Nude per l'assassino (1975)

... aka: Assassin for Models
... aka: Assassino per fotomodelle (Killer for Photo Models)
... aka: Der geheimnisvolle Killer (The Mysterious Killer)
... aka: Die Nacht der blanken Messer (Night of the Bare Knives)
... aka: Nackt für der killer (Naked for the Killer)
... aka: Nude for the Killer
... aka: Nude x l'assassino
... aka: Strip Naked for the Killer
... aka: Strip Nude for Your Killer

Directed by:
Andrea Bianchi

Gotta love a title that just cuts right to the chase. Shame about the movie itself. A young woman named Evelyn goes to get an abortion but doesn't come home as the gynecologist accidentally kills her. He and an acquaintance then place her body in a bathtub to make it look like she accidentally drowned instead. Not long after, the doctor is attacked and killed outside his home by a knife-brandishing psycho dressed in a black leather duds, gloves and a motorcycle helmet. We then meet talent scout, photographer and all-around lothario Carlo Bianchi (Nino Castelnuovo). At a pool, he spots the statuesque, bikini-clad Lucia Gerosini (Femi Benussi) and stalks her to a bar where he brags about his credentials ("Harper's Bazaar! Vogue! Elle!") and then invites her into the sauna so he can examine her, uh, portfolio. Seeing how everything looks great, he takes her back to his modeling agency, Albatross Photo, where she meets the rest of his co-workers and some of the other models.

Albatross is owned by aggressive and extremely unpleasant lesbian Gisella Montan (Amanda) and her equally odious, 350-pound husband, Maurizio (Franco Diogene), both of whom use their modeling studio to try to get laid. Gisella immediately takes Lucia to her office so she can also examine her, uh, portfolio, while Maurizio takes another model named Patrizia (Solvi Stubing) on a romantic date that includes a red-lit lesbian stripper stage show. Not too surprisingly, the wife usually gets her way while the hubby always strikes out. In fact, he's actually a mother-obsessed virgin with an inflatable doll, which begs the question: Why exactly are these two even married in the first place? The other primary models on display are Doris (Erna Schurer), a flat-chested blonde without eyebrows, and the scrawny, mustachioed Stefano (Wainer Verri). Among the primary staff are flamboyant make-up man Mario Ferreri (Claudio Pellegrini) and photographer Magda Cortini (Edwige Fenech), who's still in the process of working her way up in the business.

For some reason that can only be attributed to possible career advancement, Magda is interested in dating sleazy and obnoxious man-whore Carlo and gets the ball rolling by seducing him in a darkroom and then going down where, well, probably a thousand wanna-be models, have gone before. His idea of a charming post coital conversation involves talking nonsense about molecules in milk making coffee taste better and, when she looks perplexed, informing her "It's stupid for me to explain. You don't understand a damn thing anyhow." That's followed by him putting his hands around her throat and threatening to strangle her over a newspaper article. Magda behaves like it's all nothing and is casually chatting it up with him just a few seconds later. At first I figured this must mean Magda is also the killer because only a psychotic would agree to date Carlo in the first place. Hell, I'd even try to explain that to her except I have a sneaking suspicion she wouldn't understand a damn thing anyhow.

We discover that the woman who died getting the abortion used to be an Albatross model and the motorcycle-killer is targeting only agency employees. He / she starts by taking out the gay make-up man. Next up is Lucia, who's been putting out for Gisella in hopes of improving her chances of becoming a successful fashion model. After the two have a spat - Gisella slaps her and calls her a "cheap whore" for having slept with Carlo (well, if the shoe fits...) - Lucia is stabbed to death after walking around the house completely nude for a good five minutes. Next up, Maurizio takes Doris on a terrifying high speed drive to a country house where he attempts to rape her and then threatens to bash her head in. She responds to that by taking off her clothes, lying on the couch and cheerfully agreeing to have sex with him. However, he's unable to perform. After she leaves, he whips out his inflatable girlfriend but gets killed before he can even fully pump her up. As all of this is going on, a police commissioner (Lucio Como) wanders in and out asking incredibly moronic questions.

I can't fault this one for false advertising as there is indeed a killer and indeed a lot of stripping nude. However, I can fault it for being a colossal failure on nearly every other front. While the nudity is gratuitous and nearly non-stop, there's little suspense and the mystery elements and killer reveal are so incompetently handled it's almost laughable. Though the killer isn't unmasked until the very end, a really clumsy clue at the very beginning narrows it down for us considerably. The killer is given a photograph of eight people and it's revealed they are also in the photo. Another person pictured is already dead. The person who gives the killer the photo is about to die. And prior to handing the photo over, the victim names four of the others off who are pictured. That leaves just two people that it could possibly be. One of the two is prominently featured up until this point then suddenly just disappears (almost if they want us to forget all about them for a little while...) while the other is barely shown at all. So, yeah, there's not much of a "mystery" really going on here.

So now that we have the plot being a bust out of the way, we should make mention of the painfully awful dialogue, the fact there is almost no directorial style to speak of and that there's not a single likable character in the entire film. Carlo has to be one of the most repellent leads I've ever seen in any of these films. He helps cover for the doctor after the botched abortion by staging it like a drowning (and probably was the one who impregnated her in the first place), uses every woman he runs across, strangles and berates his girlfriend and then threatens to rear-entry rape our heroine during the "funny" final scene... and the filmmakers behave as if he's the most charming guy in the entire world! The fact they let him live and don't castrate him like they do another character is a missed opportunity if there ever was one.

As far as the violence is concerned, most of it takes place off-screen and we just see the thick-red-paint-drenched aftermath. While most of the kills are stabbings, they throw in a few variations like a pair of ears, a breast and a wiener being removed, though that and all of the nudity don't do much to elevate this poorly-plotted, by-the-numbers effort. Strip was made toward the end of the giallo cycle when this type of film was falling out of favor with audiences and ideas and innovation were clearly in short supply. Increasingly more graphic sex films were popular though, prompting many directors to focus almost entirely on nudity as opposed to paying much attention to the mystery / horror aspects of these "thrillers." That seems to be the case here. While I can't say I personally had much fun watching this dumb, cynical film, some people seem to like it.

Bianchi, one of the sleazier Italian directors of his day, primarily made sex comedies, horror films and porn (both soft and hardcore). He was brought in to shoot additional and more exploitative scenes for the controversial What the Peeper Saw (1972) and also made the possession / sex film MALABIMBA (1979), which had more explicit X-rated inserts added to it so it could play in adult theaters, Angel of Death (1987), which involves Nazi scientists conducting experiments in a jungle and a couple of late 80s slashers: Maniac Killer (1987) and MASSACRE (1989). He will forever be best know however for his trashy zombie movie fave Burial Ground (1981).

To my knowledge, this title did not get an official U.S. release until Blue Underground put it out on DVD in 2005. An English-dubbed version was released theatrically in the UK, but had five minutes of violence and nudity removed.

★1/2

Malabimba (1979)

... aka: Malabimba, the Malicious Whore
... aka: Malicious Whore, The
... aka: Possession of a Teenager
... aka: Sublime Sensation

Directed by:
"Andrew White" (Andrea Bianchi)

Meet the Karoli family. Despite severe financial problems, the elderly matriarch of the clan (Pupita Lea Scuderoni) insists they hang on to their massive castle home, which has been in the family for three centuries and at one time was used as a monastery. Son Andrea (Enzo Fisichella), who lost his wife Daniela years earlier, wants to sell the castle so they can get out from under their debt, but he's broke and powerless. Brother Adolfo (Giuseppe Marrocco), who also lives there, has plenty of money, but he's unfortunately suffered some kind of brain injury that's left him crippled and unable to speak. As a result, all of his finances have fallen into his wife Nais' (Patrizia Webley) hands and Nais isn't a very nice woman. She is, however, fully aware that she's a huge whore and seems to take great pride in that fact. Mama Karoli wants Andrea to seduce and marry his brother's wife so that they can get their hands on the money. Still pining for Daniela and believing Nais is a "low-grade slut" anyway, Andrea refuses... at least at first. And that leaves poor Bimba (Katell Laennec), Andrea's 16-year-old daughter, who has lived her entire life in the home completely isolated from the outside world. In fact, she's not once left the castle grounds and the repression and naivety leave her quite open to malicious and evil influences that happen to be lying dormant inside the castle just waiting to strike out.

The family hold a séance in an effort to call forth Daniela's spirit. Instead, the medium (Elisa Mainardi) accidentally dredges up the vengeful spirit of Lucrezia, who was a "malicious whore" and the shame of the entire family. She also died under mysterious circumstances. Lucrezia lashes out at the family, calling them all perverts, hypocrites, sluts and "domesticated swine." She then exits the medium's body, briefly harasses nun Sister Sofia (Mariangela Giordano), who's there to take care of Adolfo and serve as a tutor and companion to the girl, and finally makes a b-line for Bimba's bedroom to possess her. Bimba sees snakes and lapses in and out of Lucrezia's personality, complete with a husky middle-aged woman's voice. At dinner, she tells her granny, "When you were my age, you were already fucking all of your father's friends!" and squeezes the butler's crotch. She then tries to grope the nun and calls her a whore, before sneaking outside dressed in a sheer nightie to spy on various bedroom activities, which center primarily around the large-breasted Nais. After unsuccessfully trying to seduce Andrea, Nais decides to screw her lawyer Giorgio (Giancarlo Del Luca) instead after he gets her in the mood by slapping her around and calling her "The best whore in the world."

So what else does Bimba do? Well, she embarrasses her uptight family by lifting up her dress and exhibiting herself in the nude in front of party guests. And then she tries to make out with her own father and rubs his cock. And then she stabs a hole in her teddy bear's crotch, inserts a candle and uses it to get off on. She also 69s with a stuffed elf doll, manages to fog up a mirror in two different spots and becomes quite the little peeping Thomasina. Some moments are extremely tasteless, including her watching her dad have sex while she rubs her crotch, and then trying to coerce the adult nun into sex. Then sleaziest bit, however, is when she sneaks downstairs where her crippled uncle is sleeping, strips off her clothes in front of him and then sucks him off until he keels over from a heart attack! As if the constant voyeurism, masturbation and full frontal nudity weren't enough, the sleaze factor is upped even more by the addition of some hardcore sex inserts added later on by someone else. There actually aren't a whole lot of these, but they're briefly used during three different scenes.

Malabimba basically falls into the sub-category of Euro exploitation clearly influenced by The Exorcist; a cycle that also includes THE ANTICHRIST (1974), Beyond the Door (1974), EXORCISMO (1975), The Possessor (1975) and numerous others. It combines two popular themes of the 70s; the corruption of minors / innocents / virgins and the corruption of nuns, but its only really horror content is in the possession theme. This was clearly made as a sex film as that's where nearly every scene ends up. There's not a drop of blood in this one, nor are there any special effects or makeups on the possessed teen. It was shot at a great, picturesque location, but under-utilizes the scenery at hand and ends up shooting nearly every scene indoors. The photography and music are both pretty good. I'd give it a 6 on the sex scale but only about a 3 as a horror film.

The Severin DVD comes with some decent extras, including both the cut and uncut versions. It's a good print, aside from numerous scenes clearly sourced from a damaged VHS print that have been edited back in. Giordano is one of the interview subjects on a documentary featurette and she states that this was the first film she ever did nudity in but then tries to downplay the sex angle. By this stage in her career she was already into her 40s, but how the Italian movie industry was going at the time, you either did the nude scenes or you didn't work. The floodgates now opened, she took on nude roles in a bunch of genre films that really pushed the boundaries of R / X ratings, like GIALLO IN VENICE (1979), Patrick Still Lives (1980) and Satan's Baby Doll (1982). To genre fans she's perhaps best known for playing the tough mama who gets her nipple bitten off by her creepy dwarf son in the zombie flick BURIAL GROUND (1980), which was also directed by Bianchi. All of those were made for her then-husband, producer Gabriele Cristani. She'd later go on to act in Michele Soavi's THE SECT (1991) and Jess Franco's Killer Barbys (1996). In the interview, Giordano has (mostly) nice things to say about the cast and crew, and claims she felt comfortable playing the role of a repressed nun because she was raised in a Catholic convent. Cinematographer Franco Villa is the second interview subject and also has nice things to say about the experience. Much hoopla is made of the fact that the film later had X inserts added to the mix so it could play in adult theaters.

Bianchi (billed as "Andrew White" here) also made the sleazy giallo Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975), the hard-to-find (though reputedly dull) Maniac Killer (1987) and the routine slasher flick MASSACRE (1989).

★★