Knife of Ice (1972)

Knife of Ice (Il coltello di ghiaccio), released in 1972, was the fourth movie Umberto Lenzi made with star Carroll Baker and it’s a bit of a change of pace.

The first three movies are what I describe as proto-gialli - they have some of the style and feel of the later gialli but there are major differences. They’re stylish erotic thrillers that lack the blood and gore of the full-blown giallo. Knife of Ice is an interesting hybrid. Structurally it’s a giallo but in style and tone it’s a proto-giallo. And it has hints of the supernatural.

This was a Spanish-Italian co-production set in Spain. The bullfight credits sequence seems to have no connection to the rest of the movie but in fact it includes a clue.

Umberto Lenzi co-wrote the screenplay with Antonio Troiso. The original inspiration for this movie was Robert Siodmak’s 1946 classic The Spiral Staircase, a movie for which Lenzi had enormous admiration. Lenzi and Troiso made major changes to the plot so if you know how The Spiral Staircase ends that won’t help you in guessing the ending of Knife of Ice. Lenzi did not want to do a remake but rather a totally different movie taking the 1946 movie as a jumping-off point.

Martha Caldwell (Carroll Baker) arrives at her uncle’s home in Spain with her cousin and best friend Jenny Ascot (Ida Galli). Her uncle suffers from a severe heart complaint. He’s being treated by Dr Laurent (Alan Scott). It’s not quite clear if Dr Laurent is Martha’s boyfriend but they’re obviously close.

Then two murders take place. It seems there is a serial killer on the loose. The police find occult symbols and evidence of a Black Mass having taken place. There are signs that a satanic cult might be active. Two of the central characters have a great interest in the occult. There’s a crazy guy hanging around and he seems to be on the scene when a murder takes place. Inspector Duran (Franco Fantasia) certainly thinks he could be dealing with satanic cult murders.

Then the plot twists start to kick in. Regardless of the identity of the murderer or the motive there’s no doubt that Martha has been marked down for murder.

There’s no shortage of sinister suspects. There’s Martha’s occult-obsessed uncle, there’s the slightly creepy housekeeper, there’s the weird satanist guy, there’s the doctor, there’s the black-clad chauffeur.

Like a full-blown giallo this movie has multiple murders but there are no spectacular murder visual set-pieces. Lenzi is more interested in the atmosphere and in building a sense of dread. We feel that Martha is in great danger but we don’t know why and that adds to the dread.

This movie not only lacks gore, it also has no nudity or sex. That probably hurt it at the box office. Lenzi’s three previous movies with Carrol Baker were sexy thrillers and they were huge hits. Knife of Ice enjoyed much more modest commercial success.

Those earlier Lenzi-Baker movies were very stylish films with an atmosphere of glamour and decadence. In this film Lenzi is aiming for a very different feel. He throws in quite a few gothic horror tropes and the overwhelming tone of the movie is gothic. He keeps us in doubt as to whether it might turn out to be gothic horror or merely gothic melodrama but the gothic vibe is strong. There are plenty of moody creepy fog-bound scenes. It’s obvious that Lenzi was determined not to get stuck in a rut. A couple of years later he would turn the giallo genre upside-down and inside-out with his brilliant Spasmo.

Martha is mute. She isn’t deaf. She experienced an appalling shock as a child (seeing her parents killed in a train accident) and she hasn’t been able to speak since. It’s a challenging role for an actress but Carroll Baker does an excellent job.

Alan Scott is very dull as the doctor but the supporting players are very good.

Knife of Ice is low-key but enthralling and I enjoyed it immensely. Highly recommended.

Severin’s Blu-Ray includes something increasingly rare these days - genuinely worthwhile extras. There’s a longish and very informative interview with Lenzi and a very perceptive video essay by Stephen Thrower.

I’ve also reviewed the first three Lenzi-Baker collaborations, Orgasmo (AKA Paranoia, 1969), So Sweet...So Perverse (1969) and A Quiet Place To Kill (1970).

Orgasmo (AKA Paranoia, 1969)

OK, first things first. In 1969 Umberto Lenzi made a movie called Paranoia. The Italian distributors changed the title to Orgasmo, a less appropriate but at the time more commercial title. In 1970 Lenzi made another movie called Paranoia, a movie that is also known as A Quiet Place To Kill. In order to minimise confusion I think it’s advisable to call his 1969 movie Orgasmo and his 1970 movie A Quiet Place To Kill. That way we know which movies we’re talking about. So I will refer to the movie that is the subject of this review as Orgasmo.

There’s another matter that needs to be cleared up. Severin’s Blu-Ray release includes two different cuts of the movie. The first is the Director’s Cut. This is in fact the original cut. This is the movie that Lenzi made. The second cut is the X-Rated U.S. cut. Don’t get excited by this - this version is in fact less raunchy than the Director’s Cut. This is a hacked-up shortened version of the film that eliminates Lenzi’s ending, which has the effect of totally ruining the movie. Don’t waste your time on this version. Watch the Director’s Cut.

Orgasmo is generally considered to be a giallo. In fact there were two distinct phases or waves of the giallo genre. The first wave lasted from around 1967 to 1970 with one or two later outliers. The second wave began with Dario Argento’s The Bird With the Crystal Plumage in 1970. These two phases are so radically different that it’s important to be clear that they are totally separate and distinctive sub-genres, with their own conventions. The second wave giallos are visually flamboyant blood-drenched thrillers usually involving lots of murders and black-gloved serial killers. The first wave are stylish erotic thrillers, with often only one or at the most two murders. The first wave giallos are characterised by an atmosphere of jet-set decadence and glamour.

Both sub-genres have much to recommend them. Most people prefer the post-Argento second wave giallos. Personally I much prefer the first wave giallos which have much more interesting plots and characters and an emphasis on eroticism that is both more subtle and more genuinely perverse than the second wave.

The first wave giallos are often dismissed by fans who are disappointed that they differ so radically from the post-Argento giallo.

Umberto Lenzi made four films starring Carroll Baker and these films are superb examples of the first wave giallo.

Orgasmo begins with a very very rich widow named Kathryn (Carroll Baker). She meets a hunky young American named Peter (Lou Castel). She allows lust to cloud her judgment and begins an affair with him although there are some red flags she should have noticed.

Kathryn is a little unstable and a little too fond of a drink.

Peter’s sister Eva (Colette Descombes) turns up. Kathryn finds it fun hanging with these two exciting sexy youngsters. They are much younger than Kathryn and this seems to be what she finds most seductive about them. She’s in her mid-30s and she’s starting to become aware that her youth has slipped away from her.

She finds it hard to keep up with them but Eva keeps feeding her pills which helps.

Kathryn thinks she understands the situation and she thinks she’s in control of it. She starts to wonder about this when she catches Peter and Eva in bed together. It’s OK, they can explain everything. Kathryn is deeply shocked.

The truth is that Kathryn is more old-fashioned than she thought she was. She enjoys playing at decadence and playing at being a bad girl but for her it’s just a game and she gets frightened when it starts to get real.

And she is now in a situation which makes her very frightened and confused. She drinks more and takes more pills. She starts to lose touch with reality just a little.

It builds to a very twisted conclusion (assuming you’re watching the Director’s Cut). It’s a great gut-punch ending.

This movie was a triumphant comeback for Carroll Baker after a nightmarish period in Hollywood. It’s a difficult demanding complex rôle and she handles it with ease. A great actress at the top of her game.

There’s very little violence but what violence there is is genuinely shocking not because it’s graphic but because it’s emotionally wrenching and it makes us deeply uncomfortable. Lenzi doesn’t need to throw buckets of blood at us in order to get our attention.

There’s some nudity and very little sex but again Lenzi knows how to create an atmosphere of dangerous unhealthy eroticism, and he knows how to do it subtly. And there’s a wonderfully decadent atmosphere.

Lenzi really found himself as a director with this film. Orgasmo is very very stylish.

Whatever you think of its status as a giallo Orgasmo is a superb erotic thriller. Very highly recommended.

Severin’s Blu-Ray release offers a lovely transfer. There are two audio commentaries.

I’ve also reviewed the second of the Lenzi-Baker collaborations, the wonderful So Sweet...So Perverse (1969).

A Quiet Place To Kill (1970)

A Quiet Place To Kill was the third of the four gialli directed by Umberto Lenzi and starring Carroll Baker. It should be noted that the first of these four movies, Orgasmo, was released in the U.S. as Paranoia. Confusingly the third movie was entitled Paranoia in Italy but released internationally as A Quiet Place To Kill. To keep things as clear as possible we will refer to it here as A Quiet Place To Kill (which is in any case a much better title).

This movie is what I call a Phase 1 or early period giallo. You could also refer to this period as the pre-Argento giallo period. Argento’s 1970 The Bird with the Crystal Plumage redefined the giallo. Henceforward Phase 2 or late period gialli would mostly be serial killer movies, they would invariably feature a black-gloved killer and they would be characterised by an over-the-top baroque visual style with lots of blood.

Phase 1 or early period gialli are quite different. There’s not a great deal of blood. They are usually not serial killer movies. They don’t necessarily involve black-gloved killers. They are erotic thrillers and they are just as stylish as the later gialli but in a different, more subtle way. They also usually have an atmosphere of Swinging 60s decadence. I personally enjoy these early gialli a great deal and Umberto Lenzi did them very well indeed.

These early gialli have been overshadowed by the more flamboyant and blood-drenched later gialli but I actually have a slight preference for these earlier movies. Movies like Lucio Fulci’s One on Top of the Other (AKA Perversion Story, 1969), Romolo Guerrieri’s The Sweet Body of Deborah (1968) and Lenzi’s So Sweet, So Perverse (1969).

A Quiet Place To Kill begins with a lady racing car driver having a near-fatal racetrack smash-up. She is Helen and she is payed by Carroll Baker. She will need to take things easy for a while. She is rather surprised to receive an invitation from Maurice (Jean Sorel) to spend some time recuperating at his villa. Maurice is her ex-husband. They did not part on friendly terms.

Helen gets another surprise when she arrives at the villa. Maurice has remarried. His new wife is Constance (Anna Proclemer). Maurice usually goes for younger more glamorous women. On the other hand Constance is rich, and Maurice definitely goes for rich women.

The atmosphere is rather tense. Constance is having dramas with her daughter. She doesn’t seem to have too much confidence in Maurice’s faithfulness. And Maurice’s desire to get Helen into bed is all too obvious. Helen has reasons to hate Maurice but she still feels a powerful sexual attraction for him. Then Constance tells Helen something rather surprising.

Initially it seems like this is going to be a conventional romantic triangle leading to the consequences that one might expect. But then the plot twists start to kick in and things get rather unpredictable.

I’m not going to say any more about the plot for fear of revealing spoilers.

Jean Sorel was definitely the ideal actor for this type of movie. Maurice is charming, amusing, handsome, sexy and (as both Helen and Constance agree) remarkably good in bed. He is also cynical and totally amoral, untrustworthy, irresponsible, decadent and quite possibly dangerous. A sensible woman would have nothing to do with him, but he’s so charming and sexy that women find it difficult to be sensible about him. Jean Sorel nails the character to perfection.

Carroll Baker was close to being the perfect giallo actress - very sexy but very likeable and possibly dangerous. And a very fine and versatile (and somewhat underrated) actress.

And The Sweet Body of Deborah in 1968 had already established that Sorel and Baker had real chemistry.

Umberto Lenzi should be more admired as a director than he is, and he made some great gialli including the wildly offbeat but brilliant Spasmo (1974). His late 60s and early 70s movies in particular are deserving of more attention. His early gialli are stylish without being showy, and he certainly could capture the atmosphere of the decadent jet set.

I don’t recall any blood at all in this movie, which will certainly puzzle giallo fans. There’s some nudity, but not much. There are no actual sex scenes.

If you go into A Quiet Place To Kill expecting a conventional giallo of the type that became ubiquitous in the 70s you may be disappointed. This represents a distinctive sub-genre of the giallo and it may be counter-productive to consider these late 60s movies as gialli at all. This is an erotic thriller and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s an interesting genre and one of which I’m very fond. The focus here is on twisted emotional and erotic relationships and the screenplay and the acting are of sufficiently high calibre to make it an intelligent provocative look at such relationships.

A Quiet Place To Kill is a brilliant little movie and it’s very highly recommended.

The Severin Blu-Ray offers a fully restored transfer which looks luscious.

So Sweet...So Perverse (1969)

So Sweet...So Perverse (Così dolce... così perversa) was the second of the series of gialli made by Umberto Lenzi and starring Carroll Baker. It was released in 1969.

Jean Reynaud (Jean-Louis Trintignant) lives in a swank Paris apartment with his wife Danielle (Erika Blanc). Their marriage could best be described as an armed truce. They don’t sleep together. Jean has affairs. At the moment he’s having an affair with a married woman, Helene Valmont (Helga Liné).

Jean is chronically bored. He is always searching for something, anything, to relieve his boredom.

The apartment on the top floor, just above theirs, has just been rented by an American woman. We will soon find out that this is Nicole Perrier (Carroll Baker). Jean notices her immediately. He always notices beautiful women.

Then he hears sounds from Nicole’s apartment. It sounds like a violent argument between a man and a woman and the woman sounds frightened. Jean races upstairs but Nicole’s apartment is locked and no-one will answer the door.

Then Jean remembers that he has a key to that upstairs apartment. It had been given to him when the apartment was untenanted and he had forgotten to return it. He heads upstairs again and lets himself in. He finds Nicole in an agitated state, but she refuses his offers of help.

Jean doesn’t think too much more about the incident but the following day he spots Nicole in the street. He follows her, to a photographic studio. He hears another violent argument. Nicole bursts out of the door, again very agitated, and asks Jean to take her away from there.

When he finally persuades her to talk she tells him about Klaus and about how much she hates him, but she can’t break away from him. Klaus is cruel and brutal and twisted and sadistic. But Nicole keeps going back to him. He excites her.

This should have been a red flag for Jean, but Jean thinks of himself as a sophisticated man of the world and as a man who can handle any situation. He doesn’t want to admit that he might be getting out of his depth with Nicole.

He will soon discover just how far out of his depth he already is.

He has fallen hard for Nicole. They begin an affair. Danielle is jealous and upset. Jean did not expect that. It is possible that Jean is one of those men who doesn’t understand women anywhere near as well as he thinks he does.

Jean and Danielle set off for a romantic getaway but the bad news is that Klaus has tracked them down.

Then the plot twists start to come thick and fast and they’re delightfully twisted and nasty. You can't take anybody in this movie at face value.

This movie belongs to an incredibly interesting period in the history of the giallo. Mario Bava had made a full-blown giallo in 1964, Blood and Black Lace, but it failed to start a trend. Then, right at the tail end of the 60s, came a number of movies in which you can see the giallo beginning to emerge as a distinct genre but with a slightly different feel to the movies that followed in the wake of Dario Argento’s 1970 Bird with the Crystal Plumage. These late 60s movies were all about sex, decadence, betrayal and murder among the rich and glamorous (what was known at the time as the Jet Set). These movies included Romolo Guerrieri’s The Sweet Body of Deborah (1968) and Lucio Fulci’s One on Top of the Other (1969) as well as the first couple of Umberto Lenzi-Carroll Baker gialli.

So Sweet...So Perverse taps into the same vein of decadence, betrayal and murder.

The screenplay was mostly the work of Ernesto Gastaldi and that’s a major plus. His screenwriting credits include such gems as the excellent gothic horror The Long Hair of Death and important gialli including The Sweet Body of Deborah, The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion, The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, All the Colors of the Dark and Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key as well as the fascinating Secrets of a Call Girl (AKA Anna, The Pleasure, The Torment, 1973).

Carroll Baker is of course fabulous. But Jean-Louis Trintignant and Erika Blanc are just as good and their characters are just as important. Helga Liné is good also and Horst Frank is wonderfully sinister. This really is a great cast.

Severin’s Blu-Ray release looks fabulous and includes a fine audio commentary by Kat Ellinger.

So Sweet...So Perverse is highly recommended.

The Sweet Body of Deborah (1968)

The Sweet Body of Deborah, directed by Romolo Guerrieri, is one of the better known early giallo titles.

Deborah (Carroll Baker) and Marcel (Jean Sorel) are on their honeymoon. They’re very much in love, they’re very hot for each other and everything is perfect. Until they go to a strip club and Marcel runs into an old friend. The old friend accuses Marcel of being a murderer. He believes that Marcel is responsible for the death of Suzanne. Suzanne committed suicide and Marcel didn’t even know she was dead but he does now feel to blame for her death.

It appears that Marcel has a bit of a past. A year ago he owed a lot of money to some people and they were the sorts of people who take extreme measures to collect debts. He got the money to pay them from his rich girlfriend at the time, Suzanne. Then, according to Marcel’s story, he decided he had to change his life so he left Europe and headed for America.

He seems to have become very successful very quickly. Judging from the very expensive sports car he now drives. Assuming that it’s his money that paid for it.

Deborah receives a phone call, telling her that she must die as revenge for Suzanne’s death. When Marcel calls the phone company they tell him something curious, something that makes him look at Deborah with suspicion.

And there are things that cause Deborah to regard Marcel with suspicion. These mutual suspicions simmer away beneath the surface. They’re still in love, but the suspicions won’t go away.

Threats are made against Marcel as well. The police do not believe that there is any substance to any of these threats.

Until one night when they’re in bed Deborah and Marcel hear footsteps in their rented villa.

We, the audience, know no more of Marcel than Deborah knows, and we know no more of Deborah than Marcel knows. We might form vague theories about what is going on but we have no actual evidence at all. They might be lying to each other, but it’s possible that neither is lying. This is a mystery rather than a suspense movie although it has some very suspenseful moments.

One of the things that makes it work is that Deborah and and Marcel are so likeable. They’re a perfect couple. We don’t want to believe anything bad about either of them and we don’t want anything terrible to happen to either of them. And yet we have our doubts about them. Of course it’s possible that one or both is not bad but mad. Their suspicions may be grounded on delusions. But we don’t know.

This is perhaps not a full-blown giallo. There’s no black-gloved killer and there are no spectacular murder set-pieces. It does however have a very giallo feel and style and like the best giallos it’s a psycho-sexual thriller.

There’s a certain amount of nudity and sex. The sex scenes aren’t really gratuitous. They tell us quite a bit about the characters. There’s the scene in which Marcel and Deborah make love but suddenly it’s Suzanne’s face and body that Marcel is seeing.

Jean Sorel is excellent and he has great chemistry with Carroll Baker.

Carroll Baker was perfect for movies of this type. We can believe she’s sweet and innocent but we can also believe that she might have a very dark side. A fine actress in top form.

This was 1968 so Carroll Baker gets to wear some groovy threads. I love her green mini-dress in the discotheque scene (yes of course there’s a discotheque scene).

This movie was a major hit in Italy and really kicked the emerging giallo genre into top gear. Suddenly everybody in Italy wanted to make stylish erotic thrillers and pretty soon film-makers would starting upping the ante in the violence department.

This is a movie that is a bit tricky to get hold of. The only options seem to be an Italian and a German DVD. I have the Italian DVD and it’s excellent and includes the English-language version.

Compared to later giallos The Sweet Body of Deborah relies more on plot than gore (in fact there’s no gore at all). And the plot is pretty nifty with plenty of twists. If you like the giallo style but you’re put off by the excessive violence then this is the movie for you. It’s also essential viewing if you’re interested in the history of the genre. And apart from that it’s just a very good very entertaining movie. Highly recommended.