Stray Cat Rock: Machine Animal (1970)

Stray Cat Rock: Machine Animal, directed by Yasuharu Hasebe and released in 1970, was the fourth of the five very successful Stray Cat Rock pinky violence movies made by Japan’s Nikkatsu studio at the beginning of the 1970s. The legendary Meiko Kaji features in all five movies.

The first thing that needs to be pointed out is that the Stray Cat Rock movies were not what today would be thought of as a franchise. There are no direct links between the five films. Each film features entirely different characters. Meiko Kaji plays different women in each film. Each film has a slightly different feel. What they all have in common is that they all involve the adventures of girl juvenile delinquent gangs.

The second thing to be pointed out is that while Machine Animal feels like a pinky violence movie it features no nudity and no sex and the violence is very restrained. This is a rather good-natured movie.

Maya (Meiko Kaji) is the leader of a Yokohama girl gang. They have a friendly relationship with a male juvenile delinquent gang, the Dragons (led by a guy named Sakura), but Maya’s gang is fiercely independent. They sort out their own problems.

Both gangs, Maya’s gang and the Dragons, encounter three young guys whose car has broken down. Two of the guys are Japanese while the third is an American, Charlie. It seems like these three guys are going to get beaten up, but that doesn’t happen. These juvenile delinquents are not mere thugs. They’re not out for aimless violence. If you don’t bother them they won’t bother you.

The girls later discover that these three guys have a huge stash of LSD tablets that they’re trying to sell. The girls steal the drugs.

Maya then finds out that Charlie is a U.S. Army deserter tired of the carnage of the Vietnam War. He’s trying to escape to Sweden. The drugs are to be sold to finance his escape on a cargo ship. Now the girls feel really bad. They don’t want Charlie to have to go back to the war.

The girls decide to return the drugs but then things get really complicated, with everybody trying to steal the acid tabs from everybody else. The Dragons get involved. Various pushers get involved. Sakura’s somewhat sinister sister Yuri (Bunjaku Han), the major local dealer, gets mixed up in it as well. Nobody is sure any longer where the LSD stash is.

There is major trouble between Maya’s gang and the Dragons, with both gangs resorting to kidnappings in order to force their rivals to negotiate a deal. Inevitably things get dangerously heated.

It’s fun in these Stray Cat Rock movies seeing Meiko Kaji playing characters far removed from the ice-cold killer psycho bitch roles with which she later became associated. She was perfectly capable of playing very sympathetic nice girls and she could be funny and even adorable. In this movie she’s very likeable. Maya is a nice girl. She does not rule her gang by fear. The other girls accept her leadership because they know they can trust her and they know she’s smart and resourceful. She’s the queen but she’s a benevolent queen.

The way girl gangs are treated in this series (and other pinky violence series) is extremely interesting. These are young women trying to cope with a world that they find confusing and alienating. They deal with this by forming girl gangs which function as tight-knit emotionally supportive female groups. Girls who have fun together, but who will unhesitatingly back each other up.

It’s not done in a heavy-handed feminist way. It’s just the natural inclination of women to want to bond with female friends. They like men but they need the mutual trust and respect of female friends.

Meiko Kaji was a successful pop singer as well as an actress and she gets to sing in this movie. There are in fact a number of pop songs featured in the movie which makes it a nice time capsule of 1970 Japanese pop culture. Even better, this film features go-go dancing!

I loved the fact that at one point the girls need motorcycles so they steal them from a showroom but after they’ve finished with them they return the motorcycles to the showroom. They may be juvenile delinquents but they’re not common thieves! And when they ride the bikes through a restaurant they apologise to the customers for the inconvenience. Being a juvenile delinquent doesn’t mean you have to forget to be polite.

The acting is fine with all the girls being likeable and cute.

Stray Cat Rock: Machine Animal’s greatest strengths are Meiko Kaji’s star power and its sense of female camaraderie. It’s also fast-moving. Don’t expect lashings of sex and violence. This is more like a good-natured caper movie. But it’s entertaining, it’s a great chance to appreciate Meiko Kaji’s versatility as an actress and it’s recommended.

All five Stray Cat Rock movies are included in Arrow’s Blu-Ray boxed set and all five movies look terrific. There are a few extras as well.

Yasuharu Hasebe also directed the first and third movies in the series, Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss (1970) and Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter (1970). I’ve also reviewed the second movie in the series, Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo (1970), which was directed by Toshiya Fujita.

Pacific Banana (1980)

Pacific Banana is a 1980 ozploitation sex comedy directed by John D. Lamond.

When the Australian film industry was reborn at the beginning of the 70s it quickly split into two bitterly opposed camps. On one side was the official respectable industry that made the government happy (these movies were all financed by the government) and pleased critics. These were middle-brow movies with artistic pretensions and everybody knew these were good movies because they were dull and could never have been made unless the taxpayer footed the bill. They were seen as movies that would give people overseas a favourable impression of Australia and of the artiness and seriousness of Australian filmmakers.

On the other side were the ozploitation filmmakers. They made movies that people actually wanted to see, which enraged Australian film critics. Their movies made money, which enraged critics even more. Their movies sold well overseas and made money on the drive-in circuit in the U.S., which was yet another black mark against them.

John D. Lamond definitely belonged to this disreputable side of the industry. In 1978 he had an international success with Felicity, by far the best of the countless 1970s Emmanuelle rip-offs.

He followed up that success with Pacific Banana.

This movie concerns a young airline pilot named Martin (Graeme Blundell). His problem is that after a traumatic sexual misadventure he can no longer perform in the bedroom. This sexual misadventure also cost him his job. He ends up flying an ancient DC-3 for Banana Airlines, a cheap broken-down airline at the bottom of the airline food chain.

His pal Paul (Robin Stewart) on the other hand can perform anywhere at any time. He has two fiancées, Sally (Deborah Gray) and Mandy (Alyson Best). They’re Banana Airlines stewardesses. In fact they’re the airline’s only stewardesses.

In Tahiti Martin’s friends do everything they can to help him overcome his problems. He is offered sexual temptations which no man could resist, but poor Martin fails to rise to the occasion.

Even the amazing Candy Bubbles (Luan Peters) is helpless in the face of Martin’s inadequacies, and Candy has never failed to arouse a man’s interests.

The problem has some connection with the female members of the Blandings family, and especially with the young Julia Blandings (Helen Hemingway) who seems to terrify Martin. And Julia keeps showing up.

The basic idea is fine. Lamond knew how to do this sort of thing. The script is by Alan Hopgood, who wrote Alvin Purple (one of the best sex comedies of the 70s). Graeme Blundell is perfectly cast. There’s an exotic setting. There are lots of lovely ladies. There’s a huge amount of nudity. All the right ingredients are there, and it works up to a point but it doesn’t quite come off.

The voiceover narration is a major problem. Not only is is unfunny, it actually detracts from much of the humour. The pie fight was a terrible idea. The slapstick elements are lame and out of place.

It does have some very funny moments. It has the right playful feel and the abundant nudity and sex are handled in a cheerful good-natured way.

The ladies are not just lovely. They prove themselves to be very adept at comedy. The whole cast is good.

Umbrella’s DVD looks extremely good. Extras include an interview with Lamond speaking very wittily and amusingly about his career plus a featurette which includes Lamond, scriptwriter Alan Hopgood and star Deborah Gray (who seems to have thoroughly enjoyed making this movie).

Pacific Banana is very good in parts but one can’t help feeling it should have been just a little better. It’s still amusing and sexy and it’s worth a recommended rating.

Speaking of Australian sex comedies, I’ve reviewed Alvin Purple (1973) which I highly recommend. I’ve also reviewed Lamond’s Felicity (1978) which is absolutely top-tier erotica.

Turkey Shoot (1982)

Turkey Shoot is a 1982 ozploitation movie. When you see “produced by Antony I. Ginnane” and “directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith”it always gives one a feeling of confidence. At least the movie is unlikely to be dull.

The setting is a totalitarian future Australia in which absolute social conformity is enforced. This is a movie that seems much more chilling today than it was in 1982. It’s all very Orwellian, complete with very Orwellian slogans. All dissent is forbidden.

Chris Walters (Olivia Hussey) is a very ordinary woman who finds herself suspected of wrongthink and is sent to a re-education camp. The camp is run by the sadistic Charles Thatcher (Michael Craig). His political boss is Secretary Mallory (Noel Ferrier) whose sexual tastes seem to be more than a little outré. Mallory takes an immediate interest in Chris. She is terrified. That excites him.

The main protagonist is Paul Anders (Steve Railsback) who is convinced he cannot be broken. Thatcher intends to break him.

Also caught up in the net is Rita Daniels (Lynda Stoner). She’s been accused of sexcrime.

Anders is awaiting a chance to escape, as is Griff (Bill Young) who also believes that Thatcher cannot break him.

Life in the camp is an endless round of brutality and humiliation.

Thatcher is putting on an entertainment for a couple of important people. One is Mallory. The other is the very rich very sophisticated and very depraved Jennifer (Carmen Duncan). The entertainment will be a hunt, with five prisoners as the prey. The prisoners are told that if they are still alive and have not been captured by sundown they will be freed. Maybe it’s true, poor Chris desperately wants to believe it’s true, but it seems very unlikely.

The hunters are Thatcher, Mallory, Jennifer, several of the camp guards and a circus freak. I have no idea where he came from but he adds an extra exploitation element.

Most of the hunters are armed with guns but Jennifer prefers a crossbow. She likes to kill her victims slowly.

There’s plenty of graphic violence and gore and a very nasty sadistic tone. There’s some nudity as well, because this is after all an exploitation movie.

The action scenes are lively and energetic and over-the-top, as you’d expect from Trenchard-Smith.

The characterisations are all wafer-thin but this a straightforward violent action movie so who needs characterisation? The acting is mostly cartoonish which suits the feel of the movie. Olivia Hussey seems out of place in this movie but her performance works in the sense that she’s playing a woman who finds herself in a situation in which she really is hopelessly out of place. The standout performer is Carmen Duncan as Jennifer. She’s deliciously wicked and perverse.

Steve Railsback does his best but he isn’t quite convincing as an action hero. He’s a bit too weedy.

This is not a women-in-prison movie as such but will probably have some appeal to fans of that genre.

Turkey Shoot has all the violence that fans of violent action movies could hope for and it’s nothing if not entertaining.

The Umbrella DVD (they’ve released in on Blu-Ray as well) offers a very nice transfer without any extras.

This was approximately the 10,000th screen adaptation of Richard Connell’s 1924 short story The Most Dangerous Game. The best of these is The Most Dangerous Game (1932) although Seven Women for Satan (1976) is definitely worth seeing as is Herb Stanley’s completely off-the-wall 1968 Confessions of a Psycho Cat.

The Police are Blundering in the Dark (1974)

The Police are Blundering in the Dark is a 1974 Italian feature written and directed by Helia Colombo and it appears to be his only film credit. It’s easy to see why. This movie could have been called The Director is Blundering in the Dark. Despite its flaws it is morbidly fascinating and it has some definite oddball features that make it worth a look.

Incidentally the IMDb claims that Helia Colombo was a woman which is totally incorrect. Almost everything in this movie’s IMDb listing appears to be wrong.

We start with a woman getting a flat tyre on a lonely country road. She then gets butchered by an unknown assailant.

There’s a young couple, Lucia and Alberto, who have just been engaged as servants at a villa owned by a wealthy artist named Parrisi. Lucia and Alberto have an uneasy relationship. And the atmosphere at the villa is unsettling. Parrisi is confined to a wheelchair. His wife Eleonora (Halina Zalewska) is obviously sexually frustrated. Fortunately she is able to satisfy her sexual urges with their niece Sara. There’s also Dr Dalla, who spends a great deal of time at the villa when he’s not tending his gardens.

Another young woman, Enrichetta Blonde (a fine name for a character in a giallo), also has car trouble. She finds a roadside inn and rings her sleazy journalist boyfriend Giorgio (Joseph Arkim). He can’t come to pick her up because he’s busy in bed with another woman. By the time he arrives next morning it’s too late for poor Enrichetta Blonde.

At this stage Enrichetta’s body has not been found so Giorgio thinks she’s just gone missing. An entry in her diary leads him to Parrisi’s villa where he becomes a house guest. And finds himself in the middle of all kinds of weird psycho-sexual dramas. Giorgio is not a man to let opportunities slip by so he figures he might as well seduce both the housemaid and the niece.

As the movie progresses it becomes more incoherent but also much weirder. There is even a possible science fiction element.

Obviously there’s a psycho killer loose but there’s no point in suspecting characters who seem possibly crazy or sexually twisted because every character in this movie seems to be at least somewhat crazy and sexually twisted.

There’s the halfwit son of the old couple who run the inn. There’s Parrisi, whose artistic interests focus on the female nude. He’s eccentric and probably sexually dysfunctional. There’s his wife who is bedding his niece. Eleonora is also a diagnosed erotomaniac. The two servants, Lucia and Alberto, are shifty and seem at least slightly depraved. Lucia is a nymphomaniac so no man is safe with her around. The doctor is obsessed with flowers and is a bit of a worry. And Giorgio himself is an inveterate and amoral womaniser.

And did I mention the guy who has found a way to photograph people’s thoughts?

Colombo attempts a couple of spectacular murder set-pieces, with mixed success. Overall the violence level is fairly moderate. There is no shortage of bare breasts.

The movie has a very low-budget and slightly amateurish feel. Colombo’s inexperience as writer and director is painfully evident. At times this is an asset - he makes odd unexpected choices. Sometimes the choices are misguided but sometimes they’re weirdly interesting. The script is very slapdash. It has some very good ideas but their potential is not fully exploited. Most of the cast and crew, with a few exceptions, were also very inexperienced.

One thing this film has in its favour is a claustrophobic hothouse atmosphere of sleaze, kinkiness and sexual dysfunction.

The science fiction element (the thought photography machine) isn’t just thrown in to add a bit more strangeness. It plays a pivotal part in the plot.

Parrisi, the wildly eccentric artist, is the one character who really makes an impression.

This movie was shot in 1972 but not released until 1975. It made little impression at the box office.

The Police are Blundering in the Dark has to be considered a failure but at least it fails in interesting ways. Despite its flaws I found myself enjoying it. Tentatively recommended.

It’s included in Vinegar Syndrome’s Forgotten Gialli volume1 Blu-Ray boxed set, along with Trauma and Javier Aguirre’s disappointing The Killer Is One of Thirteen. The Police are Blundering in the Dark gets a reasonably decent transfer (to be fair it’s a movie that probably never looked all that great). The only extra is a short but informative audio essay by Rachel Nisbet.

Genocide (1968)

In the late 1960s Japan’s Shochiku studio made a short-lived and rather tentative attempt to break into the booming market for science fiction, horror and monster movies. Four of these movies are included in Criterion’s Eclipse Series 37 DVD boxed set When Horror Came to Shochiku. While it’s a cool name for a boxed set it’s a tad misleading since these movies are certainly not typical late 60s horror films. They all combine horror and science fiction in weird and wonderful ways.

Genocide begins with a swarm of insects causing an American B-52 bomber to crash into the sea near Kojima Island, just off the coast of Japan. The three crew members survive and reach the island. The B-52 was carrying a H-bomb.

The crash was witnessed by Joji (Yûsuke Kawazu), a young Japanese guy who collects insects for a scientist. At least his gorgeous young wife Yukari (Emi Shindô) thinks he’s collecting insects. Actually he’s canoodling with a blonde named Annabelle (Kathy Horan).

The Americans really want to find their H-bomb. They do find the three crew members but two are dead and the third, Charly, has lost his memory (we later find out he’s lost his mind as well).

Joji is now under suspicion of murder. Yukari knows about the blonde and she’s not happy about it but she still loves Joji. She appeals to Dr Nagumo (Keisuke Sonoi) for help. Nagumo is the scientist for whom Joji collects bugs. Nagumo is keen to help.

So far it all makes sense, doesn’t it? Well it won’t make sense for long. Dr Nagumo is already disturbed by reports from around the globe of strange insect behaviour.

Dr Nagumo is more worried after he’s visited the cave in which the American airmen took shelter. He’s also worried about Charly’s condition. Charly has been seriously spooked by something. He is now terrified of bugs.

The bugs are definitely behaving oddly but there are humans on the island who are up to mysterious and possibly wicked things as well. At this stage we have no idea what they might be up to or which of the people on the island might be involved.

There are quite a few people acting strangely. There’s the creepy guy at the hotel. Maybe he just wants to get into Yukari’s pants but maybe he has another agenda as well. We know that Joji has been covering up his torrid love affair with Annabelle. He could be covering up other things. Dr Nagumo seems like a nice guy but we can’t discount the possibility he might turn out to be a mad scientist. We’re a bit suspicious of Annabelle. And the Americans get rather evasive when they’re asked about that H-bomb.

Up to this point the movie’s craziness level is in low gear but it will soon be kicked into overdrive. The motivations of the various characters are totally nuts. The nature of the mysterious happenings on the island turns out to be bizarre.

And then we get a full-blown psychedelic freak-out sequence.

The acting isn’t very good but it’s appropriate to the demented subject matter and I rather enjoyed Kathy Horan doing the dangerous blonde thing as Annabelle.

The special effects (and especially the miniatures work) are definitely iffy. That doesn’t matter in such an insane movie. It just adds to the fun. And some of the effects with the insects do work.

The plot is gloriously silly but you have to admire its boldness. Who says movies have to make sense?

Genocide is a wild crazy ride. The pacing is excellent. The craziness doesn’t let up. Thankfully there’s no comic relief. There’s an anti-war message but it doesn’t become tedious. There’s delightfully off-the-wall pseudo-science. It combines horror, science fiction and spy film elements. Genocide is just pure enjoyment. Highly recommended if you love insane psychotronic movies.

The DVD transfer is very good. So far I’ve watched three of the movies in the boxed set. The X from Outer Space (1967) and The Living Skeleton (1968) are both goofy fun while Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (1968) is delightfully deranged.

Almost Human (1974)

Almost Human (Milano odia: la polizia non può sparare) is a 1974 poliziottesco directed by Umberto Lenzi. This is the first of half a dozen poliziotteschi Lenzi made with star Tomas Milian. Confusingly it has been released with numerous different titles.

Milian is Giulio Sacchi, a particularly dumb hoodlum. After he almost causes a bank robbery to go wrong Giulio gets beaten up by his accomplices. He decides to strike out on his own. He’s ambitious. He’s going to pull a really really big job. He’s going to kidnap Marilù Porrino (Laura Belli), the daughter of a fabulously rich industrialist.

Giulio is ambitious but he’s too dumb and too crazy to figure out that he’s unlikely to get away with it. Especially with accomplices like Vittorio (Gino Santercole) and Carmine (Ray Lovelock). Vittorio is just dumb but Carmine is an obvious weak link - he’s young, emotional and highly strung. Once the killings start he’s not going to cope very well.

And the killings start immediately. Giulio does not intend to leave a single witness alive. Anyone who knows anything at all, no matter how insignificant, is going to be killed. Giulio has obtained three submachine-guns. They are going to get a lot of use.

Commissario Walter Grandi (Henry Silva) is a no-nonsense cop who knows his job. Giulio has left a few minor loose ends and Grandi is slowly putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

This is certainly a violent movie. The violence is graphic and it’s doubly shocking in its remorselessness. You know that anybody who crosses Giulio’s path is going to die in a hail of machine-gun bullets.

Marilù’s father is willing to pay the ransom. Commissario Grandi has no doubts that if the ransom is paid the girl will be killed anyway. And we know right from the start that that’s what Giulio intends to do.

As you might expect things get tense between the three hoodlums but Giulio’s plan seems to be working. The trail of corpses he leaves behind provide Commissario Grandi with vital clues but no hard evidence - dead witnesses don’t talk.

Tomas Milian plays Giulio as a vicious out-of-control thug. Any attempt to give the movie a political interpretation, to see Giulio as a representative of the suffering downtrodden masses, comes up against the problem that Giulio is one of the least sympathetic protagonists in movie history. He has no redeeming features. We feel no sympathy for him whatsoever. He’s always been a loser and we want to see him keep losing. Any attempt to see neo-noir elements in the film is similarly doomed. Giulio has not been corrupted or led astray or forced into a life of crime - he is rotten all the way through right from the start. We are entirely on the side of Commissario Grandi - we want to see Giulio hunted down like an animal and killed. Milian’s performance is remarkable in its sheer excessiveness.

Ray Loveock is pretty good as Carmine. He’s a marginally more sympathetic character perhaps but while he’s a jumpy nervous killer he’s still a killer. Henry Silva gives a fairly nuanced performance - Grandi does not come across as conforming to the usual movie cop clichés.

Lenzi had the ability to make interesting movies in lots of different genres and to avoid the obvious clichés. In this case having a screenplay by the great Ernesto Gastaldi certainly helped. This is a poliziottesco but the focus is less on the cops and more on the psycho killer.

There’s a fine car chase early on and the action scenes are well-mounted and are not lacking in shock effect.

Giulio might be unintelligent but his very ruthlessness makes him a formidable problem for the police. And he does have a certain crazed cunning. They might know that he is guilty but finding actual evidence is a problem since Giulio leaves no-one alive to give evidence against him. He really doesn’t care how many people he kills. Commissario Grandi seems to be coming up against a brick wall.

The plot is basic but Almost Human has style and energy and a great deal of raw power. Highly recommended.

This movie has had countless DVD and Blu-Ray releases. Severin’s is the most recent (in their Violent Streets Umberto Lenzi boxed set) and it looks great and includes a host of extras.

The Possessed (1965)

The Possessed (La donna del lago) is included in Arrow’s Giallo Essentials Red Blu-Ray boxed set. It’s supposed to be a proto-giallo and I generally enjoy proto-giallos (or proto-gialli) even more than fullblown giallos. Whether this movie really qualifies for such a label remains to be seen.

A writer named Bernard (Peter Baldwin) has just broken up with his girlfriend. He arrives at the lakeside hotel owned by Mr Enrico. Bernard spent a lot of time there as a boy and he was there a year ago as well. He tells himself he just wants to relax and get some work done on his new novel. He isn’t even fooling himself. He has come to see Tilde.

Tilde is a maid at the hotel. We assume that she and Bernard had a love affair the previous year and that Bernard wants to rekindle the romance.

Those hopes are soon dashed. Tilde is dead. She committed suicide.

Bernard’s photographer pal Francesco suggests to Bernard that perhaps there was more to Tilde’s death.

At this point you expect Bernard to stay playing amateur detective but he does so in a very halfhearted manner. In fact he does everything in a very halfhearted manner. He does pick up a few possible clues. It does seem possible that Tilde was murdered.

We get a few flashbacks but it’s not always clear if certain scenes really happened or are really happening or are happening purely in Bernard’s mind.

The atmosphere at the hotel is uneasy. The marriage of Mr Enrico’s son Mario (Philippe Leroy) to Adriana (Pia Lindström) seems unhappy. Mr Enrico’s daughter Irma (Valentina Cortese) seems tense. Mr Enrico seems troubled.

There are people who seem to be trying to lead Bernard to the truth and others determined to do the exact opposite.

Interestingly we never find out exactly what went on between Bernard and Tilde. At first we assume they were lovers but later we come to doubt that. Perhaps it was just an obsession on Bernard’s part. We have to consider the possibility that they never actually met, although it appears that he had been spying on her. Everything he thinks he knows about her may be misinterpretations on his part. He’s a writer. He lives in a world of imagination. Of course there’s also the possibility they really were lovers.

The extraordinary ambiguity of his obsession with Tilde is by far the best thing about this movie.

This movie is not a giallo. It’s not a proto-giallo. It has no connection whatsoever with the giallo genre. The visual style is the polar opposite of giallo visual style. It’s in black-and-white and I personally do not believe a black-and-white movie can be a giallo. The visuals are moody, sombre, low-key. There’s none of the characteristic giallo flamboyance. It’s not even film noir. The Possessed has more of the feel of a Bergman movie.

There’s no glamour. No sexiness. No hints of decadence. There are none of the identifying features of the proto-giallo.

This is an art film. As a thriller it doesn’t really work. It lacks actual thrills. It lacks action, it lacks suspense and the murder mystery elements are predictable.

That’s not to say that it’s a bad movie. It’s not without interest as a psychological study, as a meditation on memory (and the unreliability of memory) and the blurring of the line between imagination and reality. It just isn’t even remotely a giallo and it isn’t the slightest bit giallo-esque. Not only is it not a giallo. It’s almost an anti-giallo - the absolute antithesis of everything that defines the giallo. Of course co-directors Luigi Bazzoni and Franco Rossellini were not trying to make a giallo since the giallo did not exist as a distinct entity in 1965. They were presumably trying to make an art movie.

Labelling it as a giallo was probably the only way to make a Blu-Ray release commercially viable. The Blu-Ray transfer looks pretty decent. There are some extras as well.

The Possessed is a moderately interesting art/crime film. Worth a look if you’re going to buy the boxed set anyway.

Luigi Bazzoni would later make an actual giallo, the extremely good The Fifth Cord (1971). Which just happens to also be included in the same Arrow Blu-Ray boxed set.