La rossa dalla pelle che scotta (1972)

... aka: El cadaver asesino (The Murderous Corpse)
... aka: La peau qui brûle (The Burning Skin)
... aka: Red Headed Corpse, The
... aka: Redhead with Hot Skin, The
... aka: Sensuous Doll, The
... aka: Sexy Spirits, The
... aka: Sweet Spirits

Directed by:
Renzo Russo

Someone on a motorcycle is lurking around the home of John Ward (Farley Granger); a lonely, mentally unstable, alcoholic American artist currently living in Istanbul. That same person later breaks into John's house, steals a photo and goes to a bar, where he inquires about the beautiful redhead in the picture. A woman merely tells him she's "the bosses girlfriend" but doesn't seem to want to elaborate beyond that. While walking through the woods the following day, John stumbles across a bunch of hippies lying around in a field. After refusing their offer to "turn on," one of the men drags a mannequin over to him and leaves it lying by his feet. He says he can have it if he promises to take care of it. "She's better than the real thing," he adds, "She never talks back and she's always waiting." John takes the raggedy, faceless mannequin home, talks to it and then promises it he'll fix it up.

After having an unsuccessful encounter with a very persistent but insecure prostitute (Ivana Novak), John returns home to continue repairing the mannequin. After scraping something off its back, the mannequin starts bleeding and next thing he knows it has transformed into an actual woman (Krista Nell). And the woman, whom he refers to as Patty ("Lady of the House" in Turkish), is just how the hippie described. She doesn't talk back (because she's mute), never asks for anything, is always eagerly waiting at home for him to return with a big smile on her face and endures his mood swings because she's completely subservient. When John decides to make love to his "doll," all of that changes. The mannequin morphs yet again into another beautiful woman (Erika Blanc), only this new incarnation isn't anything like the last. Patty 2.0 is an intelligent, seductive, manipulative woman who has needs and wants, her own voice and opinion (that she doesn't hesitate to make known) and something of a cruel streak when she doesn't get her way. She's also not going to be controlled nor just allow the insecure John to lock her away in his home.

John has been struggling to get by and has only been able to sell his paintings for a few hundred lira apiece. The art dealers all want nude women because that's what sells, but John wants to paint what he wants when he wants. The problem is, examples of what he wants are still hanging up in galleries all over town, unsold. Sick of living in poverty, Patty offers to pose nude for him so they can make a little money and stop living like paupers. Though resistant at first, John finally relents. He takes the painting into the gallery and is offered 1000 lira. More paintings soon follow. Art collector Omar Bay (Aydin Terzel) starts commissioning specific paintings of Patty and becomes infatuated with her in the process. And he's not the only one.

John soon discovers he's got some real competition and must start catering to the increasingly needy Patty's every wish or risk losing her. She takes on macho local hunter Steve (Venantino Venantini) as a lover, as well as the wealthy Omar, who promises to shower her with gifts if she'll leave John to be with him. John starts finding clues around the home (a shotgun shell, a cigarette in the ashtray) that other men have been sneaking over while he's away and the already mentally-unsound artist finds himself growing more and more paranoid. Pretty soon, Patty is all but rubbing his face in her various infidelities, including seducing a 16-year-old boy on a beach. She eventually decides to run off with Steve to Barcelona, but first offers John one more night... in exchange for his soul. Just what is she? A ghost? A demon? Some other kind of supernatural being? Just a figment of John's imagination?

Even though this has been written off as lesser than by some giallo devotees who've specifically sought it out and then been disappointed there's not a gloved killer running amok, this is actually a pretty interesting little psycho-drama / eerie mystery with supernatural overtones that has some interesting things to say about love, insecurity and the power play that occurs in most romantic relationships. Helping to carry this oddity along are very good performances from its two stars, with Granger effective as the intense, controlling, imbalanced artist and a perfectly cast Blanc sinking her teeth into the role of an enigmatic, scheming seductress.

First released to U.S. theaters as The Sensuous Doll in 1976, this made its way to video under the title Sweet Spirits in 1988, courtesy of Private Screenings. The box for that video (falsely) claims it runs 87 minutes but most other prints run anywhere from 70 to 78. I'm not even sure how long the uncut version is supposed to be but I've seen it listed as anywhere from 82 to 90 minutes, which means the 78 minute Retromedia DVD release that I viewed is missing some footage. Another DVD being sold by Asian Cult Cinema (under the title The Sexy Spirits) claims to run 84 minutes and shows stills not seen in the version I viewed.

Certain releases have reels out of order and others have re-edited the film or even reassembled certain scenes in a different order. Some cuts have removed most of the nudity while, on the other end of the spectrum, there's a French-language version with added XXX sex inserts. Would be nice if we could at least get a regular uncut version of this one.

★★1/2

La polizia chiede aiuto (1974)

... aka: Coed Murders, The
... aka: Police Want Help, The
... aka: What Have They Done to Your Daughters?

Directed by:
Massimo Dallamano

Originally, blandly titled La polizia chiede aiuto ("The Police Want Help"), this middle-of-the-pack giallo / poliziottesco (police procedural) was released stateside under the title The Coed Murders. (Great poster, huh?) It was also titled What Have They Done to Your Daughters? at one point specifically to recall director Dallamano's slightly better-known What Have You Done to Solange? (1971). Both films fall into the then-popular 'troubled schoolgirl' sub-category, which were made pretty much for audiences to thrill at the prospect of underage girls (well, older actresses pretending to be them, at least) being sexualized and murdered. When compared to, say, the Dallamano-co-scripted Enigma rosso aka Trauma from a few years later, which featured a tasteful plot-line involving young girls being dildo-raped to death, or even the aforementioned Solange, which involved young girls being stabbed to death in the vagina, this seems much more tame and classy. The gore, violence and nudity are fairly minimal in this one and, though there's some pretty crude dialogue describing the seedier aspects of the story, most of the time is spent on the police investigation.

One thing hoping to separate this from the pack is its casting of Giovanna Ralli as assistant district attorney Vittoria Stori. Since the detectives in these films from this time were almost always male, it was somewhat novel (at least in concept) to have a female leading up the investigation. Unfortunately, the execution sadly downplays this angle. Nearly every character on the male-dominated police force doubts her capabilities at doing her job simply because she happens to be female, her gender is constantly addressed and everyone acts like it's big of her to be able to enter a crime scene with a dead body present and not faint or something. Now this would have been OK if the film had not made such a big fuss about her gender to begin with or if Vittoria had been allowed to be the heroine or otherwise prove her worth, but the writing strictly forbids her from becoming a brave Jodie Foster-in-The Silence of the Lambs type. And when all is said and done, she herself is eventually reduced to the 'victim' role; cowering in the corner and having to be rescued by a man. Afterward she's all but pushed off to the side so that the male inspectors can take over the heavy lifting. It's also worth noting that Vittoria's contributions to cracking the case become less important as the film progresses.

Things begin with the discovery of the nude, dead body of 15-year-old Silvia Polvesi ("Cheryl Lee" / Sherry  Buchanan) found hanging in a sublet attic apartment. Forensics reports uncover that she was murdered prior to being hung. The same reports conclude that she was something of a whore and had traces of semen found in every orifice except her nostrils. A team of detectives - led by Claudio Cassinelli as Inspector Silvestri - hit the city and start to piece the clues together. They first interview Silvia's parents. Farley Granger plays the neglectful father in a small, why'd-he-even-bother role. The mom (Marina Berti) relates a hilarious flashback where she finds her daughter's birth control pills and confronts her while she's topless in the bathroom. ("Sure, I know I'm still a child but I'd rather not have a kid every nine months!") From there, they interview Silvia's shady psychiatrist Dr. Beltrame (Steffen Zacharias), peeping tom Bruno Paglia (Franco Fabrizi), who'd been snapping pictures of Silvia having sex from a building across the street from where her body was found, a bunch of secretive schoolgirls and others.

A private detective who followed Silvia around for a few days is later found dismembered in the trunk of a car and the killer - who's clad in a leather outfit and motorcycle helmet and carries around a hilariously huge meat cleaver - goes after the detective's mistress Rosa (Micaela Pignatelli) in the hospital because she has some incriminating audio recordings, as well as anyone else who threatens to uncover what's going on. The motive? Well, it has something to do with a bunch of old perverts and a teenage prostitution racket. Nothing new there.

This is all pretty by-the-numbers stuff. Lots of characters, lots of red herrings, lots of silly dialogue (upon entering a bloody crime scene, the chief inspector notes "That's two dead now... always assuming that this isn't chicken blood.") and a very typical and very Italian score (a bunch of young girls going "Nah nah... nah nah... nah nah!" over and over again) by Stelvio Cipriani. Watchable? Sure. It's reasonably well-made, has pretty good acting and production values and some neat camera placements (like behind the handlebars of a speeding motorcycle). A few of the suspense scenes are good, especially one where Vittoria is pursued through a parking garage, as are a couple of gory moments (like a policeman's hand getting hacked off). Sadly, none of that is enough to overcome a general lack of creativity. Since nothing memorable or even remotely original happens, this probably would have benefited from being sleazier than it actually is. I'm also still trying to figure out why it was acceptable to play audio recordings of underage girls being coerced into anal sex by nasty old men but the "fuck" in "Go fuck yourself" had to be bleeped out to protect our sensitive ears.

Giallo regular Mario Adorf (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage [1970], Short Night of the Glass Dolls [1971], etc.) co-stars as a detective whose teen daughter is also involved. Dallamano also made the interesting Dorian Gray (1970) and The Night Child (1975).

★★1/2