La muerte ronda a Mónica (1976)

... aka: Death Haunts Monica

... aka: Il buio intorno a Monica (The Darkness Around Monica)

Directed by:

Ramón Fernández

At the age of 19, German-born beauty Roswicha Bertasha Smid Honczar emigrated to Spain, changed her name to Nadiuska and quickly rose to fame as Spain's #1 sex film star after the fall of Francoist censorship in the country. According to a 2016 article in Vanity Fair, during the height of her fame, Nadiuska was being represented by the most coveted talent agent in all of Spain, was living in a luxurious penthouse apartment, had her own entourage consisting of a personal secretary, chauffeur and trainer, graced the covers of countless newspapers and magazines (including doing a nude tribute to Sophia Loren [whom she resembles] in a 1977 issue of Italian Playboy) and was so popular she was the highest-paid actress in the entire country for a spell. Despite having starring roles in dozens of Spanish films, it was her small though memorable role as Conan's mother in Conan the Barbarian (1982) that she's best remembered for today. However, her career would unravel soon after appearing in that.

Helping to usher in her decline, tabloids reported that she had been having a years-long affair with her well-respected (married) agent. And then it was uncovered that she was involved in a sham wedding with a mentally-ill man just to gain Spanish citizenship. Hoping to invest her money into something else, Nadiuska sunk her savings into numerous businesses, but all ended up failing. An attempt at a career resurrection in the late 90s didn't net many further acting opportunities and next thing people knew she was being spotted among the homeless babbling incoherently. She was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and has since been residing in a psychiatric hospital. Likewise, Nadiuska's co-star here, Karin Schubert, also fell on very hard times after her stint as a sex film star concluded, though that's another story for another review.

Usually classified as a giallo, this is your standard tale of a bunch of rich, scheming, amoral people who apparently have far too much free time on their hands. At the center is Nadiuska's pouty Monica, a married housewife who's inherited a great deal of wealth, which, in the world of giallo, automatically puts her in a world of trouble. Monica has sunk a substantial sum of her fortune into a business called Eurozona that her husband Federico (Jean Sorel) runs. Other partners in this company include middle-aged bachelor Arturo (Arturo Fernández), who has a string of disgruntled lovers all around the city and used to date Monica himself, and the fur-coated glamour puss Elena De Fuentes (Schubert), who's close friends with Monica. At least that's what she thinks. Trustworthy friends are also few and far between in giallo.

Because her husband is always so busy working his high-stress job and been neglecting her, Monica has sunk into a deep depression and become addicted to pills. She sleeps in late and doesn't do much aside from taking long baths and lounging around looking miserable. Elena comes to her with a confession: Her husband has been having an affair with a bitchy, husky-voiced model named Eva Schiller (Bárbara Rey). This not only has the potential of compromising the moral integrity of the company, but also bankrupting them as Elena claims he's also been spending an exorbitant amount of money putting his lover up in a fancy apartment and showering her with jewelry and other expensive gifts.

Monica immediately goes to a photography studio to confront hubby's mistress. While Eva readily admits to the affair, she refuses to give up their relationship and even refuses Monica's generous offer to pay her to go away. Eva, who's also involved in a "special relation" with Elena, tells her to leave and take it up with her husband instead. Meanwhile, Diego (Damián Velasco) has just been released from prison after a ten year stint. Turns out that before Federico hooked up with Monica, he was a criminal involved in contraband, drugs and kidnapping. Diego ended up holding the bag and going to prison for both of their crimes and he's not too happy about that. Sensing (probably correctly) that his former cohort is the one who tipped off authorities, Diego now wants "compensation" or else he's going to make Federico's life a living hell. However, Federico's finances are all tied to other people (wife, partners in the company), so getting him the amount of cash his blackmailer is demanding won't be easy.

After coming to the conclusion she should try to fix her marriage (not sure why considering they've only been married a year and he's already lying and cheating on her!), Monica is attacked late one night by a ski-masked intruder with a switchblade. She shoots at the person three times, but they punch her in face and knock her out. While she's unconscious, the intruder does a little corpse switcheroo and puts his disguise on another dead body and leaves it lying next to her so she'll think she killed him. The corpse left at the scene is extortionist Diego. When Federico arrives back home, he insists they not tell the police because the "scandal" would destroy their business and talks Monica into helping him dump the body into a lake.

Federico flies off to Barcelona for a business meeting the following day, leaving poor Monica all alone. She receives a threatening phone call that night from someone claiming to know what she's just done. The person then tells her to meet them at an old abandoned house... or else. When she arrives there, she finds several dead bodies. After fleeing home, she discovers yet another corpse in her bathtub. Just who is doing the killings and why?

A competently-made though middling "thriller;" this is very dialogue-heavy, slow-moving (though it picks up in an enjoyably ludicrous way at the very end) and not shot or directed with much style. Though called a giallo, it reminded me much more of a made-for-TV movie in its lack of visual flourish and theatrical qualities. The only thing here you may not find in a TV production is a generous helping of female nudity. All three of the main actresses chip in (Nadiuska and Rey more than once), as do a number of other ladies in smaller "disrobe-then-disappear" roles. However, it's also worth noting that the scenes themselves are far from erotic. There's no sex here; just a bunch of "Hey, since you'll be on the phone having this really mundane conversation in this scene, you may as well also be naked in the shower while you're doing it!" moments. Even a lesbian nightclub act comes off as boring because it's filmed from a distance.

This was the only genre film for this director, who mostly made comedies. I will give him some credit for generating a little suspense at the end and one well-executed jump scare, though it's pretty obvious he's not very skilled at this particular genre. Some of the posters advertised this as an Agatha Christie adaptation, which it is not. The cast also includes Euro horror regulars Yelena Samarina and Luis Barboo as Monica's servants, Isabel Luque as one of Arturo's lovers and Sandra Alberti, who went on to star in the Spanish exploitation gem Satan's Blood (1978). There's never been an official U. S. release for this title, though a number of outlets like Sinister Cinema offer a washed-out (though widescreen) print with English subtitles.

★★

Il dolce corpo di Deborah (1968)

... aka: Body, The
... aka: El dulce cuerpo de Deborah
... aka: En röst i mörkret (A Voice in the Darkness)
... aka: Married to Kill
... aka: Sweet Body of Deborah, The

Directed by:
Romolo Guerrieri

Only very forgiving giallo addicts are going to want to swill this perfumed toilet water. Tranquilizer-popping, possibly unstable American Deborah (Carroll Baker) and her hunky new hubby Marcel (Jean Sorel) decide to take their honeymoon in Geneva, Switzerland so she can see where he grew up and learn as much about him as possible. Well, more like learn something about him as the two don't seem to know each other all that well. Everything is going fine (at least as far as sex and nice scenery are concerned) until they decide to go to a nightclub to watch a black dancer strip down to a g-string and Marcel runs into an old buddy of his. The friend, Philippe (Luigi Pistilli), glares at him, gives him the cold shoulder and turns right around and leaves as soon as her spots Marcel. Marcel chases him down only to have Philippe brand him a murderer; accusing him of killing his former girlfriend Suzanne prior to running off to the U.S. Philippe insinuates he murdered her, though the death is on the book as a suicide. Deborah overhears the entire conversation and, later on, presses Marcel to provide an explanation. That he does and a long flashback follows.

Prior to going to America, Marcel, who'd fallen on some hard times, fell in love with the well-to-do Suzanne Boileau (“Evelyn Stewart” / Ida Galli). Because some thugs he owed money to were beating him and threatening his life on a regular basis, Marcel had Suzanne swipe some money from her loaded parents to pay them off. Wanting to better himself (and pay them back), he then decided to go to America and stay with some friends in Boston until he could get back on his feet and provide better for their future. He promised Suzanne he'd write her every day and that he'd soon return to her, but that all changed once he met Deborah and fell in love with her. Supposedly the heartbroken Suzanne then committed suicide in his absence. Philippe is bitter because he was also in love with Suzanne and perhaps now wants revenge.

Now wanting to find out exactly what happened, Marcel goes to visit Suzanne's parents only to find the house has been abandoned long ago. When they go inside, they find a lit cigarette with lipstick on it and hear someone playing the piano but no one is to be found. A phone rings and the voice on the other end threatens Deborah; claiming they're going to kill her to punish Marcel for what he's done. A later call to the phone company reveals the phone at the villa was disconnected over a year ago. Never mind all of that, the lovey dovey duo have a plane to catch to Nice, France. Upon arrival, they rent a huge orange villa out in the country for a week and then many little things occur that give Marcel the impression that they didn't leave their troubles behind back in Geneva. Suzanne's favorite song ends up in their stack of records, Marcel thinks he sees Philippe at a boxing match and the strange phone calls begin again...

A lame and utterly forgettable thriller, Deborah is slow-moving, almost offensively empty and vapid and completely devoid of thrills and suspense. This has to be one of the weakest, most bland scripts ever penned by the prolific Ernesto Gastaldi. The dialogue is awful, the one-dimensional characters function as little more than mannequins to adorn with fine late 60s fashions and things plod along from one boring non-event to another until the very end when it unleashes a few customary "surprises." Sadly, the last minute plot twists are all incredibly lame and predictable (gee, a 300 thousand dollar life insurance policy... who'd have ever guessed!) and come way too late in the game to salvage this, anyway.

The only thrills this attempts to generate are of the erotic kind. However, since this was made during a big transitional period in world cinema when censorship was just starting to erode, the scenes are all extremely tame. We're talking close-up shots of arms, legs and shoulders and barely discernible “nude” scenes shot through foggy shower doors. In other words, there is no real nudity from the stars (at least not in the 92 minute version I viewed) despite about a half dozen “love” scenes. Instead, we get long sequences of the two leads kissing, hugging, lying in bed with strategically draped blankets wrapped around them and pawing at each other while spouting laughably insipid “romantic” dialogue (“You're so delicious... and I'm always so hungry.”) Often resembling a feature-length perfume commercial (perhaps a better alternate title would have been “Eau de Giallo”), the print ads pretty much sold the entire film on the (bare) backs of the hot lead couple. Alas, it takes more than a few pretty faces to make something worth watching.

I love Baker in certain roles (like her brilliant turn in Andy Warhol's Bad) but, let's face it, when the woman is bad, she is really bad. In the English version, the actress dubbed her own voice (I believe several of the other main actors did as well) and, despite being in her mid-30s when this was filmed, usually sounds like a frail old lady. Her voice cracks, warbles and completely lacks inflection and she often awkwardly breaks and pauses between words as if trying to sync her dub to her lips. She does however look great and some of her clothing choices are pretty hilarious. During one scene, she cuts it loose in a comic book-themed nightclub (“Kaboom!”) decked out in Christmas bulb earrings and bracelets. In another, she plays Twister on the front lawn while dressed in a lime green mesh onesie. Oh, the late 60s. Gotta love 'em.

Genre regular George Hilton is in this one, too, playing a voyeuristic painter named Robert. Born in Uruguay, the handsome Hilton started acting in Argentina but quickly relocated to Europe so that he could actually have a career. He was far better suited for the spaghetti westerns he was frequently cast in than suspense thrillers and horror, but found himself cast in numerous early 70s gialli anyway; usually ones also produced by Luciano Martino and directed by Luciano's brother Sergio Martino (who was one of the production managers on this one). In most of those films Hilton came off as incredibly bland and one-note, but he's a bit more animated and less wooden here despite the film itself being worse than his later efforts.

This French / Italian production was given a U.S. theatrical release in 1969 by Warner Brothers / Seven Arts but was never officially issued here on home video. Italy (on the Nocturno label), Greece (Key Video), Hungary (Mokep), Brazil (Mac) and Spain (CJ) all received VHS releases, while Italy, Sweden and Japan have gotten DVDs. The director was born under the name Romolo Girolami and is the brother of director Marino Girolami and uncle of director Enzo G. Castellari and actor Ennio Girolami. He also made the giallo The Double (1971) and a number of westerns.

★1/2