Arabella l'angelo nero (1987)

... aka: Angela, the Black Angel
... aka: Angel: Black Angel
... aka: Arabella: Black Angel
... aka: Arabella, the Black Angel
... aka: Black Angel, The

Directed by:
"Max Steel" (Stelvio Massi)

What a huge piece of trash this is! Since she's not getting any at home, reckless nymphomaniac Deborah Veronese (Tinì Cansino) sucks down some liquor ("Mmm... Tasty!") and heads on over to the local sex club for some action. The red-lit club - called "The Infernal Regions" (!) - is located in some old castle and has an eyepatch-wearing, accordian-playing drag queen who tells people "pay for your sins" before they can enter the door. Inside, all kinds of sleazy and kinky things are going on. There's a threesome on the stairwell, two men wrestling in their leather underwear in one room and a woman using a strap-on on some guy in another room. Deborah seems to be enjoying watching until two guys show up to slap her around and pull a knife on her. A photographer / blackmailer has trailed Deborah there and taken some incriminating pictures. Then a bunch of police show up to raid the place. Just when things can't get any worse for Deborah, one of the cops decides to let her go... after he bends her over her car and rapes her! Afterward, she calls him a "bastard" and forgets to grab her purse, which she'd dropped on the ground. Just a regular night out on the town, I'd say.

The next day, we learn a little about Deborah's miserable home life. She's rich (hence, the blackmailer) and married to Frank (Francesco Casale), a bitter, wheelchair-bound best-selling novelist who is past deadline on his latest book and is always screaming at her. So how did he end up in the chair? Because on their wedding day, Deborah went down on him while he was driving and he had a head-on collision with a van! Alfonso (Carlo Mucari), the vice cop who raped her, shows up at her home with her purse and then attempts to extort money. But first he wants sex... and he wants it right there and now. Because her husband and mother-in-law Marta (genre vet "Evelyn Stewart" / Ida Galli) are inside, Deborah takes him around back to the utility shed. He says "Last night I found you in hell. Today you're coming along with me, and we're going to heaven together!" The two start going at it, but when Deborah notices that her husband is watching, she clubs the guy over the head with a hammer. They bury the body in the back yard and she confesses she has been "an angel during the day, a filthy, degraded woman by night." He promises to stand by her no matter what and even encourages her to go out and take other lovers so he'll have inspiration for his latest novel "The Black Angel."

Someone's not too happy about their little arrangement, though. A scissor-wielding psycho is going around gutting and then castrating men. First up is the photographer who took the incriminating photos of Deborah at the sex club. And then a cowboy Deborah took to a hotel for a one night stand. Lesbian detective Gina Fowler (Valentina Visconti) is on the case. At the crime scene with a bloody body stretched out on a bed, a cop eating a sandwich informs her "There's a lot of blood around cause they cut off the guy's dong. I mean, his penis. His male organ. His member, ya know? Including balls. Testicles. Testicle!" Gina excuses herself to the bathroom (do cops really use bathrooms at crime scenes?) and envisions blood pouring out of the faucet. On the front page of the newspaper there's a picture of the castrated dead cowboy for everyone to see. A little concerned her latest lover has been murdered, Deborah figures she should cool it for a bit, but her husband encourages her to "carry on" her random love affairs instead.

Gina confesses to her lover Agnese (Rena Niehaus) that a similar crime happened in her family years earlier. Agnese betrays Gina by running to the papers with the story in order to get money and advance her own career. Because it is now considered too personal, Gina is promptly thrown off the case. Agnese intercepts a call and agrees to meet the killer alone at night at a park (!) and finds herself getting her throat cut and then stabbed in the vag. Because the two had been in a fight earlier ("You filthy old bull dyke!"), an APB is put out for Gina's arrest. Meanwhile, Deborah heads out for another little adventure, this time going to the "Freak Boy Zone" and picking up a bisexual male hustler in one of the most hilarious outfits ever (see below). Several absurd plot twists follow as the identity of the killer(s) is unveiled.

Filled with full-frontal nudity and sex, laughable porno-level dialogue ("Come on, show off your body! Be proud of it! Excite me!"), terrible acting, atrocious English-language dubbing, shots of wienerless corpses, scissor blades poking into boobs and plenty of other moments in questionable taste filtered through a gloosy, tacky late 80s aesthetic, this is going to appeal much to fans of ridiculous sleaze. I wasn't bored. It has never been officially released in America. Some of the bootleg prints floating around are the Japanese version, which has all of the below-the-waist nudity fogged out.

SBIG