Scorpio is my favorite sign of
the Zodiac, and not just because it’s my sign.
It’s not something silly like a fish or a crab or a scale. Scorpions can sting you, and, in some cases,
those stings can be fatal (my understanding is that they’re typically closer to
a bee sting unless you’re particularly sensitive to their venom). Real men get tattoos of things like scorpions
with daggers and skulls and banners with sayings like “kill ‘em all” or “death
before dishonor” or “Mom” on them. Even
outside of the appeal of its immediate, monstrous symbolism (but very much
because of it), Scorpio is a favorite of hardasses and villains alike (and
often both). The psychopath in Dirty Harry is called Scorpio. Nick Fury’s archenemy is called Scorpio (he
even leads a team of supervillains based on the Zodiac, thus proving that Scorpios
are tops). Albert Brooks’ brilliant Hank Scorpio from The Simpsons is a pure James Bond supervillain with a go-get-‘em charm. Robert Scorpio from the soap opera General Hospital is a smoldering pile of
masculinity (okay, I might be stretching it with that one, though I’m sure
there are plenty of folks who would vehemently disagree with me). I’ve never heard of a character named Phil
Pisces or Danny Sagittarius (and by the way, those names are now copyrighted by
me, so back off). Nevertheless, it’s
with a much more un-macho perspective that Sergio
Martino’s The Case of the Scorpion’s
Tail (aka La Coda Dello Scorpione)
approaches my beloved arachnid archetype.
As Lisa Baumer (Ida Galli) is busy making sweet, sweet
love to her back door man, her husband’s plane is busy exploding in
midair. Turns out, hubby left Lisa with a
one-million-dollar insurance benefit, but she has to travel to Greece in order
to cash it out. Enter Peter Lynch (George Hilton), the insurance
investigator sent to keep tabs on her.
But a mysterious killer may soon put a stop to Lisa’s (or anybody’s)
enjoyment of all that cold, hard cash.
Like so very, very many gialli, The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail deals
with things like infidelity, and it does so with an air of suspicion (because
these films are entirely predicated on the notion that everyone, including the
protagonist, is a suspect). Did Lisa
have her husband killed, and if so, why take out so many innocent people to
accomplish this? Did she do it to spend time
with her lover (who, coincidentally, is a flight steward)? Does her former lover, a junkie who,
bizarrely, only wants a pittance from the inheritance to feed his habit, have enough
goods on Lisa to bring this gravy train to a complete halt? Lisa and her husband haven’t been close for
some time, and this emotional distance is the same thing that allows these
types of characters to do the things they do.
These movies aren’t about love in a traditional sense. Yes, sometimes the characters actually care
about each other, but by and large, they are primal beings desperate to feed
their carnal desires. They are also the
type of people who will have sex with someone just to get ahead or to place
someone in their thrall. Indeed, sex is
a rather large cornerstone in all gialli, both as an exploitable element and as
a plot device, and here it’s no different.
Every woman in the film is in a state of dishabille at some point or
another, and the camera always accentuates and/or ogles them, bringing the
audience into the mindset of the male (and sometimes female) characters. But casual sex in gialli is also many times
dangerous, luring murderers to their victims like the scent of pollen to bees
(or a better analogy would be like the bait of a Venus flytrap to, well, flies).
Similarly, this film is heavy
with the motif of following and being followed.
The opening credits roll over various shots of Lisa strolling through
London in her bright red hat. Sometimes
the camera follows behind her, sometimes it observes her from afar (and this is
a shot type repeated several times in the movie). Likewise, Peter follows Lisa, journalist Cleo
(the gloriously bountiful Anita
Strindberg) follows Peter and Lisa, and the killer follows them all. This concept works (and different gialli play
it up to different degrees, though I can’t think of one off the top of my head
that doesn’t have it to some extent) for two reasons. First (and most obvious), from a narrative
perspective, it produces some level of tension.
The character being followed may or may not know they are being
followed. The character following them
may or may not intend them harm, but we don’t discover this until these
sequences resolve themselves (and, okay, they’re often red herring style, jump
scare payoffs, but not always, and therein lies the suspense [like Hitchcock’s time bomb setup, we know
there’s going to be an explosion, we just don’t know whether or not the
characters will be caught in it]).
Second, they allow the audience to become a purer strain of voyeur
(something very prevalent in this film).
Frequently, these sequences wind up in a character’s (99.99% of the time a female
character’s) home, where said character simply must disrobe. Meanwhile, the camera watches, unbeknownst to
the character. It satisfies the prurient
interest of the audience in the same way that it enflames the libido of the
spying character (otherwise, why not simply kill them the instant they walk
through the door?). It links sex and
death with the anxiety of being caught doing something you shouldn’t be doing
(in a What Happened to the Inquisitive
Janitor kind of way; notice how often these scenes involve a peephole POV or
keyhole-shaped matte). And if nothing
else, gialli are all about doing something you shouldn’t be doing.
These genre requirements,
however, are just that in this film: requirements. There is nothing particularly outstanding
about the film’s plot, nothing all that compelling about the characters. It satisfies the generic necessities and
nothing else. In fact, both plot and
characters simply maunder along, as these things can have a tendency to do,
until they hit the moment of “the big reveal” and then finish after some pat
exposition labors to connect all the dots for us (though I’m of the opinion
that the better ones are those that leave us just a little stupefied). Unfortunately, in a genre where garishness is
preferred, just hitting the beats in four/four time isn’t enough, and that’s
all this film does. Martino does bring a strong sense of style to the murder set
pieces, but otherwise the film doesn’t make any attempt to distinguish itself
from the pack. The effort brought to the
table in The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail
is largely workmanlike, and sometimes that’s enough, but when you’re appearing
onstage with Bootsy Collins, you may
want to wear something a bit more striking than a sweatsuit.
MVT: Martino does manage to shine here and there with some nifty
flourishes, but it’s kind of like spangling a day-old mackerel.
Make or Break: There’s a
murder that comes a bit later than would normally be expected, and it entices
the audience with a hint of a “no rules” attitude that doesn’t materialize.
Score: 6/10
