Deathly hollows… Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975)

This thing called giallo: attractive women under threat, knives in the darkness, a killer amongst us and men behaving weirdly… some kind of sexy style always with a mean sense of humour as eager to add to the unease as the fake blood. It’s not dreary that’s for sure and Edwige Fenech is in it too – those huge brown eyes accentuated by short-cropped hair proving far more alluring than the acres of more obvious on display.

Directed by Andrea Bianchi from a story co-written with frequent collaborator Massimo Felisatti, Strip Nude for Your Killer is a knowing take on the by now well-established genre. It’s a bit like an Agatha Christie who dunnit only with nudity and far more leather-clad killers on motorcycles. The cast are less gentile as well with the exception of Edwige’s photographer’s assistant Magda.

Femi Benussi

Everything is in service to the art of shock and in this the giallo is no different from similar sexy-murder films from the US and UK from the mid-sixties to the seventies, film makers giving a more enlightened audience a thrill previously less clearly stated in screen. The age of visually-specific sensation as the ratings system relaxed… But I’ve never really got the relationship between sex and death: Strip Nude for Your Killer? Really?

But, in this case, I don’t think the title fits the film as, mild spoiler, it’s not really about consensual sex before murder…

The killer

The film begins in tinted queasiness as an illicit abortion goes wrong a girl dies and her body is dumped in the bathroom of her flat by two men. Not quite the sexy opening you were expecting perhaps – an early marker of Bianchi and Felisatti’s humour as they puncture the mood from the get-go.

Soon after the doctor responsible for the death is murdered on the steps of his practice by an assailant in motor biker gear – two down and we’re only just started.

Lucia pursued by Carlo at the pool

Next we switch to a public swimming pool where a curvy redhead Lucia (Femi Benussi) parades in revealing bikini and attracts the attention of priapic photographer, Carlo (Nino Castelnuovo), who follows her back to the steam room for a bit more steam. He tells her she could be a model and invites her to his studio.

The action shifts to the Albatross Modelling Studio where Carlo works with his girlfriend Magda (I know - he’s cheating on Edwige Fenech - what an idiot!) and a host of lovely models including long-cool blonde Patrizia (Swedish star Solvi Stubing) and the equally long hot platinum-flicked Doris (Erna Schurer – one of the films best actors).

At the shoot

The show is run by the rotund Maurizio (Franco Diogene) or more exactly his dominatrix wife Gisella (Giuliana Cecchini here listed as Amanda…) who takes a special interest in the girls and marks Lucia at first sight as requiring further attention… (there are lesbians, of course there are lesbians…) even has her corpulent husband looks on in emasculated frustration. Not that this doesn’t stop him trying it on with all the girls as well… he more pitiful than she who is masterful.

Carlo and Magda share a joke...

Carlo and Magda make out after everyone has gone and we do a double-take as he’s already cheated on her once today: is this our sympathetic leading couple? As for their sex-play… it seems, to put it delicately, that it’s all for Carlo.

After they have gone the leather-clad killer breaks into the studio and pulls out a shot of a group of people from the files… a hit list?

The workers at the studio

So it may prove, as a leather-clad hand knocks on the door of one of the studio’s photographers, Mario (Claudio Pellegrini) who, recognising the person, lets them in. After identifying the photograph the hapless snapper gets stabbed for his thanks and is discovered later soaked in blood and mutilated.

Time for the police to get involved and the next day the Commissioner (Lucio Como) interrupts a photo shoot to interview the main players. They’re all taken to the station where he attempts to get some answers whilst, creepily, one of the middle-aged cops stares at every inch of Lucia – a comment on the watching audience perhaps?

Lucia tires of the male gaze

Next we’re at Gisella’s apartment as she and Lucia are seemingly enjoying a quiet moment… suddenly Gisella leaps up and slaps her new acquisition, boy she seems very hard to please. She dresses and storms out leaving Lucia all alone, in the nude, wandering around the very large flat. Noises, there are noises… surely not here? But as the vulnerable model quivers in the kitchen the killer moves in once again.

Now things are getting messy but cometh the hour cometh the wannabe detective couple – Magda and Carlo try to piece the evidence together after they learn of the murder in the following day’s papers: something familiar about the earring found in Lucia’s hand…

On the case

But it won’t stop the killings… nor those strange moments of humour.

Maurizio tries to seduce Doris by playing the economic and sympathy card even after she expresses a preference for his missus and the dangers such a transgression might involve. But Maurizio can’t deliver and ends up carrying through his inflatable doll after Doris has left – OK we get the point.

Erna Schurer

Maurizio gets killed and is soon followed by Doris and her model lover Stefan – another who seems to care little for his lover - who are brutalized at the cost of even more red paint.

The Commissioner sees a pattern as do we… clearly almost no one gets out of this film alive but the question remains as to whom?

Solvi Stubing

Dusty verdict: There’s still enough alive to not “spoil” the ending but really this is more about the style than the mystery. The narrative flies past with  character-building effort only really directed at Magda who is the film’s only sympathetic character.

Not that Doris, Lucia and their fellow victims deserve to die but… we don’t really get to know them. Nor do we really get to know the killer who even after they are revealed, remains a mystery.

Edwige Fenech's best features are, actually, her eyes...

Franco Delli Colli deserves a mention for his effective cinematography whilst Berto Pisano’s groovy score adds to the period charm.

The conventions of the giallo feature were originally set out by  director Mario Bava in the early sixties with titles such as The Girl Who Knew too Much (1963) and Blood and Black Lace (1964) which added more sex and specific violence to the Italian thriller genre. Darlo Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) took things to a new level and set the tone for a decade of even greater suspense, sex and violence.

Strip Nude for Your Killer plays with these themes without being entirely convincing and perhaps its sense of humour is the downfall as if it is laughing too hard at its self-awareness and trying to shock too hard right up to the – literal – end joke.

Available from Amazon, parental guidance advised…

In the grip of giallo… The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971)

Italian cinema is like another country to paraphrase Ian Rush: similar but decidedly different. They may have ruled European art-house from neo-realism through to the titans of total control such as Fellini and Antonioni but the Italians also had their own take on Hammer horror or was it film noir?

Giallo took elements of both to create over-plotted, bloody and erotic horrors taken from an everyday life in which everyone behaves suspiciously and no one is to be trusted. It’s an uncertain world and one that AllMovies described as sometimes “…a head-spinning experience in style over substance." The attempt at this result is deliberate with a generous of naked female flesh, artfully shot violence and sublime, swoonful scores (here from Nora Orlandi).

Edwige Fenech,

It takes your cinematic comfort food and lets it rot in front of your eyes as these elements combine with the warm sunlit locations – Vienna, Catalonia, Italy… to violently subvert your anticipation and response. It’s a cinema of masochism in which the audience must surrender to the brutality and in-humanity gratuitously-displayed on screen. There’s no guarantee of a happy ending and when everyone has secrets – especially the seemingly-sympathetic ones… who can you identify with; who can you trust?

Giallo is Italian for yellow; the colour used to denote thriller books and as these pulp fiction stories were presented on film, blood red and blackness became the main signifiers…

So it is at the start of the film a man in black, who drives a black car strikes out at a woman using a cut throat razor: a violent killer is on the loose and we know it could be anyone of the characters on film – or more than one...

Julie is suffocated by her husband's diplomatic discipline

Cut (sorry) to our heroine Julie Wardh (Edwige Fenech) as she arrives at Vienna airport with her husband the much older Neil (Alberto de Mendoza) a high-flying diplomat who is greeted by some dull-looking men who drag him off to the latest of many meetings.  Julie grabs a cab home only to be informed of the latest murder… oh these things that always happen to other people….

Her mind drifts to a violent confrontation with her former lover Jean, who assaults her in a rain-sodden wood only for the two to make passionate and intense love… back to reality she leaves the cab and as she enters her apartment block spots a black sports car just like Jean’s… Once inside the bell boy brings her a bouquet of red roses with a message from Jean. Will she ever be free of him?

Julie tries to brush the thoughts off as she heads to a party with her best friend Carol (Conchita Airoldi). The party’s a swinging affair as these things could be in 1971 but the girls behave themselves especially as Carol’s dishy cousin George (George Hilton) is there discussing his inheritance with co-benefactor Carol.

Carol and Julie eye the talent

Things are going well until Julie’s ex Jean (the superbly menacing Ivan Rassimov) shows up glass in one hand and their secret love in his mind. He’s nasty what could Julie ever see in him, yes he’s handsome but really what poor manners… ah, I see: the two had a specifically sado-masochistic relationship and he knows how thin her veneer of civilised tastes really is.

Jean raises a glass... not for the first time

Julie leaves only to be pursued by Jean and only the intervention of the late-arriving Neil just about drives Jean away… Neil strikes the sadist who responds with a dismissive laugh that mixes disdain with the knowledge of Julie’s weakness (how many times has he struck her?).

That night Julie has a dream that graphically illustrates the kind of relationship she used to enjoy with Jean: fifty shades of scarlet with smashed glass submissiveness the tip of the iceberg. But Jean wants away and to escape not just Jean but this side of herself…

Julie and Jean enjoy a bottle of wine...

That night one of the girls from the party is killed by the knife man in her shower – a scene you could say is a tribute to Hitchcock from director Sergio Martino but the whole genre has clearly been touched by the nastier aspects of Hitch’s oeuvre…

Julie and Carol see the headlines on a shopping trip brushing off the co-incidence… returning to Julie’s flat they find George, he’s clearly seen something he likes but Julie is trying for the straight and narrow with Neil. But when the girls go to restaurant they find that George has booked a table for them – Carol is playing match-maker for her bored friend.

Julie and George go biking

George takes Julie for a blast on his nifty motorbike and for the first time in a while she feels the thrill of unprotected adventure as they whisk through the Viennese streets and out into the country… it’s only a matter of time before she gives in and the spur is provided when walking late night near George’s as a black car just like Jean’s flies past… cue a romp on George’s couch watched from the window by a mysterious man in black.

Still the flowers keep on coming and Julie receives a phone call threatening to reveal her proclivities… the caller asks to meet her in the park but assuming the blackmailer is Jean Carol offers to go instead and to set him straight… but in one of the film’s most unsettling sequences Carol meets the knife man and is killed.

Carol walks to her doom

What now for Julie as it becomes clear that she is the murderer’s ultimate target… can she find refuge with anyone? 

Dusty verdict: The plot is quick-moving and becomes more detailed as we race towards to conclusion. Julie escapes to Barcelona with George but cannot elude the man in black for too long…

I won’t give away the ending as it would take a many more words to explain how the film gets from A to B… it’s a bare knuckle ride of fantastic twists and turns.

The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh is well directed by Sergio Martino and not as graphically violent as it could well be - a plus in my book - with the suspense created by well-shot atmospherics and fine acting. Edwige Fenech is the stand out as the woman with the strange hobby who needs the chance to escape from an almost ludicrous amount of bad fortune… and whilst Ivan Rassimov excels as the most obvious threat to her life and happiness; he's not the only one!

The film is available at collectable prices from Amazon on DVD but you can also rent it from Love Film.