Kill, Baby, Kill (Operazione paura)

Mario Bava was completely justified in accusing Federico Fellini of deliberately stealing the apparition of a young girl with white blond hair and wearing a simple white frock, even down to the ball she bounces, all of which Fellini used in his Toby Dammit segment in Spirit of the Dead (1968). This dead 7 year old was an integral part of Bava’s narrative for his 1966 masterful gothic horror film Kill, Baby, Kill.

As the film opens we see this young child laughing at a woman who is about to commit suicide by throwing herself onto a spiked railing.  Roll opening credits. Into this eerie Carpathian Village comes a stranger, Doctor Paul Eswai who notices that something must be awry because the coachman that brings him will not enter the village. Upon entering the local Inn no greetings are exchanged. The doctor is there to carry out an autopsy on the woman that impaled herself on the railings. He discovers that this is only the latest of many such strange deaths’ that have occurred in the village in the last twenty years. During the postmortem he finds a coin imbedded in the dead woman’s heart. This has been put there by a mysterious sorceress who also saves our Doctor from a brutal beating from a couple of local thugs who accuse him of defiling the dead. With never a hair out of place our gallant Physician attempts to instigate an investigation with the help of Inspector Kruger, who promptly turns up as a corpse. ‘Ah ha’ ponders our brave GP ‘me thinks the Villa Graps holds the secret to all these unexplained bizarre deaths’ The villa is like the one in Great Expectations, all cobwebs and a dried up old lady who seems to have out lived her three score years and ten.  He soon discovers that it’s all down to a curse that began with the death of 7 year old Mellissa Graps who was playing with her ball in the street when she was tramped to death by some horses ridden by town folk who made no attempt to save her, so she bled to death in the dirt. Since then the village, were it would appear no one does any housework, has lived a nightmare scenario believing that this poor young child returns to be amongst the living, and those that see her: die! Well there was a lot of poverty, ignorance and good old superstition around at the time.

 

7 year old Mellissa Graps.

The Mysterious Sorceress.

Its not really important who did what to whom and why, what is important is to indulge your self in the eerie atmospherics and freaky nature of a great horror movie by an Italian master. Beautifully composed jump cuts, starkly vivid colour, excellent cinematography, a great music score and some very strong performances from a talented cast. This is one of the great Giallo movies and one not to be missed. Although my copy, part of The Dead of Night Collection, was dubbed it was very well done and almost unnoticeable. Highly recommended to fans of the genre. 

Doctor Paul Eswai.

Berberian Sound Studio

Cabbages!!!!

This weeks Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club started slightly differently when our host for the evening Audrey Young handed out various everyday objects that can be found in most homes. Things like gloves, a phone book, a piece of cellophane, a container of soap and a stapler. She asked us that if you recorded the noise each one made, what could that sound be used for in a 1970’s Italian horror/thriller movie? This certainly started our evening in a light-hearted manner and Audrey went on to explain that tonight’s film was meant to be homage to the production of  ‘giallo’ movies. Movies that were made by directors like Dario Argento, Mario Bava, and Lucio Fulci between 1968 and 1978. The word giallo, she went on to explain, is Italian for yellow and stems from the origin of a subgenre in Italy as a series of cheap mystery paperback’s which all had yellow covers. This subgenre became a unique cinematic type of film that veered into horror and dark psychological thrillers, becoming synonymous with a heavy, theatrical and stylised visual element’s and soundtracks that were general written specifically for each film. It went on to be a major influence on the modern slasher movie.

Gilderoy at work.......

......recording screams.

Audrey informed us that Berberian Sound Studio (2012) was Peter Strickland’s second feature film; his first was the award winning Katalin Varga (2009) a low-budget rural revenge drama set in Romania. Tonight’s film is very nostalgic about a world before digital recording devices and strips bare the mechanics of the old horror analogue film studios that would commandeer all sorts of every day items to make some very gruesome noises, including an array of garden produce like melons, cabbages and radishes!

Lack of friendly faces does not help Gilderoy's paranoia.

The film relates the experiences of a British sound technician Gilderoy (Toby Jones who gives a remarkable performance) who travels from his home in Box Hill Kent, where he lives with his mother, to Italy in the 1970’s to work on the sound effects for a gruesome horror film, The Equestrian Vortex. Not familiar with the working practices of the ego driven Italian producer (Cosimo Fusco) or the womanizing director (Antonio Mancino), Gilderoy seems like a fish out of water from day uno. Unable to reclaim his travel expenses from the cash strapped venture and gradually becoming ever more despairing of the movies subject matter, the whole working experience becomes literally a total nightmare.

The great looking  cover for soundtrack album

I enjoyed this strangely diverting film especially the beautiful reproduction of a period recording studio (or is the Three Mile Recording Studio in London still like this?) and the very complementary electronic soundtrack that adds to the unsettling atmospherics of the film with Strickland successfully reflecting the mood and tone of the original giallo movies, but I’m afraid it lost me completely towards the end, as it did when I first saw it at the 2012 Edinburgh International Film Festival, when the director takes us a little to far into paranoia that has beset Gilderoy. Something the RBC audience also seemed to have had a problem with.

Deep Red (Profondo Rosso)

Promotional artwork for Deep Red.

From time to time we all complain about the obtrusive musical soundtracks that accompany some films. Spoiling our enjoyment when the music attempts to tell you how to feel about a scene, but with certain movies it’s inconceivable that we could watch them without a soundtrack. For example directors like Quentin Tarantino use music to enhance the story line, you couldn’t imagining watching Pulp Fiction (1994) or perhaps Kill Bill (2003, 2004) without it’s musical score.

Another director who is famous for experimenting with music is the leading Italian director of horror movies and mystery thrillers Dario Argento. When he first wanted to score his film Deep Red (1975) he contacted jazz pianist and composer Giorgio Gaslini who, it is alleged, he fell out with and had to look for somebody else, eventually finding a home grown progressive rock band called Goblin. Influenced by early Genesis and King Crimson the band so impressed Argento he got them to rewrite most of the score including the films famous main theme which forms an important part of the narrative.  Goblin in one form or another subsequently went on to score many of Argento’s films.

The original title of the movie was Profondo rosso but in America where it was cut by some twenty minutes it’s known as The Hatchet Murders. The film is usually referred to as being part of a sub genre known as giallo which in Italian is a word meaning yellow and stems from a series of cheap pulp paperback mystery novels which all had trademark yellow covers.

Daria Nicolodi.

David Hemmings.

Co-written by Argento, Deep Red proved to be his break through film and he remarked that it was his favourite of all his movies. A film between dream and fantasy with a plot that does not take close examination but it has his trademark vibrant colour, massive close ups, jump shots, flamboyant camera movement, gruesome bloody death’s and as I previously pointed out a great score. The story involves some gory murders linking a mystery from the past, which English piano teacher Marcus Daly (played by a rather lack lustre David Hemmings) attempts to investigate with a local reporter Gianna Brezzi (played by Daria Nicolodi, Argento’s wife at the time). Is it a film worth seeing? Yes as an example of this world-renowned directors oeuvre, in fact it’s a good place to start.

A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin.

It’s strange that some films are remembered more for a court case rather than the film it self. Lucio Fulci’s 1971 psychodrama murder mystery thriller, or giallo, A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin is a ‘case’ in point. In a scene in the later part of the movie our main protagonist Carol Hammond opens the door to a room where there are dogs that appear to have been experimented on, they are cut open with their hearts and guts still pulsating. This scene was so graphic and realistic that several crewmembers were forced to testify in court to disprove a charge of using live animals. But it took the appearance of Carlo Rambaldi, the man who set up the special effect, to save the films director from a two-year prison sentence by producing the fake dog prop that was used. This was the first time in film history that an effects artist had to prove his work was not real in a court of law!

My first experience of Italian directors work was when Ian McCulloch came to the RBC Film Club in Dumfries to introduce Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979) probably Fulci’s best known work and famous for two scenes in particular. The first features a zombie fighting an actual Tiger Shark underwater; this was filmed in a large salt-water tank with the shark being fed horsemeat and sedatives before the filming began. The other infamous scene is where a woman has her eye gouged out on a splintered piece of wood very slowly and very painfully.

The murder victim.

A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin is the story of Carol Hammond (Brazilian actress Florinda Bolkan) who is the daughter of an English politician. She experiences vivid psychedelic nightmares that consist of depraved bisexual orgies and the consumption of copious amounts of LSD. In a particularly intense nightmare she dreams that she murders her decadent neighbor Julia Durer (Anita Strindberg) whose late night wild sex and drug parties have been the main subjects of her hallucinatory type dreams. When she wakes next morning she find that the woman has been murdered and the police have started an investigation.

The lovely Brazilian actress Florinda Bolkan.

Although this is an Italian film it is set in England with some exteriors filmed at Woburn Abbey and Alexandra Palace, some of the dialog has been dubbed and some is in English and we also get the odd subtitle. As well as actors from various country’s we also have two well-known British thespians in the shape of Leo Genn who plays Carols father and Stanley Baker as Inspector Corven who has an irritating habit of whistling while people are talking to him! I would disagree that the ‘dog’ scene is the most upsetting; it’s the flying rodents in the form of bats that attack Carol and get tangled up in her hair that really gives me the willies. Still the fans of this genre get a grand helping of flesh and blood and the odd lesbian love scene. Known as Schizoid in America this is quite an interesting wee movie even taking into account a certain amount of corny acting and it’s wishy-washy soundtrack.