The Case of the Bloody Iris - the most giallish giallo

If I would have to show gialli to a person that knows nothing about them, this one would be definitely one of the first to recommend. It's far from great, it's sometimes really stupid, and definitely it's not original at all, it's really eclectic actually. But that means that this movie has almost every ingredience linked with giallo and its style. There's almost nothing missing in this one.

Overlong weird title? Perché quelle strane gocce di sangue sul corpo di Jennifer? In Italian, check. Well, it doesn't contain any number, any color nor any number, but I guess with "Bloody Iris" and "Drops of Blood / Gocce di sangue" it leaves a lot for your imagination of red blood on white skin / flower.

Numerous murders, mostly girls? Check.

City location? Check.

A black-clad killer using mostly a blade? Check.

Female nudity? Check.

Incompetent police? Check.

Who is the more representative pair of giallo leads than Edwige Fenech and George Hilton? Double check.

Non-police investigator? Edwige must do that herself, she's a shy detective but she investigates a bit. Check.

Bottles of J&B? I believe there were some. Yes, at least this one above the bartender - check.

Bad memories? Check.

Twisted sexuality (in terms of a 1972 watcher)? Check.

Modeling agency? Check.

Gay photographer? Check.

The violence could seem graphic to some and pretty mild to someone else, but yes, there's some blood, so check.

Luciano Pigozzi and George Rigaud in small parts? Check.

Weird (un)funny scenes? Check.

Stylish shots with lots of zooming? Check.

I could go on and on. Actually I believe I named it all. After the second rewatch, I didn't have such a good time, maybe it all seemed to me fresh the first time, with this being my third giallo, three years after the first two. Now after watching many more, I see its flaws clearly. But it's an entertaining movie and yes, I still would recommend it to a newby. Along with The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh and Blood and Black Lace, so he would see some quality stuff too.

Samurai Cop

 There are zillions of bad movies in this world. Boring stuff. Embarassing stuff. Films full of nonsenses, bad acting, lousy attempts of action and SFX. Disturbing movies.
And then there's Samurai Cop.
When Edward D. Wood, jr. was called the worst director of all time, it was for one reason.
The critics didn't know Amir Shervan yet.

His Samurai Cop is a movie made so badly it's amazing.
Everything is just fucked up - acting, screenplay, dialogues, camerawork, lighting, editing, continuity, fight sequences, masks, decorations, sound with lots of dubbing even by the lead actors. The hero can't speak and wears a wig that falls from his head during fights. His buddy makes hilarious faces for the most of his footage, because they didn't have enough material for a full length feature. The dialogue doesn't make sense even gramatically. The music sounds like from an Atari computer game.
And I didn't mention really bad looking gore scenes and overlong clumsy sex scenes.

Even though - or maybe just for that all - I love this movie. I have a passion for so badly made movies, when they are not too boring. I enjoyed Deadly Prey, Howling II or even Turkish Star Wars. Samurai Cop might be one of the best in this category. A movie that is so awful, that it's great.

Laura Gemser, the Black Emanuelle

The Italian genre cinema divides in several categories. The great ones (like movies by Leone, Bava, Argento and others), the interesting ones (the good spaghetti westerns, gialli, poliziotteschi and other genre movies), the boring ones (the bad SWs and other genres) and the very dirty ones. The Gemser movies are a part of the last category. Her movies are very sleazy and not only that you feel the movies are dirty, I myself feel dirty when I watch some of it. It's also a case of a few gialli (like Slaughter Hotel, French Sex Murders or Giallo a Venezia), I believe also the bad poliziotteschi and I feel some of the cheap spaghettis are also that nasty. I felt that they are not just bad, but it's also bad to watch them. Strange feeling, but when I saw The Son of Django (with Gabriele Tinti, who was also in all the Emanuelles), I felt exactly that way, I somehow regretted watching it. There's no sex, not much brutality, yet it was really a disturbing movie.

The Emanuelle movies are simple. Emanuelle is an undercover journalist (or underwear journalist? No, she wears no underwear. I know it wasn't funny.), who fucks her way through some complots to get a succesful article in the magazine she works in. That's basically all.

George Eastman having fun

I didn't watch many of them. I actually saw only two. It's strange - I despise them, I know they are over the top with their unexciting sex scenes, their opened sexuality is also over the top (Emanuelle would fuck not just anybody, men or women, but anything), they portray rape as something sexy, they are very misogynic and above all, really stupid. But sometimes I get in the mood to watch some of it. I try to avoid it, but yes, I have already watched two of them and I'm afraid I'll watch some more in the future. Why? Well, Laura Gemser is very beautiful and yes, she was very wooden, but yet very likable.

If I will watch some more, I would certainly skip the sex scenes and just watch the stupid plot. To save time and to have a good fun. Emanuelle and the white slave trade was so bad it was funny. If there weren't those ugly hairy whores all over the film, it would be more enjoyable.

I would never watch any of the original Emmanuelle series with Sylvia Kristel, they don't seem that funny as the Italian rip-offs. Not even when considering a Sylvia Kristel-Laura Gemser sex scene, that started Laura's career, in one of the French films. Actually, of the "true" Emmanuelles, the only one, that is really hot for me, is Krista Allen. I'm not saying that I would watch her Emmanuelle in Space series. But back to the Italian rip-off with the single m.

One of the disturbing things in those movies are the hardcore inserts. If it was intended to make it more exciting, it actually didn't help. And it's clearly visible that the girl isn't Laura Gemser. And another disturbing thing is the lousy Nico Fidenco music, that was also present in the sex comedies with Edwige Fenech. Those were vulgar and stupid, but not sleazy.

Emanuelle movies are not a genre itself, the series went through all (s)exploitation genresof the 70s and 80s - erotic drama, erotic comedy, WIP movies, cannibal movies, nunsploitation, criminal movies, mondo documentary. Gemser even appeared in a late giallo, Murder Obsession by Riccardo Freda, the man who allowed Mario Bava to direct himself in the late 50s. She tried to do other movies than just Emanuelle, like Horror Safari, Endgame or Ator, the Fighting Eagle. But the last two mentioned movies were also directed by Joe d'Amato, the director of most Emanuelle films.

She tried to do something else, appearing in a few more acceptable movies. I've actually seen only Crime Busters, the Bud Spencer - Terence Hill comedy, but it's my favorite of them and Gemser doesn't spoil it. In her other non-trashy movies, she appeared alongside Orson Welles, Toshiro Mifune or Richard Boone. Quite unexpected! But she couldn't escape the stigma of the hot girl from trashy movies. Not even by changing her name to Moira Chen for the bigger movies.

After the death of her husband Gabriele Tinti, whose career was also destroyed by the series (partly due to his jealousy, because he was always watching the love scenes of her wife, so he had to be in every single Emanuelle movie), she retired. I've read somewhere that she lives with George Eastman (who was also present in several Emanuelle movies), or was living with him some time ago. But there was no confirmation of this claiming. So the real Gemser is living in privacy. The by many fans beloved Laura Gemser lives in the Emanuelle series.

Five less known Clint Eastwood movies

Clint Eastwood is, of course, the living legend of the American cinema. And yes, his fans know all of his movies, love all of them and they will say, that no one of Clint's movies are less known. But when generally speaking of Mr. Eastwood's career, the always remembered movies are the Sergio Leone trilogy, Dirty Harry series, his awarded ones and some of the newer stuff. These five movies, that I particularly like, are kind of in shadow of the classics.

TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA (1970)
When you want to name an Eastwood western, you'll probably name The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Unforgiven or The Outlaw Josey Wales. This one is probably my favorite of the rest, which is strange, sice I haven't seen it for ages. I must fix it. Anyway, it has the great leading duo of Eastwood and Shirley MacLaine, the always interesting setting of French intervention in Mexico, the music by Ennio Morricone himself and directing by the great Don Siegel, one of my favorite American directors. It's rather talky than action-packed, but the movie never drags and is entertaining. Hell, I need to watch it again.

PLAY MISTY FOR ME (1971)
Clint's directorial debut is not his most famous movie. But it's a good one. It of course stands on the performance of Jessica Walter, who plays the psychotic girl, that stalks the DJ played by Eastwood. Clint is always Clint, but here he is weaker than in his other movies. He's just a playboy, not the tough guy. Therefore I don't like the way it ends. But it's not that bad ending.

THE GAUNTLET (1977)
When I saw this one for the first time, I hated it. Second time I started to appreciate it. Everything can't be of Dirty Harry quality, right? I guess I saw it at the same time as Where Eagles Dare, which is, of course, brilliant. The Gauntlet is far from brilliant, but it's entertaining. Lots of it based on the chemistry between Eastwood and Sondra Locke. Actually, apart from Every Which Way But Loose and other movies, in The Gauntlet and Sudden Impact I like her performance. It is silly, it has quite non fitting score (but it is actually great), but if you want a comic book Clint Eastwood movie, take this one.

BRONCO BILLY (1980)
Nice drama, not an action packed western comedy, that maybe some of the audience expected. Little more feelings, very nostalgic, an unusually light movie for Eastwood. Plus there's everybody, who appeared in all of his movies through the 70's - Sondra Locke, Geoffrey Lewis, Sam Bottoms, Walter Barnes, Dan Vadis and many others. Really a good one, much better than the monkey comedies Clint made at the same time.

HEARTBREAK RIDGE (1986)
Partly an army comedy, partly a drama about middle age. The army parts are hilarious, lots of great lines from the beginning. Then the movie starts to drag a little and the battle ending isn't very good, but the dialogue from the first part saves it. I rate it maybe higher than it deserves, so I would give the prick the satisfaction.

Those were my five picks. There are a few more relatively less known movies, but some of them I haven't seen. The Beguiled by Don Siegel for example, that looks interesting. They remade it. Oh, God, why? It's just sequels and remakes. Nothing new... Eastwood is an exception.

ARROW VIDEO'S YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM... DVD REVIEW

Yet another Edwige Fenech related post? So many lately... Ok, let's start with her boobs. Or something that I like actually more - the way she couldn't really cover them (on purpose, I guess):

Are you still here? Ok, let's go to the subject. I live in the Czech Republic and our Blu ray market is a disaster. Almost nothing interesting. The distributors have to sell the movies both as Blu rays and DVDs to sell something. Therefore I don't have any Blu ray player, and hence I bought the Arrow DVD and not Blu Ray. I guess the only difference between them is the resolution. I was really interested in the extra features, so I picked up this through a special e-shop, purchasing foreign discs in the Czech Republic.

I wrote something on the movie in the previous post, so I won't do it again. Not that it's not worth it, it's a pretty good one with great acting (not an usual thing in the Italian genre cinema), good music, interesting characters and some great scenes. Not my favourite movie by Sergio Martino (that would be All the Colors of the Dark), but I liked it better than Torso. I have to rewatch The Case of the Scorpion's Tail, since I liked Mrs. Wardh much more the second time.

I'll go directly to the extras. The movie itself is presented with beautiful clean image and nice sound, original mono, both in English and Italian. Interesting fact is that if you choose Italian version, you'll see Italian opening credits, if you choose English, you'll see the English credits, with the title "Gently Before She Dies". The English subtitles are also present, I'm not sure, maybe Italian as well?

Then we have here a few interesting documentaries. The first one, running cca 30 minutes, is a new interview with the director Sergio Martino. He discusses making the movie, its success, his relationship with Fenech and Pistilli and adds some interesting information on his other movies.

Second one is taken from the 2005 US DVD release by NoShame, another 30 minutes long featurette with Martino again, then screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi and Edwige Fenech herself. In 2005 she didn't look like 56 years old. She looked some 20 years younger. Marvellous. Martino, Gastaldi and Fenech are speaking Italian, so there are English subtitles.

The third featurette is a commentary with images on the career of Mr. Martino. I haven't heart it, since there are supposed spoilers for some movies that I haven't seen yet. So I have to watch The Sweet Body of Deborah first. Uh, it's starring the boring pretty face Jean Sorel and the Barbie Carroll Baker. But also Luigi Pistilli, George Hilton and Evelyn Stewart / Ida Galli. She was gorgeous. Well, seems I'll have to make it, only because I'm interested in this documentary.

The fourth one is a commentary on the career of Edwige Fenech. Lots of information, lots of her nude body in the images and clips. Yes, the titles of her comedies are awful. Giovannona Long-Thigh dishonored with honor. The Inconsolable Widow Thanks All Those Who Consoled Her. Just awful. The comedies are also horrible themselves. Even the Fulci one. Double Edwige can't save it.

Then there is an Eli Roth commentary. 10 minutes. Why did they include it? Well, he talks about his love for Martino's movies, and then about his attempt of making a Martino movie in Hostel 2. The guy has some self-confidence, eh? Well, he's the Bear Jew. Maybe he speaks even better than Tarantino, who gets always over-excited. Nice clip from a filmmaker who likes this movie, but nothing that valuable.

THE GOOD:
Apart from this, the cover is reversible and the other side has an image from the original poster. So I reversed it. Looks marvellous now.

Image, languages, original mono, many interesting extras.

THE BAD:
NTSC Format. It was released in Europe, after all. Maybe they didn't want to speed it up to make it PAL.
Not much information on Anita Strindberg. Martino and Fenech remember her just briefly. Where is she? Why did she disappear in 1981? Whatever happened with her? Sad.

THE UGLY:
The front cover with a new design. Too modern, too slasher-like, who is the woman supposed to be? Anita? Edwige? Good that I could reverse it.

Rating: Movie 8/10, DVD 9/10. I'm satisfied.