La morte accarezza a mezzanotte (1972)

... aka: Cry Out in Terror
... aka: Death Caresses at Midnight
... aka: Death Walks at Midnight
... aka: Die eiserne Hand des Todes (The Iron Hand of Death)

Directed by:
Luciano Ercoli

Apparently always game for making some extra money, successful model Valentina ("Susan Scott" / Nieves Navarro) will soon regret allowing herself to be the guinea pig in an experiment with a mind-bending drug called H.D.S. and allowing her shady reporter "friend" Gio Baldi (Simón Andreu) write an article about her experiences. Gio promises Valentina complete anonymity in his article while the doctor, an expert in toxicology from the University of Milan, promises the intramuscular drug is completely safe. After the injection, Valentine first starts showing signs of drug-induced euphoria but that soon changes to horror as she's flooded with bloody visions of a man in sunglasses (Claudio Pellegrini) murdering a woman with an "armored fist" (spiked glove).

The following day, Val goes to work only to find out she's been fired. The "doctor" who administered the drug turns out to be an impostor and she'd been set up. Gio had taken photos of her while she was drugged and then ran a front page story in his sleazy tabloid rag Novella 2000 about her visions while under the hallucinogenic substance. To top off her great day, she finds herself also being arrested after angrily flinging a rock through Gio's window. Could things possibly get any worse? Sure. Even though everything else that transpired with the H.D.S. drug was a fraud cooked up to sell magazines, Valentina's vision of a mysterious murderer on the loose, while perhaps not entirely accurate, isn't entirely untrue either.

Valentina would prefer to forget all about it, but that isn't an option because whoever was responsible for the murder she saw then comes after her and several characters pop out of the woodwork to either stalk her or drop clues as to what's really going on. There are additional complications to muddy the waters even further. For starters, the crime Valentina saw occurred six months earlier in the apartment right across from hers. She may have seen the crime and repressed the horrific memory. Second, someone had already been arrested for that murder and is currently being housed at a asylum but it's not the same man from her vision. Third, another woman turns up dead and whose murder seems to be tied to the other but police have already written it off as a suicide.

Plenty of red herrings file in and out. There's Pepito (Fabrizio Moresco), nutbag friend of one of the victims, who slashes cat throats when he isn't stalking Valentina. And there's Verushka (Claudie Lange), wife of a sinister asylum doctor Otto Wuttenberg (Ivano Staccioli) and sister of one of the victims, who shows up from time to time looking into her sister's death and may also be crazy. Valentina's moody, self-centered artist pseudo boyfriend Stefano ("Peter Martell" / Pietro Martellanza) is in and out of the picture and isn't much of a support system. While Inspector Serino (Carlo Gentilli) tries to make sense of what's going on, he's also simultaneously investigating Hamburg drug smugglers (including the constantly-giggling weirdo Luciano Rossi) who've recently set up shop in Milan and may be connected to the murders themselves. And, of course, that strange guy in sunglasses always seems to be lurking around. Most of these people will be dead by the time everything is said and done.

Have you ever gone to a restaurant, ordered a sandwich and it comes on brioche or ciabatta and looks delicious based solely on the bread? But then you take a bite only to discover that the bread is actually the best thing about it? That's essentially this movie. It starts with an interesting set-up and has a lively, entertaining finale but nearly everything stuffed inside is flavorless, forgettable and mundane. The repressed-memory-recall-based-on-a-hallucinogenic-drug angle could have been taken all kinds of interesting places but, like a lot of the other filler crammed in here, turns out to be just a dead end. Though this is competently shot and has a few fun (and verrrry 70s) sets, there's not nearly enough directorial flair, visual imagination or plot interest to elevate it above the average.

The most interesting thing going on here is actually the lead character / main actress. This is the first time I've seen Navarro keep her clothes on for an entire film (in fact, this film has no nudity at all) and her "Valentina" is atypically assertive for a giallo female lead. She's also bitchy, sarcastic, hot-tempered and has a habit of slapping everyone in the face. While that doesn't make for a very likable heroine, and she's still forced to do a number of moronic things just so the plot can advance, it does stand out here as something a little different.

The typically convoluted script by Ernesto Gastaldi and May (Mahnahén) Velasco was based on a story by Sergio Corbucci. It was an Italian / Spanish co-production with parts filmed in both countries and is the third of five collaborations between the husband-and-wife team of Ercoli and Navarro following Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (1970) and (the much better) DEATH WALKS ON HIGH HEELS (1971). There was no U.S. release that I'm aware of until the 2006 No Shame DVD. It and the companion film High Heels have been issued on a Blu-ray box set titled "Death Walks Twice" by UK label Arrow Video.

★★

Perjanjian Terlarang (1990)

... aka: Forbidden Agreement

Directed by:
B.Z. Kadaryono

A torch-carrying mob of villagers march to a witch doctor's home, where he's in the middle of doing some kind of ceremony with a topless woman. He leaps out through the roof and tries to escape, but he's caught, beat to a bloody pulp and then thrown into a lake. Next up, we're treated to a montage featuring two teen couples on motorcycles driving around on the beach and being mushy in a canoe. And then we meet three other guys with pantyhose over their heads, who break into a mansion. After doing her nightly prayer, a servant woman is slapped and then karate chopped unconscious. After admiring her jewelry, the wife is pushed down and hits her head on the corner of a table. After counting his money, the man of the house is beat over the head with a chair.

Just as the thieves are walking out with a briefcase filled with money, a TV, stereo and jewelry, daughter Murti (Sally Marcellina) and her martial artist boyfriend Yusman (Johan Saimimi) arrive home. Though Yusman is able to fight them until they run off, the family's problems go much deeper than a few robbers roughing them up. The once-rich father - Murdali (Wenda Wijaya) - has been having major financial problems. After paying off only a portion of his debt the family's money is now completely gone.

Murdali makes the mistake of accepting help from Juragan Hamid (Mawardi Harland), a wealthy criminal who's willing to barter for goods. Unfortunately, the "goods" he wants are Murti's. Backed into a corner, the father goes along with it, and the passive mother (Tien Kadaryono) asks her to sacrifice for the family, but Murti refuses as she's in love with Yusman. The two lovebirds go on another romantic canoe ride on a lake, slash their wrists and make a blood pact to symbolically marry even if everything else is out of her control. Some of the blood drips into the water and awakens the same evil sorcerer - Mbah Jagaraga (El Koesno) - from the opening scene.

While Murti's changing clothes, the sorcerer's ghost enters her bedroom and then takes over her body. And what's the first thing a presumably heterosexual male would do inside an attractive woman's body? If you answered touch it, you would be correct. But then he jumps into her bed, starts making out with a body pillow and puts on a sheer nightie to go seduce the boyfriend, so I don't know. As Yusman gets ready to climb into bed with her for a literal red light special as a photo of a teased-hair Jon Bon Jovi is right behind him, the spell is broken because the female servant starts reading from the Koran a few doors down.

Juragan sends his thugs (the pantyhose robbers) to collect Murti. She's chloroformed, kidnapped and locked in a bedroom. Juragan then goes to the father with a contract that will alleviate his debt in exchange for Murti's hand in marriage. And he signs it... right in front of Yusman! "Dad of the Year," he ain't. When Juragan returns home and tries to rape his new "wife," he accidentally kills her instead and then has his thugs sink her corpse in the lake. Since the body-jumping spirit was already in her a few times already, he reenters and sends her on a killing spree that includes punching through a stomach, smashing a guy against a tree with a jeep and impaling a guy on a fence. An exorcist (Arman Effendy) is finally called in to put her soul to rest.

If you're looking for seemingly endless set-up with minimal payoff, then here's your movie! The first hour is mostly dull and talky soap opera punctuated with a few fight scenes. All of the clumsy and ineptly edited horror scenes then get crammed in at the end. I wish I could say they're worth waiting for. Same goes for the anticlimactic exorcism scene, which features fireballs, wire work and a scarf used as a weapon, but is over before it even has a chance to get good. They don't even bother with any make-up on the possessed Murti and instead make her hair smoke and drench her with red light. On the plus side, there's a decent widescreen print of this available instead of the usual awful VCD with a blurry picture and jacked up aspect ratio.

The sets (especially the hospital rooms where many of the scenes take place) are hilariously cheap. Pictures of Billy Idol, George Michael and Debbie Gibson have been ripped out of magazines and then taped to the lead female's walls while her big macho hero boyfriend has a poster of Boy George (!) hanging by his bed.

In addition to being a prolific TV actress, Marcellina (sometimes spelled with one "l") was also the heir to Suzzanna's "Queen of Indonesian Horror" throne. By my count she appeared in around 20 horror / mistik films over an 8 year span (late 80s to mid 90s) and most feature her as some kind a possessed seductress. Unlike Suzzanna, who frowned upon nudity and overt sexuality in her films, Marcellina accepted that part of the job as she knew it would help the film's distribution. She even produced and wrote many of her own starring vehicles, and even some movies she didn't even appear in, which wasn't at all common back then.

The director made at least 13 other genre films: Ingin Cepat Kaya (1976, "Wishing to Get Rich Quick"), Guna-guna Istri Muda (1977, "A Young Wife's Witchcraft"), Pembalasan Guna-guna Istri Muda (1978; "Revenge of a Young Wife's Witchcraft"), Kutukan Nyai Roro Kidul (1979; "Curse of the Ocean Goddess"), Tumbal Iblis (1981; "Sacrifice for Satan"), Nini Towok (1982), Bisikan Setan (1985; "Satan's Whisper"), Kuburan Angker (1987; "Eerie Cemetery"), Lenyapnya Ilmu Misteri (1988; "The Vanishing of Mystery Science"), Wewe Gombel (1988), Putusnya Jaring Laba-laba Merah (1989; "Snap of Red Spider's Web"), Sengatan Laba-laba Merah (1989; "Sting of the Red Spider") and Pawang (1995; "Animal Tamer"). I'm still weeding through all this stuff so there may even be others.

★1/2