Sunday 17 March 2024

Cool It, Carol! (1970)

Pete Walker made a brief splash as a director of British horror films in the 70s but prior to that he had made a number of sexploitation movies. The last of them was Cool It, Carol! (released in the US as Dirtiest Girl I Ever Met) in 1970.

The basic plot is a very old story indeed. An innocent young girl from the country goes to the big city (in this case London) in search of fame and fortune and doesn’t find exactly what she hoped to find. In this movie she’s accompanied by a young man who also has dreams of making his fortune in London. These were old old clichés even in1970 but this movie adds some really intriguing spins. This is a movie that consistently avoids going in the direction you expect.

We start off in a typical small English village. The young man is butcher’s apprentice Joe (Robin Askwith). His fantasy is to work in a fancy car dealership in London, selling sports cars. The young woman is Carol (Janet Lynn). She pumps petrol in the local garage. She dreams of fame and glamour.

Joe is not exactly her boyfriend. They’re friends and maybe there’s some romantic attraction but it hasn’t gone very far. That all changes on the train to London when Carol seduces Joe.

Joe finds that you don’t just walk into a job in an exclusive luxury car dealership. You need to have the right qualifications. Mostly you need to have gone to the right school and you need the right upper-class accent.


Carol has more luck. She has real prospects of landing a modelling job. In the meantime they’re flat broke. Carol and Joe are rather pragmatic. The easiest way to get some quick cash would be for Carol to turn a few tricks. Which she does. She doesn’t particularly like doing it but she doesn’t really mind it and at least they now have money for food.

Various opportunities open up for Carol. She gets modelling work, including nude modelling. She appears in a hardcore sex film (with Joe as her co-star). She becomes a highly paid call girl. The money is now rolling in.

Of course you know what’s going to happen. It’s all going to turn into a nightmare for Carol and she’ll end up in the pit of degradation and despair. But that’s not what happens. I won’t tell you exactly what does happen but it’s an example of Walker’s determination in this film to avoid the obvious.


Around 1970 film censorship in Britain was finally starting to loosen up just a little but it was still necessary to tread very carefully. As a result this movie is fairly tame. There’s a small amount of nudity (including a brief flash of frontal nudity). There are some fairly non-graphic simulated sex scenes. Compared to British movies made just a year or two later it qualifies as very tame.

In the late 60s there were a number of British films that form a sub-genre we could call sexploitation misery. They’re like the incredibly depressing British kitchen sink dramas of the early to mid 60s with the addition of a very small amount of nudity but with the same message of utter despair. Their message is that having sex only leads to unhappiness so you might as well just throw yourself in front of a bus now and get it over with. Her Private Hell (1968) and Permissive (1970) are excellent examples. Cool It, Carol! definitely does not belong in that sub-genre. It’s not in the least judgmental and it’s not interested in guilt or misery.


It also does not fit into the classic early to mid 70s British sex comedy genre. It does have some very funny moments but it’s not the broad humour we associate with British sex comedies. There is no slapstick. Cool It, Carol! is a million miles away in feel from Confessions of a Window Cleaner. This is subtler more sophisticated humour.

If you only know Robin Askwith from the Confessions movies you’re in for a shock. He is very funny at times here but it’s a semi-comic performance with some moments that require serious acting, which he handles with surprising skill.

Janet Lynn is terrific. She avoids all the acting clichés you expect given the basic plot outline. She plays Carol as a girl totally lacking in self-pity. She is not a tragic character. Sometimes bad things happen to her but she shrugs her shoulders and moves on.

This movie is a succession of surprises. I’m not talking about clever plot twists but rather surprises in terms of the characters. There’s not a single character in the movie who is merely a stock character type or a mere stereotype. Characters are introduced and we think they’re going to be stereotypical but they turn out not to be.


There is for example the guy who makes the hardcore movies in which Carol appears, and the pimp whom they encounter. We assume they’re going to be the sleazy villains of the piece, corrupting Carol, but they aren’t really. They don’t use blackmail or threats to induce her to do anything (at no time in the entire movie is Carol forced to do anything). They offer her certain amounts of money and they pay her. They might seem a bit sleazy but they deal fairly with her. That’s not what you expect in this genre.

The two main characters are exceptionally interesting. They’re innocent by big city standards, but they’re not babes in the wood. Carol isn’t an innocent virgin. Right from the start she has a totally relaxed attitude towards sex. It just isn’t that big a deal for her. She doesn’t feel degraded or exploited being a prostitute or doing a hardcore film. It’s just sex. Joe acts as her pimp but he doesn’t exploit her. They’re not madly in love with each other but they are fond of each other. They are not corrupted by anything that happens to them. They started out as nice young kids and they remain nice young kids.

This was an incredibly radical approach for a British sex film to take in 1970. It’s almost as if sex is just a normal part of life rather than being wrong and dirty.

The first thing you notice about the 88 Films Blu-Ray transfer is that it’s slightly grainy. Whoever was responsible for the restoration had enough sense to realise that the grain is supposed to be there. It adds to the atmosphere. The Blu-Ray is packed with extras. Cool It, Carol! is very highly recommended.

Friday 15 March 2024

Legend of the Witches (1970)

Legend of the Witches is an odd faux-documentary mixed with sexploitation written and directed by Malcolm Leigh and released in 1970.

It was shot 1.33:1 and in black-and-white and clearly on a very very small budget.

It’s an interesting mixture, with a mostly very serious tone and very portentous narration. On the whole it’s sympathetic to witchcraft.

Witchcraft was at the time a popular subject in fiction and in movies so this film would have a certain built-in commercial appeal.

We start with what is supposedly the witches’ creation myth. Then we go to an initiation ritual for a new witch priest.

Then we get a kind of potted European history from the witches’ point of view, with William the Conqueror, Robin Hood and Joan of Arc all featuring as witches or involved in witchcraft.


Next up is an account of the many survivals of pagan ritual in Christian ritual. These two historical interludes are the most interesting part of the film although one might be justified in being sceptical about their historical accuracy.

We get a visit to a witchcraft museum in Cornwall. Plus several more re-enactments of witchcraft rituals. Finally we get some very strange not very relevant stuff about scientific ghost-hunting and scientific investigations of psychic powers. This stuff might not be relevant but it is an excuse for some appealing trippiness.

This was 1970, with the hippie thing in full swing, and one can see signs of the  mutual influence that was becoming apparent between occult groups and some branches of hippiedom.


And along the way we get prodigious amounts of male and female frontal nudity.

The impression it all leaves is that there was an attempt being made to make a fairly serious documentary but with lots of exploitation elements to make it saleable. One assumes that the serious documentary elements were there mainly to provide a justification for lots of nudity, and presumably in the hope that this would somehow get the movie past the rigid British film censors.

There’s a total absence of humour. That might have been a deliberate ploy to make the film seem like a serious respectable documentary.


Alex Sanders, the most high-profile practising witch in England at the time and something of a celebrity, was involved in the making of the film. Much of the ritual shown in the film is therefore likely to be a fairly accurate representation of the practises of Sanders’ brand of Wicca.

Being shot on a micro-budget in black-and-white turns out to be something of an asset in disguise, adding to the cinéma vérité documentary feel. Overall the film probably needed to be tightened up a bit in the editing room. A bit more liveliness wouldn’t have hurt.

Malcolm Leigh had a brief career as a director mostly of short subjects, being best-known for his 1971 sex comedy Games That Lovers Play (which starred Joanna Lumley).


The BFI have paired this film with a similar witchcraft faux-documentary, Secret Rites, in their excellent DVD/Blu-Ray combo Flipside series. The transfer is as good as can be expected considering that the movie probably didn’t look great even at the time of its initial release. There are plenty of extras although they’re a mixed bag.

Legend of the Witches was typical of its time with some obvious affinities to British mondo-style films such as London in the Raw (1965) and Primitive London (1965) but it takes itself much more seriously.

Legend of the Witches is intriguing enough to be recommended.

Tuesday 12 March 2024

Psychomania (1973)

Psychomania is a 1973 British zombie biker movie. It’s terrible, but kind of great as well.

It could be regarded as falling into the folk-horror genre.

In some peaceful English town there’s a biker gang who call themselves The Living Dead. They’re really just juvenile delinquents. They’d like to be evil, but they’d get in trouble with their parents if they actually did anything evil.

The leader of the eight-member gang is Tom Latham (Nicky Henson). His girlfriend Abby (Mary Larkin) is one of the two female members of the gang. The other is Jane (Ann Michelle) and she’d like to be leader of the gang.

Tom really is a bit of a nutter. He’s obsessed with the idea of dying and then returning from the dead. He thinks his mother (played by Beryl Reid) and her butler Shadwell (George Sanders) know how this can be done. He thinks his father tried to do it but failed. Mrs Latham is a medium but it appears that she really can contact the dead. All Tom has to do is to convince Mrs Latham and Shadwell to reveal the secret.

Which they decide to do. It’s probably not a great idea because Tom is already unstable but he’s going to keep annoying them until they give in to him.

The secret is to commit suicide, but to really believe with all your heart that you’ll come back.


Tom tries it and it works. He suggests that all the gang members should try it.

Of course you can only die once. Once you’re dead you’re pretty much invulnerable. Which means that you don’t have to face any consequences for your actions. If you’re already inclined to violence you can now indulge that taste as much as you like.

But you do have to be prepared to kill yourself first, and you do have to believe.

Pretty soon the gang is leaving a trail of corpses in its wake.

Chief Inspector Hesseltine (Robert Hardy) has no idea what’s going on. He eventually starts to have an inkling of the truth but the police really are powerless. Maybe the gang can be stopped, but not by the police.


Tom likes being dead but he wants Abby to be dead with him. She thinks she’s ready to do it, but maybe it isn’t really so easy.

If you’re expecting a zombie biker movie with typical movies zombies and lots of gore you might be disappointed. There’s no gore at all. And these zombies look like normal human beings (which personally I think is a lot more interesting). To describe this as a zombie movie is in fact misleading. These bikers are brought back from the dead by means of an occult bargain with dark demonic forces. This is more of a witchcraft or even a satansploitation movie than a zombie movie.

This is really supernatural horror, but done as an action motorcycle movie in a contemporary setting.


The acting is OK. Nicky Henson gives Tom the right mix of arrogance and stupidity. George Sanders is a bit restrained as Shadwell. Beryl Reid overacts, which is what her role requires. Robert Hardy could be relied on to play a cop. The other players all give entertaining performances.

Abby is the closest thing in this movie to a three-dimensional character and Mary Larkin does a pretty reasonable job. Abby is the only member of the gang who actually gives some thought to consequences.

For the most part the low budget is no problem. The stunt work is very good. There is only one real special effects shot and unfortunately that’s the one time where the tiny budget becomes a problem. It just doesn’t work, but it’s only one scene at the end.

Don Sharp was a fine action director and he understood pacing so this project was ideal for him. He knew what was needed and he knew how to achieve it on a small budget.


One of the things I like about this movie is that it bears no resemblance whatsoever to other zombie movies. This movie is its own thing. There’s something refreshing about that. The weirdest thing is that these are violent outlaw bikers but they like folk songs.

The fact that the script is a bit of a mess, that major plot elements are not resolved in a clear-cut way, that characters’ motivations are sometimes obscure and the whole movie is somewhat incoherent and stylistically confused is what makes it work. It gives it an oddball flavour and a definite trippy ambience. The movie’s worst flaws are its greatest strengths.

Psychomania has its own unique flavour and for all its oddness it’s a great deal of fun. Highly recommended.

The BFI Blu-Ray/DVD combo offers an excellent restored transfer (very impressive given that the negative of this film has been lost) with lots of extras.

Sunday 10 March 2024

School for Sex (1969)

School for Sex is a 1969 movie written, produced and directed by Pete Walker. It is included in the four-movie 88 Films Pete Walker Sexploitation Collection Blu-Ray set. This is an intriguing collection. One of the movies is a very late Pete Walker movie. The other three represent the very beginnings of his career as a director of feature films. These three include one truly excellent and rather quirky movie, Cool It, Carol!

School for Sex was Walker’s first proper feature film. It’s a sex comedy, but that has to be qualified since the movie was made in two very different versions. It has been said that the problem with British sex comedies is that they’re not funny and they’re not sexy. That’s a bit unfair. It’s a legacy of the extraordinary critical hostility to these movies at the time, a legacy they have never fully been able to escape. Some British sex comedies are actually very amusing. Some are sexy, in a typically embarrassed British way.

Which leads us back to the two different cuts of this movie. Given the insanely restrictive censorship environment in Britain in the 60s the cut prepared for British release is so tame that it could be described as a sexless comedy. The other cut, the continental cut, was intended for release in European markets. It represents the movie as it should have been and was clearly intended to be. Instead of the occasional embarrassed glimpses of bare breasts in the UK cut it features a lot of nudity, including a lot of frontal nudity. It’s an actual sex comedy.

Happily 88 Films have included both cuts on their Blu-Ray release. My advice is, don’t bother with the pointless British version. If you want to appreciate what Pete Walker was capable of doing within this genre you need to watch the continental version.


The movie begins with a distinguished English gentleman facing sentencing on charges of fraud. His defence counsel offers a lengthy speech in mitigation, which introduces a flashback sequence. We find out how Giles Wingate (Derek Aylward) ended up in such a mess. He had returned from the war a hero, to take possession of a large estate and an even larger fortune. Wingate had one weakness - women. And unscrupulous gold-diggers gradually stripped him of his fortune.

The plea of mitigation succeeds in keeping him out of prison but now he has to find a way to rebuild his fortune. He has a plan to do just that. He will turn Wingate Manor into a school for girls. But a school with a difference. The girls will be instructed in the art of seduction, the aim being to teach them how to separate rich men from their money. This will be profitable for the girls, and for Giles Wingate (he will get one-third of whatever money they are able to extract from those rich men).


Wingate will be the headmaster but he’ll need a deputy headmistress. He finds the Duchess of Burwash (Rose Alba) who needs work after having spent all her late husband’s money. The duchess is rarely sober but she’s in tune with Wingate’s ideas on how to make a less-than-honest buck. Wingate also finds a PT instructor for the girls, Hector (Nosher Powell), a broken-down lecherous ex-prize fighter. Wingate himself will teach the girls how to seduce men into handing over their fortunes. Having been the victim of unscrupulous women himself he knows all their techniques.

Unfortunately the amazingly thick-headed village policeman and a jealous neighbour are taking an interest in the goings-on at Wingate Manor.

That’s pretty much it for the plot but there is a nice twist at the end.


This movie has a very 1969 anti-authoritarian vibe. The police are bumbling idiots constantly sticking their noses into other people’s private affairs. Lawyers, judges and politicians are dishonest and are much worse rogues than Wingate.

Wingate is a rogue, but he’s a likeable rogue. His girls are not exactly honest. They all have criminal records (he recruits them via a crooked parole officer) but they’re likeable rogues (or rogue-ettes) as well.

Derek Aylward is perfectly cast. He does the dishonest gentleman thing superbly. One thing that’s interesting is that Wingate is genuinely fond of his young lady pupils and treats them with respect. He may not be honest but he is a gentleman.


The girls are all extremely pretty and all look good with or without their clothes. The most notable is Françoise Pascal who went on to star in Jean Rollin’s superb The Iron Rose (1973).

So going back to that accusation that British sex comedies are neither funny nor sexy, how does School for Sex stack up? It really isn’t terribly funny but it is good-natured and lighthearted and occasionally amusing. The British cut isn’t sexy, but the continental cut with its copious nudity definitely is sexy. It’s a basically good idea but at this stage of his career Walker lacked the experience to exploit it fully. It’s harmless and it is interesting as a very early British sex comedy. Worth a look, but don’t set your expectations too high.

The 88 Films Blu-Ray offers a nice transfer. There are quite a few extras. Sadly the audio commentary is disappointing.

Thursday 7 March 2024

OSS 117: Mission to Tokyo (1966)

OSS 117: Mission to Tokyo (AKA Terror in Tokyo, original title Atout coeur à Tokyo pour OSS 117), is a 1966 French eurospy movie directed by Michel Boisrond and starring Frederick Stafford. This was the fourth of the 1960s OSS 117 movies, based on Jean Bruce’s novels featuring secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, codenamed OSS 117.

A mystery organisation claim to have invented a super-weapon which they will use unless governments pay them a hundred million dollars. Military bases will be their targets.

CIA agent OSS 117 is assigned to the case. The best lead is a woman in Tokyo who is being blackmailed by the mystery organisation into providing them with the information they need to target those bases.

The woman is Eva Wilson (Marina Vlady). The plan is for Eva to make contact with the bad guys. Hubert will pretend to be her husband (her actual husband is in Washington).


Hubert and Eva decide that it’s important to make Hubert’s masquerade as her husband convincing so they sleep together.

There’s a meet in a girlie bar where Hubert encounters a pretty Japanese girl, Tetsuko (Jitsuko Yoshimura). Tetsuko might be able to provide a further lead but even if she can’t Hubert doesn’t mind. He doesn’t really need a reason to pursue pretty girls.

Hubert’s problem is that he is now involved with two women and he can’t be sure if he can trust either of them. Maybe he’ll have a better idea of that after he’s slept with both of them.


Hubert’s bigger problem is to find the villains’ secret headquarters, and their super-weapon. He has to deal with lots of heavies who want to do him harm.

This was Frederick Stafford’s second and final appearance as OSS 117. He looks like the kind of guy who might be a secret agent, he’s good in the action scenes and he’s likeable and charming. Hubert is a skirt-chaser, but he only chases girls who like to be chased.

Marina Vlady and Jitsuko Yoshimura are fine as the two women mixed up in the case. Jitsuko Yoshimura in particular is bubbly and cute.

Perhaps the villains could have been more colourful.


The plot is a pretty standard eurospy plot but it’s serviceable enough. The movie moves along fairly briskly. The fight scenes are reasonably good.

The bad guys’ secret lair doesn’t compare to anything from a Bond movie but it’s OK.

Director Michel Boisrond doesn’t try anything fancy but he’s quite competent.

There’s a decent mix of action and romance. Perhaps surprisingly it’s all played very very straight with no comic interludes.


The action finale is fairly exciting. Obviously a lot less spectacular than a Bond movie but for a modestly budgeted movie perfectly satisfactory.

OSS 117: Mission to Tokyo doesn’t quite have as much eurospy craziness as I would have liked.

On the whole this is a thoroughly enjoyable rather lighthearted spy thriller and it’s highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the two previous OSS 117 movies, OSS 117 Is Unleashed (1963) and Panic in Bangkok. They’re worth seeing.

Tuesday 5 March 2024

For Men Only (1967)

For Men Only (originally titled I Like Birds) was written, produced and directed by Pete Walker and released in 1967. It was almost Walker’s first feature film. I say almost because with a running time of just 43 minutes it’s halfway between a short and a feature film. It’s included in the four-movie 88 Films Pete Walker Sexploitation Collection Blu-Ray set.

For Men Only is very similar in style and tone to Walker’s first proper feature film, School for Sex. Both are sex comedies, or at least they would have been but the narrow-minded puritanical British Chief Film Censor had no intention of allowing the Great British Public to be corrupted by such filth. As a result both movies are so ridiculously tame that they just fall rather flat. But both movies existed in two different cuts - the limp British cuts and much spicier cuts intended for European markets.

Happily 88 Films have included the sexier scenes from the continental version as extras so it’s possible to see what Pete Walker actually intended these movies to be - good-natured, amusing, lively and sexy.

Freddie Horne (David Kernan) is a journalist for Woman’s Vogue, or at least he was until his fiancée Rosalie (Andrea Allan) forced him to give up the job. She didn’t want him spending so much time with glamorous fashion models.


Her father has found him a more respectable job, working for a magazine publishing house that specialises in serious highly moral religious magazines.

Freddie gets a shock when he goes to the country house of the chairman of this publishing house, Miles Fanthorpe (Derek Aylward). He discovers that Fanthorpe’s real business is not religious magazines but girlie magazines. The religious magazines are just a front.

Fanthorpe’s house is full of very pretty very scantily-clad girls. The girlie photography is done here. Freddie knows that Rosalie won’t approve but Fanthorpe assures him she’ll never find out. And Freddie does have an eye for lovely young ladies.


Of course it’s all going to get rather fraught when Freddie forgets about his prospective father-in-law’s silver wedding anniversary party and Rosalie sets off to Fanthorpe’s country house to fetch him. Even worse, her father turns up soon afterwards. To put the icing on the cake the vicar and two very respectable church ladies also show up, to demonstrate their appreciation for Fanthorpe’s campaign for the moral cleansing of Britain.

Rosalie gets in a few embarrassing situations, falling into a bathtub and having to take off her sodden dress only to be mistaken for one of the models.

Freddie ends up sharing another bathtub with a couple of naked young ladies.


This film is very similar to School for Sex. Both have ideal plots for sex comedies but neither film manages to extract quite as many laughs from the situations as one might have wished.

For Men Only is however good-natured and light-hearted and energetic.

Derek Aylward to a large extent carries the film. He was remarkably good at playing characters who were gentlemen on the surface but likeable rogues underneath.

David Kernan is quite OK as the somewhat flustered hero.

It’s a movie that would like to be shocking but doesn’t quite dare to do so.


For Men Only
was released as the second half of various double bills and apparently did reasonably well.

The short running time turns out to be an asset. It means that the action keeps moving along and the movie is less likely to wear out its welcome.

It’s interesting as marking the beginning of Pete Walker’s career (if you don’t count the 8mm nudie shorts he’d been making for several years). Walker developed quite quickly. School for Sex in 1969 would be an improvement on this film and it was followed by the rather excellent Cool It, Carol! a year later. For Men Only isn’t great but it’s worth a look.

The Blu-Ray provides a nice transfer but apart from the racier scenes from the continental version it’s bereft of extras.

Sunday 3 March 2024

Deadly Sweet (1967)

Deadly Sweet (Col cuore in gola) is a 1967 giallo directed by Tinto Brass.

Tinto Brass’s career has been interesting to say the least. In the 60s and early 70s he was establishing himself as an art-house director, even being hailed as the next Antonioni. Then in 1976 came his first examination of the link between extreme sex and absolute power, Salon Kitty. It ignited a firestorm of controversy. He intended his next film, Caligula, to be a further exploration of the same topic. Caligula of course had a famously chaotic production history and was savaged by critics who had decided they hated the movie even before they had seen it.

Brass responded by totally reinventing himself, as a maker of erotic movies. He wanted to make high-quality intelligent erotic movies at a time when this was commercially impossible. Brass didn’t care and went ahead anyway and carved out a successful career. What’s interesting, considering the extreme nature of Salon Kitty and Caligula, is that his later erotic movies are cheerful and good-natured.

So a giallo from Tinto Brass is a bit of a surprise.

Bernard (Jean-Louis Trintignant) spots a pretty girl at a night-club. She is Jane Burroughs (Ewa Aulin). She’s there with her brother Jerome (Charles Kohler). Their father was killed in a car accident a few days earlier. Bernard goes to see the manager of the club because he has been refused credit. He finds the manager dead. Murdered. And Jane Burroughs is there but she swears she didn’t kill him.


Bernard is now mixed up in whatever it is that Jane is mixed up in, which seems to include both blackmail and murder. There is a photograph that must be retrieved.

We have no idea who Bernard is. He knows how to handle a gun. He could be a private eye, an undercover cop, a spy, a gangster or maybe just a guy who likes to help cute girls in trouble. We eventually find out that he is an actor, and it’s appropriate that Trintignant is an actor playing an actor since this is a movie in which the line between reality and fiction is constantly blurred. This is certainly not a realist film.

There’s plenty of trouble in store. Jane gets kidnapped. There’s another murder. Bernard finds opportunities to use his gun. He gets knocked unconscious by a midget. He and Jane are pursued by heavies.

They do find the time to fall in love and sleep together.


Bernard is determined to unravel the puzzle. And it’s a nicely convoluted puzzle.

This is a movie set in England, directed by an Italian with a French leading man and a Swedish leading lady. In the case of some Italian movies shot in England you find yourself thinking that they could just as easily have been shot in Milan or Rome. In this case however the setting makes sense. This film is going very strongly for a Swinging London vibe.

There are nods to Antonioni’s Blow-Up and some direct references (Jane and Bernard pass a poster for the movie). Deadly Sweet does have some very slight hints of the flavour of Blow-Up. Deadly Sweet is a very 60s very Pop movie with a Pop Art verging on psychedelia visual style. Brass was aiming very much for a comic-book feel (Guido Crepax was a major influence on the film and drew some storyboards for it).


At times this movie is in danger of being too clever for its own good but for the most part Brass gets away with it because he really is clever and visually inventive and he imbues the film with lots of energy and style. We’re never quite sure how seriously he wants us to take this movie. My feeling is that we’re not supposed to take it seriously at all, we’re just supposed to enjoy the ride. And it is an enjoyable ride. There are some truly inspired visual moments.

When I describe Deadly Sweet as a giallo I have to qualify that a bit. The giallo genre can be divided into two phases. The second and better known began in 1970 with Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage - blood-drenched serial killer films with black-gloved killers and lots of spectacular murders. Prior to that, in the late 60s, was the proto-giallo phase - stylish erotic thrillers with often only one or two murders and often with very little blood. Personally I prefer these proto-giallos, such as Lucio Fulci's One on Top of the Other, Umberto Lenzi's So Sweet...So Perverse and Romolo Guerrieri's The Sweet Body of Deborah but that is of course purely a matter of personal taste.


Deadly Sweet
fits into the proto-giallo phase, although perhaps it doesn’t fit as neatly as some other movies. It has some of the elements you find in these early giallos - you have a couple who aren’t really sure if they can trust each other, there are other important characters who may be treacherous, there are hints of sexual perversity, there’s an atmosphere of decadence although it’s not quite the decadence one associates with proto-giallos. This is the decadence of the cultural revolution of the 60s. This is pop youth culture decadence, not old money decadence.

The tone is all over the place, veering from being quite serious to being definitely tongue-in-cheek and then veering off into pure spoof territory. That should be a flaw but it adds to the movie’s offbeat quirkiness. Imagine a giallo made as an homage to Blow-Up but in the style of a Guido Crepax comic and you have Deadly Sweet. Surprisingly it turns out to be a lot of fun. Very highly recommended.

The Cult Epics DVD looks good and there’s an excellent audio commentary with Tinto Brass in which he reveals something rather amusing. There are quite a few shots in black-and-white and naturally you assume this has some deep significance. In fact he had to do those shots in conditions where there was no way to get enough light to shoot in colour so he just shot in black-and-white.