THE GIALLO PROJECT - A... COME ASSASSINO

In a grand Italian villa, just shortly after 10 in the evening, a murder has been committed. Poor old John Prescott, the wealthy proprietor of an African diamond mine, has been found with his throat cut from ear to ear. Days later, his relatives gather in the villa to listen to an audio recording of John Prescott's will, joined by Prescott's most trusted business associate, his secretary Giacomo. We learn rather quickly why no one is in mourning. Prescott wasn't a kind man, nor was he especially loving to his family. In fact, it seems as if he hated every single one of them with a red hot passion. His will demonstrates this. Prescott's millions are to be divided in three, only payable after every man and woman in the room has spent a month living together in the villa. Then, after the 30 days have passed, the first three people to travel to Prescott's notary will be rewarded with one third of the inheritance. The not-so-subtle suggestion is quickly realized by Prescott's wormy nephew George. 

“It's a provocation to...”, George screams out. He doesn't even have to finish the sentence. Everyone knows full well what John Prescott's intentions were.

The other members of the party include George's flirtatious wife, Adriana, an ex-stripper who was courted aggressively by the now deceased Mr. Prescott, and Martha, Prescott's sister, forever mourning the death of her husband. There's Angela, Prescott's pretty blonde niece and her milquetoast husband Armando. Rounding out the Prescott family is John's giggling idiot son, Julian, a man-child who is always seen playing with knives. The only real outsider is Giacomo, a beefy, bitter man not at all sorry to see his old boss dead. Around these suspects orbits a police detective, the ever watchful Inspector Matt. He's here to find out who killed John Prescott. What he should really be worried about is who is willing to kill for John Prescott's millions.

And that's the driving force behind Angelo Dorigo's A… COME ASSASSINO. To be honest, I shouldn't be classifying this film as an Amateur Detective story, in part because the Detective in question is a professional. It's also because A… COME ASSASSINO is more BAY OF BLOOD than it is THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE. It isn't a story with a single killer. It's a story practically littered with them. In the tally below, you'll only see two victims, but the film is stuffed full of dead bodies. See, no one actually cares who murdered John Prescott that night. They hated the man and he hated them in return. All anyone cares about is the money and it's that greed that sets the murderous mayhem in motion.

This is a film with many, many layers of deception going on all at once. We no sooner learn that Character A has been conspiring with Character B to frame Character C than we learn that Character B has been working with Character D to bring down Character A. It's an ever-shifting mass of bad intentions, ulterior motives and triple crosses. Of course, every character in this film is a horrible, despicable person so their eventual deaths don't exactly fill us with sadness, but there is a wonderful time to be had in watching these godawful creatures twist each other in murderous pretzels, only to have their greedy venom spit right back in their faces. It's such a joy to watch this all go down that I half forgot this was supposed to be a mystery rather than a glorious bit of cynical black comedy.

The solution to the puzzle of who killed John Prescott quite literally doesn't matter. It's just a MacGuffin, a bloody bit of plot to get this whole ball rolling downhill. What matters here is the whirlpool of immorality and greed, and the eventually drowning of all these disgusting characters in it. Taken as a tasty bit of hyper-cynical melodrama, the film works damn well. It has a brisk pace, the black and white cinematography is gorgeous (even though my copy of the film leaves MUCH to be desired), and the acting is all on point. Every actor, from Mary Arden to Sergio Ciani (aka Alan Steel aka the guy in all those awful Hercules movies), plays their part perfectly. They're just awful, terrible, horrible human beings.

But that's where I can see A… COME ASSASSINO losing much of it's audience. Because even though this is technically a giallo, there really isn't an awful lot of giallo in it. This is not a film that will appeal to murder mystery purists or even casual armchair detectives. Try as you might, you will not be able to piece together all the alibis, facts and lies in any kind of logical manner. Every character in this film is playing every other character in this film. It is lie after lie after lie for 70 straight minutes. So if you're looking for a puzzle to solve, stick with the jigsaw variety. But if you want a wonderful bit of immoral, blackly comedic melodrama full of backstabbings, rooftop brawls, shoot-outs and polite insults, A… COME ASSASSINO is a film to seek out. It's a great, entertaining ride.

A… COME ASSASSINO

(aka A… For Assassin)

Director: Angelo Dorigo

Writer: Sergio Bazzini, Roberto Natale, Ernesto Gastaldi

Starring: Sergio Ciani, Mary Arden, Ivano Davoli, Aiche Nana, Giovanna Galetti

Italy; Bival Film

1966, 76 minutes

Narrative Variety: Amateur Detective

Murderer(s): 1 Woman

Murderer(s) Role: Sister

Murderer(s) Motive: Revenge

Victims: Man (throat cut), Woman (stabbed to death)

Murderer(s) Death: N/A

THE GIALLO PROJECT - THE MURDER CLINIC

Elio Scardamaglia's THE MURDER CLINIC marks a first for the still growing filone. It's a period piece, set in the late 1800s. While watching the film, the time period seems apropos. It is every inch a Victorian Gothic melodrama, steeped in madness, repression and guilt, tied loosely together with a nice yellow ribbon. Pretty women skulk around dark corridors lit only by candlelight in search of answers to dangerous mysteries. Scenes like that exist in the more modern gialli of the 1960s, but THE MURDER CLINIC seems to be purposefully trying to recreate the Victorian Gothic rather than merely calling back to it, if not outright parodying it.

A good example of that sort of thing would be the opening scene of Mario Bava's THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, widely considered to be the first proper giallo film. We see Nora sitting on board a plane heading to Italy while a voice over informs us that Nora has an addiction to reading murder mysteries, a peculiar addiction that later calls into question whether or not Nora really did witness a murder and is now targeted for death. It might just be her murder mystery fueled imagination at work. Jane Austen's popular parody of Victorian Gothic melodrama, Northanger Abbey, likewise features a heroine with a particular obsession with a certain type of literature (in Catherine's case, Gothic novels). But in Austen's novel, Catherine's Gothic literature fueled imagination turns out to be fantasy. In Bava's film, Nora really is being hunted by a killer. Regardless of the difference, both Austen's novel and Bava's film use Gothic tropes to flesh out the backbone of their narratives, only to turn distinctly more modern as their stories unfold.

THE MURDER CLINIC however stays comfortably within the realm of the Victorian Gothic throughout, even as a straight razor wielding killer wreaks havoc on the narrative. The film concerns a small clinic somewhere in the English countryside. The man in charge is named Robert Vance. He has a wife named Lizabeth who has a frail heart and little patience for her husband's flirtations with some of his patients. Staying at the clinic are a bevy of interesting faces. There's Fred, a man prone to psychotic breaks, an elderly woman whose only friend is a stuffed cat, and Janey, a recently arrived mute. One night, Janey is chased from her room and slashed to ribbons by a killer. Vance discovers her body and buries it somewhere off the property. Unfortunately, someone knows about Vance's clandestine body disposal.

As all of this is going on, Gisele, a bitter, cheating wife, is being escorted back east by her husband. When their carriage breaks down, Gisele attempts an escape, clubbing her husband over the head. This spooks the horses and off they go into the distance, but not before trampling her husband to death. It is Gisele that sees Vance burying poor Janey's corpse. Gisele fakes an illness, taking advantage of Vance's lustful eye, and is brought back to the clinic where she proceeds to blackmail Vance into giving her an awful lot of money.

Vance has no choice but to pay up. You see, many years back, Vance was charged with attempted murder. Lizabeth's younger, prettier sister, Laura, had been visiting the couple at their soon to be constructed clinic when she suffered a horrible accident, falling into a pit filled with lime. The accident left her horribly scarred and Vance was brought to trial. Witnesses at the scene swore that they saw Vance push Laura into the lime, but a lack of physical evidence set him free. His reputation as a doctor ruined, Vance abandoned his dream of owning his own clinic and took the lead job at the nuthouse in the English countryside. If Gisele goes to the police, what little life Vance has will be over.

And amid all of this melodrama is Mary, the good-hearted nurse, madly in love with Vance. What about those strange noises that we hear coming from the attic? The noises that sound like footsteps? That would be Laura, the mad woman in the attic (the films very own Bertha Mason), kept there in seclusion as Vance works on curing her of her deformity through radical skin grafting experiments. Oh, and we can't forget about the killer, can we?

Except that the film does, because it doesn't quite feel like THE MURDER CLINIC was designed to ever be a straight forward murder mystery. The film was co-written by Ernesto Gastaldi, one of the great giallo screenwriters. THE MURDER CLINIC, in many, many ways, feels a dry run for Gastaldi's later giallo masterwork, YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY. Both films are built on the backs of Victorian Gothic literature tropes and both films are loaded with poisonous relationships, characters stuck in seemingly inescapable personal hells, and are rife with potential violence. Both films feature typical giallo killers slashing women to shreds, but neither film ever really commits to being a proper giallo film. 

YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY is (more of less) an adaptation of Poe's The Black Cat, with the black gloved killer angle of the first half treated as a massive red herring, something that appears to have been included just to throw us off the films true motive. The killing scenes in THE MURDER CLINIC are more directly tied into the narrative, but they come off as afterthoughts, like they were given more and more emphasis as the script went through revisions.

That might be because the murder mystery angle of the film feels far less thought out than the more melodramatic angles. For example, it's a bit difficult to believe that Gisele would so brazenly attempt to blackmail Vance, especially when she believes him to be a cold blooded killer. The idea that Vance is keeping Laura in the attic isn't well thought out either. The film could have taken the more interesting EYES WITHOUT A FACE tactic of having Vance killing young women for their skin, all so he could carry out his guilt ridden experiments in skin grafting. I suppose we're meant to think that Laura is responsible for the killings, but the film never bothers to give her a proper motive. Fred is the only likely suspect the film offers up. There's a short scene of Fred attacking Gisele in her bedroom, a scene that only exists so the film can conjure up a believable guilty party.

THE MURDER CLINIC spends an awful lot of time (nearly 40 of its relatively short 87 minutes) just getting all of these characters under the same roof. It then spends another 15 or so minutes getting down to business working out the love triangles, the blackmail angle, telling us of Vance's troubled past and Laura's accident… It is one hell of a busy hour and through much of that hour, I was really engaged with the film. I was enjoying trying to figure out just who was playing who, why no one seemed all that bothered by Janey's first act murder, or where the film was going to take the characters as all these personalities began to clash and crumble.

Unfortunately, the film never really hits that high note of drama. It descends into slasher territory with characters dying left and right before petering out with a tired, easy resolution. However, I would say that the first hour or so more than makes up for the deficiencies of the final act. The murder mystery may not be the strongest, but the range of characters and the dramatic interplay between them is surprisingly delicious. I would have preferred the film to be longer. I would have preferred to have had the drama between the characters reach a boiling point and THEN have the killer step in to bring that drama to a bloody end. I think the film would have been better served that way. If THE MURDER CLINIC had more effectively tied the bloody business into its very well done melodramatic material, I would not hesitate in calling this film one of the best 1960s gialli out there. As it stands, I still recommend giving the film a watch, but I can't deny that it is, at the end of the day, kind of disappointing.

THE MURDER CLINIC

(La lama nel corpo)

Director: Elio Scardamaglia

Writer: Ernesto Gastaldi, Luciano Martino

Starring: William Berger, Francoise Prevost, Mary Young, Barbara Wilson, Philippe Hersent

Villa Parisi, Frascati, Rome, Lazio, Italy; Ci. Ti. Cinematografica, Leone Film, Orphee Productions

1966, 87 minutes

Narrative Variety: Poisoned Past

Murderer(s): 1 female

Murderer(s) Role: Wife

Murderer(s) Motive: Jealousy

Victims: 1 woman (slashed to death with a razor), 1 man (run over by carriage), 1 woman (slashed to death with a razor), 1 man (dies off screen, presumed suicide), 1 woman (throat slashed)

Murderer(s) Death: Falls to her death (suicide)

THE GIALLO PROJECT - LIBIDO

When he was a child, Christian witnessed his sex maniac father murder a lusty, young blonde. 20 years later, Christian returns to his father's home with an eye on selling the property once the deed is transferred to him in a few months time. Along for the visit is his finance, Helene, the estate caretaker (and close family friend) Paul and Paul's ditzy, younger blonde wife, Brigitte. There is obvious acrimony between Christian and Paul, the former eager to fire his longtime associate and the latter desperate to keep the estate in the family name. As the days go by, Christian gains the attention of Brigitte, Paul and Helene begin spending more time together, but far more worryingly, Christian begins seeing and hearing things around the estate. Is he going mad or is something far more sinister afoot?

LIBIDO marks the arrival of Ernesto Gastaldi, one of Italy's foremost genre film screenwriters, in the land of the giallo. The simple story of LIBIDO is by far the most typical form of the Poisoned Past narrative found in the entirety of the filone and Gastaldi would go on to refine the narrative of LIBIDO through multiple films including THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH, A… COME ASSASSINO and THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH, a landmark title in the giallo. It's a simple premise that works, a character haunted by something in the past is tormented by someone in the present, someone close, someone who knows all too well the extent of their trauma. These usually skew towards the psychosexual, but LIBIDO plays it more straight, bearing little of the complexity that would go on to mark Gastaldi's later work.

The film begins with a quote by Freud explaining his idea of the libido (the psychic energy that exists in our subconscious) and from that we surmise that this will be more of a psychological thriller than a potboiler. Indeed, Gastaldi seems to be playing that game. It's easy to read the characters as metaphors for Freudian sexual/power dominance ideas with the id, ego and superego being represented by Brigitte, Helene and Paul respectively. But whatever psychological depth Gastaldi and his co-writer Mara Maryl (who plays Brigitte in the film) were trying to add to the film gets brushed aside for a more routine and simplistic mystery in the later half. That isn't to say that the second half of the film is therefore uninteresting or subpar. Far from it. Once LIBIDO takes its sharp right turn into mystery thriller territory, it becomes a bleak, delicious bit of filmmaking.

The final third of the film piles on the twists, turns and reversals as characters get caught in lies, divulge secrets and display signs of malicious intent. Christian owns up to having violent impulses just before Helene starts sporting scratches and bruises on her body. Is Christian harming her while in some kind of fugue state? Brigitte lets slip that while Christian may think Helene and Paul didn't meet until after their engagement, the truth is that Paul deliberately set up the meeting between Helene and Christian, hoping it would lead to their engagement. Christian follows Paul and Helene when they head off to do some shopping. He later spies them in an embrace outside of a hotel. Are they trying to drive him crazy to get their hands on his inheritance?

The final solution to this puzzle is a triple twist ending that would feel positively hackneyed had it not been set up with so much care. While undeniably twisted, the final moments of LIBIDO pack a genuine punch, wonderfully, blackly ironic in their machinations but almost heartbreaking at the same time. While the impact will likely be diminished if you're at all familiar with Gastaldi's later work (especially YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY), the send-off to LIBIDO definitely sold me on the films greatness. And I don't use that term lightly. With its abundance of memorable performances, stylish direction and suitably slippery narrative, this is a film that deserves a critical reappraisal. It is an easy film to recommend, especially if you're interested in the foundational roots of the giallo. 

LIBIDO

Director: Ernesto Gastaldi, Vittorio Salerno

Writer: Ernesto Gastaldi, Mara Maryl

Starring: Giancarlo Giannini, Dominique Boschero, Luciano Pigozzi, Mara Maryl

Italy; Nucleo Dariano Film

1965, 87 minutes

Narrative Variety: Poisoned Past

Murderer(s): 1 male (in flashback), 1 female (present day)

Murderer(s) Role: Father (in flashback), Friend (present day)

Murderer(s) Motive: Money

Victims: 1 woman (killed off screen in flashback), 1 man (pushed from a cliff), 1 woman (shot)

Murderer(s) Death: N/A