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I re-watched this today while fully awake and it all mostly makes sense. Still not near my favorite Sergio Martino by a long shot, but I liked it a little better and can see why some like it. Germi is a pretty cool cop character.
One thing that confused me was the scene where Germi and the two inept cops go to visit an older man for information about one of the dead girls. In the subs for the Italian audio, he talks about "when I lost Marissa's mother..." leading one to think he is Marissa's father or at least related to her. But it would make much more sense if he is the father of Floriana (the girl with the long dark hair who got shot by Menga). And in fact the pictures on the table that Germi looks at both show her, not Marissa. We get more info later that Marissa is the niece of the ultimate baddie, Pesce. The picture that Germi picks up shows three girls - Gloria, Floriana and another girl who's face isn't shown clearly. But she has straight hair, not the curly hair that Marissa is shown with. And there is another picture on the table of just Floriana. So it seems like they are in the home of the father of Floriana. Was it an error in the subtitle? Why was the grieving man talking about Marissa and Marissa's mother?
Doh! I've seen Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls. Why did I forget that?
Well, I'm looking at the very soon to be released UHD/blu-ray sets from Severin which are Vixens!, Supervixens and Beneath The Valley Of The Ultra-Vixens, so it's likely going to be one of those.
Never having seen a Russ Meyer movie, I'm curious and would like to. Does he favor natural women (no implants)? One thing I really can't stand is fake tits, especially if it's really obvious. Any size is great with me as long as they're real.
This was an odd one. I was too tired for part of it and need to re-watch, but it wasn't grabbing me. Other than the opening scene, it didn't seem like a giallo at all, definitely the poliziotteschi variety. Opening with the brutal kill, but then changing to the goofy tone with goofy music made it hard for me to get into. I've generally not taken to the Italian police procedurals but will give some a chance now and then. This story is very urban, and I miss the castles, dress styles and other trappings of the giallo and gothic horror movies.
Maybe it's a mark of how tired I was, but I was confused for the longest time, thinking the killer from the open was the same person as Claudio Cassinelli's character Germi. The shootout on a rollercoaster was cool, don't think I'd seen that before. But the running gags with Germi's glasses or the car door falling off, and then the music which alternated between some funky Starsky & Hutch style music or then the light comedic jaunt just didn't involve me. A lot of the movie seemed designed to get big laughs from a theater audience. Which is odd when the tone of the opening few minutes is anything but funny.
I just watched that S2 episode "The Thing From The Grave" with Miguel and Terry Hatcher. I love Miquel from Twin Peaks and Robocop. He was always a great a-hole.
It's funny that someone would watch the whole movie and not realize that's Lord Cunningham (Anthony Steffen), the main character. The sequence ends showing the plaque with the name of the institution and Dr. Richard Timbarlane's name, who is the doctor that appears throughout the movie and talks about Cunningham having been institutionalized. It is clearly earlier in time, maybe shortly after his wife's death, and now he's out and picking up redheaded prostitutes that remind him of Evelyn.
I liked that opening sequence for the shot in the mossy overgrown amphitheater where you see Cunningham come over the edge and then the pursuing figures come up on the sides and start to come down after him. Nice visual composition.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067487/mediaviewer/rm1892242688/?ref_=ttmi_mi_all_27
I didn't really think the fact his wife had an affair was ever in doubt. Since that information comes from Dr. Timberlane who it turns out is on the up and up, it seems safe to say the sequence of events he describes (Chamberlain wants to divorce Evelyn after finding out she had an affair, she gets pregnant against advice to try and keep him from leaving her, and dies in childbirth) is all true. And Lord Armstrong during his episodes seems to recall that he caught her and her lover in the garden. So I think that is all true.
We only actually know of one prostitute he kills, the first girl Polly (Maria Teresa Toffano), as the second supposed kill turns out not to have happened. But maybe he's been doing it for awhile. It is still an interesting aspect that he's presented as doing this and at the end of the movie is another victim.
The movie is fun, though its not exactly tightly paced and does seem a bit slow. I enjoyed the visual aspects - the beautiful women, the castle and interior with those great large paintings and murals, the quintet of maids with identical blonde curly perms, etc. And Erika Blanc's fantastic sexy rising from the casket striptease! Also have to like the kill of Aunt Agatha to then have her body eaten up in the pen of foxes.
Tinto had an eye, that's for sure!
Why the hell isn't this movie on blu-ray in the US?
I highly recommend this blu-ray. They did a region A release as well. The Arrow looks great, has the better Italian audio, and the special features are nice. I especially liked the interviews with Erika Blanc. She's pretty funny with her stories making fun of Anthony Steffen being so vain, and the talking about the American collector offering a large sum of money for the thigh high boots she wore in the movie.
No, that's exactly what he said. I'm sure she kept her skin smooth and it felt much different having her on his back compared to some brawny guy it was supposed to be. And it was probably funny to her to be asked to put on a fake mustache and play a guy considering that's how she began life.
I thought she was great! I loved it. Ellie Kemper was so cute and fun in this. Creeped out? You sound like such a kid.
I liked the ending. I was a little surprised by the romantic tack it took with the monster holding back not able to kill the hunter, even after he stabbed it/her fatally. She instead dies in his arms letting him know she'll wait for him in the afterlife. Interesting end.
Thanks. But jesus, just say "HOE". There's no need to be coy.
What the hell is a "304"?
Yep. That's the thing. Juliette Lewis came across as very sexy, in a way that belied what you would expect if you just saw some stills of her. It's called talent. Some women can do that.
I watched this today, and there is very, very little. In the opening scene you get a very quick (under a second) glimpse of one part of a woman's breast as she pulls her shirt on. There is a gore scene later that is supposed to be a woman's breast being torn by the monster, but it's just a closeup quick scene, and not even a real person, obviously. Then later there is a girl in a tub with bubbles over her chest, and you get a very brief glimpse of some side-boob. That's it.
See this image of an old promotional poster for the US version, talking about it supposedly getting an X rating for violence. No mention of nudity.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071535/mediaviewer/rm357182976/
The version I watched was 85 minutes and under the title "The Loreley's Grasp" on the Shout Factory blu-ray.
Might be. He just sorta disappears in this after calling Gioia and lying about not being in Rome. Presumably with some other woman, but we don't even see that. We just see the Coliseum in the background as he's telling her he won't be in town for a few days.
<blockquote>Capucine is so unique, beautiful and classy that she makes the other and much younger actresses look like whores.</blockquote>
I don't agree with that at all. She's okay looking for an older woman, but she's completely outshined by Serena Grandi and the other models. Even Daria Nicolodi.
The original Italian audio is much better than the English dub.
Serena Grandi is really gorgeous in this.
The film has that weird aspect where we see (from the killer's POV) the victims with grotesque looking heads (the nasty eye face, a bee head, etc), but this is abandoned and the movie doesn't really go into the psychology of the killer at all. It's a fun stylistic touch in those early kills, but it would have been nice to think it through better and do more with it.