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The prospect of Barbara Bouchet and Rosalba Neri togheter is enough to have most eurocult fans foaming at the mouth, but Silvio Amadio's Alla ricerca del piacere has more on offer than just the lovely leading ladies. Unfortunately this entertaining thriller is only available on DVD in a badly cropped full screen version, but hopefully a restored version will surface one day. The very gialloesque artwork is by Renato Casaro.
Gianfranco Baldanello's Yellow: le cugine is one of the titles that is always mentioned when rare gialli are discussed. It something of a holy grail to most giallo fans and I don't think I've ever come across anybody that claims to have seen it. This poster is probably about as close as I'm ever going to get to it.
Trauma is one of the few Argento films I've had the pleasure of seeing on the the big screen. I remember being bitterly dissapointed when I first saw it at the Stockholm film festival back in the early 90's. I recently revisited it through the R2 Optimum disc and while it's still not one of Argento's better films, it wasn't quite as bad as I remembered it. No info on who is behind the very poor looking locandina.
We'll start the week off with Ezio Taruntelli's great artwork for Umberto Lenzi's Spasmo. Very different from Lenzi's collaborations with Carroll Baker and the more Argento influenced Seven Blood-Stained Orchids, Spasmo is a slightly confusing but nevertheless entertaining entry in Lenzi's giallo canon. The film features a great soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. The main theme Bambole is a dreamy, romantic composition with beautiful floaty vocals from I Cantori Moderni, that fares well against the rest of Morricone superior early 70's output. The other themes, Spasmo and Stress Infinito, stand in stark contrast to the main theme. Spasmo is a dark, melancholic orchestral piece and Stress Infinito is a jarring, atonal track slightly reminiscent of themes from The Bird With the Crystal Plumage and A Lizard in a Woman's Skin. 
Dr Roger Mell (Ray Milland), a physician and headmaster of a boarding school, is having an affair with the beautiful Sonja (Sylva Koscina), a married woman. He arranges to have the husband murdered, but is mortified to find out that the hitman killed the husband by blowing up a plane on take-off killing 140 people. In a fit of rage, Dr Mell kills the hitman, but realizes that one of the pupils has witnessed the crime. The only question is who...
Rafael Romero Marchent's Qualcuno l'ha vista uccidere is a slightly different giallo since you know who the killer is from the very beginning. Instead of focusing on finding the killer, we follow Milland as he tries to find and eliminate of the only witness to his crime. A fairly slow-moving giallo, but worth seeing. Milland is good in the lead, the script is by revered giallo director Luciano Ercoli and the soundtrack is by Stelvio Cipriani.
I was well and truly surprised when I first saw L'Uomo più velenoso del cobra as the film starts out in my hometown Stockholm, but apart from the opening montage, we don't really get to see anymore of Stockholm in this bottom of the barrel giallo. The script is quite poor to begin with (in spite of co-writing credits from Ernesto Gastaldi and Luciano Martino) and it certainly doesn't help that Albertini manages to botch the few sequences that should have been suspenseful due to poor direction and poor choice of music. The score doesn't really fit the film, but I would suspect that Cipriani recycled quite a few cues here (certainly the Femina Ridens theme anyway). I didn't find much worthwhile about it, but at least is was mercifully short at 82 minutes.
Art work on the fairly rare locandina is by Renato Casaro
My first viewing of Duccio Tessari's La Morte risale a ieri sera was in Italian with no english subs available. I usually tend to wait and watch films until I manage to find some kind of English option, but being a big Tessari fan I jumped at the chance to finally see it. Even though I only understood a very small part of the dialogue with my very limited Italian, I thought it was a truly excellent film. Tessari film is a very engaging thriller that packs a powerful emotional punch without ever succumbing to melodrama. On subsequent viewings of the film, I've had the pleasure of watching it with subs and my appreciation of the film has only increased.
Part of the success of the film is due to the excellent acting from Frank Wolff and Raf Vallone. The chemistry between the two is great, especially in the scenes in the morgue and when the father cleans out the dead girls things of the flat. This is a hidden gem if there ever were one.
The poster is one of the favourites in my collection, but unfortunately I haven't been able to find any info on who's responsible for the beautiful artwork.
Unlike Sergio Martino's previous gialli (which were produced by his brother Luciano) I Corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale was produced by Carlo Ponti. I'm not sure if that's one of the reasons that it's got a slightly different feel to Martino's previous films, but it's nevertheless a great film. You've all seen the fantastic looking sequence when the killer is stalking one of his victims in the woods and the very suspenseful later half with Suzy Kendall locked in a house with the killer.
It's one of the gialli with the most numer of editions available on DVD, but sadly none of the are perfect. Apparently the NoShame had a one in the works as well, but since they seem to have closed their doors, it looks like a definitive version is unlikely to surface anytime soon.
And like all the other posts this week, I haven't been able to find any info on the poster design.
Dr Roger Mell (Ray Milland), a physician and headmaster of a boarding school, is having an affair with the beautiful Sonja (Sylva Koscina), a married woman. He arranges to have the husband murdered, but is mortified to find out that the hitman killed the husband by blowing up a plane on take-off killing 140 people. In a fit of rage, Dr Mell kills the hitman, but realizes that one of the pupils has witnessed the crime. The only question is who...
I was well and truly surprised when I first saw L'Uomo più velenoso del cobra as the film starts out in my hometown Stockholm, but apart from the opening montage, we don't really get to see anymore of Stockholm in this bottom of the barrel giallo. The script is quite poor to begin with (in spite of co-writing credits from Ernesto Gastaldi and Luciano Martino) and it certainly doesn't help that Albertini manages to botch the few sequences that should have been suspenseful due to poor direction and poor choice of music. The score doesn't really fit the film, but I would suspect that Cipriani recycled quite a few cues here (certainly the Femina Ridens theme anyway). I didn't find much worthwhile about it, but at least is was mercifully short at 82 minutes.
My first viewing of Duccio Tessari's La Morte risale a ieri sera was in Italian with no english subs available. I usually tend to wait and watch films until I manage to find some kind of English option, but being a big Tessari fan I jumped at the chance to finally see it. Even though I only understood a very small part of the dialogue with my very limited Italian, I thought it was a truly excellent film. Tessari film is a very engaging thriller that packs a powerful emotional punch without ever succumbing to melodrama. On subsequent viewings of the film, I've had the pleasure of watching it with subs and my appreciation of the film has only increased.
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