All month we spotlight the five gialli the prolific Sergio Martino directed between 1971 and 1973. Ranging from Agatha Christie/Edgar Wallace-style mysteries to Polanski-esque paranoid thrillers and proto-slashers, these lurid pulp masterpieces are exquisite exercises in style and represent quintessential examples of the genre. They also feature incredible soundtracks and amazing leading ladies, most notably Edwige Fenech and Anita Strindberg, who appear side-by-side in YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY. Though Martino went on to make dozens of films in other, sensational genres, he never fully returned to giallo. Nonetheless, these are up there with the best of Bava, Argento, and early Fulci.

THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH
aka BLADE OF THE RIPPER
Dir. Sergio Martino, 1971.
Italy. 96 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3 – MIDNIGHT

Sergio Martino’s first giallo is also one of the genre’s most sexually dynamite works. Raven haired French beauty Edwige Fenech is Julie Wardh, an ambassador’s wife in Vienna still reeling from her sadomasochistic relationship with an intense ex-lover, Jean. As she arrives, a killer is stalking women on the streets—and Jean just happens to be in town. In the meantime, she meets George, the debonair cousin of her friend Carol, who thrives of seducing married women. Things heat up between the pair while bodies pile in the streets and Jean remains a menacing presence—and soon, the sets his sights on Julie, spinning the plot through dozens of twists.

THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH is totally out-of-control, and a major genre classic: a hot mess of over-the-top stylization, kinky sex, nightmare interludes, brutal killings, suspense sequences, and, of course, a top-notch soundtrack by Nora Orlani including an insane version of “Dies Irae” that kicks in whenever Julie has flashbacks about having dirty sex with Jean. A giallo essential!

THE CASE OF THE SCORPION’S TAIL
Dir. Sergio Martino, 1971.
Italy. 91 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4 – MIDNIGHT

Bombshell Anita Strindberg anchors Martino’s most nimble and classic example of giallo tropes in THE CASE OF THE SCORPION’S TAIL, which ostensibly tells the story of a woman under investigation following the mysterious explosion of her wealthy husband’s airplane. When she travels to Greece to collect her inheritance, a number of variables come into play: a vindictive mistress and her hired thug, an insurance claim investigator, a stalker-killer on the loose, and a photojournalist, Cléo (Strindberg), assigned to the story. After a number of twists and turns, the investigator and journalist become the center of the story—and the killer’s prime target.

THE CASE OF THE SCORPION’S TAIL has a whole lot going for it: particularly, a simply incredible score by Bruno Nicoli that is among the best work ever done in the genre, and Martino’s best suspense sequence, in which a stealthy home invasion leads to a rooftop chase recalling Louis Feuillade’s classic LES VAMPIRES serial. THE CASE OF THE SCORPION’S TAIL is pure sex, suspense, and style — a total thrillride.

ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK
Dir. Sergio Martino, 1972.
Italy. 95 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10 – MIDNIGHT

Sergio Martino reteams with muse Edwige Fenech for a Polanski-esque paranoid nightmare about a woman, Jane, who begins to lose her mind after taking heavy meds following a miscarriage. As she grows cold toward her partner, warms up to her sexy neighbor Mary—played by Marina Malfatti from THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF HER GRAVE—who encourages her to get her act together by, er, joining a devil-worshiping sex cult. Somehow, this only makes things worse. When a phantasmic stalker gets into the mix and Jane participates in ever-more ritualistic murder orgies, things spiral further into madness.

ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK is Sergio Martino’s most surreal film, featuring a number of delirious nightmare set pieces. As always, Fenech is fantastic, and as ROSEMARY’S BABY knockoffs go, this is one of the best.

YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY
Dir. Sergio Martino, 1972.
Italy. 97 min.
In English.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11 – MIDNIGHT

“I don’t feel like being involved in one of your spectacles.”

Made between ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK and TORSO, YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY is a misanthropic, brooding, manipulative and beautiful treatment of Edgar Allen Poe’s story “The Black Cat.” It also has a drunk author getting J&B shipped by the crate to his house, which might be the gialloest thing ever. Fans of Sergio Martino’s earlier film THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH (from which this film gets it name) might be thrown a bit by the subdued, sullen quality, but it’s part of a greater plan, a plan that includes commune freak-outs, slaughtered mistresses, gratuitous POV (on line with Martino’s next film, TORSO) and perhaps greatest of all, Edwige Fenech, of whom I can say nothing without getting the vapors. With a storyline that’ll satisfy no-loose-ends mystery fans, enough jaw-dropping cinematography and costuming to please the art crowd, and Martino’s thoughtful and visceral style (there’s also a great Bruno Nicolai score to sweeten the pot), YOUR VICE…might be Martino’s finest.

TORSO
aka The bodies bear traces of carnal violence
Dir. Sergio Martino, 1973
Italy. 93 min.
In English with a few previously cut scenes in subtitled Italian

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24 – MIDNIGHT

TORSO is the fifth and final giallo by under-appreciated genre master Sergio Martino. Having perfected the lurid and stylish pulp-literary whodunnit with films like THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH and THE CASE OF THE SCORPION’S TAIL, here he strips the giallo formula down to its raw essentials, breaking it down into a new form of distilled carnage-by-numbers that anticipates the American slasher—which has never approached this level of bravura panache.

The plot is absurdly minimal: a masked man is killing college coeds along with anyone else who threatens to reveal his identity. The police’s only clue is a red scarf, which is probably intended as a mocking allusion to the red herring. (At one point, a character who thinks she’s identified the killer remembers he was wearing a black scarf with an abstract red pattern rather than a red scarf with an abstract black pattern—yet they look identical.) No matter the details: the film is pure sex and dismemberment, ranging from necking in cars to lesbian exhibitionists to a drug-fuelled hippie orgy, which, in one of the film’s most memorable sequences, results in someone wandering half-naked and stoned through thick fog in a dew-drenched forest before encountering the killer, clad in a leather jacket and ripped stocking mask, appearing like a swampy apparition. The film unlikely culminates in an incredibly nail-biting and grisly protracted suspense sequence that is pure edge-of-your-seat cinema.

Thanks to our friends at Blue Underground, we’re pleased to present the film in a stunning transfer made directly from the film’s original, uncut elements. We’ll show it with the English-language soundtrack, which has a minute or two of previously excised footage in subtitled Italian.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5: BLACK DRAGON’S REVENGE
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6: BLACK SAMURAI
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12: DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13: DON’T GO IN THE WOODS
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19: SUPERCHICK
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20: LAS VEGAS LADY
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26: THREE ON A MEATHOOK
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27: INVASION OF THE GIRL SNATCHERS

THE BLACK DRAGON’S REVENGE
Dir. Chin-Ku Lu, 1975.
USA/Hong Kong. 87 min.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 – MIDNIGHT

In the 1960s, Ron van Clief was dubbed “The Black Dragon” by Bruce Lee. After Lee’s death, a whole wave of Hong Kong cinema dubbed “Brucesploitation” sought to cash in on the star’s death. Unlike many of them, THE BLACK DRAGON’S REVENGE, also known as THE DEATH OF BRUCE LEE, doesn’t feature a lookalike. Rather, van Clief is summoned on an international mission to uncover the truth behind Lee’s death. He’s joined by the Bronx’s Puerto Rican “White Dragon” Charles Bonnet.

Everything about THE BLACK DRAGON’S REVENGE is shamelessly, gloriously derivative, including the score that inexplicably rips off Ennio Morricone’s theme from THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS. What puts THE BLACK DRAGON over the top is the awesome fighting by van Clief and Bonnet, both at the top of their form. (Also, uh, their hilariously stilted dialog exchanges.) The action is beautiful and brutal, particularly a scene in which Bonnet takes on a group of killers after tearing a large dart out of the side of his neck.

BLACK SAMURAI
Dir. Al Adamson, 1977.
USA. 88 min.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 – MIDNIGHT

ENTER THE DRAGON’s “Kicking-rhymes-like” Jim Kelly stars in this amazing attempt to cram every possible comic book conceit into a single blaxploitation kung fu occult spy movie. Kelly is Robert Sand, Agent of D.R.A.G.O.N., coerced by shady government operatives into traveling around the world in pursuit of evil warlock Janicot and his legion of henchmen (notably including several little people, some of whom know karate, and others who just wield large shotguns). He’s going to need all his kung fu skills to get through this mission–along with shotguns, supercharged trick cars, a mariachi band, decorative live snakes, and an actual JETPACK. I honestly didn’t even know jetpacks were real until I saw the Jim Kelly flying around in one, plain as day, without any apparent special effects, and looked up jetpacks on Wikipedia.

Anyway: that platonic-ideal, balls-to-the-wall, kitchen-sink exploitation movie you’ve always wanted to see but never knew how to find? It’s showing at Spectacle tonight.

DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE
Dir. Joseph Ellison, 1979.
USA. 82 min.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 – MIDNIGHT

D. Boon asked, “What makes a man start fires?” Donny’s coworkers at the garbage disposal plant call him a fag and a sicko when he stands coldly transfixed as the incinerator envelops a co-worker in flames. He returns home to find his mother dead: his long-suffering guardian, who punished him as a child by holding his arms over the stove’s open flames. The curdled scars on his arms say nothing of the hideous psychological brand on his brain. His homicidal passion ignited, Donny does what any frustrated man would do: buys a flamethrower, builds a steel room, and lures women home so he can set them ablaze then arrange their charred corpses in his sitting room.

A decidedly sick ripoff of PSYCHO, DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE is perhaps less along the lines of a cheapie slasher than a film that seems to at least some extent be legitimately interested in creating a character portrait around a disturbed mind. (When Donny decides he’s been cured and changes from his working class duds into a new leisure suit, you almost want to believe he’s going to find true love at the discotheque instead of lighting a bunch of people on fire.) Consider it TAXI DRIVER with a blowtorch and the grindhouse version of a Scorsesean Catholic guilt complex. Future SOPRANOS wiseguy Dan Grimaldi turns in a memorable performance as Donny, and the film has some truly creepy moments and shocking scares.

DON’T GO IN THE WOODS
Dir. James Bryan, 1981.
USA. 82 min.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 – MIDNIGHT

Possibly a conceptual art project to make the most consummately inept slasher film ever, DON’T GO IN THE WOODS is totally riveting for its singular oddball charm. Even if the filmmakers couldn’t figure out how to load the camera correctly (as evinced by occasional flares on the side of the image), they sure-as-F knew how to unleash buckets of blood. The sort of plot-like thing is basically something to do with this giant grizzly survivalist guy running around killing a ton of people. That’s basically it.

Like Godard’s 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER, there isn’t really a central protagonist, just an endless stream of campers, lovers, ornithologists, painters, roller skaters, and whatever kind of chilling and doing their thing before their guts are ripped out or their heads are smacked by swinging bear traps and stuff — under a bed of what is surely some of the most offensive use of synthesizer ever. Do we even need to tell you that this is essential bad-movie viewing?

SUPERCHICK
Dir. Ed Forsyth, 1973.
USA, 94 min.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 – MIDNIGHT

Tara True (Joyce Jillson, better known today as Nancy Reagan’s astrologer) spends her days as a flight attendant, where she wears a wig to downplay her attractiveness, but by night she’s a free-wheeling karate-wielding lady with a different man in every town! Between water skiing, reefer parties and mocking trenchcoated perverts, one of her gentleman callers wants her to help in a bank heist.

John Carradine as a creepy sadist and Dan Haggerty as (you guessed it) a biker! Sex on a piano! All the nudity you’d expect from an early 70s Crown International film (there’s a short buy sweet Uschi Digard cameo) make this a more action-packed counterpart to the AIP Stewardesses series!

LAS VEGAS LADY
Dir. Noel Nosseck, 1975.
USA, 87 min.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 – MIDNIGHT

More glitzy 70s capers with casino hostess Lucky (TV stalwart Stella Stevens) planning to rip off Circus Circus for millions in LAS VEGAS LADY!

With supporting roles by Andrew Stevens (who, a year later, played Mark in the Spectacle fave Massacre At Central High), George DiCenzo (Helter Skelter) and Frank Bonner (WKRP’s Herb Tarlek)!

THREE ON A MEATHOOK
Dir. William Girdler, 1973.
USA, 80 min.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 – MIDNIGHT

“But I would have remembered it.” “You didn’t remember the others, Billy.”

Based loosely on the life and crimes of Ed Gein, William Girdler’s second feature (after the amazing ASYLUM OF SATAN) is a bleak, grainy look at backwoods dread and familial madness. Starting with a stock trope (four young women go backpacking in the Kentucky woods), the film hits its stride when Billy Townsend discovers the girls camping by their farmhouse and invites them to stay with his father and himself. Pa has convinced Billy he’s actually a psychotic killer and warns Billy against the women staying over, but things are not quite as they seem…

Containing gore effects by spookshow magician and H.G Lewis associate Pat Patterson, it’s a film well-saturated in deep red, and certainly those looking for some skinny-dipping nudity won’t be disappointed. Shot in the same farmhouse used in INVASION OF THE GIRL SNATCHERS (later burned to the ground by arsonists convinced it was used for Satanic rites), THREE ON A MEATHOOK contains much of the same blank-eyed stare as Frederic Friedel’s film AXE — it’s definitely one to catch for fans of 70s rural horror.

“The VHS revolution made it possible for folks my age to see fellow Louisvillian William Girdler’s indelible (blood-stained), instantaneous period piece THREE ON A MEATHOOK, which had long been the subject of rumor and speculation.  And somewhat as expected – and like many other things from the Bluegrass State – it became cause in equal parts for perverse pride and horror.” – David Grubbs

INVASION OF THE GIRL SNATCHERS
Dir. Lee Jones, 1973.
USA, 93 min.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 – MIDNIGHT

“Nice glyphs!”

New wave parody? Secret truth about UFOs? Stoned goof? INVASION OF THE GIRL SNATCHERS is all three and more to boot. Made using some of the same sets, equipment and crew as Three On A Meathook, this film was originally titled The Hidan Of Maukbeiangjow (Hidan meaning “high place”) by Don Elkins and Carla Rueckert, two UFO researchers (see here for more info) asked by director Lee Jones (who produced SUPERVAN, GRIZZLY, and HONEY BRITCHES) to write any script they wanted so long as it had sex and violence.

With befuddled aliens, tracking devices hidden in bras, a safecracker named Freddie Fingers, body-switching, topless sorcery and more, GIRL SNATCHERS is like a zero budget MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE with metaphysical digressions, goofball puns and a lovely rural Kentucky quality that puts more self-conscious parodies to shame.