Violated! (1974)

... aka: Hollywood Ripper, The

... aka: Rapist, The

Directed by:

Albert Zugsmith

Say whatever you want about him, but not many exploitation directors could boast the credentials Zugsmith had. After becoming independently wealthy working "straight" jobs in marketing, publishing and sales, Zugsmith (by then in middle age) set out to fulfill his dream of becoming a filmmaker in the early 1950s. He co-founded his own production company, landed a contract with RKO and directed three low budget films for them. The surprise box office success of his Invasion U.S.A. (1952) led to major studio interest and contracts for MGM, Allied Artists and Universal. During his time working for the latter, he had his hand in quite a few now-classic films. He produced the well-regarded Douglas Sirk melodramas Written on the Wind (1956), which was a big hit, and The Tarnished Angels (1957), as well as the classic The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), which would go on to become one of the highest grossing genre films of the entire decade. Most notably, however, he was instrumental in bringing Orson Welles' film noir classic Touch of Evil (1958) to the screen. Though it was initially a disappointment at the box office, Touch is now considered a masterpiece and frequently pops up on all-time best lists. It was also deemed culturally and artistically significant enough to be selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in just their fifth year.

The "respectable" portion of Zugsmith's career virtually disappeared during his MGM years, namely because of his continued work with platinum blonde bombshell Mamie Van Doren, one of a gazillion Marilyn Monroe wannabes who were never able to compete with the real thing. Going from Welles and Sirk to flops like The Private Lives of Adam and Eve and Sex Kittens Go to College in just a few short years was quite the fall from grace. By the end of the 60s, Zugsmith was making straight-up soft-core porn (Sappho Darling; Two Roses & a Golden Rod) and heading down to Mexico to make the barely-released psychedelic horror flick The Chinese Room (1968) and the failed western-comedy The Phantom Gunslinger (1970). After trying to capitalize on the Manson Family murders with the sleazy The Cult (1971, aka The Manson Massacre), he finally bowed out for good with this nasty little rape-revenge film starring a bunch of hardcore porn performers.

Britt-Mari Nilsson, the Swedish-born wife of producer Roger Gentry, opens the film as the latest unfortunate victim of a victim-mutilating rapist who's recently been terrorizing Tinseltown and dons a different rubber Halloween mask for each attack. After stalking her around Hollywood Boulevard for a bit, the psycho turns up at her home later that night and attacks her after a swim. She's pulled into a gazebo, has her bikini ripped off, is raped (the assaulter doesn't bother to remove his pants) and then gets her face sliced up with a switchblade. Hilariously, a later radio broadcast will describe the thirty-something Nilsson as a "12 year old girl" (!) and also claims that the psycho's hallmark is carving a swastika on his victims' bodies.

We then meet Terry Murphy, who's played by prolific sex film star Rene Bond. Because of her hectic dating life, Terry brushes off potential suitor Quentin Judson ("Billy Buzby" / Jay Scott), then returns to her apartment where she strips out of her red vinyl mini-skirt and go-go boots and hops into the shower. The masked psycho (now wearing a devil mask), cuts through her shower curtain, pulls her to the ground, rapes her, knocks her out and then carves up her chest. The following day, asshole detective Sgt. Purvis (!) (uncredited Wes Bishop) shows up and chastises her about not reporting the crime sooner. He suggests she's making it all up and informs her that no one will take her claims seriously because she makes money selling ads in a sex paper and is an attractive young woman that juries would find hard to sympathize with. (Sadly, some of these observations are quite true to life.).

It's revealed that just fifteen minutes after she was attacked, Quentin was pulled over by cops half a block from Terry's house for speeding and had a knife in his possession. Terry refuses to believe it could have been him. Even though he's a 'Nam vet, he's a "gentle soul" who loves small animals, reads poetry out loud and "practically lives on strawberry yogurt and sunflower seeds" (?) Angry that she's now "damaged goods on the marriage market," Terry vows to apprehend the killer herself if the stupid cops can't do it. And apparently they can't since an Asian secretary is attacked about two minutes later, bringing the victim total to over 30.

When she isn't merrily bouncing around hippie coffee house trying to sell books, Midge Lewis is a college student who has been busy "studying psychopaths in my psych class." But that does nothing to prepare her for her encounter with the real-life psycho, who chloroforms her, pulls her into a van, shackles her by the wrists and ankles and does his usual carve job on her thigh. Midge is played by the attractive but apparently one-and-done Susanne Suzan. Whoever Ms. Suzan is, she was also the associate producer, takes top billing, refuses to do any nudity (unlike her co-stars), seems European in origin (maybe she was real-life friends with Britt-Mari) and delivers all of her dialogue in a monotone with a very thick accent.

After a parade of other victims, including porn star Sandra Dempsey (SEX AND THE SINGLE VAMPIRE) getting punched in the face and her top ripped open, and a black woman who offends the rapist by getting turned on by his attack, leading to her being beaten unconscious (!), this finally starts to settle into something resembling a plot. Terry, with assist from Quentin (who's out to prove his innocence to her) and an apprehensive Midge (who frowns upon torture since her father was a Jewish concentration camp survivor), decides she's going to lure the chief suspects to her home and then try to use "psychological torment" to force a confession out of one of them. The two chief suspects are sleazy, skirt-chasing television repairman John Murphy (Jerry Delony) and child-like, mother-obsessed linoleum installer Stan Driscoll (Ric Lutze).

With lots of nudity (though perhaps less than one would expect given the plot and cast), scenes that alternate between dull (most of the cop / interrogation scenes), amusing and disturbing, enthusiastic yet highly variable performances and a crazed finale that includes kidnapping, necrophilia, torture with pliers, a knife, a blowtorch and a homemade electric chair (!), this is a very entertaining piece of grindhouse trash.

Fans of Bond will definitely want to check this out. I've seen her in other things before but not anything where she had the lead role and was actually asked to act. In addition to providing the expected full frontal nudity here, she actually chips in a surprisingly fun performance, especially the more unhinged her character gets. You don't exactly have to be Meryl Streep to carry a movie like this, you just need to be into what you're doing, and Bond clearly is. Only four other actors are credited, but much of the supporting cast comes from the Lee Frost cinematic universe. There are small parts for Gentry, Marland Proctor (also the production manager), Phil Hoover and Vincent Barbi. Most of the actresses playing victims remain unknown.

Though this is currently listed as a 1975 release on IMDb, the copyright date is 1973 and the film was playing as early as October 1974 in Chicago. It was almost always on some kind of double bill and newspaper ads show it was paired with a wide variety of other films, including the Italian crime drama Execution Squad (1972), the Exorcist copy BEYOND THE DOOR (1974) and the Russ Meyer-directed sexploitation film Common Law Cabin (1967). It was later reissued to theaters under the new title The Hollywood Ripper.

Long thought lost, this finally turned up on the ten film Vinegar Syndrome box set "Lost Picture Show," which, for once, really did include a bunch of absolute rarities. The other titles of interest to horror fans in the set include Red Midnight (1966), Beware the Black Widow (1968), Las Vegas Strangler (1968; originally called No Tears for the Damned) and The Sex Serum of Dr. Blake (1973; aka Voodoo Heartbeat).

★★1/2

Mio caro assassino (1972)

... aka: Folie meurtrière (Murderous Madness)

... aka: La ronda de la muerte (The Round of Death)

... aka: Sumario sangriento de la pequeña Estefania (Bloody Summary of Little Stefania)

... aka: My Dear Killer

... aka: O Carrasco da Mão Negra (The Black Hand Executioner)

... aka: Time to Kill, Darling!

Directed by:

Tonino Valerii

This Italian / Spanish co-production starts with a very cool pre-credits sequence of a man at a rock quarry being grabbed by the neck by a excavator claw, lifted off the ground and decapitated, but don't get your hopes up. It's one of the only memorable moments in the entire film! The victim - insurance investigator Umberto Paradisi (Francesco Di Federico) - had curiously rented the piece of heavy machinery for one day only, and the operator - Mario Anzuini (Remo De Angelis) - has vanished without a trace. Police inspector Luca Peretti (George Hilton - THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH) is on the case. First assuming Mario accidentally killed the man, panicked and then fled, their initial theory soon falls apart when Mario is killed himself. Though found hanging, Luca determines that he was actually murdered and the scene was staged to look like a suicide. 

Believing the excavator was rented for the sole purpose of finding something in a swampy lake at the quarry, Luca orders it thoroughly searched, and then interviews both a strange old couple (Dante Maggio, Lola Gaos) living near the quarry and Umberto's former employer (Corrado Gaipa - CRAZY DESIRES OF A MURDERER). The same name comes up both times: Moroni.

Umberto had been tasked with investigating insurance claims made by the Moroni family. Their young daughter, Stefania ("Daniela Rachele Barnes" / Lara Wendel, in her film debut), was kidnapped. That was followed by an extortion attempt that was paid by her family, but when the father, Alessandro (Piero Lulli), tried to follow a mediator to the location of the blackmailers, he too disappeared and was found dead a month later, along with the little girl. Alessandro's insurance policy mentions the names of four people who'd been interviewed during the investigation: Eleonora "Rita" Canavese-Moroni (the wife), Oliviero Moroni (brother), Giorgio Canavese (brother-in-law) and Paola Rossi (a teacher). Luca decides to acquaint himself with all of these people.

Meanwhile, Umberto's widow (a wasted Helga Liné) shows up to identify the corpse and attempts to aid the police in the investigation. However, she's stopped dead in her tracks when a black gloved killer stalks and kills her in a highly unbelievable scene where she's strangled with her own scarf in the middle of the day in a very crowded post office. Though there were many witnesses to the crime (though apparently not a single one who tried to help the victim), none can seem to agree on what the killer looked like. The only clue left behind is a child's drawing clutched in the victim's hand, which leads investigators to a school called Instituto Benedettine.

At the school, Luca consults Paola Rossi (Patty Shepard), who'd previously been questioned by Umberto. She helps place the drawing as having been made just a week prior to Stefy's disappearance. Later that night, she inadvertently lets the killer into her apartment because she personally knows whoever it is and is then killed with an electric saw, making a complete mess of her spotless white kitchen in the process! For an encore he bashes her skull in with a statue, though that takes place off-screen and we only hear about it later.

Our hero then pays a visit to the dreary Moroni household and discovers that Stefy's mother, Eleanora (Dana Ghia), has gone mad and is still expecting her little girl to return home from school at any moment. Slightly more help, or at least a little more lucid, are brother-in-law Oliviero (Tullio Valli) and his wife, Carla (Mónica Randall - THREE DAYS IN NOVEMBER). While Oliviero, who lost an arm in the war, holds his late brother in high esteem, Carla resents him for having been a charlatan and a leech.

The other Moroni brother, Beniamino (Alfredo Mayo - VOODOO BLACK EXORCIST), is an artist and used to take little Stefy outside for long periods of time, he claims, to shield her from her parents' constant bickering. The two were on the verge of divorcing. His creepy artwork centers around dismembered baby doll parts and he's seen in his studio with a naked pre-pubescent girl, whom he claims is "a model." Then there's Eleanora's shady brother, Giorgio (William Berger), who owns an international shipping company involved in illegal activity; potentially drug smuggling. Giorgio may also enjoy the company of underage girls employed by a local brothel, just in case we needed a second potential child molester on the suspects list. Luca assures him that if he's willing to cooperate that no one will ever find out about any of that though (!)

Lumbering, talky, overlong and filled with multiple sketchy suspects and possible motives behind the crimes, this is a fairly competent example of the giallo subgenre, but middling and (mostly) bland all the same. Leaning very heavily into the police procedural side of these films, there are endless scenes of Luca and his colleagues, Chief Marò (Salvo Randone) and Brigadier Bozzi (Manuel Zarzo), standing around, sitting around, walking around or driving around discussing the case, plus endless scenes of Luca drilling various suspects. Because so much time is spent with the cops, most of the supporting cast (and there are actually some good actors in this bunch) are stuck playing flat, uninteresting roles. Sadly, that also includes whoever it is who's laying the killer. The person is so ill-defined that the big reveal doesn't hold any kind of impact whatsoever. It may as well have been a complete stranger.

Similarly, the direction here is extremely workmanlike. It's not stylish or creative, merely adequate, and the few murder set pieces, which should be highlights, are poorly staged and lacking in suspense. Though Valerii had previously co-written a couple of Gothic horror films (Crypt of the Vampire and THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH), he doesn't seem to have much flair for this kind of stuff; which is probably why he's better known for spaghetti westerns like My Name Is Nobody (1973). A good example of botched potential is Shepard's death scene. While memorably bloody, the execution leading up to it kind of undermines its overall effectiveness. After running away from the killer, she "hides" by standing right in the middle of her kitchen with the door wide open, then stares at the killer, turns her back, crouches down and just lets the person saw her to death!

There are completely disposable characters wedged in here, as well, especially poor Marilù Tolo in a completely useless role as Luca's girlfriend, Dr. Anna Borgese. Being a doctor and all, you'd assume she'd come in handy helping to create a psychological profile of the killer or something, or at least be put in jeopardy at some point herself, but nope! The only reason she's in this is to appear topless a couple of times. She looks miserable and all of her dialogue is huffing and puffing that the detective is too busy to spend any time with her. Nobody cares!

Four different writers, including the director and Roberto Leoni (Santa Sangre), are credited with the messy script. The best thing to extract from this one is the nicely eerie score composed by Ennio Morricone, with Bruno Nicolai serving as conductor. The soundtrack is available from Death Waltz Recording Company.

While this was not theatrically released here in the U.S., it was in France, Italy, Spain, Brazil and some other countries (mainly in Europe). This also never received any kind of home video release in the 80s or 90s here. It wouldn't be until 2003 that Shriek Show finally got it out in an English-subtitled DVD. The British company Salvation also distributed an English-friendly version in the early 2000s. In 2020, Vinegar Syndrome included this in their box set "Forgotten Gialli Volume 2," which also includes French Sex Murders (1972) and The Girl in Room 2A (1974). Extras for this title include the rare English-dubbed print of the film, a new interview with co-writer Leoni and archival interviews with the director and star Hilton.

★★