Naked and Violent (1970): or, Mondo Americano

I'll admit to having limited first-hand experience with the "Mondo" documentary subgenre. It's a type of film I've read a good deal about but of which I've actually watched relatively few examples, like pre-WWI German Industrialist Hygiene films or Scando-Mongolian Expressionist Midget Porn. Named after the infamous film that inspired all subsequent examples, Paolo Cavara and Gualtiero Jacopetti's Mondo Cane (1962), the Mondo movie specialized in sensationalized depictions of strange, shocking rituals from around the world, often focusing on "savage" cultures like African and South American native tribes.

Actual animal killings, bizarre rites of passage, and taboo sexual ceremonies were the genre's stock in trade, and the lurid scenes that fill such movies were sometimes real, but just as often staged by the filmmakers for maximum shock value. (This aspect of the Mondo film was satirized gruesomely and unforgettably by Ruggero Deodato in his even-more-infamous Cannibal Apocalypse.)

As time went on the "savage" Mondo films (Africa Addio [1966]) were joined by "sexy" Mondo films like L'amore primitivo (1964--according to imdb, "including such things as sex slavery, dwarf love, Asian brothels and lesbians!"), the wonderfully titled Mondo Freudo (1966), and even Russ Meyer's Mondo Topless (1966, reviewed right here on MMMMMovies). As long as something was shocking and exotic and suitably unconfirmable, it was fair game, and the perverted public ate it up.

For trash-film fans from the USA, however, probably none of the Mondo titles is more shocking than Sergio Martino's 1970 effort Naked and Violent (aka America cosi nuda, cosi violenta, or America: So Naked, So Violent). Directing only his third feature and with still a ways to go before finding his stride in a series of excellent, stylish gialli and horror flicks, Martino presents a view of late 60s America as a savage, brutal place, with all the sensationalism and cultural condescension one would expect from the Mondo Africa films it mimics.

"Say you love the U.S. of A. SAY IT, BOY!!!"

We open--after the AMAZING heart-felt title song, "Look Away (Lady Liberty)"--at Cape Kennedy, where for the second time NASA is about to send a group of astronauts to the moon. As the stern, disapproving narrator tells us, the moon no longer charms people the way it used to--jaded by success and affluence, curious Americans gather more to buy spaceman-shaped earrings, interstellar snacks, toy rockets, and even space-themed pornography! Rather than a symbol of the triumph of man over nature, Cape Kennedy has become a "lunar park," an amusement park for the bored, pampered, perverse citizenry to glut its insatiable appetite for thrills.

"I'm about to blast off, baby!"

Insomuch as the flick has a central thesis, this is it: America, the richest country in the world, is full to the brim with sickos. Perhaps because of its wealth and unchecked political power, even the most way-out tastes and fetishes can be indulged, and frequently are. The movie purports to be a documentary of the darkest corners of the American Nightmare.

Viewed dispassionately, it's not a bad thesis--in fact, it's neither the first nor the last film to place the American consumerist lifestyle at the center of all the manifold evils not just in our country, but in the world. A compelling and even damning movie could be made--in 1970 or in the present day--with just that argument as its basis. But of course a Mondo documentary is not the place for serious socio-cultural critiques, and Martino and crew are not interested in presenting one. They're here to shock, and shock they will, by hook or by crook!

Ain't That America?

We start in New York City, which the narrator calls "the largest Italian city in the world," as it contains at least four million people with Italian surnames. Looking at the massive skyscrapers in a dizzying vertical shot from street level, he informs us that some of these buildings, with hundreds and hundreds of floors, are built "entirely without windows!" Then we take a tour of the Bowery, where we see alcoholic bums sleeping on the street as passersby step over them. Finally we visit a Retirement Home, where sad-faced, dementia-plagued seniors languish, "forgotten" by society. One old man is happy to be used for experimental cancer treatments, we're told, as it promises him a chance to be "useful."

In a time-honored Mondo technique of juxtaposing the grotesque with the sensual, we are then flown to Miami beach, where we watch some of the "most healthy, well-fed examples of youth" in the world. It's a cheap shot to go from the dying derelict cancer patient to the beautiful bodies of Miami, but it's also an effective one--you can't help but be drawn in, and then ashamed for it, which is of course the point. Sniffing most derisively, the narrator tells us these girls "all have the most perfect figures possible...and therefore, identical ones."

Well, there's no arguing with that methodology.

A few shots underwater and on the beach hint at some of Martino's future style, but just barely. Still, as quick and dirty as mondo films were, it's surprising any got through at all. The film moves at an absolutely breakneck pace, hardly giving one scene or pronouncement time to register before moving on to the Next Shocking Thing. Therefore, narrative summation is neither possible nor terribly useful. It appeals more to my low-level OCD, therefore, to categorize the scenes first by a) subject matter and then by b) reality versus staged.

HIPPIES

• The filmmakers take us to the Woodstock Music Festival, where we see masses of nude, pot-smoking, and sometimes bleeding hippies. The narrator gives us statistics on the number of people who died at the festival (five) and the number of infants born (three) and concludes that Death has bested Life, 5-3. Clearly he wasn't correcting for the Sha Na Na bonus! All this seems to be real footage.

• We also get to see a real-live hippie tripping on smack. (Note, though the filmmakers insist it's LSD, the intravenous administration tends to imply heroin. Of course I'm no hippie myself, so feel free to correct me, junkies!) He blathers about kittens, Mao Tse Tung, salads and salt, and a lot of other stuff. Less fun than it sounds, but believably real.

• Hippie Girls rent themselves out to dirty old men to be human canvasses in an "art" class. The modest $5 fee sounds like a bargain to me. If it's not real, I want to believe it was anyway.

...but I know what I like.

• In the fairly obviously staged hippie segments, we start with the bored bourgeois housewives of San Franscisco going down the strip and picking up dirty hippies for "follow ups"--i.e., dirty weekends with no strings attached. Later on we see a trio hiring a hippie hustler for a love-in, to which they've graciously invited the cameras. Ever wanted to see a hippie forcibly bathed? Now's your chance.

• Things get wilder with a suburban/hippie mash-up, as a group of stoned orgy enthusiasts don rubber horror masks and then practice free and indiscriminate love all over each other. I don't know why I never thought to bring a fog machine to my orgies, but these flower children have shown me the error of my ways.

• Less fun is the peep-show between the gates of the Polanski mansion, where Sharon Tate et al. met their grisly and famous demises. This is immediately followed by a Black Mass Ceremony in which a hippie girl is stripped naked (Zang!), her body covered with hot dripping wax (kink wahey!) and then a live chicken has its head pulled off and the blood graphically squeezed all over her skin (Yeah bab-hey, wait, shit, that's fuckin' gross...). The animal death is real, and so was my vomit.
  

Don't think about the chicken

RACE RELATIONS

Of course the great shames of America's history are the country's treatment of the Native Americans and the slave trade, and the fallout from both serves for prime fodder for exploitation.

• With the Native Americans, we see a poverty-stricken village in the Grand Canyon, which is fairly respectfully done. They try to milk a later scene with a group of Native American's staging a protest at Alcatraz, but there's really not much there.

• With Black/White relations in the US, the filmmakers have considerably more luck. In the real footage, we get to see a "South Will Rise Again" old woman toting her shotgun around her city streets, presumably looking for negroes. We also hear from the female owner of a newspaper in a town that has just elected its first black mayor, and she has some unflattering things to say about it, both in print and on film.

• In a rather amazing betrayal of the width of the cultural disconnect and the Italians' own racial attitudes, Martino films a Black church revival meeting, explicitly connecting the religious celebrations with the former slaves' African pasts. That's as may be, but he follows it with "actual footage shot in New York City!" of a full-on voodoo ceremony, where a chicken is killed and women go through a rite of passage that involves a machete in the crotch. Later we see a middle-class voodoo rite where the witch doctor "parks his Cadillac before putting on his grass skirt," leading to more African costumes and dancing. It's as if the filmmakers think they can't have a Mondo movie without tribal ceremonies, and have bent over backwards to make sure they can fit them in. (Not voodoo, but still exploitative: there's also a staged lynching re-enactment that's as uncomfortable as it should be.)
  

New York, Yesterday

BIZARRO

And then there are the things that just have no category.

• Cowboys string up a dozen live rabbits by their feet to a clothesline, then take target practice with rifles, the effects of which on the helpless bunnies' heads are graphically shown. Not for the weak of stomach, this scene was probably the most cruel and unnecessary I've seen since the monkey-eaten-by-python sequence in Slave of the Cannibal God--also, coincidentally, directed by Martino.

• A lonely nebbish brings a surprise package home with him, which turns out to be an inflatable sex doll! We get a lot of mileage out of the poor fellow blowing up his date and then dressing her in nylons. Fortunately we cut away before he actually gets his groove on. It does make one appreciate the advance in technology, however.

Even your fantasy girl disapproves

• In Las Vegas, men at a circus-themed casino throw balls at a dunking-booth style target while blanket-covered women on mechanical beds watch. When one hits the target, the girl is dumped to the stage where she performs a strip-tease! Which casino is that again?

• A pacifist, hoping to stay out of the draft, recruits his long-haired friends to chop off his fingers so he can't hold a gun! This is shown in graphic detail, which points out the absolute fakeness of it, and thus becomes hilarious.

The Shocking Truth

• And then there are the parts of American culture that must seem strange to anyone not borne to it: American football (49ers and Bears, or Gladiatorial Combat?); drag racing and short-track motorcycle racing (the latter of which looks legitimately, CRAZILY dangerous); a drive through Dallas along the very route where JFK was assassinated, and the statement that because of the tourist industry rising around the site of the murder, it has become "an amusement park of death"; Hugh Hefner's contradictory Playboy philosophy (juxtaposed with the killing of the rabbits above, of course); the Amish (which the Italians don't get AT ALL); and even a short segment devoted to the phenomenon of monster toys!

Multo Mondo

After these and dozens of other scenes by turns shocking, hilarious, and downright baffling (and sometimes all of these at once), Martino winds up with a short vignette about old folks retiring to the "paradise" of Florida--lots of the happy aged cavorting about in ill-advised bikinis, etc.--which is a 50-years-on revisit of the Miami Beach cheesecake from earlier (cottage cheesecake, maybe?) , but also directly contradicts his early uncomfortable visit to the nursing homes where we supposedly lock away the aged who can no longer live a happy life. Ah well, whattaya expecting here, Ken Burns?

And possibly a comb

The final manipulative twist of the knife is a scene purporting to show something good and noble about the American spirit, to offset all the preceding ugliness. What demonstrates the basic humanity of Americans better than anything else? Well, according to Martino, it's a 2000-soul strong home for "retarded" children, where kind-hearted USA-sians teach the mentally deficient to feed themselves, dress, and perform Christmas pageants. It's a choice clearly made as an excuse to show the afflicted children as sideshow grotesques, and is fairly shameless and exploitative in the worst sense--what I mean is, it's one thing to make fun of middle-class hippies in psychodrama therapy, but another to leer at mentally handicapped children smearing oatmeal in their hair and shrieking "Silent Night" off key. I've got a pretty high threshhold, I'd like to think, but this seemed extremely icky in its intent and execution.

The conclusion of the documentary will get any red-blooded American's dander up, as the narrator unleashes a poetically damning speeach at one of the country's most beloved symbols, the Statue of Liberty. After reciting the "Give us your poor, your tired, etc." speech, the narrator responds:

"Oh, put out your light you hoarse old gal. Your shouts do not move me anymore. Your call sounds always fine, I must admit. But I cannot accept it any longer. After years listening to your lies, I don't care anymore. Put out your light! Ye tired old gal. And turn your back to the Ocean. And put a little love, if you can, in me too."

It's a good thing for Martino & co. Toby Keith wasn't around in 1970--and also that one presumes he doesn't watch that many movies with subtitles. (Or maybe he does, what do I know?) He'd have put more than love into him, that's fer sher. Boot-shaped love, courtesy the Red White and Blue! YEEE-HAW!

Of Thee I Sing

I can only assume the print MYA DVD used for their transfer was the best surviving one they could find, but it's still in pretty rough shape--lots of scratches, specks, and occasional print-damage jump-cuts. But as you might imagine, that sort of enhances the viewing of a Mondo film rather than taking away from it.

As a film by a man whose later work I admire a great deal (well, except for the cannibal stuff), I find it interesting to see how Sergio Martino got his start, even if little of his later trademark style is in evidence. As a time capsule of perversion, an exercise in gross-outs, and a fascinating look at my own country's culture from an outside point of view, I'd recommend Naked and Violent to those interested in that sort of thing. 2 thumbs.

Just keep it away from Lee Greenwood, though--God knows it would probably kill him!

"*Sigh.* Well, shit."

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

Island of the Fishmen (1979): or, I'm a Sole Man

It seems that negative occurrences in our lives have the propensity to generate their own terrible momentum. You stub your toe on the way to the bathroom in the morning; a little later, you crack your head on an open cabinet door. Pulling into the parking lot at work, you scrape your paint on an unreasonably high curb. You go into find your computer has crashed, taking all your work on a mission-critical project with it, leading your boss to publicly humiliate you in front of the whole office before sending you packing to the unemployment line. Returning home in an emotionally vulnerable state, you find your Significant Other performing Crisco Acrobatics with the paperboy and three of his underage classmates, leading you to grab your rifle in preparation for a neighborhood-wide bloodbath/rampage. The first shell misfires, however, blinding you for life, the next 20 years of which you'll spend practicing echolocation in the Clink.

We've all been there, am I right?

In Sergio Martino's 1979 mad science horror flick Island of the Fishmen, naval lieutenant Claude de Ross is having one of those kinds of days. First, the prison ship on which he is the chief medical officer sinks, leaving him in a lifeboat with a group of convicts he freed as the ship was going down, and who are mostly unappreciative of his heroism. Next, the lifeboat is scuttled by some mysterious, barely-seen creatures below the waves, casting all the castaways onto the rocky shore of a godforsaken jungle island. One of the thirst-mad survivors perishes drinking toxic water from a volcanic pool, and another is gorily slain by yet another half-glimpsed monstrosity.

Then things get REALLY bad.

The Stinkeye Bass Does Not Approve

After saving fat convict Jose from drinking the poisonous water, Claude leads the remaining convicts further inland, looking for civilization. They don't find that exactly, but they do find a Burmese Tiger Trap, which kills another convict and leaves the lieutenant dangling from a vine for his life. Bad Con Peter wants to let the doc die, but grateful Jose overpowers him and rescues Claude from death by pointy sticks. They wander into an abandoned cemetery, where the graves are all ominously empty, and there encounterAmanda Marvin, an aristocratic Eurobabe with excellent horseback riding/snake shooting skills.

Following Amanda back to her plantation home, they meet the Lord of the Island, Englishman Edmond Rackham, who keeps his Native Goon Squad in line with help from Voodoo Priestess Shakira. Peter angers the gods by desecrating a voodoo altar, and after an uncomfortable dinner in the Big House Claude starts to wonder exactly why there are so many deadly traps all over the island, and what his host is hiding in the locked room under the stairs...

*We've secretly replaced Rackham's regular coffee with some swamp water the native dude behind him dunked his nuts in. Let's see if he notices...*

As expected from a Sergio Martino joint, the movie looks gorgeous. Martino and cinematographer Giancarlo Ferrando fill up the gloriously wide screen with strong compositions, bright colors, and interesting set designs. Martino also flexes his directorial muscles in early scenes where the island's mysterious denizens menace the castaways, generating a lot of tension and interest with quick cuts, half-glimspes of monstrous forms, and the occasional gout of understated gore. And the score by Luciano Michelini vacillates between orchestral "jungle adventure" swells and pleasingly Goblin-esque rock interludes that add almost as much interest as the visuals.

Their first night Peter sees Amanda leaving the plantation for a midnight ride, and follows with a leer in his Italian eye that can only mean one thing in films of this vintage. He gets more than he bargained for, however, when she is met at the beach by a gang of freakin' piranha men! Though they look extremely dangerous, they seem to have a strange affection for the girl, who fearlessly allows them to come close and gives them all drinks of a strange milky substance she's brought along for the purpose. Not impressed by her Aquaman-like powers, Peter attacks her en route back to the house, and is predictably torn apart by her foul-smelling friends.

Slave of the Milliner God

The next day, running after the gorgeous lady of the house with his tongue lolling like a hound dog in heat, Claude also comes face to face with fishy doom, but is saved by Aquamanda. His curiosity piqued, the Italian Stallion forces his way through the Native Guard (who are clearly handicapped by their ornate wicker shoulderpads) and into the Secret Room, where he finds...Joseph Cotten! Joe is Professor Ernest Marvin, Amada's father, and appears legitimately drunk throughout his relatively brief role. (No surprise there--Cotten's done it before.) Claude demands an explanation, which Rackham is only too happy to give.

It seems that the island is the last above-water outpost of the Lost Continent of Atlantis, thre remains of which lie 2000 feet below the surface off the coast. (Rackham takes Claude down in his diving bell to view the ruins, which are brightly lit by sunlight despite the incredible depth.) The fishmen, he claims, are the descendants of the Atlanteans, and Professor Marvin has found a way to communicate with them--or rather, has got them hooked on drugs! They're addicted to the milky potion the Marvins provide and will do anything for it, including diving to the ruined Temple of the Sun God and brining the priceless golden artifacts up to exchange with Rackham for smack. But Marvin is dying, and Rackham fears he wont' be able to keep the fishmen in line once the good doc kicks off and takes his delicious speedball smoothie recipe with him. Therefore, if Claude will keep the professor alive until the temple is completely ransacked, he can escape with the Europeans on Rackham's private yacht, leaving the natives to deal with the strungout junkie jugfish.

Unholy Mackerel

Oh, and Shakira's voodoo trances suggest that the volcano at the center of the island is about to erupt, sinking them all to a magma-strewn watery grave. Just an FYI.

So clearly, like many Eurohorror efforts of the era, there's an awful lot of shit going on here. And that's not even all! Turns out Rackham's story about the Atlantean descendants is all bunk--unbeknownst to Amanda, Professor Marvin is a MADMAN who has been using xenotransplant technology to transform the island's natives into fishmen, out of some crackpot Utopian scheme to save the human race by returning them to the oceans. Rackham is merely exploiting the results of Marvin's experiments--one of which turns out to be the unfortunate Jose, seen here in his incomplete icthyological form:

"Speak up...I'm hard of herring."

Of course this all leads to a climactic confrontation once the volcano erupts, Marvin kicks off, the manor house goes up in a fiery cataclysm, and the fishmen--who are clearly tripping balls--decide to go on one last rampage before the supply runs out for good.

You know I love a good kitchen sink movie, and if it's nothing else, Island of the Fishmen is definitely that. As crazy genre tropes go, this one is really packed to the gills. (Ba-dump.) Mad science, man-fish mutations and ancient undersea temples (both of which were fixations of Lovecraft's stories, hence the designation), voodoo rituals and more volcanic stock footage than you can shake a stalagmite at--it's quite the smorgasbord, you'll agree.

Acting-wise, it's also a hoot. In addition to Cotten's channeling of Oliver Reed for his performance, Richard Johnson (Fulci's Zombi) gives a marvelously slimy performance as the villanous Rackham. His wonderfully eeevil smirks and Snidely Whiplash-delivery of lines ("Mmyess, the island does hold certain...inconveniences for the uninitiated," and my favorite, "Please try to look as beautiful as possible tonight, my dear--you may be the last beautiful thing...that poor man will ever see!") are a non-stop joy.

"I'm Frankenstein! No, wait, I'm makin' fish here...aw *hic* hell, just gimme the damn gin."

Claudio Cassinelli, who worked with Martino the previous year in the markedly less fun jungle flick Slave of the Cannibal God, is also fun as Claude de Rossi, if only for his presumably self-dubbed English dialogue. (Sample: "What powerz hass Rackham? What he's doing on this island, what is he up to?") Barbara Bach is gorgeous but bland as Amanda; however, my critique may have something to do with having confused her mentally with Catherine Bach, and thus being profoundly disappointed at not seeing Daisy Duke fighting off the fishmen. And Beryl Cunningham as the menacing, snakelike Shakira turns in a great performance--believeably a woman you wouldn't want to cross, either in voodoo or in love (and Rackham foolishly does both).

Fucking with this woman: Not Advised

The effects are fun too, in both the "OMG WTF LOL" way and the "Hey, that's not bad!" way--a winning combination. The miniatures of the undersea kingdom look like they were bought in the aquarium section of the local Pet Smart, and the final conflagration of the manor house uses both a full-size set and a matchstick model, which burn very differently, you know. However, the fishmen costumes are actually quite good--obviously influenced by the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but using Amazon piranhas as facial models, the suits look a little silly on land, but in the many excellent underwater scenes recall the strength and grace of their Gillman ancestor. And Martino knows how to film them to minimize the silliness--quick cuts, close-ups on the dead fish eyes and bloody piranha teeth--they look a lot better and scarier than perhaps they should.

You can probably tell I had a great time with this one--it's never boring, though it does lack the tasty nudity of my favorite Eurohorrors, and the gore is less gory than you'd think it would be. Still, I'd rate it an easy 2.25 Thumbs. Martino is now officially in my upper echelon of European directors, as he can make even schlocky monster movies look as gorgeous as gialli. If you're in the mood for some Victorian era mad science, give it a look.

A few more images from Island of the Fishmen (1979):

Creature from the Black Mudhole

It came with 3 free guppies

Jets...

...vs. Sharks

"Claude: I'm your FATHER...'s banker."

Fisher Price's Little People Playset: Cannibal Adventures

"Say the secret woid, win a hundred dollas."

Will Swim for Smack

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972): or, I Really Have Nothing to Add to That Title

Despite taking its title from a memorable, menacing note delivered to Edwige Fenech in director Sergio Martino's 1971 giallo classic The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, as well as calling back two of that movie's stars (Fenech and uber-Eurobaddie Ivan Rassimov), Martino's 1972 effort Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key is not a sequel. In fact, a viewer might well struggle to see how that admittedly awesome title applies to this flick at all. There's plenty of vice going on, to be sure, but I can't remember a single locked room, even when it would have made sense to throw the bolts to keep nosy police inspectors and ex- or current lovers in the dark.

But looking for representational logic in gialli titles is surely a pathway to madness, and moreover, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that on the other side of that title card (which is superimposed over a soft-focused couple making hot Italian love in white satin sheets--zang), Martino delivers a wild, thrilling, and entertainingly perverse mystery/slasher that has as its touchstones both the macabre sensibility of Edgar Allan Poe and the high-octane excitement of muddy motocross. Add heaping helpings of Naked Edwige and enough J&B to pickle a pachyderm, and you've got a winner by any standard of measure.

J&B: You Know What Kind of Party It Is

We open at the palatial country estate of Oliviero Rouvigny (Luigi Pistilli), a decadent writer-type who achieved a great deal of fame in his early career but has since gone completely to seed. He shares the house with his gorgeous but obviously disturbed young wife Irina (Anita Strindberg), his beloved black cat Satan, and just about every acid-trippin', folk-singin', bra-slingin' hippie within spitting distance of the villa. While the flower children sing horrible folk songs and dance naked on his twelve-seater dining room table, Oliviero entertains himself by getting sweaty-drunk, groping his Afro-Italian maid , and subjecting Irina to varying levels of social and sexual humiliation. (During the opening free-love party, he collects all his guest's unfinished drinks in a large silver bowl and forces Irina to gulp it down, eventually soaking her with the backwash-laden vintage.)

As luck would have it, the Awful Author also has a not-quite-innocent Oedipal fixation. The Lady of the Manor, deceased only two or three years now, was apparently famous for being an actress and infamous for her sexual conquests, a subject her devoted son can't seem to talk about enough. Mommy is a constant presence in his life, thanks not only to Satan (who was her kitty) and the life-sized portrait of her in the main hall, but also the fabulous costume gown she wore in said portrait, which Oliviero still has and forces his lovers to wear while he engages them in rough sex! Is it any wonder Irina's mascara never seems to be on straight?

Strindberg gets her Crazyface On

Things start to seem even more dangerous for Irina when a bookstore clerk with whom Oliviero was having one of his many affairs turns up dead at a rock quarry, her throat spilling copious amounts of red tempra paint. (Of course we the audience get to see her stalked through the darkened terrain by the requisite black-gloved, fedora-wearing shadow, allowing Martino to show off some of the super-stylish camera work that is a constant joy in this film.) The police visit the next morning, merely as a formality, though the Inspector drops some not-too-subtle hints about Oliviero's suspect status. (His memorable aside, "Murder has a habit of involving all sorts of people, for no reason whatever!" could be a genre definition for gialli films in general!) When the maid tries on Mom's Sexy Dress and ends up similarly gutted in the Rouvigny Estate itself, one can't help thinking perhaps the fat cop is onto something.

In one of leaps that can really only happen in Italian sex-thrillers of the 70s, Oliviero offhandedly proclaims his innocence but refuses to call the police; rather, he decides they should immediately hide the maid's body by bricking her up behind a damaged wall in the wine cellar and never speaking of it again. Never mind the fact that a woman was murdered in his own home, and if he didn't do it, someone else did. Irina protests, but soon Oliviero browbeats her into helping him with his home- and alibi-improvement project.

"Leave me alone! I'm bein' a metaphor over here!"

Having established what day-to-day life is like for the Rouvignys, it's now time to throw a monkey wrench into the well-oiled machinery of their marital bliss. That wrench arrives in the form of Oliviero's niece Floriana, played of course by Vicar pantsthrob Edwige Fenech, who has decided for who knows what reason to come stay with her dear old unk for a few weeks. Floriana has grown up quite a bit since the last time her uncle bounced her on his knee, and his icky way of leering at her leaves no doubt he'd like to re-enact that memory, only further up the lap.

Floriana is a no-nonsense, self-assured free spirit, a strong woman who knows what she wants and isn't afraid to go after it. She's also not shy about playing to her uncle's obvious incestuous lust, as they engage in sexy banter within moments of her arrival. "Sex is a very demanding occupation," Oliviero opines, "the basic requirement is imagination." To which Floriana replies, "All the imagination in the world woudn't do you any good--if you couldn't get a hard-on!" Irina stands by silently, looking uncomfortable--though the longing looks she also casts Floriana's way hint at something mysterious and sexy a-brewin'.

Made of Hotness

It's not long before Martino brings that mixture to a full rolling boil: noticing the palpable tension between husband and wife, Floriana quickly becomes Irina's confidant, hinting that perhaps the best way out of her bad marriage would be the removal of the offending party via tossing-off-a-cliff. Irina is too timid to enact that plan, but not too timid to succumb to Floriana's lesbonic advances later that evening in an incredibly sensuous love scene. Making the most of her country vacation, the naughty niece also seduces a local delivery boy, attending his weekend motocross race before taking him up to the Rouvigny barn loft to clean the grime off his sparkplugs, IYKWIMAITYD. Floriana then completes the hat-trick of hawtness by inviting her drunken uncle into her bedroom and popping out of bed in Dear Dead Mom's ornate gown before having her way with him as well. As a result, Irina and Oliviero grow increasingly jealous of each other, and both start thinking about filing for a Sicilian divorce.

The movie is absolutely bursting with atmosphere and visual richness. Martino gets in some hugely stylish and satisfying shots throughout, and his use of bright primary colors against gloomy shadowed backgrounds is often breathtaking. The story also pegs the perverso-meter again and again, with sexual humiliation, adultery, and strong implications of incest being just a few of the items on the menu. (In a particularly entertaining exchange, Floriana spars with Oliviero on this subject, asking flatly, "Is it true you slept with your mother?" Her uncle retorts, "Is it true you're a two-bit WHORE?" Touchy touchy!) The director is also helped by the jaw-dropping gorgeousness of both his female leads--Strindberg has a unique, striking beauty, with near-superhuman cheekbones and piercing blue eyes that convey vulnerability on the brink of madness most effectively, and of course Edwige is Edwige, which is to say, ZANG.

You guys go on ahead. I'm never leaving this place.

The black cat Satan is also a major player in the movie, popping up interstitially to stalk Irina's caged doves or wade through pools of blood like a dark furry metaphor. The cat also significantly hates Irina, who almost seems to believe the beast contains the jealous soul of Oliviero's mother, taking revenge via hissing and scratching for her having stolen Mommy's little boy away. The mutual loathing between Irina and Satan comes to a head in a scene that will surprise no one who's ever read Edgar Allan Poe seriously, but still manages to be shocking and more than a little creepy.

Of course since this is a giallo, things need to get all twisty-wisty in the third act, as the Black-Gloved killer strikes again and is proven to be someone you couldn't have reasonably suspected, other masks fall away as the motivations of the principals are revealed, main characters die, and it all wraps up in an homage to Poe that again is not unexpected, but because of that has something of the poetically inescapable in it, the gears of Fate clicking home and turning in the only way they ever could. (Also: look for a scene that prefigures an iconic scene in The Shining by about eight years; was Kubrick a fan?)

Rassimov the Ice King

I've stated previously that All the Colors of the Dark was my favorite Martino giallo, but now I think Your Vice is a Locked Room... has wrested that title from its claws. The movie looks gorgeous, Martino's camera work and color schemes are divine, and the story is as perverse and exciting as you could ask for. The acting is great across the board--Pistilli is perfectly cast as the run-dry decadent author surviving on booze and psychosexual issues, and Strindberg is great as the frightened, slowly going-mad wife. Fenech is gorgeous as always, here rockin' the bob-haircut and go-go boots like no other; she also gets to work her acting muscles a bit by playing a sexy, confident schemer instead of the sexy damsel in distress, and she pulls it off beautifully. (Also beautifully pulled off by Edwige: her clothes.) Ivan Rassimov appears in a surprisingly small role, but makes the most of his limited screen time.

The only thing that works against the film for my money is some fairly ugly racism directed at the Rogivny's black maid by just about everyone in the flick--although it could be argued that this is meant to be indicitive of the moral wasteland in which even the "good" characters live and operate. Still, Your Vice is a Locked Room... hit on all other cylinders for me, and hit them so hard and fast that I am pleased to give it the 3+ Thumb rating. Even if you don't think you like gialli, check this one out.

Some more great images from Your Vice is a Locked Room...(1972)

You bet they buy it by the case

Edwige has the same effect on me

Free Dummy!

Oliviero's editor was displeased with the latest draft

This shot just isn't fair.

Sweet Jesus...

This one's for me, not you

"OBEY!"

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The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971): or, It's In the Blood

I've decided I really, *really* like director Sergio Martino. In the few films of his I've watched for the site, he always seems to bring the stylish visuals, the neat compositions, and a much-appreciated Bava-esque use of color that always gives me a little ocular-induced frisson of pleasure. Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye was a cool old-dark-house gothic chiller that in retrospect deserved a bit more than the 2 thumb rating I originally gave it, and All the Colors of the Dark was a super-cool Rosemary's Baby-influenced Satanic Panic flick with some really striking images and gorgeous cinematography.

(Note: astute commenters have pointed out that my original attribution of Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye to Martino was incorrect--it was in fact Antonio Margheriti who directed that flick. Honest mistake: Martino/Martini, Margheriti/Margarita. That'll teach me to drink and review. :) )

Plus, I can thank Martino and that last movie for introducing me to the pants-straining wonders of Eurohottie Extraordinaire Edwige Fenech for the first time--a favor for which I can never adequately express the depths of my depraved gratitude.

Sure, Sergio gave me a bit of an upset tummy with his cannibal-cinema effort Slave of the Cannibal God, a flick that displayed none of the qualities I was praising a few sentences ago and thus I found not at all to my taste. (HAW!) But after watching today's entry, Martino's justly revered 1971 giallo The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, I'm prepared to declare his Keach-filled cannibalsplitationer an unfortunate misstep in an otherwise sterling filmography. Because Strange Vice, with its wonderful shots, gorgeous colors, intricate and sometimes exuberant overplotting, and more Naked Edwige than you can shake yer stick at (almost), is a real winner by just about any Mad Movie standard.

Let's cut to the chase...

We open with a typically stylish scene in which a streetwalker working near an airport is picked up by a faceless john wearing black leather gloves--yeah, don't get too attached to THIS character. They park on the side of the road and the girl takes off her shirt, giving us the first of the film's excellent and EXTREMELY COPIOUS instances of nudity. Rather than being impressed by her substantial charms, iykwim, her client immediately unfolds a straight razor and slashes her to death! A Pollack-style splash of tempera-paint blood on the inside of the black windshield is a nice stylistic flourish, tossing us into the movie on just the right gory, artistic tone.

After a very pointed epigraph from Sigmund Freud ("The very fact that the commandment says 'do not kill' makes us aware and convinced that we are descended from an unbroken chain of generations of assassins for whom the love of murder was in their blood, as it is perhaps in ours too"), we find busy-busy businessman Neil Wardh (Alberto de Mendoza) arriving at the airport, accompanied by the missus, Julie Wardh, played of course by the incomparably hot Edwige Fenech. Edwige is ROCKIN' the headscarf/turban-look, and is not at all upset that her husband can't accompany her to the hotel before heading to a financial meeting. She's a modern woman, after all--she has her own things to do.

The Lady Swami sees self-pleasuring in your future...

On the way to the hotel, Julie learns about the recent rash of razor-slashings that are all over the news in town. At a rain-soaked stop at a traffic light, Edwige goes all soft-focus and remembers a tumultuous encounter with ex-lover Jean (the sublimely creepy and oddly handsome Ivan Rassimov), also in a rainstorm, in which Jean literally beats Julie into sexy submission. It's another very stylish scene, with the rain streaking down over slow-motion blows, Edwige's blouse ripped open, and a long-range shot of Jean forcing his attentions on her supine form on the ground beside his distinctive black sports car. When a smack bloodies Julie's lip, the feel and taste of the red stuff turns her protests into violent passion--our first glimpse of the "strange vice" of the film's title.

Arriving at the hotel, Julie notices a strangely familiar sports car parked outside--what are the chances? Unnerved, she flees into the luxury suite her husband has reserved for them, which has the kind of 70s decor I can only dream about--broad horizontally striped wallpaper, tinted bubble-pane windows on the doors and even in the hallways, and a glass-topped sitting table whose center is a Lazy Susan of Boozin'. Sweet, indeed. Edwige wastes no time stripping off for a shower, giving us more toplessness and a bare bottom shot to die for. Again, suh-weet.

Wow! Just LOOK at that wallpaper!

Before she can get wet, though, the porter knocks with a bouquet of flowers and a card from a mysterious admirer: "The worst part of you is the best thing you have, and will always be mine.--Jean." Okay, maybe *not* so mysterious. Anyway, with her possessive and violent ex-master following her around Europe, Julie obviously has more immediate concerns than the razor-slasher to worry about...or does she?

Three days later Mr. Wardh has *still* not made the time to relax and cavort with his bored young wife (IDIOT!), so Julie goes to a party given by her ditzy socialite friend Carol (Conchita Airoldi). There she meets Carol's cousin and co-inheritor of the family fortune George (the eponymous and ubiquitous George Hilton), who seems en- rather than dis- couraged at the sight of Julie's wedding ring. Jean makes an appearance as well, leering evilly at Julie while two Italian models rip each others' paper dresses off for a good-natured, squealing naked catfight in the middle of the room! Yes, it's that kind of party. Where's the mashed potatoes at?

Ivan the Terrible

As she's leaving the party Jean catches up with Julie and makes his intentions clear: he wants to get together for a little slap-and-tickle, minus the tickle. At just that moment Mr. Wardh finally shows up and confronts his former rival. At one point he pops Jean one in the jaw, leading to some excellent acting from Ivan as he first gets all bestial and angry looking, then slowly calms down before letting loose a wonderful eeevil laugh. It recalls a similar scene from Bela Lugosi in Dracula, and that's a huge complement.

Back at the hotel Julie has another flashback to her problematic relationship with Jean, this one much more in the style of the freaky surreal sequences Martino did so well in All the Colors of the Dark. We get some cool fish-eye lens work as Jean towers over the sprawled Julie, first pouring a glass of champagne on her bosoms (nice) and then smashing the bottle on a table, sending a shower of gem-like shards of glass raining down on her! (NOT nice!) He uses the broken bottleneck to cut off Julie's shirt, also leaving a bleeding scratch on her torso, the sight of which again seems to push Mrs. Wardh from terror to desire. Obviously sex and fear and blood are all mixed up in poor Julie's psyche, and when Jean falls on top of her and they begin making love on a bed of broken glass, her back is soon dotted red with small cuts. Strange days indeed.

Most Peculiar, Mama

Meanwhile, the Razor Slasher continues to cut a swath through the city's Beautiful and Naked, including one of the paper-dress girls from the party where Julie saw Jean, who goes out in a boobtacular homage to that famous Psycho shower scene. Julie's unhappiness in her marriage comes front and center, as she confesses to Carol, "I've got to escape from myself!" Fortunately for us stage one of the escape plan involves entering into a torrid affair with George, which climaxes (IYKWIM) in an extended lovemaking session on a couch in George's flat, giving us some more amazing Fenech-nudity, including a tantalizing cheek-spread just before Martino cuts away. Unfortunately they do this in full view of a picture window, where a dark figure watches, obviously angry about the whole thing.

I don't want to reveal too much more about the plot, as the movie takes this set up and goes on a narrative version of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Will the Razor Slasher be revealed to be the violently jealous, jilted Jean, the obvious choice? Will it turn out to be Mr. Wardh, who perhaps knows more about his wife's dalliances than he lets on? Could it be (gasp!) her new lover George, who seems too good to be true and probably is? The flick gives motives and opportunity to all, and the way it pulls all the threads together in the end will please some and frustrate others, but at least it's never boring.

I would like to talk a little about some of the things Martino does right, though, as he really flexes some cinematographic muscles here. The director keeps a tight rein on the story, and the editing and pacing keep things going forward at a good speed, even if not always in a straight line. He also puts together some very stylish compositions. A scene where Carol goes to meet a blackmailer in Julie's stead at a botanical garden is both beautiful and tense, and a later scene where the killer stalks Julie through a darkened parking garage recalls some of the gorgeously geometrically lined shots from All the Colors of the Dark. (In fact, at times in that movie Martino may have been visually "quoting" himself). The flashbacks are great in their trippiness too, though not approaching AtCotD's weirdness, and a late confrontation between George and Jean in a desert-like setting looks like it could have come straight out of a super-stylized spaghetti western--a genre I'm sure Martino dabbled in at least once.

Here's Looking at You

As for the "strange vice" of that memorable title, I was surprised it didn't figure more prominently into the actual machinations of the plot than it did. Whether you interpret Julie's vice to be straight S&M or full-out hematomania, it's an intriguing aspect of her character that I felt could have been explored (and exploited) more fully. As it is, the vice is used to explain her attraction to the otherwise repugnant Jean, which is fine as far as it goes. But in this case, I think it could have profitably gone further.

The acting is good from just about everybody involved. Ivan Rassimov is a real villain's villain, with his reptilian looks and snarling voice injecting menace and creepiness into every scene. (His blonde locks seem to get several shades lighter in some scenes, which I take to mean he is in fact a chameleonic reptoid alien.) Hilton is not as good, but passable enough. And Edwige is mesmerizing as usual, though for my money not quite as believably terrified here as in All the Colors of the Dark. But as a Nef Double-D (Naked Edwige Fenech Delivery Device), Strange Vice has it all over that later film.

Nothin' Strange About It

As for the rest of the cast, a lot of them are female, most of them are HAWT, and *all* of them get nekkid. In fact, this movie has one of the higher noodz-per-minute ratios of any movie I've seen recently. Nuff said?

Much as I liked Strange Vice, if I had to pick a favorite Martino joint right now, I'd still go with All the Colors of the Dark. I'm just a sucker for a good hippie devil cult, so sue me. But that's in no way to diminish the goodness of this flick, which more than earns its 2.75 thumbs rating. If you like giallo and love Edwige Fenech (and as for that latter point, who doesn't, eh?), you should really give it a look. And I'll be looking for more Sergio Martino flicks in the future.

"OBEY!"

Postscript--Someone who's a better mixologist than I should really see if he or she can create a Sergio Martino-themed cocktail, called (naturally) the Sergio Martini. It should have vibrant colors, not *too* much taste, and after you drink it you should feel happy and dizzy. And be naked. Get to work, people, and send me your recipes!


Bonus Material: Added Edwige--because too much is never enough.

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