The 10th Victim (1965)

Elio Petri’s The 10th Victim was released in 1965 but even if you didn’t know that I think you’d have no trouble guessing that it must have been made sometime between around 1965 and 1967. It has that mid-60s euro vibe in spades.

It’s set in the future. Social order is maintained by offering the populace legalised regulated violence in the form of the Big Hunt. If you sign up for this you participate in ten hunts, five as victim and five as hunter. In the unlikely even that you survive all ten you receive fabulous riches and of course fame and adulation.

The idea of social control by means of violence as entertainment has been used many times in science fiction movies, notable examples being Rollerball, The Running Man, Lucio Fulci’s Warriors of the Year 2072 (1984) and to a lesser extent Turkey Shoot (1982). But The 10th Victim marks the real beginning of this sub-genre.

Marcello Poletti (Marcello Mastroianni) and Caroline Meredith (Ursula Andress) are both getting close to successful completing their ten hunts. Now Caroline is to be the huntress and Marcello the victim. The twist is that in the Big Hunt the hunter is given complete information about his victim while the victim has no idea of the identity of the hunter coming after him.

Caroline has been following Marcello about but while it has crossed his mind that she is the assigned huntress he cannot be sure. If he could be certain he could kill her. The victim has every right to kill the hunter. But there’s another twist. If he kills an innocent person by mistake he will face a long prison term. That adds a lot of interest to the plot. Even if the victim, in this case Marcello, is 98% sure of the identity of the huntress he can’t take the risk of killing her. He has to be 100% sure.

Marcello operates a sideline, a kind of religious cult known as the Sunsetters. This was going well until their meetings started being disrupted by violent bands of enraged neorealists.

There’s plenty of flirting going on between Caroline and Marcello. She may just be toying with her prey. She might also feel some sexual attraction towards him. He might be attracted to her. But they’re both experienced participants in the Big Hunt which means they’re experts in deception.

There is of course also the possibility that they’re not sure about their own feelings.

I don’t honestly think this movie has any political axe to grind. It takes swipes at both oppressive governments and corrupt capitalists. This is a dystopian future but it’s not a stereotypical left-wing or right-wing dystopia. In fact it’s a lot more like the actual world we live in in 2024. It certainly takes a few satirical swipes at the worlds of advertising and entertainment.

I shudder to think of the ways in which critics and film scholars of today would try to read the ideological obsessions of the 2020s into this movie. This movie is much more an exercise in style and pop artiness than any sort of political film.

At this period no Italian filmmaker was capable of making a non-stylish movie but this one really has style to burn. And imagination.

What makes this movie so very 1965 is that it’s a heady mix of pop culture and art. What also makes it very 1965 is its willingness to get seriously crazy and surreal. This is not just a futuristic world. It’s a world of wild fantasy, both aesthetically and in plot terms.

It’s also a genre mash-up. This is a science fiction movie and a thriller and an offbeat romantic comedy. While this movie is not based on a comic book this was a period at which a slight comic-book feel was starting to become apparent in both British and European movies.

Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress are sexy and charismatic. Andress gets to wear some very cool glamorous sexy outfits, and she knows how to wear them.

The 10th Victim is a wild crazy ride and it’s very highly recommended.

The Blue Underground Blu-Ray looks terrific.

I've also reviewed the novel, Robert Sheckley's The 10th Victim.

Colt 38 Special Squad (1976)

Colt 38 Special Squad was the last movie directed by Massimo Dallamano before his death in a car accident in 1976. It belongs to the poliziotteschi genre, as does his earlier Super Bitch.

To understand the poliziotteschi genre you have to understand that these were violent times in western Europe with widespread terrorist activity by groups such as the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy as well as organised crime due to the boom in the drug trade. There was an air of paranoia, and a certain sympathy for the idea that the police sometimes needed to be ruthless. There was of course at least some of the same paranoia in the United States in Britain, but the sheer extent of terrorist violence in Italy kicked the paranoia there into overdrive. The emergence of a genre of hard-edged ultra-violent crime films should have come as no great surprise (and crime movies in Britain and the U.S. were become more hard-edged at the same time with movies like Get Carter and Dirty Harry).

The poliziotteschi genre emerged at the end of the 60s, just a couple of years after the rise of the giallo. By this time the spaghetti western genre had fizzled out and gothic horror was in decline.

Colt 38 Special Squad gets off to a flying start. A police raid led by Inspector Vanni (Marcel Bozzuffi) turns into a full-scale gun battle. The brother of the gang leader is shot to death by Inspector Vanni. The gang leaders is known as the Black Angel, and he takes a terrible revenge.

Inspector Vanni now has a personal score to settle.

He’s been angling for the formation of an elite four-man squad of motorcycle-riding cops with special firearms training. Now he’s been given the go-ahead. The Special Squad are not exactly given carte blanche but they’re given to understand that they’ll be given some leeway in their methods. A certain degree of ruthlessness is expected of them.

They prove to be not just ruthless but undisciplined hot-heads who will be more trouble than they’re worth unless Vanni can lick them into shape. But they’re brave and they’re keen.

A stroke of luck may point Inspector Vanni in the direction of the Black Angel. A large shipment of dynamite has been stolen. One of the thieves is caught quite by accident, and he is linked to the Black Angel.

It doesn’t help much, but at least the police know that the Black Angel is planning something that requires a lot of dynamite.

The Black Angel holds a few aces that the police don’t know about and he is always a step ahead of them. He plans to hold the city to ransom.

This is a very violent movie with a very dark tone. Innocent people get killed. The body count is very high. The police cannot protect people. Inspector Vanni is a smart tough cop but he’s up against a criminal who is also very smart and has the advantage of not having to care about his methods. He’d cheerfully kill hundreds of people if it would further his plan. Vanni finds some leads but they don’t lead to quick results, time is against him and the most promising leads go nowhere.

Ivan Rassimov (who also starred in Dallamano’s Super Bitch) makes an effectively ice-cold villain. Marcel Bozzuffi gives some real substance to Inspector Vanni, a man driven to the brink of despair by his inability to catch the Black Angel.

Carole André is very good as Sandra, a pretty young nightclub owner who is mixed up in the Black Angel’s plans. She’s a nice girl but she’s naïve and she has a bad boy boyfriend and she gets much more involved than she wants to be.

There’s as much action as you could want. There are explosions, gun battles and car and motorcycle chases. Some of the violence is pretty gruesome, after dynamite has done its work.

Dallamano handles the action scenes with confidence. Dallamano really was one of the great Italian directors of his era and has never received quite as much recognition as he deserved.

Colt 38 Special Squad deals with terrorism but it doesn’t deal with specifically political crimes. Perhaps there was a feeling that it would be unwise to give the film anything that could be interpreted as a political slant.

This is a fine if rather grim action thriller. Highly recommended.

Arrow have released this movie in their Years of Lead poliziotteschi boxed set. The transfer is excellent. Those who care about extras may be disappointed that there are virtually none for this movie.

I’ve reviewed a couple of other movies in this genre - Revolver (1973) which is extremely good, the incredibly nihilistic Milano Calibro 9 (1972) and the superb Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (1976).

The Cats (1968)

Duccio Tessari’s I bastardi (1968) is one of those European movies that gets a bit confusing when it comes to titles. It was released in English-speaking markets variously as The Cats, The Bastard, Mod-Cats and Sons of Satan. For convenience I’ll refer to it as The Cats.

This was an Italian-French-German co-production but was shot at least partly in the United States. Certainly all the location shooting (and there’s plenty of it) was obviously done in America.

Rita Hayworth is Martha and she has two sons, Adam (Kinski) and Jason (Giuliano Gemma). She loves them both but especially Jason. One can’t help feeling she may be a bit blinded by maternal love since we see Jason murder half a dozen people in the first few minutes of the movie. Martha calls her sons her kittens (hence the English title).

Adam and Jason are both criminals. Martha doesn’t mind as long as they pay her her allowance and keep her in whisky.

Jason’s killings were intended to wipe out Adam’s criminal rivals. Jason would be paid by receiving the proceeds of a jewel heist.

Everything is going great for Jason. He has lots of money. And he has a cute sexy girlfriend, Karen (Margaret Lee).

Unfortunately things are about to fall apart for him. He ends up grievously injured and is rescued by a pretty lady rancher, Barbara (played for former Bond girl Claudine Auger).

Fate has played a perverse trick on Jason. Barbara is his one chance of happiness. Any sane man would be delighted to win Barbara’s love but Jason doesn’t want her. He obviously prefers bad girls. And he has scores to settle. Revenge is all he can think about. He doesn’t care how much it might cost him.

So this is an obsession movie. It’s also a very dark very violent very cynical movie. Of all the characters in this movie Barbara is the only decent human being. Martha is a crazy drunk. Adam and Jason are psychos. Anyone who trusts Karen deserves what he gets.

We know this is all leading up to a violent finale and then the movie adds a twist that I can absolutely guarantee you won’t see coming. It really is the kind of thing you’re only going to see in an insane late 60s movie. There is a reason for it and when you find out the reason it’s kind of crazy.

Like most European movies that were filmed in the U.S. this movie still feels totally European. It’s a deranged eurocrime movie that just happens to take place in Arizona.

Rita Hayworth does the crazy drunk thing extremely well.

It’s hard to judge Kinski’s performances because of the English dubbing but he manages to get across plenty of Kinski derangement. Giuliano Gemma is effective enough as the obsessed Jason. Margaret Lee oozes sex and treachery.

You won’t get too many chances to see Rita Hayworth and Klaus Kinski starring in a movie together.

Kinski’s groovy sunglasses are a highlight. There’s plenty of that 60s aesthetic if you like that sort of thing (and I like it a great deal).

This movie is on DVD in the Warner Archive series. It’s barebones but it’s a pretty good transfer. The English dub is the only soundtrack option.

The Cats is a pretty decent movie if you enjoy movies about hyper-violent criminals. I liked it. Recommended.

Kommissar X – Three Golden Serpents (1969)

The seven West German Kommissar X eurospy movies made between 1965 and 1971 were based on the incredibly popular Kommissar X book series. Paul Alfred Mueller (1901-1970) wrote 620 Kommissar X books under the name Bert F. Island. Yes, you read that right. 620 books.

Drei goldene Schlangen (AKA Three Golden Serpents AKA Island of Lost Girls AKA Beautiful Lost Girls in Hell's Island) was the sixth of the Kommissar X movies and was released in 1969.

The Kommissar X films started out as standard erospy movies (albeit very good eurospy movies) but the later entries in the cycle have more to do with crime-fighting than espionage. At least in this one it’s an international crime syndicate so the feel is not too different from a eurospy film, it just lacks the gadgets and the slightly science fictional touches one associates with eurospy flicks. It seems quite likely that the switch to crime-fighting was the result of increasingly tight budgets.

The two lead actors are once again Tony Kendall (as Joe Walker) and Brad Harris (as Captain Tom Rowland). Rowland is on holiday in Bangkok when an American woman, a Mrs Leighton, asks him for help. She believes that her daughter Phyllis has been kidnapped. The mother doesn’t want the police involved. Rowland reluctantly agrees that maybe Joe Walker is the man who can help.

In these later movies Joe Walker is a private eye rather than a secret agent but he’s as cocky and cheerful and irresponsible as ever. Tom Rowland is still pretending to be horrified by the thought of having to work with Joe yet again. He disapproves of Joe’s irresponsibility but of course if you’ve watched the earlier movies you know that these two really are buddies. Tom just likes to complain. It makes him feel better.

Almost immediately there is an attempt on Joe’s life. Followed by numerous additional attempts. It’s obvious that he’s stumbled into something big and he’s up against people who are both murderous and persistent. Fortunately they’re not very competent.

Joe and Tom do have one important clue. Two of the would-be assassins have a tattoo showing three entwined snakes. It sounds like a religious cult or a crime gang.

Phyllis has indeed been kidnapped and her captors intend to sell her into prostitution. First they will break her spirit wth drugs and psychological torture. While being held captive she meets Petra. Petra appears to be working for the crime gang, but she promises to help Phyllis. We don’t know what to make of Petra. Is she planning to double-cross the crime gang or is she intending to betray Phyllis? Either way Petra is definitely one feisty gal. After escaping she steals a boat, and killing the three crew members is like child’s play for her.

Joe and Tom have heard rumours of an island which men can visit, but they have to agree to be drugged for the trip there so that they have no way of knowing where the island is. When they get there they will find an assortment of very pretty girls to entertain them.

The island may be owned by Madame Kim Soo, a very rich very respectable lady active in charity work. The police are sure she would never be involved in anything shady, and would certainly not be running an island brothel.

Joe decides he’d like to visit this island. He’ll pretend to be a Texan millionaire. He’s sure no-one will recognise him.

Nothing can go wrong because he has a radio transmitter in his sunglasses. Tom Rowland will be able to keep in touch with him and the police should be able to use the signal to locate the island (which they do using a groovy machine with a spinning globe on top of it). It’s a good plan. As long as nothing happens to those sunglasses.

Joe’s mission is not just to close down Madame Kim Soo’s sex island. His main task is to rescue Phyllis, presumably held prisoner on that island.

The action is pretty much non-stop and it’s done quite well. The violence isn’t graphic at all but the body count is high.

The Thai locations are used well. By this time the Kommissar X movies were being shot in colour and Three Golden Serpents looks impressive.

There are lots of beautiful women and lots of topless scenes.

The battle on the mud flats is a crazy but effectively weird touch.

Tony Kendall and Brad Harris were working together as a well-oiled machine by this stage. The supporting players are all perfectly competent.

Director Roberto Mauri worked in the usual array of genes and was also responsible for the delightfully goofy King of Kong Island (1968). His work on Three Golden Serpents might not be inspired but he keeps things moving.

Three Golden Serpents isn’t trying to be anything more than pure entertainment and as long as you accept this and don’t try to analyse the movie it works on that level. Perhaps not quite as good as the previous movie in the series, Three Blue Panthers, but still recommended.

The German DVD boxed set offers this movie in both German and English language versions. It gets a pleasing anamorphic transfer.

The Red Circle (Der rote Kreis, 1960)

The Red Circle (Der rote Kreis) was the second of the West German Edgar Wallace krimis (which is the term used in Germany for crime thrillers) made by Rialto. Technically this one was a West German-Danish co-production. It was based on Edgar Wallace’s 1922 novel The Crimson Circle.

The movie starts with an execution in France. Or at least an attempted execution. We then jump forward several years, to London. Scotland Yard is perplexed by a major blackmailing racket, with the blackmail leading to murder in a disturbing number of cases. Blackmail victims who don’t pay up end up dead. The Red Circle is responsible for these crimes, but nobody knows if this is a single individual or a gang.

Of course in an Edgar Wallace story you’re likely to have a rich elderly man (in this case he’s a man named Beardmore), and some question about the inheritance he will leave when his time comes. His only obvious heir is his nephew Jack (Thomas Alder), whom he despises.

Jack has been spending a lot of time with a Miss Drummond (Renate Ewert), secretary to a neighbour named Froyant. This interests Chief Inspector Parr (Karl-Georg Saebisch) a good deal. Miss Drummond is well known to the Yard as a successful and daring thief. Jack has been instructing her in archery, which will later have some significance.

Beardmore is one of the Red Circle’s intended victims and he’s a cantankerous old man who has no intention whatsoever of paying up.

Another intended victim is Lady Doringham, the rich and not entirely faithful wife of a much older very rich man. She appeals to Scotland Yard for help.

Chief Inspector Parr finds himself having to work with a private detective, Derrick Yale (Klausjürgen Wussow). His superiors at the Yard believe he’ll need help on this case. Parr isn’t thrilled, although he admits that Derrick is a fine detective.

The body count rises steadily. The Red Circle is always one jump ahead of the police. Embarrassingly, some of the victims are killed right under the noses of the police.

There are at least four possible suspects, all equally plausible.

Compared to the first Rialto krimi Der Frosch mit der Maske (Face of the Frog) this one had a different distributor, a different director (Jürgen Roland replacing Harald Reinl) and a totally different cast. In spite of this you can see the krimi starting to emerge as a distinctive genre. Outrageous plotting, lots of style and some nice visual set-pieces. And with just enough of a tongue-in-cheek quality without going overboard.

Jürgen Roland is certainly more than competent as director and went on to make a couple more movies in the series.

Eddi Arent is the only familiar face from the first time. If you’ve only seen the English-dubbed versions of these movies you probably hate Eddi Arent and think he’s the most irritating comic relief actor in movie history. I hated him too, but it turns out that the problem was that he was so horribly dubbed in English. Much to my surprise, when I started watching these movies in the German-language versions with English subtitles I started to really like Eddi Arent.

The other cast members are very good, with Renate Ewert being particularly good as the sexy bad girl.

The plot is complicated, with plenty of red herrings. It’s best not to worry too much about the coherence of the plot. What matters is that it’s fun. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.

The German Tobis Blu-Ray (in one of their three-disc Edgar Wallace sets) offers the movie in both the English-dubbed version and in German with English subtitles. I very strongly urge you to watch the subtitled version. The transfer is anamorphic and looks lovely. It’s such a pleasure to see these movies looking so fantastic. They’re movies that rely so much on stylish visuals that you really can’t appreciate them in some of the horrible pan-and-scanned DVDs that have been floating around for years. And the Tobis Blu-Rays are very easily obtainable.

The Red Circle is an excellent early krimi. Well-crafted and well-paced and wildly and deliriously entertaining. Highly recommended.

Jeunes filles impudiques (AKA Schoolgirl Hitchhikers, 1973)

Jeunes filles impudiques is one of the softcore movies Jean Rollin made in the early 70s, because even film-makers have to eat. In English-speaking markets it was given the title Schoolgirl Hitchhikers although there are no schoolgirls in it and properly speaking no hitchhikers either. But it is the kind of title that distributors of exploitation movies tend to like.

These movies are often contemptuously dismissed even by keen Rollin fans. In the case of Bacchanales Sexuelles, made a year later, that’s rather unfair. Bacchanales Sexuelles is quite an interesting movie and it has plenty of Rollinesque touches and the sort of surrealist vibe that Rollin fans love so much. Jeunes filles impudiques is perhaps not quite so ambitious.

Monique (Joëlle Coeur) and Jackie (Gilda Arancio) are on a hiking trip in the woods. They come across an abandoned villa which seems like the ideal place to spend the night. Much more comfortable than sleeping in a tent. It might have been wise to check first, to make sure the villa really was abandoned, but the girls were too anxious to engage in some hot bedroom action with each other to waste time on such precautions.

In fact the villa is occupied, by gangster Fred (Willy Braque).

The girls are not too worried when they discover they’re not alone in the house. They introduce themselves to Fred, by immediately having sex with him. That’s always a good way to break the ice in awkward social situations.

The three of them have a lot of fun and the following morning the girls leave, to resume their camping trip.

There is however a complication. Fred’s boss Béatrice (Marie Hélène Règne) shows up. She’s come to collect the stolen jewels stashed in the safe. But when the safe is opened the jewels are gone. The gangsters jump to the obvious conclusion that the two girls stole the jewels. Fred sets off in pursuit.

Catching the girls is easy. Béatrice tortures Jackie but can’t get any information out of her. Jackie denies any knowledge of the whereabouts of the jewels.

Béatrice is the sort of woman who likes torturing girls. She never goes anywhere without her trusty cane. Meanwhile Monique makes her escape and sets off to fetch help. For some inexplicable reason she doesn’t go to the police, she goes to a private detective named Harry (Pierre Julien).

Harry regards her story with scepticism but he can’t afford to refuse a client, and Monique seems like a nice girl. He’d like to help her. He thinks the gangsters (assuming they exist) have probably left but they might come back. So he’ll stake out the villa. In fact three of them - Monique, Harry and Harry’s pretty young female secretary (played by Reine Thirion) - will be in on the stake-out. Harry has a gun, as does his secretary (she acts more as his partner than his secretary and she knows how to handle a gun).

The gangsters do return and things get complicated. Just about everybody (good guys and bad guys alike) ends up being taken hostage at some point.

It’s played strictly for fun. It’s more like a classical farce than a hardboiled crime thriller. And it is fun.

Marie Hélène Règne’s performance as Béatrice is spot on - she plays her as a sinister sexy kinky melodrama villainess which is exactly the way she needed to be played.

Joëlle Coeur made several movies for Rollin and she’s very good. The acting overall is effective, once you understand that the whole thing is not meant to be taken seriously.

Rollin himself plays a minor rôle.

There’s a lot of gunplay including a full-scale shootout that wouldn’t be out of place in a western. But nobody gets hurt. This is a good-natured movie.

Jeunes filles impudiques achieved its objective. It made a lot of money and got Rollin back on his feet financially.

It’s a movie that offers some action, a lot of light comedy, lots of nudity and lots of simulated sex. The fact that the three actresses who disrobe - Joëlle Coeur, Gilda Arancio and Reine Thirion - are very hot doesn’t hurt. And Rollin makes the sex scenes genuinely erotic - these people really do convince us that their characters are having a good time.

The Maison Rouge Blu-Ray offers an acceptable transfer although there is some very slight print damage.

If you want to check out Rollin’s softcore films then Bacchanales Sexuelles is a better place to start since it feels more like a real Rollin movie (and it really is worth seeing). But Jeunes filles impudiques is enjoyable as silly sexy fun. Recommended.

Killing Car (1993)

Killing Car (La femme dangereuse) is a late Jean Rollin film and it’s quite different in many respects from his earlier vampire and zombie movies.

In 1993 Jean Rollin had some money in his pocket. He had about enough to buy himself a cup of coffee and a couple of croissants but he decided to do without the coffee and croissants and use the money to make a movie instead. This is what being a film-maker is all about. If you have no money but you have talent and determination you just go ahead and make the movie. Jean-Luc Godard once said that to make a movie all you need is a girl and a gun. In this case Rollin had a girl, a gun and a car.

The girl is known only as the Car Woman. She’s played by Australian-born Tiki Tsang. Sadly it’s her only film credit.

The movie opens in a junk yard where a sleazy scrap dealer is trying to sell an American car. He thinks that an Asian woman (Tiki Tsang) might be interested in the car but she has other ideas. She strips off her top, he embraces her, she shoots him.

The scrap dealer’s girlfriend isn’t happy about this and she has a gun as well. A gun battle ensues. The girlfriend enlists the help of a group of whores. Thus being a Jean Rollin film the junk yard just happens to be next door to a fun fair so there’s a running gun battle in the fun fair. I love this movie already.

The crazy beginning is vaguely reminiscent of the surreal opening sequence of Rollin’s Requiem for a Vampire (and I’m pretty certain that it was intended to remind us of his earlier movie). Logically it doesn’t make sense but we’re dealing with the logic of surrealism. And all of Rollin’s movies, even in the case of Killing Car where there’s a superficial feel of grittiness, are exercises in cinematic surrealism. In Killing Car the surrealism is subtle but it’s there.

The Car Woman kills some more people. At each murder scene she leaves behind a toy car. That’s the only clue the cops have. It’s a vital clue, it’s the key to the whole mystery, but the police are baffled as to what it means. Eventually its significance will be revealed but the Car Woman’s motivations remain slightly mysterious.

She kills remorselessly. She’s like a machine.

What’s even more baffling is that there is no obvious connection between any of the victims. Perhaps she’s a serial killer, driven by some weird kink. But she isn’t. There’s a reason for her killing. It’s obviously revenge, but this is not a straightforward revenge killing movie.

Tiki Tsang’s performance works for me. She doesn’t do a great deal and she has very little dialogue but she has screen presence and she has the look - the look of a crazy chick who kills without mercy or emotion. The fact that she displays no emotion makes her effectively chilling. Rollin knew what he was doing when he cast her.

Rollin pulls off some very fine murder set-pieces in this movie.

This is Rollin moving slightly outside of his comfort zone. There are no mysterious ruined castles. It’s all stark urban landscapes. This is something Rollin did occasionally, The Night of the Hunted being an example. But in The Night of the Hunted he made the industrial landscape seem otherworldly. Here he makes it seem gritty and realistic. The movie is a real rarity in Rollin’s filmography in that it appears to take place in everyday reality. It’s the events that occur, and the performance of Tiki Tsang, that give us the uneasy feeling that maybe these characters are not quite inhabiting our world. Or at least not psychologically inhabiting our world.

Killing Car also has, in a subtle way, the feel of a classic revenge western. Tiki Tsang could be the mysterious stranger who rides into town, except that she arrives in a 1950s American car rather than on horseback. If Clint Eastwood played the Man With No Name then Tiki Tsang plays the Woman With No Name, and her performance is a bit Clint Eastwood-like.

If you’ve ever wondered what happened to the scythe used to such good effect by Brigitte Lahaie in Fascination then Killing Car will answer your question in a scene clearly intended to evoke his 1979 masterpiece.

The old Redemption DVD offers an OK transfer. It’s full-frame which is probably correct - the original negatives are lost but the framing in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio looks right. There are no extras to speak of. The movie was shot in 16mm (actually on Super 16 film) and it looks grimy and grainy and scuzzy but again this feels right and was probably how Rollin wanted the move to look.

Killing Car is an oddity but it’s a surprisingly effective change of pace for the director. It still has the characteristic Rollin moodiness. Killing Car is highly recommended.

Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971)

Aldo Lado’s Short Night of Glass Dolls seems to be widely regarded as a giallo. It has stylistic affinities with the giallo genre but it doesn’t quite fit, but it’s certainly rather giallo-esque.

The story takes place in Czechoslovakia (there was such a place in 1971). Gregory Moore (Jean Sorel) is an English journalist working there for a while, in a city (probably Prague). When the movie opens Gregory Moore is dead. But he doesn’t think he’s dead. He can still remember things. He remembers the whole strange story.

He had a very cute Czech girlfriend named Mira (Barbara Bach). She was hoping to go with him when he returns to London and Gregory thinks there’s a good chance he can pull some strings to allow her to do so.

Then Mira disappears. The police tell him to keep out of the case but of course he ignores them. With some help from his journalist friends Jacques (Mario Adorf) and Jessica (Ingrid Thulin) he starts looking for Mira.

This will cause some awkwardness, given that Jessica is Gregory’s former girlfriend and she’s still carrying a torch for him, in a big way.

Mira hasn’t been seen by any of her friends, she hasn’t been arrested, she hasn’t been taken to hospital, she hasn’t turned up at the morgue. Gregory clings to the hope that she’s still alive. The odd things is that if she left she must have been naked - all her clothing including her underwear has been left behind.

He figures that a good place to start his investigation would be by looking into the disappearance of other girls. There have been quite a few in the past few years. All seem to have left their clothing behind.

He gets an obscure clue from a crazy blind man but Gregory fails to spot its significance. He doesn’t recognise it as anything other than the rantings of a crazy man.

Gregory has a very vague suspicion that Mira’s disappearance may be connected to a very boring party they attended. The guests were all very important old people.

Butterflies and a tomato that feels pain (yes really) are also involved.

This is a mystery thriller but with added offbeat elements. We know early on that something very strange is going on, but we don’t quite know what it is. It takes Gregory a bit longer to realise that there’s something bizarre behind this mystery.

We can see why Gregory has so much trouble unravelling this puzzle. He knows he has some clues but they make zero sense and can’t possibly be related.

We expect that the final revelation will be fairly weird. And does it pay off satisfactorily? I think it does.

What’s nice is that even when we start to suspect that we understand very roughly the kind of territory we’re heading into there are still multiple ways that the ending could play out. The suspense is kept up right to the very last shot of the movie.

Jean Sorel is a French actor who made several giallos including the excellent The Sweet Body of Deborah (1968).

Barbara Bach of course went on to be a Bond Girl.

Writer-director Aldo Lado also made Night Train Murders (a movie I don’t care for) in 1975 but in 1972 he made the out-and-out giallo Who Saw Her Die? (a movie I like very much indeed). Short Night of Glass Dolls was his first time in the director’s chair and it’s a very assured and rather ambitious debut.

The 88 Films DVD (there’s a Blu-Ray edition as well) provides a very fine transfer. Both English and Italian language (with subtitles) options are included but the only extra is a trailer.

While I still don’t think this is a true giallo I think giallo fans will find a great deal here to enjoy. This is a leisurely-paced movie that relies on mystery and suspense rather than blood and gore but it does have some very macabre moments and the ending packs a punch.

If you enjoy the slightly more unconventional types of eurocult movies Short Night of Glass Dolls delivers the goods. Very highly recommended.

Fantomas Unleashed (1965)

Fantomas Unleashed, released in 1965, was the second of André Hunebelle’s three Fantomas movies.

The great diabolical criminal mastermind Fantomas, created by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, made his first appearance in print in 1911 and would eventually feature in 43 novels, as well as comics and movies. The Fantomas books are outrageous pulpy fun with unbelievably convoluted plots and an air of breathless excitement and mystery as Fantomas seemingly has the ability to strike when and where he chooses.

The first of Hunebelle’s movie adaptations, Fantomas, came out in 1964. It was a huge success and very influential. The various pop art and comic-inspired fantasy adventure movies of the 60s, movies like Danger: Diabolik and Barbarella, were inspired to some extent by Fantomas. Fantomas also had a huge influence on the spy and action-adventure genres in the late 60s.

What’s interesting about Fantomas Unleashed is that it makes use of many of the plot devices that Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre loved so much. Both the good guys and the bad guys in the novels are continually adopt ingenious disguises and it’s obvious right away that this 1965 movie is going to make plentiful use of this device. I think this is very cool since it’s totally in tune with the spirit of the source material.

In the novels Fantomas’s arch-enemies, Inspector Juve and journalist Jérôme Fandor, often have to battle official scepticism. In this movie Commissioner Juve (Louis de Funès) has just been presented with an official decoration for his achievement in ridding France of the menace of Fantomas.

In fact Fantomas is still very much alive and he’s hatching his most ambitious and most evil plot to date. He has kidnapped a scientist, Professor Marchand, and he intends to force the unfortunate scientist to develop a super mind control weapon for him. But one scientist is not enough. Fantomas will also need to kidnap Professeur Lefèvre.

This is where the disguise idea really takes off in outrageous directions. Fantomas is impersonating Professeur Lefèvre, but Fandor is impersonating him as well in an attempt to trap Fantomas. There are three Professeur Lefèvres running about, creating ever-increasing chaos.

Fantomas also tries to manipulate Fandor’s girlfriend Hélène. He hopes to use her to put pressure on Fandor but mostly we get the impression he just wants to make her his mistress.

Juve disguises himself as well, as the chaos level just keeps increasing.

Juve also puts a great deal of faith in gadgets (this was 1965, a time when the Bond movies were just beginning to embrace the idea of gadgets). Juve’s gadgets are remarkably silly although it has to be admitted that his trick raincoat really is quite funny.

Naturally Fantomas has some gadgets of his own up his sleeve, one of which provides a rather Bond movie ending.

The movies have a sillier more lighthearted tone than the novels but in the mid-60s that was probably a sensible commercial decision. Personally I think Louis de Funès overdoes the comic stuff a little as Juve. Juve becomes a bit of a Clouseau-like bumbling ass. It does have to be said however that Louis de Funès did know how to do comedy.

Jean Marais plays both Fantomas and Fandor, as he does in all three Fantomas movies. In a movie in which so much of the plot hinges on disguises that was quite a clever move. And in this movie Marais plays Professeur Lefèvre as well. Marais’ performance is one of the movie’s greatest strengths.

Mylène Demongeot is funny and charming and sexy as Fandor’s fiancée Hélène. She played Hélène in all three Fantomas movies.

Fantomas is like Dr Fu Manchu. You know that his plans will almost certainly be foiled but you also feel pretty sure that he’ll escape. He has to escape, in order to appear in the next instalment.

The sets are wonderful, very pop art and very eye-catching. And of course the Fantomas blue makeup became iconic. The pacing just doesn’t let up. There’s no danger of boredom. There are fine stunts and the special effects were pretty cool in 1965.

This movie is included in Kino Lorber’s three-movie Fantomas boxed set (on DVD or Blu-Ray) which really is an absolute must-buy if you’re a eurospy fan or a fan of comic book-inspired eurocrime movies. The transfers are excellent.

Fantomas Unleashed is a worthy follow-up to the first Fantomas movie. Highly recommended.

I've reviewed several of the books at Vintage Pop Fictions, including the book that started it all in 1911, Fantômas.

Milano Calibro 9 (1972)

Fernando De Leo’s much admired Milano Calibro 9 is a 1972 Italian crime film that belongs to the poliziotteschi genre rather than the giallo genre. It was based on a noir pulp crime story by Giorgio Scerbanenco.

It begins with a series of exchanges of parcels. Clearly the parcels contain something illegal since those involved look very obviously like hoodlums. In fact the parcels contain money. This is a currency export racket. When all the exchanges are complete and the final parcel is opened it contains, much to the horror of the bad guys, stacks of blank paper. These criminals have been swindled. And they’re not happy. If you can’t trust criminals then whom can you trust? They take a terrible and blood-drenched revenge on everyone who might conceivably have stolen their money.

Three years later Ugo Piazza (Gastone Moschin) is released from prison. The rumour in the underworld is that he was the one who stole the money, a rumour he vehemently denies. His problem is that the boss of the crime syndicate he was working for, a man known as the Americano, is convinced that Ugo took his money. And it’s not healthy for a man to have the Americano suspecting him of disloyalty.

Ugo gets beaten up. Not because he’s likely to admit his guilt, but because in this situation that’s what happens. You get beaten up. The Milan underworld is a very violent world. If this movie is to be believed Milan in the early 70s was like Chicago in the 20s only more so.

The Americano, having had Ugo beaten up again, gives him his old job back. Ugo has his own reasons for accepting - it will give him the opportunity to clear his name.

Ugo meets up with his old girlfriend, dancer Nelly Borden (Barbara Buchet) and they rekindle their affair.

Chino (Philippe Leroy) gets mixed up in Ugo’s troubles. Chino and Ugo are old buddies. Chino is a hitman but he’s an honest hitman! Chino looks after Don Vincenzo, who used to be the local godfather. Don Vincenzo is now old and blind and spends his time lamenting the fact that the Mafia just isn’t what it used to be.

What follows is a succession of incredibly violent episodes. Lots of beatings, lots of shootings. Then we get a series of twists at the end.

It sounds promising that there are problems. For starters the characters are loathsome. I just wanted them all to die. Lots of them do die but unfortunately it takes 100 minutes to accomplish this. There’s not a single character we can possibly care about. The police are equally repellant. The Commissario (Frank Wolff) is a tedious blistering buffoon. His second-in-command, Mercuri (Luigi Pistilli), treats us to a serious of excruciatingly heavy-handed political diatribes on the evils of capitalism. Then he gets transferred but he comes back to deliver yet another series of political lectures. The police shouldn’t be chasing criminals - they should be out on the streets protesting with the students and workers.

Then we get lots more violence, culminating in the most ludicrous shootout in cinema history.

I like Barbara Bouchet but she might as well have not bothered making this film. OK, she looks great dancing in that very revealing beaded bikini but apart from that she contributes nothing. Her part is appallingly underwritten.

Gastone Moschin is good at looking stolid. That’s all he does throughout the film. He does not change his facial expression once. OK, that type of minimalist acting can work in a crime thriller if you’re Alain Delon or Steve McQueen. You can come across as ultra-cool and icily obsessive. Unfortunately in this film Gastone Moschin just looks stolid. In fact he looks like he might well have been unconscious for most of the filming.

Mario Adorf as the Americano’s chief henchman Rocco makes up for this, giving a performance that ranges from mild hysteria to off-the-scale hysteria. Lionel Stander as the Americano is too hammy to be genuinely menacing.

Oddly enough for a movie with so much action and so much violence the results are a bit on the boring side. Some of the better giallo directors could get away with lots of hyper-violence by at least filming it in interesting ways but De Leo proves himself to be rather uninspired as a director. The violence just becomes wearying.

I’ll admit that the ending does provide a satisfying series of twists. And of course it provides more extreme violence. And I’ll admit that the opening parcel-exchange sequences are very well done.

Arrow’s Blu-Ray/DVD combo release is what we’ve come to expect from this company - a very good transfer with lots of extras. We get no less than three documentaries, one on the film itself, one on Giorgio Scerbanenco who wrote the story on which it’s based and one on De Leo’s career. De Leo is featured in the documentaries and he’s a guy who certainly has an optimistic view of his own talents.

If you like your crime thrillers to be extremely violent and extremely brutal Milano Calibro 9 delivers the goods on that count. If you like your crime thrillers to be stylish you may be disappointed. It’s a competently made film but it doesn’t quite have the visual inspiration you expect from Italian movies of this era. If you like tight plotting it has its moments but it’s not going to dazzle you. If you want characters you can care about, forget it. I’d suggest renting rather than buying this one. I can’t honestly say I enjoyed it, but that may just be a matter of personal taste.