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

L'étrangleur (1970)

... aka: Der Würger mit dem weißen Schal (The Strangler with the White Scarf)

... aka: L'étrangleur par Paul Vecchiali (The Strangler by Paul Vecchiali)

... aka: O Homem do Cachecol Branco (The Man in the White Scarf)

... aka: Strangler, The

Directed by:

Paul Vecchiali

I'm sure I've bitched about the term "giallo" plenty here already, but sometimes you really can't avoid bringing it up, especially nowadays! Once again, people who should really know better continue to try to stretch this small sub-category of film into an exaggerated relevance using invisible genre parameters. Michael Den Boer over at 10K Bullets begins their review, "The Strangler is a French thriller that is heavily influenced by the giallo genre..." (Uh actually, no, it wasn't. Please name a single 60s giallo that notably and heavily influenced this film. I'll wait.) Gary Tooze's piece on DVD Beaver claims "The giallo tag earns its keep in the later sections..." and then goes on to compare this to the films of Hitchcock, probably because he's unable to name a single actual giallo to compare this to. In her review over at Screen Anarchy, Olga Artemyeva seems a bit confused as she shoots off a few Bava titles (that are absolutely nothing like this film), claims that because this has a killer with a past trauma and a "meddling heroine" that it's "well within reason" to call it a giallo (ha, is that really all it takes these days?) and then curiously proceeds to backtrack her way out of the genre classification. Clayton Dillard's review at Slant is on the money in its first paragraph using Michael Powell's Peeping Tom and Claude Chabrol's The Champagne Murders as reference points, but even he cannot resist throwing out a "proto giallo" label later on.

So in case you're keeping score here, apparently this was made before giallo was an established thing yet somehow also was influenced by what would later be called a giallo and it's OK to call it a giallo even though it really isn't one and Hitchcock films that were made decades earlier are now retroactively also basically giallo. No wonder people get so confused!

As for how this all got started, in this instance at least, you can trace it back to misleading marketing. The folks over at Altered Innocence, who've done a very fine job remastering the film after a long period of dormancy, whipped up a shitty press package to go along with the release. It describes this as, "An unconventional French giallo released before the subgenre's popularity boom resulting from filmmakers like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci..." I'll give them this much, it certainly IS unconventional... so unconventional it has almost nothing in common with the subgenre you're trying to stick it in. Guess we can now safely start referring to vampire and mummy films as zombie films since they all feature still-functioning undead things. Who cares about all the little details!

Is there anything to gain from all this nonsense? Not really, aside from acknowledging that plenty of folks (who probably want to appear film savvy or in-the-know) misuse "giallo" as an all-encompassing term to mean any suspense, mystery, drama, crime OR horror film involving a killer that was produced in Europe in the 60s, 70s or 80s. What they accomplish is the exact opposite as far as I'm concerned, but never mind that. Let's instead single out a few other reviewers who weren't taking the bait. Glenn Kenny at RogerEbert.com rejects the "lost giallo" label (probably because he's aware of the defining characteristics of a giallo), while Kathy Fennessy at Seattle Film Blog returns us to reality when she notes this is actually a "character piece" and "not a full-fledged giallo as some have claimed." Thank you, Glenn and Kathy.

I found a few amusing Letterboxd comments I'd also like to share that really encapsulate the amount of confusion caused when a certain film classification is stretched beyond its point of usefulness. Username Dorian Wright refers to this as a "melancholy anti-giallo" (so not a giallo then?), another chap called Michael says this is "an early giallo that deconstructs the genre before it had fully cohered" (kind of like the time travel implications behind this) and a third fella named M I L E S admits, "If it wasn't marketed as a proto-giallo, I may have liked it less" (which may explain why Altered Innocence marketed this the way they did to begin with).

As for the film itself, well, it's French and has been given the "art house" designation by many, which basically means it's going to be slow-moving, non-exploitative as not to potentially piss off moralistic critics who will refuse to take it seriously otherwise and enigmatic to the point where sophisticated cineastes with a refined palate (i.e. not me) will be extracting one of five hundred different meanings from it. Not that any of this is necessarily a bad thing to all viewers, but you should at least know what you're getting yourself into here and whether or not this is even gonna appeal to you.

We first meet Émile, a young boy from a presumably abusive home who's just been "punished" by his parents. He breaks open his piggy bank, sneaks out late at night and goes to a train station to buy some comics. His memorable little adventure is topped off when a well-dressed man borrows his white knit scarf long enough to strangle a crying woman who seems curiously unperturbed by the entire experience. Many years later, a serial killer who's already claimed five victims is prowling around the city strangling women with a white, tasseled knit scarf. He's intentionally choosing victims who are single, unhappy, depressed and suicidal. Could it possibly be a now 30-something Émile (Jacques Perrin)? Of course. As has already been pointed out, the killer's identity is never a mystery.

Given the unenviable task of apprehending the psycho, Inspector Simon Dangret (Julien Guiomar) goes on a local TV news program to try to set a trap. Claiming to be a reporter, he publicly announces his address and phone number in hopes the killer is listening and encourages him to get in touch. Someone unexpected hunts him down immediately after: A strange young college student named Anna Cardiff (Eva Simonet). Newly-single and depressed herself after another failed relationship, Anna is paranoid she may be next on the asphyxiation block and offers herself up as a potential decoy to help catch the killer. While the investigator passes on that, he does eventually enlist other services from her.

Émile, who works at a produce stand at an outdoor market when he isn't stalking victims, decides to call Simon and give him some insight into why he does what he does. He claims killing makes him feel nothing, he doesn't know why he does it and that he's always happy, whether he's killing someone or not. OK, so no real insight then. He then starts breaking into Simon's home and leaves him notes made out of magazine clippings. The two will later meet up in person, where the killer explains that he is "sick with happiness" to the point where he can't "bear seeing tragedy." He views the murders as mercy killings and most of his victims seem more than willing to go along with it. Knowing he's going to go meet the killer, Simon doesn't inform anyone nor does he bring a weapon with him and, after their conversation is over, the detective simply lets him walk away so he can go kill other women! Huh?!

Set pieces briefly showcase the victims but these bits are never played for suspense, thrills, scares or even black humor. Some will perhaps say there's some insight here into the human condition but to me it was basically just a parade of lonely, depressed, miserable woman. Torch singer Monique (Jacqueline Danno, a real-life singer and recording artist) treats us to a dreary sailor-themed musical number at a nightclub and is killed after trying to drown herself in the river. Posing as a scarf salesman, Émile manages to weasel his way into the home of lonely, washed up former movie star Hélène (Hélène Surgère), who won't be making a comeback anytime soon. Upset about choosing money over her art, ballerina Florence (real-life ballerina Katja Cavagnac) is the next victim. Each seem resigned to their fate and Émile even claims he has something of a sixth sense in picking up on this before he kills them.

Instead of showing an actual strangulation or attack, the glassy-eyed, submissive victims instead freeze like they're posing for a still photo as the killer loosely drapes the scarf around their neck. Though this is clearly purposefully done and probably has some sort of significance, it mostly just reminded me a laughably pretentious perfume commercial. I ended up just assuming this wasn't a realistic depiction of the murders and instead the emotionally-detached killer's own perception of them. The film ditches this approach altogether toward the end when Émile goes after a hooker and he's run off by the woman's streetwalker sisters. Some viewers have tried to extract feminist meaning from this, but I'm not so sure I agree. All of the female characters who are educated and have careers are shown to be miserable, resigned, weak, suicidal and helpless, while the women who service men's sexual needs are shown to be happy, spunky, strong and independent. That doesn't feel very feminist to me, and this is coming from someone who 100% thinks one can be both a feminist and a sex worker. It's really about the contrast here.

As the killings are going on, a man known only as "The Jackal" (Paul Barge), who should have instead been called "The Vulture," is stalking Émile and using the murders as an excuse to pick the corpses clean of all valuables. That not only upsets the killer (who amusingly takes offense to being wrongly labeled a thief, though he's fine with being a killer) but is also harming the actual investigation. With the police force and the public both breathing down his neck, the main detective eventually quits his job, yet still stays involved with the case. Now that I think about it, they could have spared us the dozen or so boring police scenes had they just made the Simon character an actual reporter to begin with as opposed to a detective posing as one.

As with a number of other films that fall into the French High Art™ category, no one acts like a normal human being who does normal human being things here. A lot of the actions are perplexing, nonsensical and, frequently, downright stupid. The characters are cold, joyless, self-obsessed, humorless and terminally glum as they shuffle through their everyday lives like apathetic zombies. While this approach does provoke a little thought as to why the filmmaker chose to portray everyone like this, that doesn't make this dramatically inert film any less tedious to sit through. 

There are a couple of dream sequences thrown in, which are at least a little more intriguing than the primary story arc. In one, the killer envisions himself having a picnic with his victims while his late mother watches. In another, he's walking down the street and keeps seeing quick glimpses of an anarchic society filled with masked criminals and rampant beatings, murders, muggings, rapes, etc.  Sandra Julien, who'd later become a Euro sex film star (she headlined Jean Rollin's Shiver of the Vampires right after this), appears in this footage for about five seconds getting her clothes torn off by hooligans. In addition, there's a scene where a married (to a woman) closeted gay guy confesses to his friend that his wife sticking her finger up his ass no longer satisfies him, and another scene where a man attempts to extort money from Émile after he mistakes him for a gay prostitute, which I'm sure are relevant somehow.

This played at Cannes in 1970 but did not make much of an impact back then and does not appear to have been wide released outside of its home country. After its film festival run, it vanished for decades, did not appear on VHS or DVD anywhere and would not be resurrected again until over 40 years after the fact. In 2015, it was given a limited theatrical re-release in France. Two years later, it played at a Portuguese film festival. And, just last year, it turned up at the New York Film Festival and other select American film festivals. This was followed by its release on streaming platforms like The Criterion Channel and Shudder (where I viewed it). You may have more fun analyzing this than I did. I had much more fun analyzing the effects the initial press release had on subsequent reviews and audience reception.

★★