Nightmare Beach (Welcome to Spring Break)

Spring Break, wet t-shirts contests and biker gangs is not something you'd normally associate with a giallo. Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare Beach really has far more in common with your average American 80's slasher than any giallo. But John Saxon is always worth watching though and you do have to admire the ingenuity of a killer builds an electric chair at the back of his bike. Poster art is by the always dependable Renato Casaro.

Arabella l'angelo nero (Angela, the Black Angel)

Stelvio Massi might have been responsible for some great poliziesci (including the enjoyable Mark trilogy), but Arabella l'angelo nero really is a very poor giallo. Without a decent script and unable to create any kind of suspense, Massi goes all with the sleaze instead and any female character sheds her clothes within seconds of appearing on screen. Well, everybody apart from Evelyn Stewart. I always feel a bit sorry for her when I watch this. She'd been in films by Fellini and Visconti and she starred in handful of classic gialli titles, but by 1989 she was reduced to starring in this kind of shabby fare. No wonder this was one of her last films.

La Morte è di moda (Fashion Crimes)

If yesterday's Tenebre post was the good, this is both the bad and the ugly. Like Tenebre, this stars Anthony Franciosa but there's where the similarities end. La Morte è di moda is an uninspired and predictable giallo and the airbrushed poster is one of of the poorer ones in my collection.