, and the locations change so much that you don't really notice it. There are so many exciting and tense scenes, dramatic fights and clever plans that you simply don't have time to get bored.

So, do I recommend this movie? Yes, of course! I would say that anyone who likes war or adventure movies should see Force 10 and any general movie fan could enjoy it. With a cast like that, you can't really go wrong. You don't even have to see The Guns of Navarone first, but it is the smart thing to do.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great week!

 

Starfield

I wanted to jot down some early thoughts about Starfield. This is in no way a review, just an early impression.

This it the first new IP for Bethesda Game Studios in over 25 years, and as of writing this, I have 25 hours played so I have barely scratched the surface. The numbers are a happy coincidence.

Looking at basic gameplay, BGS has not reinvented the wheel, and why should they? With a few thousand hours in Fallout 3, New Vegas, 4 and Skyrim, I immediately knew how to play. Movement, guns, melee, using items etc are all the same. Some things like the inventory is partially different, but keep an eye on the tooltips, and you'll be fine. This feels and plays like a Bethesda game and I'm very happy about that. I feel comfortable playing, since the character moves and reacts in a way I'm so familiar with. 

The graphics are in my opinion very nice. There have been complaints online, but I wonder if that is just a matter of taste or if the complainers are forced to turn the graphics down due to hardware issues. Starfield is pretty demanding on the PC, needing 16gb RAM and it wants to be installed on an SSD. get all that and it looks phenomenal.

Looking at the not so basic gameplay, it is quite a bit more complicated. Since this is sci-fi and we're in space, there is space flight and space combat. The flying is fine, at least so far. Nothing is too complicated, although it takes time to learn the new controls. Space combat is somewhat mixed for me. At one point I jumped back in to the system where my quest giver was and found her engaged with three other ships who immediately targeted me. After dying seven or eight times, I adjusted the difficulty from Normal to Very Easy and barely survived the fight. My ship is still completely basic so there was no way of surviving that fight unless you are a very accomplished gamer in the area of dog-fighting, which I'm not.

I don't know that much about crafting yet, but it seems fine. You do need to collect a lot of different materials from different planets and that takes time. You have a scanner that helps you do that, and you can even use the scanner to take and edit pictures which will become load screens. A small but awesome idea.

The character generator is good if a bit fiddly. With a bit of trial and error you can make an awesome looking character for you to play with. Unlike Fallout 4, the main character is not voiced, so unless you go looking at them, you won't see your characters faces all that much. A part of me misses the back and forth dialogue, but in Starfield we at least have more speech options, and the role-playing options are back. Loosing the voiced protagonist is a small price to pay for that.

Some players of the 1 million+ that were playing at the same time have experienced bugs, and so have I, but nothing too nasty. A glitching companion and a status effect that won't go away is about it. I'm sure BGS will fix a bunch of them soon enough.

Speaking of companions, they are a mixed bag. Useful to have around, but also prone to charging ahead and engaging enemies that you are not ready for. You also get the small talk which ranges from funny to please-shut-up-already-I'm-going-as-fast-as-I-can. I usually prefer playing without companions, and there are quests where you have to have one along. Somewhat frustrating, but not a deal breaker.

The space map is awesome and looks great, the ground map is terrible and I hope someone develops a mod for that soon.

To end this first impression: If you like Bethesda's open world games and you like sci-fi, then there is no real reason why you wouldn't like this. Some call it Fallout in space, but that is misleading. Starfield feels nothing like Fallout except for the controls. This is a new game and should be judged as such. So far I'm having a blast playing, and beyond some minor things, nothing to complain about. Just make sure you're PC is able to handle this beast of a game.

I may do another post at a later date giving my opinion then, but until then, that's that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!

 

Those are some Big Cannons!

I found a movie called Force 10 from Navarone and the cast list looked pretty good. Then I found out that it is a sequel to:

The Guns of Navarone (1961), which I hadn't seen, so I sat down and watched it. Can't start with the sequel after all.

This WWII epic is based on a novel by Alistair MacLean and is directed by J. Lee Thompson. In a nutshell the story is this:

2000 British soldiers are trapped on a Mediterranean island, and Germany intends to wipe them out in order to intimidate Turkey into joining the Axis. The Royal Navy could easily get them to safety but for a heavily fortified artillery emplacement on the (fictional) island of Navarone. The RAF has tried to bomb the artillery, but to no avail, so it falls to a small commando group to destroy it. The group is led by Major Franklin (Anthony Quayle) with Captain Mallory (Gregory Peck), Greek Colonel Stavros ( Anthony Quinn), Corporal Miller (David Niven) who is also a professor of chemistry and an explosives expert. The rest of the team is less well known today but all solid actors as well.

First off, The Guns of Navarone is 2 hours and 38 minutes long, which is on the extreme end of a movie that is comfortable to watch in one sitting. The reason for this length is that it shows pretty much every step of the way. Early planning, later planning, travel, rock climbing, hiding from the Germans, sneaking into town... etc etc.

The benefit of this is that you get to know the characters very well, and that you don't always see things coming, but it also drags the movie a lot. A lesser director with a worse script would have made a movie that is impossible to sit through. As it is, The Guns of Navarone is something of a masterpiece so it works, but only barely.

Naturally I won't spoil anything, so I won't go into any detail as such, but a lot of the story is easy to guess from the start. After all, no one makes a movie where the Nazis win, let alone back in 1961. Things turn out alright, but of course, at a price. The excitement comes from seeing who makes it and who doesn't. But enough about that.

The Guns of Navarone is the kind of movie that they don't really make anymore, it's just too expensive. It cost $2.000.000 back then and even though it made a hefty profit, I shudder at what it would cost today.

Fun trivia time!

• Gregory Peck portrays a British officer, even though he refused to do a British accent. He also felt he was miscast for the role.

• This is the only war movie David Niven ever did where he didn't play an officer, which he was in real life.

• Niven caught a nasty infection and was hospitalized for a month. This set production back so badly they considered re-shooting all his scenes with another person. He went AWOL from the hospital, finished his scenes, but relapsed and spent seven more weeks in hospital.

• The story is loosely based on the real Battle of Leros.

• All the German tanks were actually American and the Royal Navy destroyers were Greek, as are all the German extras.

• The artillery set was refurbished and reused as cable car terminus in Where Eagles Dare, also written by Alistair MacLean.

So, do I recommend this movie? Absolutely! Any fan of war film that hasn't seen it should see it. Even those who don't care much for war could find this fascinating. There are no big battles, no, but it is no less hard hitting for that. All the acting is superb and it is extremely well done. There are tons of day shots with a night filter, which is annoying after a while, but that is how it was done back in the day. This is an old school epic in the best sense of the word. Well worth it despite the length.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!