Two Undercover Angels (1969)

Directed by: Jesus Franco
Run Time: 78 minutes

Acid jazz, a werewolf, 60's pop art, dead models, incompetent cops,  and a pair of beautiful and deadly private investigators. Welcome to weird world of Jesus Franco and his equally weird movie Two Undercover Angels. Without further stalling let's dive into the weird world of Jesus Franco and his out there creation.

The story open at a fashion show were one of the runway models is being encouraged to spend some time with a generous patron, a Mister Radeck. The model thinks this request while changing out of the wedding dress she was modeling.  Unfortunately for her she loses track of time and finds herself alone at the venue. Things get worse when she comes across the henchman Morpho. Morpho is mute and rocking a Lon Chaney Jr. wolf man look. He molests and kidnaps the model for his boss, the mysterious homicidal artist Klaus Thriller, who photographs her last moments of life while Morpho violently kills her.

The focus shifts to an eclectic art gallery were the murdered model has been painted as garish pop art portrait. The gallery owner, Napoleon Bolivard (Jesus Franco), is investigating the noise from his gallery. He get knocked out by a woman dressed as a dominatrix and she finishes stealing the garish portrait. This is Diana, one half of the Red Lips private investigators criminal  enterprise. Currently they are investigating the rash of dancers and models who  have disappeared mysteriously for two clients. The first client being a pair of inept police officers who  need their help and who also want to arrest them. The second client is Mr Radeck, who is desperate to know the fate of the model from the beginning of the movie.

The women's investigating strategy consists of trying to get Thriller's artwork and talking about how to  solve the mystery before them while wearing lingerie or bikinis. Overall the duo are successful in getting the portrait and a statue of a woman that also  looks similar to one of the missing women. However this leads to Napoleon and another gallery employee being killed by Thriller. On the grounds that Thriller wants his homicidal art available for all to see.

With another session of talking out what to do next in their bikinis it's decided that Diana should go to one of the bars were dancers have disappeared from. Through the power of plot contrivance, Dianna meets Thriller and makes the stupid mistake of going to his place. If not for Regina, Dianna's partner in crime, Dianna would have been Thriller's next masterpiece. Later back at their headquarters and no clue how to advance the investigation, our heroines get into their thinking bikinis. However the plot has other ideas and delivers a bouquet of flowers with a bomb in it. Acting quickly the deadly bouquet is thrown in the pool just in time for the drive by shooting to happen. Avoiding being shot at, our heroines go to Morocco to get a tan and solve the case.

The movie has weird fever dream logic to it. Unlike some of his other films, this one has a plot that can be followed with a few needless tangents. Franco's different views on women, power, and sexuality are on display in this movie but no where as extreme as in Blue Rita or The Girl From Rio. In short, if you are looking for a crazy cinematic ride this is a good movie to start that journey on. The movie is available on DVD and Blu Ray.

MVT: This clip even made the trailer, that how insane it is. The two detectives book a hotel room using the name James Bond. The rational behind this is their names would make them sound like cops but booking a room under the name of the world's most dangerous ornithologist would allow them to blend in.

Make or Break: The only acid jazz go go bar in Spain scene made this movie for me. Mostly because the idea of splicing in Austin Powers would be funny and not change the tone of the film any.

Score: 5.3 out of 10

Count Dracula's Great Love (1974)

**POSSIBLE SPOILERS**

I’ve never been big on Dracula or vampires, in general.  I’m all for women with heaving bosoms coming under the thrall of a vampire, and the scenes of “consummation” can be a lot of fun.  Back in the day, I loved watching the Hammer Dracula films on television on a Saturday afternoon, because they were so different from the staid portrayals of vampires up until then (but, hey, isn’t that why Hammer became so popular to begin with?).  I still love Horror of Dracula, largely because of that absolutely kickass ending, and some of the later Hammer films, when they incorporated Satanism into the mix, are a joy, as well.  The 1931 versions of Dracula (Spanish and English language versions) are great stuff (the former especially elides the cumbersome elements of Browning’s take, and it doesn’t hurt any that Lupita Tovar is absolutely ravishing).  That said, the romance angle that so many films hang their coats on does nothing at all for me.  Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula bores me to tears, this despite some fantastic effects work (all done practical and very, very old school).  I’ve never wanted to watch John Badham’s Dracula with Frank Langella even a little, and stuff like Twilight are as far away from the mark for me as you can get.  Give me Nosferatu (1922 or 1979; I’m not picky), or Near Dark, or Martin, or Shadow of the Vampire, anything with either something to dwell on intellectually or respond to viscerally (sure, sex can be considered visceral, but I like monsters, and blood and sex is more interesting to me than sex and sex).  Aren’t you glad I didn’t say, “give me something with some bite?”  Javier Aguirre’s Count Dracula’s Great Love (aka Cemetery Girls aka Dracula’s Virgin Lovers aka El Gran Amor Del Conde Dracula) gives me so much of what I want, but still flubs it.

A carriage carrying Imre (Victor Alcazar), his secret love Marlene (Ingrid Garbo), and three other chicks, Karen (Haydee Politoff), Senta (Rosanna Yanni), and Elke (Mirta Miller), throws a wheel in the middle of the Burgo Pass.  Seeking shelter for the night, and since the coachmen is dead from an ill-timed horse hoof to the head, the gang make it to the old sanitorium, where they are taken in by Dr. Marlow (Paul Naschy).  From there it isn’t long before the blood and boobs start flowing.

I have a weakness for many of Naschy’s films, because, like the man himself, I have a weakness for the classic Universal monster movies.  His Waldemar Daninsky character is a true member of the lycanthrope hall of fame, though my all-time favorite film of his (and Aguirre’s) is The Hunchback of the Morgue (reviewed previously on this site).  He loves his monster mashes, and he’s not afraid to tackle multiple characters in a film (witness: Dr. Jekyll and the Werewolf).  He even managed to inject some life (man, the puns are flowing tonight) into the Mummy (The Mummy’s Revenge).  Naschy was fantastic at playing the physicality of monsters, incorporating his background as a bodybuilder to give his performances a kinetic energy.  His films have a concrete atmosphere that plays with the gothic trappings of the classics of the Thirties through the Fifties.

It is entirely possible that Naschy’s Dracula could have been all the things I look for in a vampire film.  The problem is that the movie follows its dopey, half-baked love story to the point of schmaltzy sentimentalism.  The film does have some fine moments for any exploitation/horror fan.  The actresses are all willing to get naked.  There is enough blood to make things pop here and there, and it’s often intermingled with female flesh.  Naschy gets to tussle with other men often, showcasing his Shatner-ian slugfest skills.  The male vampire makeups include these great contact lenses that really give the monsters an otherworldly, creepy mien.  There is just enough sadism to please fans of whippings, and some sleazy moments are mixed in with them (the lady vampires suck the blood from the wounds incurred during a lashing).  There are even some “what the fuck?!” elements, such as the knife sticking through a character’s throat like Steve Martin’s old arrow-through-the-head bit.  

That said, the filmmakers are infinitely more interested in the love between Dracula and Karen, and even that they get wrong.  Much ado is made about how the only way for Dracula to regain all of his powers and resurrect his daughter Rodna (yes, Rodna) is for a virgin to fall in love with him of her own free will.  Now, you may recognize this plot device, as it’s the exact same one used in every one of Naschy’s Daninsky films, and it’s handled in the exact same way (as is the film’s structure).  The women in these films fall in love at the drop of a hat, all for the sake of the tragic endings these movies have to have, and it feels like it.  Karen is not only no different from any other Naschy heroine (and I really hesitate to use that term to describe them) in this respect, but the boundaries of just how much love can forgive is stretched past breaking.  After giving of herself physically and emotionally to the Count, he promptly cuts Karen open as part of Rodna’s resurrection ceremony.  Then he throws her into a cell for what must be a couple of months (he keeps having to inexplicably wait for another full moon to complete the next step of his little ritual), where she sleeps on a straw bed and shouts for help.  During all this time, he keeps begging her to love him (I’m confused; didn’t she already say that she did?).  

Before the “finale,” Dracula and his lady vamps bounce around the countryside, attacking peasants, thither and yon (these sequences are actually entertaining, and had there been more of this, the film probably wouldn’t stink as bad as it does), and Dracula continues to pontificate about this, that, and the other thing and plead with Karen, who remains as emotionless here as she does in the rest of the picture.  The filmmakers then give up on any semblance of reason or narrative in one of the most anticlimactic endings you’re likely to see.  There are so many “WHY?!” instances in the film, it really deflates the bits that work well (because they do work so well).  I can’t say I recommend Count Dracula’s Great Love, but goddamn it, I want to.

MVT:  The elements that deal with the more graphic aspects of the story, both red and pink.

Make or Break:  Dracula’s monologue in the third act, that seems to go on for over twenty minutes and not make a lick of sense.

Score:  4/10

Death Carries a Cane (1973)

What do film characters do when they’re not onscreen?  I’m not talking about the sort of people that populate sensitive dramas.  We can guess what they do, because it’s probably the same as us.  I’m thinking of bad guys, mostly: gangsters, monsters, slashers, ad infinitum.  When they’re not busy fitting the generic needs of a pick-me-up for the film they’re in, what are they doing?  Are they bogged down in the minutiae of moment-to-moment life like we are?  What did the Xenomorph in Alien do with his time when he wasn’t jamming his inner jaw through the skulls of the Nostromo’s crew?  Sleep?  Read a good book?  Suffer bouts of existential dread?  It’s the same with human baddies.  We typically enter on a scene where they’re already set up in a quasi-tableau: Hanging around the boss’ office, standing menacingly behind the boss, and so on.  Very rarely do we see them balancing their checkbook, washing their underwear, etcetera.  

These characters are not intended to have lives outside of those specifically portrayed on the screen.  Even when they talk about what they’ve been doing elsewhere, it doesn’t feel like anything touching reality.  It’s the character speaking as the character.  It doesn’t matter how colorful, or well-rounded, or logically motivated they are, these guys exist solely to function as antagonists.  We’re not supposed to think about what they’re doing when we don’t see them.  We’re meant to be involved with how the protagonists are engaged.  But I can’t help it.  I find myself thinking often of what banal tasks Jason Voorhees is getting up to offscreen.  He can’t stare at his mother’s mummified head all the time, after all.  This doesn’t mean that I want to see films based on this concept, per se (I think Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon pretty much covered this base sufficiently).  All that would mean is my wandering mind would instead focus on the good guys in the same capacity.  It’s like going to the bathroom.  How many movies have we seen where characters wake up somewhere and immediately spring out of bed and get moving without obeying nature’s call first?  Yes, there are reasons for not showing us this.  It’s just one of those things that occurs to me, the same, I’m sure, as the fact that most handguns don’t hold an infinite number of bullets occurs to gun enthusiasts.  Maurizio Pradeaux’s Death Carries a Cane (aka Passi Di Danza Su Una Lama Di Rasoio aka Maniac at Large aka The Tormentor aka Trauma aka Devil Blade) partially satisfies this obsession of mine by not only giving its heroine a nervous bladder (“I’ve gotta go pee pee!”) but also using this to instigate the action of the finale (yes, really, kind of).

While waiting for her fiancée Alberto (Robert Hoffmann) to show up and see off her relatives, Kitty (Nieves Navarro aka Susan Scott) glimpses a woman being murdered through an observation telescope.  Next thing she knows, witnesses are dropping like flies, and everyone takes a poke at playing red herring.

It’s no stretch to imagine that Death Carries a Cane is heavily concerned with The Gaze.  Not just the Male Gaze, though that’s a large part of it, but also the simple act of looking and how this affects the characters.  The opening titles are shot through an observation telescope as two horny guys completely miss the point of the instrument and wind up looking at just about everything except women (until the credits end, that is).  Kitty gets involved with the plot by accident, but she was still eager to look through the telescope, so The Gaze’s influence is felt on her, as well.  Similar to Hitchcock’s Rear Window, Kitty follows her desire to see what’s going on around her, observing without being observed, playing voyeur and suffering the consequences.  The Gaze has a price.  

Kitty and Alberto make and photograph blank-faced dummies that they stab and tear apart as part of their art.  The dummies replace real bodies, obviously, and the act of photographing them in “death” speaks to the loss of self and autonomy which comes from being the subject of The Gaze.  Also playing into this idea, Alberto takes naked pics of Kitty while she sleeps.  There is a focus on eyes with a great many closeups to drive the point home.  These are usually done in tandem with POV shots.  For example, when the killer visits the lowly chestnut vendor’s house, we watch through a cruddy window as the man eats his evening spaghetti (with a spoon!).  The camera tracks in on the vendor’s eyes as he looks out at us in Direct Address (this is external to the POV shots as its not handheld, if memory serves, though it goes to The Gaze on both sides, as viewer and viewed).  Of course, this wouldn’t be a giallo without a lot of female nudity, and the filmmakers serve it up often, playing to the prurient interest of the audience’s Gaze (as is often the case, the sex scenes don’t quite fit outside of being sex scenes for a movie; for example, Kitty has sex with Alberto immediately after he catches her trying to leave because he makes her nervous).

Every suspect in Death Carries a Cane has an infirmity.  Alberto has a sprained ankle.  Musician Marco (Simón Andreu) is impotent.  Silvia (Anuska Borova), twin sister to Marco’s girlfriend Lidia (also Borova), uses a cane.  Naturally, this is so that we have different characters on which to cast suspicion.  It also points to the damaged psyche of the killer, as he/she is crippled inside and out.  

Pradeaux’s film hues closely to the rules of gialli, with plenty of stylish, bloody murders (using more handheld camera than I’m used to with these types of films, although the set pieces are nicely orchestrated, by and large), some titillation (without somehow feeling totally sleazy), and an end reveal that comes so far out of left field you really have to consider if it was improvised on the day of shooting.  The film doesn’t rise above the crowd, though it’s solid enough in its group.  The thing that hurts it the most, in my opinion, is its choppy editing.  Its cuts are jagged, not meshing and flowing, and there is always the possibility that this was intentional in the same way that its extensive use of handheld was.  Maybe the two were meant to go hand in hand in an effort to create an off-kilter atmosphere.  Unfortunately, the discordance is discursive.  Not enough to make Death Carries a Cane a failure (as a giallo or otherwise), but enough to make it a lesser film with sparkles of greatness in it.

MVT:  Pradeaux’s ambition is on display, and he is to be applauded for the attempt.

Make or Break:  The witnessing of the initial murder does a nice job of inciting the plot and opening a proverbial can of worms.

Score:  6.75/10              

The Case of the Scorpion's Tail (1971)

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