L'uomo senza memoria (1974)

... aka: Atormentada (Tormented)
... aka: Dødens puslespil (Death Puzzle)
... aka: Le trancheuse infernale (The Infernal Slicer)
... aka: Man Without a Memory
... aka: Puzzle
... aka: Rompecabeza: Hombre sin memoria (Puzzle: Man Without Memory)

Directed by:
Duccio Tessari

Eight months after having been involved in a car accident and waking up in a clinic, a young Brit (Luc Merenda, last seen in TORSO) still hasn't been able to regain his memory. A passport on his possession claims he's “Peter Smith” but a man named Philip (Manfred Freyberger) shows up at his psychiatrist's office telling him he's a friend and his name is actually “Ted Walden.” After Philip gets Peter / Ted alone, he promptly beats him up, calls him a two-bit con artist, accuses him of faking his amnesia and threatens to kill him but someone from outside the apartment shoots Phillip to death through the window. Before dying, Philip also passes along some other possibly important information, namely that Peter is 30 years old and is married to an American woman currently living in Italy. Immediately after, the doorbell rings and he receives a telegram from his wife Sara (the seriously gorgeous Senta Berger), who claims she can't wait to see him again and leaves a date and location for them to meet. Peter / Ted hides the body in a Murphy bed and then it's off to the airport.

Meanwhile in Portofino, Italy, Sara has moved on with her life best she can and is working as a swim teacher. Luca (Duilio Cruciani), a young boy who lives next door, has a massive crush on her as does an older man, Daniel Reinhart (Umberto Orsini), who works at the same sports center as Sara and seems to secretly hope she remains single for selfish reasons. After someone breaks in, chloroforms her and ransacks her home, Sara receives a telegram from Peter / Ted telling her he's about to join her. The two meet at a train station and have a lot of catching up to do. Peter / Ted doesn't really learn a whole lot from his wife. After all, the two barely even knew each other! They met in New York City, married after a week-long courtship and, soon after, went to London, where she spent most of her time alone in their hotel room while he was off doing something. That something is unknown. Sara recalls he had an interest in antiques but never even told her what line of work he was in. Edward Walden turns out to be his real name... or “Ted” if you're a friend.

According to nearly everyone who used to know Edward (including his wife), he was a “dirty rotten bastard” or a "dirty son of a double crosser" before the amnesia came into play. Now it appears he's going to have to pay for all that when his past comes back to haunt him. One of Edward's former partners-in-crime, violent and perhaps mentally imbalanced thug George (Bruno Corazzari), keeps stalking him and Sara. He was also the one who sent the initial telegraph that lured Edward there and the guy who broke in Sara's home, knocked her out and rummaged through her things. Apparently, he, Edward and Philip all owe someone a million dollars. They'd purchased heroin with the money and now the drugs are missing but the debt remains. Whoever they owe is determined to get the drugs back within a week of Edward's arrival.

After being stalked and terrorized over several days time (including Sara enduring having her dog killed and getting lit matches tossed on her), the couple decide to flee to America, but don't keep their stupid mouths shut about their plans. Not surprisingly, right before they're supposed to leave she becomes incapacitated after being hit by a car and breaking her leg in a staged “accident.” Certain incidents Edward witnesses along the way (like blood and a ceiling fan) trigger flashbacks to his past, which help to slowly reveal what happened before his car crash. Things finally start to liven up a bit at the very end, which features some fist fighting, razor slashing and bloody scenes involving a chainsaw.

This is a presentable and competently-made but nonetheless routine little mystery (or “giallo” if you will) that holds few if any real surprises and owes a huge debt of gratitude to Terence Young's Wait Until Dark (1967) in more ways than one. Considering what this is, when it was made and where it's from, I consider the lack of surprise both a positive and a negative thing; positive because many Italian thrillers from this era seemed so intent on surprise twists they'd venture into the realm of the senseless, idiotic and absurd to provide them and negative because, well, who wants to sit through an average, predictable movie? While the lack of imagination and creativity makes for a forgettable viewing experience overall, it won't exactly kill you to watch this either. Some mildly intriguing flashbacks sequences, OK production values, realistic characters and charismatic actors help put it in about the middle of the pack.

Puzzle was scripted by the extremely prolific Ernesto Gastaldi, who perhaps wrote more of these things than anyone else. Giallo regular Anita Strindberg (Lizard in a Woman's Skin) appears in just two scenes in a minor and forgettable role. Prior to this, the director co-wrote Goliath and the Vampires (1961), Bava's HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD (1961) and numerous other peplum and spaghetti westerns; some of which he also directed. His only other genre film as director was the obscure giallo The Bloodstained Butterfly (1971). The DVD release from the Danish company Another World Entertainment comes with both English and Italian audio tracks, but no English subs for the latter.

★★

Killer Party (1986) [filmed in 1984]

... aka: April Fool, The
... aka: Macabre Party

Directed by:
William Fruet

Yet another middling slasher set on a college campus, this starts out quite fun but ultimately fails to deliver the goods when it really counts. A bitter woman attending her mother's funeral gets pulled into a casket by her dearly departed and is accidentally incinerated, which turns out to be a movie playing at a drive-in where a girl goes to a snack bar, encounters dancing zombies and then a rock band, which turns out to be a music video being watched by one of our heroines. This bizarre film-within-a-film-within- a-film opening is probably the most appropriate way to start out a film originally called The April Fool and set among a group of joke- playing college students in the midst of Hell Week. Shy Jennifer (Joanna Johnson, who later became a soap opera actress), vivacious Phoebe (Elaine Wilkes) and geeky Vivia (Sherry Willis-Burch) are the three newest pledges of the prestigious sorority Sigma Alpha Phi ("the wet dream of this college!") where they must endure such rush week indignities as paddling, having raw eggs cracked into their mouths, being fed goat eyeballs (!) and being forced to say "I myself prefer a big, fat cucumber" in the middle of class.

Thankfully, all that's about to come to an end as the girls approach the end of their hazing period, only they're about to trade the feelings of embarrassment and humiliation for the feelings of death and bodily possession instead. Bitchy sorority head Veronica (Alicia Fleer) unwisely decides to hold the sorority's annual April Fool's masquerade ball - held in conjunction with a male house known as the Beta Tau - in a long-abandoned frat house haunted by the vengeful spirit of a guy named Alan who was accidentally killed there twenty years earlier. As the party is underway, someone decked out in a diver's costume kills everyone off in a variety of ways that include a trident, knife, hammer, guillotine, drowning and that old standby, a harpoon shot up an ass. By the end, the guilty party (whose identity is poorly telegraphed in advance) is sporting white contacts, an Exorcist tongue and a husky voice and literally climbing the walls.

This actually begins surprisingly well. The production values and photography are both good, there are some fun songs, the performances are competent from most of the cast, the actors and actresses are likable and the dialogue isn't half bad either (the script was from Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter writer Barney Cohen). We get a good look at college life to start things out, but the movie wastes way too much time on that and the various pranks going on on campus, including bees unleashed upon a bunch of topless girls in a hot tub. For the first hour plus the film is almost completely bereft of horror so by the time it does reach the finale it has no other choice but to rush through it in a haphazard fashion devoid of scares, suspense or even gory payoff.

Hampering the film even further is that all of the kills take place off- screen. You simply get to see an already-killed victim or the killer approaching behind someone with a weapon before it abruptly cuts to something else. Apparently the MPAA forced them to eliminate every bit of blood and there doesn't appear to have been a lot to begin with. The only real gore moment they allowed to pass through was a decapitation and that's only because it turns out to be a prank!

Martin Hewitt receives top billing for his supporting role because he was in the hit Endless Love (1981) a few years earlier. (Terrible movie but it got him some attention at the time). Cult legend Paul Bartel has a somewhat fun bit as an uptight professor and other small parts are played by Ralph Seymour (Just Before Dawn; Ghoulies), Terri Hawkes (Prom Night II and the English voice of Sailor Moon) and Woody Brown (Alligator II). By the way, the current "trivia" on IMDb about this movie starting production in 1978 and being mostly filmed then is complete bullshit. This was actually filmed in 1984.

★★