by ·Comments Off on Torso (1973, Sergio Martino)

Opens with a threesome sex scene over the credits, nice. “Torso” turns out to be code for “boobs.” This was technically pre-shocktober, part of Criterion’s giallo series from which I also watched Who Saw Her Die? and The Girl Who Knew Too Much.

Someone is strangling hot young people with scarves. Flo goes out to a sex commune and gets drowned and mutilated in the swamp on the way home. The local scarf vendor (of Toby Dammit, also a good scarf movie) knows who bought the murderscarves but instead of telling the cops he calls the killer to blackmail him, then is immediately smooshed by a car. Mostly this raises the question of why a weirdo running a scarf kiosk keeps his customers’ phone numbers.

Suzy Kendall (kidnapped girlfriend of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) and macaw:

A group of hot girls decide to take a trip to the country after failing to locate their friend Stefano (Roberto Bisacco of Stavisky), presumed scarf murderer – though after watching more than one giallo, we know the most suspicious guy is least likely to be the killer, and sure enough when Stefano finally shows up he’s been scarf-strangled.

Jane’s car has Chicago (not Illinois) plates:

Jane wakes up and the others are dead, then hides while the killer hacksaws them. Their professor John Richardson (victorious hero of Black Sunday) is the baddie, and the moment he’s discovered he narrates his entire traumatic triggering backstory which involves a Mac & Me-esque cliff fall. Some guy fights him and saves her, I’m not sure who. Have I mentioned that all the dialogue is super ridiculous?

Girls who need a vacation:

What girls do on vacation:

by ·Comments Off on Who Saw Her Die? (1972, Aldo Lado)

Four years ago a kid was killed in the snowy woods by somebody in a woman’s hat. Now a bunch more people start dying so the survivors and authorities figure they’d better inspect whether Adolfo Celi (of Thunderball) has a secret brother who wears ladies’ hats and pretends to be a priest and murders red-haired girls – which he does. He’s still not as big a maniac as the people who do sound for these movies. James Bond himself George Lazenby and giallo fave Anita Strindberg play the grieving parents. Strangers online point out (coincidental) similarities to the following year’s Don’t Look Now, and seem to prefer Aldo Ladi’s debut Short Night of Glass Dolls over this one.

by ·Comments Off on The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963, Mario Bava)

Criterion did a giallo series and I went straight for the John Saxon movie. Nora is a young “New Yorker” visiting Rome (Letícia Román, also of a Russ Meyer erotic comedy and an Elvis flick). Her Aunt Ethel was being cared for by Dr. Saxon, dies almost instantly after he leaves, then Nora runs outside for help and is immediately mugged – tough town. She has a Blow-Up fever dream of a witnessed murder and ropes John Saxon into her madness, and I guess her landlady (Valentina Cortese, Masina’s friend in Juliet of the Spirits) has been doing some murders.

Italians are absolute goofballs. Last night I told Katy about Trap, and she asked how could a dumb movie be great, and as if to answer her, here’s Italy with one of the dumbest greatest movies of its era. Movies aren’t even allowed to be this beautiful or dumb anymore. Bava made this the same year as Black Sabbath and The Whip and the Body (which we just might watch this Shocktober). There are seven credited writers, which honestly makes sense.

by ·Comments Off on The Great Beauty (2013, Paolo Sorrentino)

Welcome to Cannes Fortnight at Casa Brandon. Last held in 2022, this year the focus is on watching movies by 2024 Cannes directors who are completely unfamiliar to me, such as Sorrentino. For a while there, every couple years he released a new must-see film (Il Divo, This Must Be The Place, Youth), which I would never see, and The Great Beauty is the Criterion-crowned consensus favorite.

Initially more avant-garde than expected. I thought the sound mixing in first scene was cool – we hear a choir but no dialogue or sound effects as some minor tourist drama plays out – but it turns out the scene was mixed normally and I had the headphones plugged in halfway. Paolo’s muse Toni Servillo plays an unproductive writer who knows everyone in Rome and can go everywhere attending all their parties. So we get to go everywhere, making me wonder who is Sorrentino that he has such access. It’s a splendidly expensive-looking movie if nothing else. Seems to be an attempted remake of La Dolce Vita – for me, Fellini’s least interesting movie, so this was an improvement.

by ·Comments Off on Before the Revolution (1964, Bernardo Bertolucci)

My second pick from Vogel’s “Assault on Montage” after the first Bach movie, and this one feels more assaultive – but it’s an assault on everything, not just montage, a big youthful 60s movie full of formal energy and manic-depressive characters. Not sensory overload though – plenty of plain backgrounds and scenes without music to keep you off guard.

Fabrizio’s blonde friend dies in an (accidental?) drowning. Aunt Gina tries to cheer him up at the funeral, not acting much like an aunt, he ditches the pretty age-appropriate girl meant as his fiancee to have a rocky affair with Gina. Halfway through we finally meet his academic commie idol Cesare, who he keeps mentioning, and she has her own older confidante who she calls Puck. Fabrizio wanders back to his own girl in the end.

A young cinephile movie, even with a scene discussing Godard and Rossellini and Nick Ray at a cafe. “I’m a bore who makes lists of films.” Has some character behaviors in common with giallo – Italians are emotionally unstable people. Does Italian music sound circusy because they invented the circus? More research is needed. Aunt Gina would later star in Phantom of Liberty and The Best of Youth. Fabrizio would direct and write The Perfume of the Lady in Black. The drowned Agostino was the only Bertolucci regular.

by ·Comments Off on La Chimera (2023, Alice Rohrwacher)

Our guy Josh has a magical talent for finding tomb treasures, the camera Evil-Deading in a slow circle until he’s standing atop the frame then collapsing upwards. But Josh isn’t great at much else. He can’t seem to profit consistently off his skills, or tell who are his friends vs. who are trying to bury and murder him. Nice recurring visual, chasing his dead girl to the other side by following a string, and always good to see Isabella Rossellini as the late gf’s clueless mother.

by ·Comments Off on Demons (1985, Lamberto Bava)

I remember thinking this was quite bad when I saw it on VHS twenty-plus years ago, and it probably is, but all qualitative analysis goes out the window when you’re watching Demons in a sold-out theater with Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin performing the soundtrack live. In fact it’s a solid horror movie once you throw out the idea that characters or dialogue or motivation or logic matter. What matters is that people are trapped in a theater full of demons – most will be killed horribly and/or turned into zombie demons themselves, and a few might survive. And after the credits roll, you forget which ones survived and why, as Goblin performs a full set of hits synched to music videos of kills from Argento, Romero, and Deodato movies.

Internet says the two who escaped through the hole in the roof caused by a helicopter smashing through the roof (!) are Urbano Barberini (the killer cop of Opera, who’d previously motorcycled through the theater cutting down zombies with a sword) and Natasha Hovey (who turns demonic and dies over the end credits). The victims are gathered by invitation of Michele Soavi to watch a movie about a demonic plague caused by a cursed mask, as the same scenario plays out in the theater. Some hopped-up punks break into the place only to become extra victims. A bloody, oozy, gory good time with a big crowd, and even Claudio was laughing at some of the English line deliveries. I haven’t seen Bava/Argento’s part two, and an attempt to make part three resulted in Soavi’s great The Church.

Hovey inviting doom from Soavi:

Victim #1:

Getting to the chopper:

Brutality in front of 4 Flies and No Nukes posters:

by ·Comments Off on All the Colors of the Dark (1972, Sergio Martino)

Every Shocktober you’ve gotta watch one of those illogical Italian movies with crazy use of zooms and focus and repetitive editing. Londoner “Jane” (Five Dolls star Edwige Fenech) sees murder everywhere since her miscarriage, husband “Richard” (her costar from Martino’s Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh) wants her to take her blue pills and make sweet love to him and not go to therapy. But Jane is being stalked by the blue-eyed man from her murder dreams. After he tries to kill her with an axe, neighbor May takes Jane to a group she says can help: a rapey clown cult of pale-faced people watching a guy with Freddy fingernails do animal sacrifices.

“You’ve crossed the limits of reality.” Everyone starts dying – Richard pitchforks Blue Eyes (Ivan Rassimov of Schock) then shoots his wife’s sister Barbara for trying to seduce him, the cult kills Richard, etc. Even the tidy explanatory ending doesn’t make sense, which is perfect.

by ·Comments Off on Variety Lights (1950, Fellini & Lattuada)

Overenthusiastic girl imposes herself on a shabby traveling variety show – this is Lily: Carla Del Poggio, who worked with every 1940’s Italian director I’ve heard of, plus G.W. Pabst, who apparently enjoyed a late Italian phase. She gets hired against the wishes of star Giulietta Masina, and hijacks the show, enjoying her new popularity but getting too big for her britches almost immediately.

We end up following the little-mustached company leader Checco: Peppino De Filippo would pair up with comic star Toto for a series of comedies (including a Fellini parody) and also appear in the cool-sounding Atrocious Tales of Love and Death with Mastroianni and Piccoli. On the street after the company’s destruction, Checco meets a sharpshooter, an American trumpeter and a Brazilian singer, and recruits them to start a new show. But Masina has her own solo gig, and Lily is too ambitious, joins another company behind his back.

Codirector Lattuada made forty-some movies including the Criterion-coronated Mafioso. It’s not clear whether this Fellini debut is the half in 8½ since he co-directed, or if the half was a short film, and I’m not looking it up since I’m not a numerically-oriented film viewer. Very good visual drama, too bad the sound was synched by fifth graders.