Behind the Black Glove: A Journey Through Italian Horror

Step into the shadowy, glamorous world of Italian giallo cinema, where black leather gloves, gleaming blades, and stylish murder mysteries captivated audiences decades before American slashers dominated horror screens. In this deep-dive exploration, George, Ryan and Special Guest Jacob Calta unravel the distinctive visual language and cultural significance of a genre that transformed how filmmakers approached thriller storytelling.

The term "giallo" originates from the yellow-covered crime novels published by Mondadori in Italy, which predominantly featured translations of mystery writers like Agatha Christie and Edgar Allan Poe. When filmmakers like Mario Bava and Dario Argento adapted these mystery structures to cinema, they created something uniquely Italian – murder mysteries with artistic flair, psychological depth, and visual sophistication rarely seen in exploitation cinema.

We examine four pivotal giallo classics that showcase the genre's evolution: Argento's "Bird with the Crystal Plumage" (1970), Bava's "Bay of Blood" (1971), Fulci's "Don't Torture a Duckling" (1972), and Martino's "Torso" (1973). Each film represents different facets of giallo – from Argento's artistic sensibilities and perfect suspense crafting to Bava's proto-slasher innovations that directly influenced Friday the 13th. Fulci's rural horror masterpiece tackles religious hypocrisy and superstition, while Martino's "Torso" perfects the slasher formula years before American cinema caught up.

What made giallo revolutionary wasn't just its graphic content but its sophisticated approach. These films featured stunning cinematography, innovative camera techniques, striking color palettes, and unforgettable music from composers like Ennio Morricone. Unlike American exploitation films of the era, giallo elevated murder to high art, turning violence into meticulously crafted set pieces.

Discover how this distinctly Italian genre created the blueprint for modern horror, establishing conventions like the black-gloved killer, elaborate murder sequences, and psychosexual motivations that would define horror cinema for decades to come. From Argento to Scream, the DNA of giallo continues to influence filmmakers worldwide.

Transcript

Introduction to Giallo Cinema

Speaker 1 0:10

here with my uh co-host team member, brian santa crisis, as always, who we had as a guest with us today the great jake calta and uh we're talking about italian murder mystery slasher films today, indeed Commonly referred to as giallo, which is derived from the pulp novel tradition of Italy, in which these cheap sort of dime novels were printed on yellowish paper, and yellow in Italian is giallo, correct. Did I accurately sum up?

Speaker 3 0:48

You got it like 90% of the way there. The big thing with giallo is that and just for those who want to know what all those random things next to my name are I am a filmmaker, writer, composer, jack of all trades, master of hopefully a few give or take We'll figure that out in the next few years but the big thing that I started out with was studying film as far back as I can remember. But anyway, the thing with Giallo is that it's specifically from a publication company, Giallo Mondadori or something along those lines, where the covers themselves are actually bright yellow, and so the Giallo is basically in reference to the covers themselves, but it's also technically not even just dime novels. Their big thing early on was actually translating a lot of the great English mystery writers like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Edgar Wallace and so on, and that kind of serves as the backbone of a lot of the very early jali that get made in the 60s and 70s. There's very much a you know, sort of the classic murder mystery structure of a lot of really weird rich people in a lot of these films having very sordid lifestyles and just about every one of their grandmothers are red herring and but yeah, the giallo thing itself also has kind of a dual meaning, Because in Italy it's a colloquialism for thrillers, as in any thriller is a giallo.

Speaker 3 2:26

Colloquialism for thrillers, as in any thriller, is a giallo. So you know psychos a giallo, peeping toms a giallo uh, you know just about everything. You know everything in that thriller genre is considered giallo. And it wasn't until you know a lot of people started looking over the trends in like italian exploitation, where you get your babas, your argentos and your falchis that come up, that we start seeing giallo identified as a very specific trend in Italian exploitation.

Speaker 1 2:50

So it's kind of like film noir, to where it was identified and categorized.

Speaker 3 2:54

It's very much something you kind of had to find critically, especially because the thing about Italian exploitation too is that at the time they were like making genres left and right. Now Hollywood was doing a lot of very popular biblical epics, some of them shot in Rome. Then you got a bunch of sword and sandal films and you know Peplum, you know characters like Hercules Machiste. Spaghetti westerns come into the fore in the mid-60s, rolling into the 70s, and the Giallo kind of picks up at the top of the 70s once it breaks big with the earliest film of our four, bird with a Crystal Plumage. But I also want to just say one other funny thing about this to kind of lay the rest of the groundwork and this also does tie into Bird with a Crystal Plumage as well is that in West Germany there was a very weirdly niche thing that was happening called the creamy, which was something of a similar wave of murder mystery films. But they were shot in black and white and they were almost universally based around the work of edgar wallace. For I don't know how, when it exactly it caught on, but essentially you have his works getting really big over over in West Germany and I I can't remember what's Rialto or the very early version of Constantine films? Like one of the early German production companies just started firing out these films, a lot of them made by the exact same director.

Speaker 3 4:20

I think it's Alfred for her, I think it's how I pronounce his name, and it's literally just Edgarughan, I think it's how you pronounce his name and it's literally just edgar wallace adaptations anything edgar wallace. And all of a sudden just became this craze and you have a bunch of studios being like, okay, we've gone through all the edgar wallace stories, fuck it, grab his son, stuff, brian edgar wallace and a lot of some. And the thing is it's not really like a oh. This becomes a major influence on the giallo, necessarily, but it's this similar wave of murder mystery mania, but then influences how some of these italian films are brought into west germany. Some films are retroactively christened edgar wallace adaptations. Burr the crystal plumage was one of those films, in fact, because I noticed that at the credits.

Speaker 1 5:03

Yeah, and I was going to say I'm not that familiar with Edgar Wallace Beyond his contributions to King Kong. Ryan, I know you're an old school folk guy. Are you familiar with any Edgar Wallace mystery stories?

Speaker 2 5:13

Not that I can recall Off the top of my head, no.

Speaker 3 5:17

I've been working, yeah, and I've been working on curating A, a piece of like public domain, like a collection of public domain short stories, and so I've been kind of thumbing through some of the stuff he was doing in the 1910s and 20s. But I haven't really read up on a lot of Edgar Wallace's stuff. But I know that there was a bit of a craze. People were on a bit of a kick with him because there was also a bit of a British. There was a British TV anthology like an Edgar Wallace theater type thing where they were adapting stories like that and they were also, towards the end, drafting in random B movies to fill out the roster Stuff, like Jerry Anderson's first film, crossroads to Crime, oddly enough, and really weird esoteric shit like that. They were like do we have a crime film? Does it look vaguely like the saint, but without roger moore? Fuck it, bring it here. We'll call it an edgar wallace theater production. I don't know what it?

Speaker 3 6:12

was. But yeah, and I don't know what it was about edgar wallace, but for some reason shuffling back to west germany, it just caught on and it was a substantial enough phenomenon that there were filmmakers. Later on in like the 2000s I think, someone made a parody film of the creamy thing, done in black and white, done in like the 235 aspect ratio, all the tropes and some similarities like black gloved killers and the kind of classic murder mystery. It could be anyone. Attitude to the suspect lineups kind of permeate a lot of those films.

Speaker 1 6:45

Yeah, can I ask question, jake? So these are obviously murder mystery stories, but to me it seems like when the italians got a hold of them, they imbued them with a slasher element in the early 60s, with something like. Probably the earliest giallo film I've seen is blood and black lace, the mario bava film yes right.

Speaker 1 7:01

So there's like slasher elements there that would seem revolutionary and only make it over to america in a mainstream way in the late 70s. Was the slasher element and sort of the pickoff of beautiful women and these long extended sequences of like hunting down the hot girl would that was? Was that an italian invention?

Speaker 3 7:20

I'd. I'd say for more or less, yeah, but it also it kind of comes from the fact that and this is something I just kind of noticed with Italian cinema in general, not just from the period but specifically kind of the tone of it going throughout the mid-century is that there's very much a willingness to just go the distance, go that one step beyond. And there actually was a earlier film from Bava, which was the Girl who Knew Too Much, which many kind of see as the definitive beginning of the giallo, and the only reason why it didn't really start catching on was until Argento gave it that push with Bird's tremendous international success. But the slasher structure sort of thing that I think kind of comes off of.

Speaker 3 8:07

I describe these films as very much an expressionist attitude. It's. It's not necessarily concerned with incredibly deep three-dimensional characterizations, but it also isn't just, you know, I'll put a couple of nice looking girls in in the picture and then we, you know, stab them and then you know blood and guts and all of no, there's very clearly a People throw around the term Grand Guignol. I think that does really apply to the Giallo, that there is very much this theatricality to the murders, there's a theatricality to the presentation.

Speaker 3 8:43

Bava himself being a cinematographer, you know literally it's almost perfect the way those first two complement each other. Because you have the one in black and white, which has all the classic high contrast stylings that were coming out of film noir, and in many ways I don't remember if it received distribution in West Germany, but I'm sure it would have slipped cleanly into the creamy craze at the time. And then you move over to blood and black lace, which is a fountain of color. It's one of the delirious looking, and the greatest thing too is the fact that that technically wasn't even three strip Technicolor, but it's about as bright as it too it looks, it's spectacular looking.

Speaker 3 9:28

Yeah, oh it's. It's seriously one of the most stunning pieces, and that's also kind of one of the nice things too, is that, of course, the genre would kind of be, would have to be spearheaded by the cinematographer, the man who could make just about anything look as beautiful as baba did and that's something that ties these movies together is they all are great looking.

Speaker 1 9:45

I mean, think about what America was producing in terms of like boundary pushing horror at the time, what Herschel Gordon Lewis shit that looks terrible, right, you know.

Speaker 3 9:55

Absolutely. I call those the C tier films because it's not even up to the level of B tier, because B tier at least implies there's some studio system there churning these out. Then you get down to Herschel Gordon-Lewis' stuff where it's like this man's making this shit on fucking pocket lint, my god.

Speaker 1 10:16

Oh for sure. How familiar are you guys with the Italian film industry beyond this genre? Because I'm not familiar with it at all.

Speaker 3 10:26

I. I guess I'm coming in with all the cards on this one because I I don't know a lot.

Origins and Evolution of Giallo Films

Speaker 3 10:33

I I don't know a lot of the like you know, I haven't studied, studied it, but you can kind of mark a lot of the trends in the industry. And I think there's actually a great quote from one of the later guys, luigi Cozzi, who I I try to remember. Yeah, I think Luigi Cozzi is the guy who did stuff like star crash and a lot of the more camp yourself. I was coming out in the late seventies and eighties but he said this really great quote, something along the lines of in Italy they never ask you what's your film like, they ask you what film your film is like. That there's always this idea that if anyone can smell a trend, that trend immediately gets capitalized on. And you see that you genuinely see that in just about every wave.

Speaker 3 11:25

Peplum started because there were a lot of hollywood studios shooting in rome, shooting their biblical epics, ben hur being one of the most famous, and you started getting films like hercules. You started getting a revival of the machiste character, which dates back to the silent era, is kind of one of the earliest strong men characters in italian. You know, entertainment then once the jello doesn't really take off until argento gives it the final shove with further crystal plumage. But during the 60s you have a wave of gothic horror that kind of starts out around the time roger corman's doing the edgar allen poe cycle at aip, so like almost perfectly in conjunction actually, mario bava directs uh, black sunday with barbara steel, which is kind of one of the big seminal gothic chillers of the era.

Speaker 3 12:12

And that same year in 1960, corman does house of usher with vincent price, and so you have this kind of ushering in from both sides of the pond. This you know, wave, wave of that. And then of course, when Leone breaks out, the Dollars Trilogy you know the rest of the 60s is all for the spaghetti western. You've got Leone making his films, corbucci doing I believe Django came first. He later did. Corbucci was the one who did the Great Silence, right.

Speaker 1 12:42

I will take your word for it.

Speaker 3 12:52

But I was going to ask you have you seen Godard's?

Speaker 1 12:54

Contempt that they filmed at Chinachita Studios? Yes, I have. Yeah, and was that? Do you know? Was Chinachita kind of on the way out at that point when he filmed it there, or was it is Chinachita? I know it's sort of a museum now if you go to visit it.

Speaker 3 13:04

I think Chinachita was sort of kind of in like a pulse keeping state, because I know there were still films being shot there, I know there were still producers coming, because you still had, you know, I believe Dino De Laurentiis was starting to really take off around this time. I know Carlo Ponti was still around at that time, so I'm sure there were always people coming up and shooting. I'm sure the sound stages were, because that's the other thing too. The 60s and the 70s were really a big boom period for filmmaking in general. Yeah, because for sheer volume of films being made and people reusing sets, reusing costumes, it's almost a bit like. It is a bit like the AIP model, except almost extended out to like an entire country, sort of.

Speaker 1 13:54

Yeah, no that's an interesting point, and you say this with what? This idea of trend chasing? That's why it's so fun and interesting to talk about these movies, because they're almost like, they're very much in dialogue with each other. I watched Mario Bava's the Psychic have you ever seen that? With Jennifer O'Neill.

Speaker 3 14:15

That would be Lucio Fulci.

Speaker 1 14:17

Oh sorry, lucio Fulci. Yeah, lucio Fulci, who also directed Don't Torture a Declan and uh. At the beginning of the film, uh, jennifer o'neill as a child, her vision of her mother falling off the rock and hitting her head on every way down is basically the exact same scene or sort of special effect, as he employs in uh at the end of don't torture reductly. It's like, yes, they were trying to one-up themselves or continue to sort of like redo this plot over and over again until they got it right, or one-up exactly, exactly, and the thing also is too there's a lot of everyone winds up connected in some way to the other guy.

Speaker 3 14:56

In the end. Mario bava is sort of the godfather of of the idea of the giallo and also that idea of very hyper stylized, hyper colorful italian horror. You know, without him we would not have argento suspiria and quite literally, we wouldn't have inferno, because he was actually on as a special effects artist for inferno and our and argento was also fostering, helping foster the career of his son, lamberto Bava, who did the Demons films in the 80s, and so you kind of have this sort of growing almost like a mini version of the Corman. I keep going back to Corman, but in all fairness, american International was one of the big importers of a lot of the films in the 60s. They brought over most of Bava's pictures and it was that relationship that got him drafted To do that sequel To Dr Goldfoot with Vincent Price. Have you seen?

Speaker 1 15:52

that right In the long and short of it, dr Goldfoot, in the bikini machine.

Speaker 2 15:55

Is that the one you're talking about?

Speaker 3 15:58

That was the first one, I think the second one was. That was the one Baba was hired on, and not a fun time was had by anyone.

Speaker 1 16:07

Well, let's talk about the movies we're going to discuss today. Exactly, jake, you picked all these movies out and if you could briefly go through and name them and sort of in a brief way why you picked them, and I guess we could probably start with Crystal Plumage after you're done, and I guess we could probably start with Crystal.

Speaker 3 16:23

Plumage after you're done. Yes, the Bird with the Crystal Plumage was the 1970 directorial debut of Dario Argento, and this first one I had picked because it essentially establishes not only just about every conceit Argento would go forward with in his career having artists as protagonists, in this case a writer, his penchant for a very set piece style of structure where you kind of bounce back from investigation, murder, investigation, murder but also that commitment to the kind of theatricality that was established by Bava in those earlier works. And going into that then is bay of blood from 1971, which I picked because one anyone who has watched slashers from the 80s knows the story by heart. Set pieces from bay of blood were the inspiration for kills in friday, the 13th Part II, directed by Steve Miner. But also Bay of Blood is interesting as a body count picture because Bava takes it to a sort of black comedy of errors extreme, where there's not an innocent soul in the picture and it gets absolutely so. The bodies pile up to such an extent that the ending is quite possibly the only ending that could be affixed to this film, because there's no way in hell you could look at the reality of this without asking okay, no one's getting out of this alive. So you might as well not let them leave the film alive either. Right, and it's also just a testament to his ability to modulate his style, because it's not as colorful as Blood and Black Lace and it doesn't really echo any of the gothic overtones of a lot of his earlier 60s work, moving into Don't Torture a Duckling, and I'll just reveal this off the bat. I texted you guys last night that one of these films hit my top 100 of all time and it was this film.

Speaker 3 18:28

And originally I picked it because obviously you have to get of the triumvirate to Lucio Fulci, who most people remember for his kind of golden era of the late 70s into the 80s of making a lot of these very gruesome, grisly, surreal horror films like the Beyond Zombie House by the Cemetery New York Ripper. But not only did this come earlier, when Lucio Falci was more of a jack-of-all-trades workman, working in just about every genre, from westerns to sex comedies to. He literally started out his career making musicals in a small movement of late 50s rock and roll, italian movies like that. But it's the fact that here he's not as gory as he'd get later on. He's still brutal, but the genius of don't torture of duckling is that its premise is very emotionally brutal and that's kind of the reason why it became an all-timer for me last night is that once you hit the final reel and you understand the motives and you have classic italian poetry of the grizzly with the idyllic and complete contrast with one another, it just came down on me like a fucking sledgehammer. And that's after impeccable piece of filmmaking, after impeccable piece of filmmaking proving falchi as a really rock solid craftsman.

Speaker 3 19:59

And lastly, I picked torso as sort of the official coming of the proto slasher and I mean it literally slots in perfectly. It came out a year before black Christmas, about five before Halloween, and yet so many modern exploitation filmmakers Eli Roth, for those who own the blue underground release Eli Roth did the introduction for that and he actually got one of the actors from the film the guy who played the doctor, I believe, as a cameo in the second hostile. But really, yeah, but really. Torso is essentially the first honest-to-God's-truth slasher and I joked about this in a review I wrote about it where I said this did play better as a horny teenager, because if you have, yeah, oh god, yeah, by far the most.

Speaker 1 20:55

Yeah, there's the most.

Speaker 3 20:56

Uh, it is the most sexed up film of of of the lot and I literally no joke. I had to like take a pit stop after watching because I was watching these in order to kind of see the evolution of the genre, and so I had to take like a fucking. Last night I was like, okay, don't torture a duckling, is the fuck, I need a cigarette. Film of the giallo genre. How the fuck am I gonna go into torso after this? So I like took an hour relaxed breathe and then went right into it. Um, but torso.

Speaker 2 21:28

You watched all these in one day.

Speaker 3 21:30

You watched all these in one day, I split, I split them across.

Speaker 2 21:33

Uh, two evenings oh, okay, okay, I was gonna say like man kind of a drive, so like two trips to the drive-thru, drive-in rather okay, see, jake, when you said you had to take a pit stop, I didn't know what the hell you were talking about.

Speaker 1 21:47

I thought you put the TV on pause in this particular shot and were taking a little break. You know what I'm saying. I didn't know.

Speaker 3 21:56

Well, the problem is with torso. You don't need to pause, you just need to let it run on long enough and you'll hit the next scene.

Speaker 1 22:02

That was sort of like shocking to me, and you know, by the way, jake, I talked about my plane ride before we were over here.

Speaker 3 22:07

I put torso on, I'm like I'll get these done on the plane, and I had that rolled out oh god fuck no you know, I was like nah, I can't be doing this shit people calling the william peterson and manhunter move up, you know. Oh, I'll just leave my crime scene photos for this little girl to look at.

Speaker 1 22:25

That's exactly. Yeah, that was. I didn't want to be put in, you know airplane jail, which I've heard exists. So, Ryan, we'll let you roll here a little bit. If we start off first with Girl with the Crystal Plumage, what did you think of it, man?

Speaker 2 22:41

Yeah, this one I really, really liked. I'm glad that I watched this one first. First because, although I liked all four of the movies that we're going to be discussing today, this one I felt I had the strongest affinity towards I don't know, it's because of dario argento, I think appeals to me the most out of all four of the filmmakers. There's something more familiar perhaps about in, in regards to the way it's made or directed, that feels more similar to American films, more or less. I got serious Halloween vibes from it, not in terms of the content, but the way it looks and feels to me, the way that the generalized story was structured in terms of how Carpenter makes a movie, structure in terms of how Carpenter makes a movie.

Speaker 2 23:24

Everything that I saw in the movie really, I guess, hit hard in what my predetermined notions about what this genre entails. You know what I mean. Like everything that I thought the genre was going to be, this movie exemplified those characteristics. So, for instance, even when the movie begins, we start with a unknown figure decked out in all black leather leather trench coat, black leather gloves, a hat, brim hat at a typewriter writing some mysterious message that, for all I can recall in the movie has nothing to do with anything. Maybe he's actually sending that to some victim, but like it's totally meaningless in the end, um to me, um that plus, he sent it to the newspaper. I I don't even remember who. I watched the movie twice and I I can't, for the life of me, I cannot figure out who this letter was meant for, or what, and what what relationship that victim had to anyone else is.

Speaker 2 24:21

Feel free to elaborate if you know but anyway um, that, plus the way that the story is constructed, in that we are given a character to follow throughout the entire movie, our protagonist, the american writer, who is visiting italy. So therefore we already have a character that is perhaps more relatable to us as American audiences a rather handsome young man with a beautiful, attractive young girlfriend, who then gets caught up into the world of this mystery, this murder mystery, and he witnesses the attempted murder in a very beautifully constructed art gallery that mimics a what what essentially looks like a painting in and of itself through the way the doors are constructed. And then he takes it upon himself to do the job the police cannot do to solve the mystery. More so because I think he you know, it's interesting because I thought they were going to do a thing where he was implicated as the suspect and they immediately, you know, throw that out, and I was.

Speaker 2 25:30

I was actually very pleased about that because I thought that was going to be a contrivance for the plot to be like hey, we suspect you, even though there's no reason to, and you need to prove yourself as the innocent person. They don't do that as the innocent person, they don't do that. But it leads down this pathway of a very interesting mystery that I don't know that 100% the explanation, all of the explanations for all these movies have some weird psychosexual implication behind it and that's fine. But even if it's a little stretched, that's probably what appealed to me the most I'll tell you, you mentioned the scene.

Speaker 1 26:08

the most, probably the best scene of the film is which, with our main character, witnesses to what looks to him like a murder in progress between a beautiful woman and a man in black in an art gallery, which, by the way, I'm just to weave here for a sec. The great thing about the I don't think I can do the pronunciation with as much gusto, jay, as you, but actually I'm a little disappointed in Ryan because he actually is Italian. I haven't heard a good giallo pronunciation from him yet, but giallo, so like the giallo film. If you're looking at it from the American perspective, it's sort of a proto slasher, right, if you're going to be an American centric, sort of head watching this. And the thing I appreciate so much about them is that they're always like, so glamorous. Do you know what I mean? In America, the slasher, go ahead.

Speaker 3 26:57

No, no, absolutely, Because it's just there was one type of film that I kind of omitted. Like I could have picked a dozen different Sergio Martino films, but I specifically chose Torso because there actually is. If you want to learn what a house giallo film looks like, it's always about the private lives of the upper middle class to the nouveau riche. It's always in as Mediterranean as all get out glamorous fashions. The musical score is always somewhere between lounge jazz and Baroque pop. Literally almost every composer if they don't have a similar style of melody, almost everyone's writing with a similar style of orchestration. It becomes like a house style for the genre.

Speaker 3 27:45

And the interesting thing about these four in particular is that they all represent a certain element of it, but they don't all represent the formula in and of themselves. They have components that would later become kind of the bog standard. Oh, go, watch the case of the Scorpion's Tale. You have scenes set on a nice island or you have this. You know all this trendsetting fashion.

Speaker 1 28:11

But yeah, the nice thing about Bird of the Crystal Plumage is that not only do you have some of that summeriness in Ennio Morricone's music, but that really hyper modern look in like the art gallery and in the art direction of the production design and I would hesitate to shoot from the hip here and be a cultural anthropologist here in italy, which I know next to nothing about, but I would venture a guess, based on watching some of these films and comparing them to american slashers, is that in america the slasher film is sort of a low class coded, lower middle class pursuit. Right, it's a teenage drive-in take your girlfriend. It's kind of gross and gruesome, but it's about hey, what can you handle, right? Whereas in italy I feel like this is perhaps a more avant-garde. Like um thing, do you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 3 28:56

like absolutely and I think this also goes back to its origins more with the murder mystery genre, because again, you know, agatha christie isn't writing about how some poor schlub at the workhouse, you know, clubbed his old lady to death. No, she's writing about all these strange eccentrics on a train across the continent or she's writing about, you know, people in the manor, all these strange socialites and stuff like that. So it's it's generally.

Speaker 2 29:23

Does that generalization hold? Because, like when you talk about, most of these yes, they are in a cosmopolitan area where people are, you know, more higher end individuals. But then when you have a rural setting, like in Duckling, do you really find the people very glamorous. Besides the oddball character there, there's one oddball character there.

Speaker 3 29:55

Well, that's. My point, though, is that these four they're all different elements of the formula, but none represent the house style in totality, not even Argento's, technically, because when you mentioned Halloween, there actually is a bit of an autumnal sort of atmosphere, when the fog comes out. Atmosphere when the fog comes out, yeah, and I actually. Okay, this is how much I love, I. I. I just blew my mind when I sat down and realized, when I was watching the film and I was looking at the design of it, vittorio strato which, by the way, that is vittorio apocalypse, now strato as dp and he actually lensed a bunch of really good looking gialli from this boom period.

Speaker 3 30:25

Uh, if anyone wants any homework after this, go watch the fifth chord from 1971 with franco nero. It looks gorgeous. Um, but between that, between the kind of bell you know, pitched percussion elements of Morricone's score, I'm sitting here watching this thinking, god, I guess Argento really liked Clute. And then I realized Clute came out the next year. Oh really.

Speaker 1 30:53

What made you think Clute? Are you talking in terms of just like thematic, or are you talking about cinematography?

Speaker 3 31:01

Genuinely the visual tone of it, the way Gordon Willis uses light and shade I mean, we call him the Prince of Darkness after all, and Vittorio Storaro has very much been public about his philosophy of contrast, and you see that all throughout the film, especially that magnificent shot in the final act where Tony Missanti busts through the door into the gallery. And it's just this one block of light in a full Panavision frame of black.

Speaker 1 31:32

That is sick. I think Clute looks like ass, like no offense. I mean, am I wrong? I think Clute is a terrible. I think.

Speaker 3 31:38

I think it was fair. Well, it was early, it was early on. It was kind of early on a lot of things Like obviously this it was early on. It was kind of early on a lot of things Like obviously this wouldn't be. And obviously Willis's camera work on stuff like the Godfather, you know, beats it black and blue obviously.

Speaker 1 31:52

Have you guys seen Go?

Speaker 3 31:53

ahead. No, but it's just. It was just kind of the general ambience of it, I guess, for, like, here's also the thing too. I look at a lot of these with kind of obviously there's the hard, you know, the hard and fast stuff, what's happening at the script level, what's happening with performances, what's happening in the direction. But my mind, whenever I'm watching these films, there's always some element of ephemera that I get caught on and for some reason the the kind of ephemera came to mind was clute, and it's specifically that those opening cues from Michael Small's score that are very low ambient, kind of glassy, that I also may be getting mixed up with some of the music from when a Stranger Calls. But then again, that's the problem of being this talking encyclopedia.

Speaker 1 32:40

I don't remember Clute as well. Perhaps I don't remember Clute as well, perhaps, but what I do remember from Clute is just the climax, where we have a 50mm lens jammed in Donald Sutherland's face and you can't see shit.

Speaker 3 32:52

Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean that was not what came to mind.

Speaker 2 32:57

Okay alright.

Speaker 1 32:58

Well, I'm just curious have you guys ever seen Gordon Willis' movie that he directed Windows with Talia Shire? I am a bit of a fan sort of I. I mean, it's not one of the most beautiful, most boring fucking movies you've ever seen. It's a great looking movie.

Speaker 3 33:12

It's so good, honestly right, honestly, yeah, and the only thing that kind of keeps the tent, what tension is kept there is really on account of one talia shire selling everything about her character.

Speaker 1 33:27

Um, I forgot who plays a lesbian murderer, a possessed lesbian killer, yeah was elizabeth ashley, I think it is um you got it, dude you're.

Speaker 3 33:38

You're a human film database over here I I plug me in, you'll get everything you need. You don't even need IMDb anymore, guys. I'm literally here for it. No, but I mean those two performances, willis' camera work and Ennio Morricone throw a stone, hit a Morricone soundtrack, those things kind of all come together for me. But it's also not like oh, it's a lost masterpiece, I would. I mean, I wish he had directed more, he could have found his footing, but it also kind of got on windows was a victim of heavenscape. Again, like everything, it's in 1980 united. You can add windows by gordon willis to that. You know, death count.

Speaker 2 34:26

It's like visiting arlington, but for like auteur filmmaking to pick back off one of the other things you mentioned, george, about this being kind of an avant-garde genre. I don't know if that's necessarily 100 true in terms of like, from what I was listening to on some of the special features and audio commentaries for these is that these were supposed to be like almost like a communal, uh, a thing that the community experienced at the theater. Apparently these were very popular, where people in local theaters would go literally almost every night to the cinema and watch different ones of different jalo films and they would basically just be there to hang out and talk and chit chat in the theater as a disposable form of entertainment and then, you know, pay attention only when either some nude scene came on or a kill scene came on I mean.

Speaker 3 35:15

So I think in retrospect.

Bird with the Crystal Plumage Analysis

Speaker 1 35:17

Afterwards, people started realizing that there was something more to the genre than um, I've got that hard to understand because for me, the thing that makes these superior, I think, to a lot of american slasher films, despite I'll use your word ephemera of, like, early, late 70s, early 80s, like you know, yeah, nostalgia, which is like, oh, this is great. But like I like that there's a mystery element to these movies, to where, like honestly, like during bay of blood, when the kids are running around and romping around the abandoned hotel, I'm just like, yeah, boring. I'm like let's get to the intrigue. Like what's going on with this? This old lady's will you know? I want to get back to the story. So the fact that this is sort of like a, a joke hangout, I guess that's striking.

Speaker 2 36:02

And that's what I don't get either because if you don't pay attention to what's going on in these movies, you don't know, you won't even remember that you watched it. So I had to watch some of these like twice, because if you stop paying attention for like two minutes you're like did I even watch them? Like what happened? Who are these people? Half the people were interchangeable. You can't remember which guy is which.

Speaker 1 36:21

you're like oh, is that the?

Speaker 2 36:22

doctor, or is that the uh?

Speaker 1 36:24

well, that's because you're racist against the town and you're like yeah that's because you're. No, I will say this the men do tend to look sort of similar yes, the men all there is no, no, no joke.

Speaker 3 36:36

I was watch when I was watching torso, the guy who played the doctor who tends to suzy kendall later on. I'm not joking. For five seconds I I'm thinking, oh shit, I didn't realize Ivan Razumov was in this, because Ivan Razumov's in like Strange Vice of Mrs Ward. He I think he has a part in your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I have the Key another Martino film. And then I'm like, oh wait, it's not him at all. There's no Ivan Tarasumov in this film.

Speaker 3 37:17

But to get to your point though, I think in all honesty, that is kind of part of the glut of films that were being made in Italy for the entertainment market full stop, because you got to remember, it wasn't just the Giallo, they were doing this at Spaghetti Westerns, no-transcript craftsmanship, because a lot of these guys have worked in there's. There's very much an exchange between the art house and the, you know, and the cineplex happening all the time. I think there's no greater example of this divide being crossed than to go over to a different filmmaker, jesus Franco, who many people know, for you know all these skin flicks, all these bizarre surrealist horror films. He did stuff like venus and furs with the late james darren uh did films like faceless, which is like a who's who of uh people who are past their prime, uh, but his one of his earliest gigs was as an assistant director to Orson Welles on Chimes at Midnight. Jess Franco, sovereign chief of schlock in Europe, like the Eurosleeves king, started with Orson Welles and Shakespeare and I know there's that exchange that happens with I can't remember who exactly, because I know Fellini has some conversations with some of the guys doing a lot of the yeoman work I know similar. I don't know if Antonioni did. I know Leone was basically in in the trenches with him for all intents and purposes because of what he was doing with the Spaghetti Western. But you know it's.

Speaker 3 39:23

There is a bit of that constant exchange and the fact is they were in a golden age, so many films were being made at the same time and filling so many different roles in the market. Obviously they were making it to cash in on exports to America and to the wider international audience. But the simple fact of the matter is, with so many of these films being made, you know I'm not not surprised they were being treated, you know, the same, as like dime novels, where it's like you read it it's like, oh sweet, that's neat, and then it collects dust on your shelves for like the next five decades or it gets, you know, sent to goodwill afterwards. I'm not surprised one bit, because when you have that much, not even gold, that much just decent fucking cinema happening, I'm not surprised if they would literally just show up and just, you know, treat it like you know, literally monday football, you know I'm not surprised one bit, but, uh, to get back to burr with a crystal plumage, uh, I think.

Speaker 3 40:20

What I think, what makes this I described, I described this as everything right and wrong about this film can be summed up in it's Dario Argento's directorial debut. He had started out doing critic work and then moved into screenwriting. Speaking of collaboration and interrelations, he was one of the guys who originally worked on the story treatments for Once Upon a Time in the West with, of all people, bertolucci. So you have, you know, dario, you know king of Italian horror, argento and Bernardo the conformist, bertolucci, you know last tango in Paris and all that.

Speaker 3 41:00

So there's this constant interchange happening there as well. But he didn't, you know he had been writing for a bunch of films and it wasn't until you know, obviously he tapped dad on the shoulder and said Papa, can I make a movie?

Speaker 1 41:15

You know, because I believe that is. No, I'm with you and that's kind of the story with like a lot of these Italian guys like with, with who's the big italian? You know I'm talking about? Uh, king connell de laurentis it was very much a family operation, right, you know?

Speaker 2 41:36

what I mean, uh yeah operation too correct, yeah, it was a was a producer financier something like that yeah, because I believe Salvatore was at.

Speaker 3 41:45

I believe it was. Was it Titus? I can't remember the name of the studio that's at the front of Titanus, yeah, titanus, there we go, because I know Salvatore was a producer and financier. I know his brother, I believe is Claudio Claudio Argento, who would later go on to not just work with his brother routinely and help him out with the kind of community he was fostering with Michele Soavi, with the church and the sect, and also Lamberto Bava and the Demons films, but he also would go on to do Sante Sangre with Hodorowski, I believe. I believe that was Claududio argento who helped him, who helped with that.

Speaker 3 42:28

But yeah, so there's a big, there's a big nepo, not not even a nepo baby thing, it's more of just kind of a. It's like the cop family operation. Yeah, it's like an empire of filmmakers and how that. That even goes back to b, because I believe his father was a camera operator, like from the silent age into the talking age, and you know, he obviously started out then as cinematographer and then became, and then, of course, his son, lamberto, became a director and writer as well. So, yeah, there's definitely a lot of kind of family lineage stuff happening there.

Speaker 1 43:01

I'll tell you, ryan, you mentioned that Argento seemed to you to be the person that like struck more of a chord and seemed more relatable, and I think it's partly because Argento to me it seems, out of all the films we've watched, but of some of the periphery knowledge I have he's a guy that actually encourages you to identify with a protagonist. If you're a voyeur, you're a voyeur from a good guy, right? I mean, we talked about Bay of Blood. It's an absolute free-for-all, very nihilistic, right. When I was watching Torso, I was under the impression that the redhead, danny, was going to be our lead character. You're kind of like adrift as to who is supposed to be the lead, and if you identify with anybody, it's the POV of the killer, right? Yeah, exactly, argento puts you in the shoes of a relatable protagonist, whereas these other guys do not for the most part.

Speaker 2 43:47

And also the plot. The mystery plot is very strong in that movie. I think you might disagree, but I think it was even stronger than in Don't Torture a Duckling, which has a great mystery element to it, a great story and all that. But this one felt very much like I want to really find out what's going on, and so he has closure himself to figure out what.

Speaker 3 44:06

And I think the secret to uh, bird's success there is that it has that pointed focus, that there is a protagonist. I didn't mind the, I didn't mind the kind of ensemble structure of don't torture a duckling. Just because it's, it becomes almost less of the mystery and then it kind of becomes the machinations of seeing how this crime spree is affecting the people of this village, is affecting the various sub. You know the various suspects. And the difference too is that both bay of blood and duckling are kind of free-for-alls in the sense that there are no real. There are no real heroes per se or there are no strong personalities. You're kind of gravitating around.

Speaker 3 44:42

You're kind of free-for-alls in the sense that there are no real, there are no real heroes per se or there are no strong personalities. You're kind of gravitating around, you're kind of checking in on different points. In you know the machinations of plot, whereas with bird it is very focused. In you have this protagonist who's thrown way in over his head and is constantly being attacked left, right and center. Christ, they even got the assassin from the man who knew too much. They got, because I believe that was um reggie really the guy who with the yellow coat yes, that is the man from, the assassin from the famous storm cloud cantata jimmy stewart version.

Speaker 1 45:21

Yes, the guy in oh, literally.

Speaker 3 45:24

I was sitting there thinking Christ, I've seen this man's face before when I first watched it, and then, when I looked it up, I'm like, oh, axeware.

Speaker 1 45:32

Wow.

Speaker 3 45:34

Yeah.

Speaker 2 45:36

Also, I think the urban setting gives it another level of sophistication that makes it much more interesting visually to look at too. Level of sophistication that makes it much more interesting visually to look at too. I mean the look at the art gallery as this little like oasis, an island of white light in an otherwise desolate black street that he he sees almost as like a vision of unreality as he's walking, happens to be walking by and gets caught up in all this um. And then you mentioned the other scene where he re-enters the gallery at the end of the movie, unbeknownst to him, and it's perfect circular loop, black yes, exactly, and the thing also is that's a very it sets the pace of a lot of what he'd do later on.

Speaker 3 46:20

Because I think the reason why also it works so great as an archetypical giallo is because so many of the things that would become fascinations of the genre would also become fascinations of argento. Uh, specific things like protagonists who are trying to recall the exact memory that holds the key to solving the mystery. Uh, that is right there in the outset in Bird of the Crystal Plumage, similarly his. The thing also about Argento is that there's always a uniform vision for the production in terms Like right down to color palette, like I've literally sat down and I can tell you what the palette. It's almost like watching a painter apply his craft. I can tell you almost the palettes. It's almost like watching a painter ply his craft. I can tell you almost exactly the color and the. You know the, the timbre of each film.

Speaker 3 47:13

And part of the reason why I initially was thinking about Clute is because I always associate a good chunk of it as a very cold, chilly kind of. You know, elements of it are very kind of cold and chilly, and the thing is this isn't going to be the last time Argento does that, because he'd later do the very same thing with Tenebrae in 1982, but push to this pseudo futuristic stream, or similarly deep red. If you actually sit down and notice it, it's almost there on the title. It's a very warm film. There aren't really a lot of blues. There aren't really a lot of you know cool colors.

Speaker 1 47:48

Do you like my Suspiria reference with my lights? Honestly, yes, yeah yeah, very stylish.

Speaker 3 47:54

Yeah, yeah, and so you know so much of what. Because the thing also is Argento would essentially become the final torchbearer for the genre. Because the thing also is, argento would essentially become the final torchbearer for the genre. Because the thing about the Italian exploitation industry is that the comedown happened towards the end of the 80s and rolling into the 90s and it's just kind of this. You know, the money's all drying up, basically, where you know there was the big boom in blockbusters from America, which is obviously taking a slice out of the pie. And no matter how many ripoffs you do of Terminator or this or that or the other, you just can't compete with the sheer juggernaut quality of a lot of these American exports that are coming into Italy. But generally speaking, I think it's just the structures of it, the ancient structures of the industry, going down with it.

Speaker 3 48:51

But the only guy who really kind of although obviously people will say oh, he started falling off after opera in 87. His mid-period stuff in the 90s is still good. And then of course people are very iffy on everything from after Sleepless in 2001. But the fact of the matter is the only man making Gialli when all was said and done was Argento. After the genre's boom period. You know he was the man who, even after having a decent international success with Suspiria and slightly less so with Inferno, he came back to the Giallo genre at a time when it wasn't really that popular at all Like him and falchi, basically brought the house down on it with tenebrae and new york ripper both coming out in 82.

Speaker 3 49:33

Um, but yeah, everything that would go and kind of inform his career is there in burr with a crystal plumage. It's almost this. It's like a manifesto for Dario Argento, the auteur, and it's one of the reasons why it does still hold up immensely, even though I feel there are certain lulls in pace. And one of the other things that kind of haunts him throughout his career is hit and miss humor. Here there are some fantastic lines. I told you Ursula Andress goes with the transvestites, not the perverts, I should hope so. Fucking fantastic. 10 out of 10. Best line. But you know it doesn't always land like with a lot of his attempts at humor later on. But even still it's like everything this man would be about for the next 40, 50 years of his life is there, perfectly laid there, and you see how it kind of evolves and changes and has elements added and subtracted in various efforts.

Speaker 2 50:34

I was going to say what about a lot of the motivations behind the perpetrators in these movies are outlandish and or absolutely ridiculous, to say the least. I would say. Do you think that this, this one in crystal plumage, was probably the least preposterous? Well, I'd say bay of blood is the least preposterous. That's purely based on greed.

Speaker 2 50:55

Uh property the least preposterous bay of blood the motivation of the killer was to oh, I thought you meant with the two kids kill their parents I'm saying the motivation of the killer, because that is purely a profit-based motive. These other ones are all these weird psychosexual motivations um this one this is.

Speaker 1 51:17

This is this is a from a time before everyone thought the ending of psycho was bad. Back Back then they were like, oh, that's dope. They explained why he's crazy.

Speaker 2 51:26

This was like the ending of Psycho on steroids here.

Speaker 3 51:29

Well, not even just that, but also in fairness to White Knight, for Don't Torture a Duckling for a bit. The interesting part of that is that it technically, while it is psychosexual in nature, it's about a preservation of purity. So at least, even though obviously the man's a cracked actor for lack of better words, you know he's gone completely off the deep end. It's a complete perversion of the idea of the priest as father figure, as guardian. I don't see that necessarily as outlandish, just because you can tell what the emotional motive of it was. And again, it's kind of the reason why that finale kind of brought the hammer down on the film for me. But birth of crystal plumage kind of suffers from the issue of.

Speaker 3 52:11

It's probably one of the more plausible, one of the more realistic and that kind of follows a lot of the film, because a lot of the film tries to use then cutting edge ideas of forensics, reconstructing criminal profiles and stuff like that. But at the same time it kind of does ring a little. It rings a little hollow, not necessarily because it doesn't make sense or it doesn't click, but simply because it does lack that grand guignol finish. Argento became known for where killers go out in these utter blazes of glory, I mean even power, nine tales, I won't spoil who gets it. The that film's finale is literally someone thrown down an elevator shaft clinging to the rails, hands burning with smoke, breaking their legs on the top of the fucking elevator Even in even in what is regarded as one of his weaker films.

Speaker 3 53:14

You get a finisher like that, whereas here she gets judo chopped on the back of the head and then we get the psycho you know psychoanalysis at the end or like phenomenon which has an ending where I almost like, I almost like threw up when they have that like pool full of dead body.

Speaker 1 53:30

God, it's like you know, it's like if he pulls his hand out of the fucking handcuff, it's just like oh my god, it's wretched, it's fucking wretched it really is, but like it's interesting, the um the forensics aspect of it?

Speaker 2 53:46

yeah, because that's actually a really interesting point. They go through this entire elaborate scene about the modern supercomputer which is going to replace, uh, human detectives in terms of finding our perpetrator and it's like it's a complete joke. Maybe that's maybe that's an allusion back to what you're saying about humor um, I think that's very much a piece.

Speaker 3 54:06

There's a reason why a lot of people and I don't always fully agree with it, but there's a reason why a lot of people call argento the italian hitchcock and it's a film like Bird with the Crystal Plumage. That idea of Hitchcockian irony, that idea of these moments of you know, these sly moments of humor, as well as his very, very good handle on building and generating suspense, and also that very good handle of what to show and what to pull back on. The kill in the bedroom where the blade goes down to the hoo-ha. You don't see it, but it's like texas chainsaw.

Speaker 1 54:48

You know it happened and you're like squirming at the fucking thought that's his genius, absolutely, I just want to pause here real quick to say thank you, zara Thustra Z-Nob, for our first ever super chat. Two bucks Canadian dollars that's really awesome. Canadian dollars oh, it is two dollars Canadian let me check the conversion.

Speaker 3 55:14

I'm happy to be part of this christening of the Film Journal channel.

Speaker 1 55:18

We might get $2.12 out of this guy, okay.

Speaker 2 55:23

I'm officially the cash cow, the end of the movie. After the long psycho-style explanation about the killer's motivation, they're then showing curious shots of the main character's girlfriend on the plane going home to the united states. And there are they implying or I guess it's up to the viewer to make this decision, are you, are they implying that this girl will also have a similar fate as our killer in the movie because she has suffered a similar traumatic incident which led to the killer's uh?

Speaker 3 55:58

three. That's an interesting interpretation of it. I haven't thought of that yet, because the only other time I thought about that kind of a uh on the plane ending was uh, was actually that. That is a good analogy to that kind of an idea. I fucking love Alice. Sweet Alice, by the way, is one of my favorite horror films absolutely.

Speaker 3 56:25

But that idea, because the only other time I ever thought of whenever we get like a plane ending the other time I think about that is in a Umberto Lenzi film so Sweet, so Perverse, which essentially ends with a kind of sort of the so Sweet, so Perverse, which essentially ends with a kind of sort of the you know, I will find you moment where someone you know it's, basically you have someone keeping an eye on the perpetrator of X crime, and that's an interesting read of that finale. I think some of it might also just be pure rhythmic, like kind of keeping you in suspense of, okay, what's happened to, uh sam, what's happened to sam, oh, sam's on the plane, happy ending, they all get to leave and of course you have that sort of again that nice bit of irony where it says you know, come to italy, nothing happens here. Right, that, just 90 minutes of nothing happening. Who's like?

Speaker 2 57:13

people experienced I think ter those also talks about this theme of the impotent lead character in a lot of these Jawa films that Sam is supposed to be like an impotent male, not just in terms of his relationship but also in terms of his inability to you know solve a mystery. Did you buy into that or not?

Speaker 1 57:33

I don't really they were doing it. They were having sex, weren't they? Yeah, yeah, there's a good implication that there's trouble there yeah, well, I think the well.

Speaker 3 57:48

I think the impotence thing probably holds a bit more sway in in something like torso, but then again, that's just because it's a very literal case application. I think it's more of I don't really see that in birth of crystal plumage, because I don't think it's it's really reaching for that level, because it's very clear that, uh, suzy, kendall and and tony busanti's characters have a perfectly healthy relationship. Their only problem is that at first it's just oh shit, I'm a witness, so they got me here for a bit longer than we were expecting. She takes it in stride, but the more they get deeper into the mystery and into attempts on their life, then she's beginning to get freaked out as anyone else would, and because it starts going down that trail of kind you know, kind of, and she gets that terrific set piece where the killer tries to knock her off in their apartment, which is it's a great scene. Oh my God, late, insane tension from that scene, utterly insane.

Speaker 2 58:53

And the fact that they have the eye hole, you know, the eye hole, the eye hole, yeah, utterly insane. And the fact that they have, you know yeah yeah of course, perfect lens.

Speaker 3 59:01

Flare of the blade as it finally comes, oh terrific. I don't really see the impotence angle there, though, just because I didn't buy into it myself.

Speaker 2 59:10

I was just listening to a lot of the commentary tracks by some of these uh people and it's like they're like, oh, a very common trend in these and I'm like I don't.

Speaker 3 59:18

I think I think, if I think, if anything and this is just kind of this is part of the issue of reconstructing genres through critical analysis is that sometimes you start looking for trends and looking for you, you know illusions and ideas that simply are an interpretation but are largely an incident, and I think you know a lot of people obviously try to do all this. People have you know, try to interpret. You know, torture or duckling, as you know, say like anti-Catholic, and while there is sort of this dance between religion, superstition and you know cold reality, fauci himself, kind of you know, described himselfition and you know cold, cold reality. Falchi himself, kind of you know, described himself, as you know, troubled, afflicted, in short, your average catholic. So he still considered himself a man of religion, but he wasn't.

Speaker 3 1:00:07

He had a, he had issues with the organization of it and so it's less a, so it's less than like an affront to God, but more like the corruption of these institutions, which goes into a lot of other political angles on his work.

Speaker 1 1:00:23

It occurred to me while watching Torso and Don't Torture a Duckling too how often the killer is this sort of angelic, almost virginal kind of presence, right, it's kind of like carp. How carpenter painted michael myers, you know, um, honestly right, as a sort of like childlike character. I mean, it's the professor in torso, correct, right, he's, he's, seems to be. Everybody that sort of seems upstanding ends up being kind of, uh, the freakiest right to to that um reveal, though like I don't know, just weird.

Speaker 2 1:01:00

I'm sorry not to go jump to the next movie, but like torso when she tells him, oh, you have the most beautiful eyes when you're not wearing your glasses, and he says, don't, don't say cruel things. To me, it's like what? Like what like?

Speaker 1 1:01:13

it's just, there's something, there's something wrong there, like I think that might have been lost in translation a little bit, but it is.

Speaker 3 1:01:21

There are certain terms there are certain terms or phrases and there's also things that I kind of like as interesting fact. Don't torture a duckling was the only of the four films that never had an international or english language you know release, because it got a very limited release in Italy but because of the allegations of anti-Catholicism and everything, it basically was limited run. They made an English dub so it's available for home video, but they never released it internationally, so that was the only film I wound up watching in Italian. Same I watched that one.

Speaker 2 1:01:56

I watched torso in italian too torso, there's like four versions on my disc and you can watch one with english, one with half english, half italian, the other one with swahili. I don't know, you could do everything oh yeah, interesting.

Speaker 3 1:02:11

The interesting thing, though, when you when you mention that childlike element, though, is the fact that markerel, who played the priest in Don't Torture a Duckling, was only 23 when he played that role, so he was young, he was a literal young adult, and his story is a bit of a tragic one because he had died of a heroin overdose at 35 in the early 80s. But it's like man had shops.

Speaker 3 1:02:37

He really did, and that performance is is one of the standouts alongside, like florinda balkan, but I want to do this in chronological order, so yeah, what's our next movie?

Speaker 2 1:02:47

bay of the love. Closing comments on the bird. Well, that's also the thing I was gonna say. Really didn't really talk.

Speaker 1 1:02:52

I was gonna say I was gonna say. Another thing about the argo thing is, it seemed to me, it occurred to me that a lot of his protagonists are also tourists, which I think, as a foreign viewer, allows you to kind of get. I mean, the writer in Tenebrae is in a hotel the whole time.

Speaker 3 1:03:06

He's a tourist. Yeah, he's an American author who has this very popular edition in Italy.

Speaker 1 1:03:11

Going to the German ballet school. Jennifer Connelly is kind of a. Is she? She's American? I believe she's.

Speaker 3 1:03:20

American, yeah, cause her name's, I believe. I believe it's like Jennifer Simpson or something like that.

Speaker 1 1:03:25

I don't remember the main gal from from Inferno. What was she doing?

Speaker 3 1:03:30

Uh, she was. Oh, I know, I know you're talking about I. Well, the thing is that was actually largely set in New York, so it wasn't even like a oh, it's a foreigner thing. No, it's all actually happening in this surrealist version of New York. Yeah, I feel like it.

Speaker 1 1:03:43

But you know what I mean. It feels like it's happening in, like the back room of the Suspiria. You know school, right, I like Inferno though, but yeah, I think, uh, yeah, I think that allows you to sort of latch on, but like also this idea of like impotence and men and protagonists.

Speaker 3 1:04:01

It's like can you account for that when argento, like most of his protagonists, were women most of the time? Yeah right, absolutely, in fact. That's actually probably the funniest thing too is that, even though obviously there are elements of nudity, there are elements of, you know, there are sexual elements in many of his films. He is probably the least interested in being, you know, sexy for sex's sake. In a way, you know, a workman like a martino or a falchi is like fuck it, it's what the it's what they're paying for, we'll put it in the damn picture you know and you get films like torso which literally opens like a swedish film, basically.

Speaker 1 1:04:34

Yeah, I think Argento is, yeah, he's less interested in just like exploitative nudity and stuff. Right, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 1:04:44

And Bava really only takes advantage of that, having come from the old school. For lack of better words, really only takes advantage of that when he feels it necessary or when it's like, integral to the motif, you know, to the idea of the film, like hatchet for a honeymoon, which is you're following this very, very twisted killer throughout the entire picture. Um, right, but yeah, argento's argento uses, uses it, but it's more, more or less like a tool in the tool belt as opposed to. You know, here's the whole package.

Bay of Blood: The Proto-Slasher

Speaker 2 1:05:15

For lack of better words well, can I just clarify one thing that I guess, george, and I have talked about this before, is that the you and you mentioned it earlier is that the term jalo gets thrown around a lot for all these movies and not necessarily everything that these people made is considered a jalo, like suspiria, for instance, is not, by any means, it's not a.

Speaker 2 1:05:34

Giallo. Yes, right, Okay. Is it because of the supernatural aspect to it that is like a hard no with Giallo, or is there something else that you or other people critics have said is like part of the criteria for that?

Speaker 3 1:05:49

Giallo, by and large, is not supernatural. The only thing that ever gets debated, though, is phenomena, because the ideas behind it aren't necessarily a Obviously the idea of, you know, girl, psychic link with bugs and things. Obviously that's a fantasy element, but it still has the grounded image of the killer clad in black slouch hat. You know all of that imagery and the structure of it is more akin to it, and it doesn't hinge on the supernatural elements per se. The murder, miss, the murderer is not a supernatural entity. I I guess, if there was a line to be drawn, that's kind of it.

Speaker 1 1:06:30

You know just not to interrupt, but like you were saying before about how Jello has its roots in American pulp and mystery stories, and also the English motor mystery. Yeah, yeah, the monkey with the razor blade is an Edgar Allan Poe reference, right Like the very first American mystery author, you know so it's kind of Exactly yeah, right.

Speaker 2 1:06:53

And one other thing I've heard Quentin Tarantino talk about movies like American quote American Jalo. Like almost considered cruising William Friedkin's cruising to be an American Jalo, but he was like no, it's not. I would not consider that a Jalo because the main character is a police officer who is doing the investigation and typically these movies need to be civilians who take over the role of a police investigator. Now I don't know how much I put I I. I see his point, but then when you look at a movie like the New York Ripper, which is a Jalo made by Fulci, that's a police officer who's doing the investigation.

Speaker 1 1:07:30

So you know, I know, there's not there's not I think

Speaker 3 1:07:35

right. I think that's an interesting line to draw and I think obviously there are certain exception, there are certain exceptions that can be made. But I think also the idea of the American giallo in and of itself is that there are very few that really occupy that sort of thing, because it also isn't just a what archetypes, you know, can we check the list on? There's a certain attitude to structure where it's almost, you know, there's almost this kind of anything can happen mentality in a lot of these films which hinges on that idea of sort of a dreamlike state. You're kind of being put in where it's not.

Speaker 3 1:08:16

None of these films take place in a conventional reality or they take on a very dreamlike element.

Speaker 3 1:08:23

It's like I said, it's the reason why bay of blood, that ending really is the only ending that can't exist because there was no reality where, oh, they just get to ride off scot-free, you know, oh, everything just gets, you know, lost and forgotten.

Speaker 3 1:08:38

No, it's literally, there's literally too much blood that's been spilled and Bava understands it's such a farshal turn of events that the only way you can really end it is to have a complete, you know, punchline version of an ending, you know, and similarly punchline version of an ending. And, similarly, the thing that really made the ending to Duckling stand out is that juxtaposition of, of course, the infamous demise of the killer, but then juxtaposed against, essentially, a vision of all of the kids he was in charge of and he believed he was helping in heaven, and then him joining them as a very surreal poetic flourish, and it's one of the few flourishes he really goes for in that film. Um, so it's, I definitely see what it is, but there's, you know, I wouldn't, I I'm not sure if I'd even say cruising, kind of fills that role, necessarily because of how much Friedkin was into grit and you know, kind of the realist, realist angle. You know I can't.

Speaker 3 1:09:42

William I shot 45 minutes of gay porn, friedkin.

Speaker 1 1:09:46

I went to the gay club, they let me shoot. It was crazy, right, you know. That's why we have Friedkin impression yes, he's very fond of things.

Speaker 3 1:09:58

Are you a?

Speaker 1 1:09:58

other man.

Speaker 3 1:10:01

Are you native to Chicago, George?

Speaker 1 1:10:03

No, but I'm Midwestern.

Speaker 3 1:10:06

At least you can put on the Chicago.

Speaker 1 1:10:09

Yeah, I'm trying to do my Friedkin thing, he is a Chicagoan, he's got to start the TV station. I was going to ask about cruising. Are there POV moments of the killer in cruising? Yeah, he is a Chicagoan, that's right. He's got to start the TV station. But I was going to ask about cruising. I can't remember.

Speaker 2 1:10:21

Are there POV moments of the killer?

Speaker 1 1:10:23

in cruising yes, yes, I think in the park, and he's wearing black leather right.

Speaker 2 1:10:28

Yeah, I guess the aspect to it is huge, especially for the ending.

Speaker 1 1:10:31

Well, we also get the kind of ending we were talking about with Plumage and with Alice, Sweet Alice, to where we don't know whether or not Al Pacino has been turned to a killer at the end of the movie. Right.

Speaker 3 1:10:44

Or if he was always there. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 1:10:47

Right where there's that moment of has he been warped into a killer by his experience? Yeah, which was probably the most controversial element of the movie. That detective wolfman, that guy we had on before, summed it up very well cruising he goes, it was too gay for the regular population and too anti-gay for the gay population for anyone to like. It's like that's very true, right, pretty much, pretty much. But with bay of blood, if we could transition to this sort of softly, yeah, I felt like, first of all, bay of Blood is different for a lot of reasons.

Speaker 1 1:11:18

I really liked it and, um, it was different because it felt to me like the first Giallo film we'd watched, where it had some sort of political with a small p statement to make at the end, where the kids kill the parents. I think the more realistic version would have been to have the husband and wife turn on each other for some reason, but they have the kids kill the parents to say like, oh, the legacy of greed is being passed down because of capitalism or whatever. And I'm sure there's some sort of remnants of like, um, you know, uh, mussolini, that runs through some of this stuff, a little bit kind of like with sallow or whatever, right, you know. I'm sure there's something there, especially with the catholic church too. Right, come on.

Speaker 3 1:12:02

I don't know enough about italian fascism, well I think, well, I think also the ending, my read of that ending, I I kind of I look at it in a certain way because I've been talking about how bava obviously knows that this is a very farshal film. There are so many bizarre characters, so many emotions taken to their absolute, zeniths, motivations, that the only way to get what you want is to keep digging the hole you're in. I mean, that's kind of the famous bit with the conniving, with the conniving couple. You know is that after it's like oh yeah, we killed that guy, okay, we gotta go kill that girl, we gotta go kill that, like going off of it, like it's a goddamn grocery list, so he knows it's complete farce.

Speaker 1 1:12:47

So obviously there's the punchline ending of oh yeah, the kids fucking killed them because there's no way in hell they're getting away with this, yeah, but, jake, I didn't find the first, the first, the whole the film to be that satirical in terms of like it's in its treatment of its characters. I was involved, I liked it well the thing is I don't.

Speaker 3 1:13:04

Well the thing is I don't see it's in as as satire necessarily, though that's the thing it's. It's more of a you you look at there's such a. The way it devolves is is is kind of my thing is that it starts out. You know very base level things. Obviously. You have a few eccentrics who live in the, who live in the area, that are concerned about what's going to happen to the bay. You have you know conniving businessmen who want to get the rice.

Speaker 3 1:13:32

You know concrete and all that jazz the scooby-doo kind of yeah, exactly, you know, old man withers, it was you the whole time I was trying to keep people out of the bay.

Speaker 1 1:13:43

You know like right exactly.

Speaker 3 1:13:46

And then of course, well, but the thing is the great part of it that kind of sets up the fact that this is going to be unlike anything. When Bava's done, like obviously you can say that there's sort of the thread of blood and black laces, whodunit structure. But the fact he goes for a double whammy of we open with the death of the old lady who owns the bay and then the husband who killed her gets killed, that sets the tone of. Anything is possible in this film there is. There are no limits, no holds barred. But it's the devolution, it's the bodies piling on top of bodies to such a exorbitant degree.

Speaker 3 1:14:33

There is no way you can resolve this within reality. It's I look at it the same way. I look at the ending of I spit on your grave. There is no way in hell that woman's coming out of that forest, a sane person, right. There is no happy ending after that. I don't care if he made sequels, I don't care if there's you know, I spit on your grave the next generation. There is no way in hell that woman is coming out of that forest.

Speaker 1 1:14:57

She is either going to go insane in space.

Speaker 3 1:14:59

Yeah, yeah, exactly, it's like she's going to go. She's run off into the woods. She's completely insane. She becomes the villain of someone else's slasher film. Basically, I watched a villain origin story, um, here. It's just that, because it's a body it's one of the earliest body count films and and of contributes to the slasher that idea and, of course, almost all the hallmarks, you know, sexed up teenagers that get it, you know, curse you for having a't find it to have like half the sex appeal of something like Torso.

Speaker 1 1:15:39

I mean all these kids they picked up?

Speaker 3 1:15:41

Oh, not nearly. And again, that's Bava coming from the old school. Sex and nudity is not a ooh. I must be lecherous and leer over it. Yeah, but he's got Claudine Auger from Thunderball, who is just absolutely beautiful yeah.

Speaker 1 1:15:56

And I was involved in her and her husband, because here's the thing, jake, I disagree with you on this thing being so out of control. From the beginning, I was intrigued and you know what, in a movie like this, I want to pick two bad people and be on their side in the game of bad versus bad. Right, am I wrong? So I thought, like I see what you mean there.

Speaker 3 1:16:15

It almost becomes a bit of like a crime caper element there, where it's like you know you have people.

Speaker 3 1:16:21

So you have these criminals over here that at least have this goal and, to be fair, there's one the one. Shred of it before you scratch beneath the veneer and you get to the cynical reasons. At least she had the veneer of. Oh, I must clear my father's name from murdering my you know my mother and all that jazz. You know there's that. But my point is again, it's not that it starts out. He sets the tone by saying anything can happen, but it does start relatively normal. I can see that. My point, though, is that, as it goes on and as the bodies keep piling up, I heard there were like I think someone sat down and counted.

Speaker 2 1:17:00

I didn't count it myself, but there's like 13 deaths or something like that in the film I like it's like random teenagers to just be body, you know, to be cannon fodder in the middle of the movie, for no reason whatsoever, it's just to pass out the run time too well yeah and yeah, not and not just.

Speaker 3 1:17:19

I believe actually that was brought in by producers, I think I'm not surprised wouldn't show.

Speaker 1 1:17:25

Yeah, I'm not surprised.

Speaker 3 1:17:27

Yeah but that, but that, basically, but, but it's like as well. Again, that also kind of contributes to to how I look at it, though. Is that because now you have OK, now you have four dead fucks on top of. You know, someone's in the bay. The old lady's been hanged. Now you have these two crazy characters that are about to spoil the couple's schemes, so they got to get whacked. You know, carlo Rambaldi's just spilling blood all over the goddamn place. You have that immaculate twist where the secretary of the businessman storms in on the illegitimate son of the old couple and he's, like you, fucking conniving bitch. You know, has that whole scene happen? Yeah?

Speaker 1 1:18:10

I loved it. Double crosses of oh, you sleep with him and that this will happen I also like this character that also appears in torture, a of Duckling, which is this sort of like John Steinbeck, faulkner, kind of mentally slow, like villager character that becomes kind of like the scapegoat, you know like right, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 1:18:27

But yeah, my point is that it's not that it's. It starts. He sets the mood by saying anything can happen in this film, but everything else about the setup, like I said, is pretty conventional and again, it's a lot of basic motivate, a lot of understandable motivation. You know, a lot of ideas of greed. You know who wants this, who wants that. You know, obviously, the, the, the entomologist, with the insects. You know he doesn't want.

Speaker 3 1:18:50

You know he has his ecological reasons for not wanting, you know, the bay to get spoiled, but also his own private obsession with bugs and being a bit of a minor sadist, his wife being, you know this, uh, you know, occultist, you know, reads tarot cards and proclaims everyone's fate and stuff like that, and so she's not dealing death but proclaiming that death is coming, so kind of. You know. You know so it it's like with don't torture a duckling where it is. You didn't directly kill them, but you said their fate is sealed. And or duckling's case, you deliberately willed this series of events into being, or in her cases or in the case of the lady in Bay of Blood.

Speaker 3 1:19:36

It's simply a oh death, death. All these terrible things are happening and of course, the husband's not listening to any of it too. So you got that lovely, loveless marriage happening in the back. But that's my point is that the more you look at, the more elements that get brought into play and the more they start stacking on top of each other. It isn't a. It's complete farce from top to bottom. It's a devolution of okay, now I have to go kill this person to get this done. Now I have to go take care of that body. And the fact of the matter is it's like already, like we're pushing 10 dead people on this fucking premises. There's no way they're getting. They're getting out of this.

Speaker 3 1:20:15

Scott free, yeah so so my thing with the ending is that I I look at it, obviously there's the punchline idea of it and even though the haze code was dead and buried by now, there is kind of that idea that the villains, that villains must go punished and we're out of all the other villains. So here two left gotta do it somehow. But I also part of me thinks and this might be a stretch part of me thinks it's almost a bit of a. It's a bit of like a death row vision sort of, because the thing is you never see the face of who gets up in the villa after the fight in the dark. So I almost want to say maybe it's not a oh, gunshot, you know, oh, the kids did it.

Speaker 3 1:21:01

Maybe it's oh, claudia nager just got fucking her shit rocked in that villa in the final fight and that's basically. She had her brief vision of, oh, everything worked out, we took care of all the things. Now the bay is all mine and her getting shot, because obviously we don't have the shot back in the villa of her dead on the floor to confirm it. But that's kind of. One of my other interpretations is that basically she did not live, she did not survive that final confrontation in the villa let me, let me also yeah I'll take the dream, fine, yeah you know.

Speaker 1 1:21:42

But like, okay, I'll, I'll dig you on that one. But um, I was just gonna ask, like with an actress like claudia auger, who's like gorgeous, right, and ryan you're a big bond guy um, why couldn't these?

Speaker 1 1:21:55

I mean, the way you were describing the reaction of these contemporarily with the public was sort of like as a joke or just like trash. When it came out, what would this have been like a big career come down to be a star of one of these films, if you were a former Bond girl and why, couldn't these Bond girls get any jobs in Hollywood? And why couldn't these Bond girls get any jobs in Hollywood? Thoughts?

Speaker 3 1:22:19

No.

Speaker 1 1:22:20

Or so yeah.

Speaker 3 1:22:23

Go ahead. No, I think with a lot of actresses from this period. I think some of it's also just it's a job At the end of the day. I think there's a lot of just workmanism that comes out of it. I think it's just okay. I did Thunderball Terrific picture made. I did Thunderball Terrific you know, terrific picture made. Lots of more but kind of a lot of.

Speaker 3 1:22:44

There are very few recurring Bond girls. That's kind of the nature of the thing is that she's kind of like you have this one big starring appearance and then you kind of move on to other things. Like Ursula Andress, obviously, after Dr no, she became very prolific in this you know arena of genre entertainment, doing everything from Red Son to Tenth Victim. You know all these different, you know genre films because her career is comparatively young, to say, a gold, a star from hollywood's golden age moving to england or moving to italy to make these b pictures. You know it's the difference from it's the difference from doing uh trog, for instance you know, I guess it's, yeah, it's, it's the difference, yeah it's, no, no go ahead.

Speaker 1 1:23:35

I'm sorry, I'm just guessing. Maybe the mentality was like well, I'm a model from europe, I got to be in bond, that's a career high. I'm just gonna keep doing like because now it's like you think of someone like I don't know olga curie lenko from, like quantum of solace. Okay, she's in that. She gets a shot at doing other shit, you know we'll throw her in max pain or you know other things, right, but um, I guess you guys want to move on to torso. What were your thoughts on I?

Speaker 2 1:23:58

mean I have a few comments about this movie. I think I think most interesting to me was how much this movie is an influence directly on the friday, the 13th series. I mean in a number of ways, not just in terms of location of the isolated campsite with a you know bay lake, whatever you want to call it, the dock.

Speaker 2 1:24:17

There's naked girls walking along the dock. It's very reminiscent of what we would expect from a Friday the 13th movie and in fact, I mean, the thing that shocked me the most was the direct replicated kill scene where the couple is having sex and they get impaled with a spear through it. I mean, isn't that not used in Friday the 13th? I believe part two, the two, the two the couple is having sex and they get impaled with the spear through it. I mean that's. Isn't that not used in friday the 13th?

Speaker 3 1:24:38

I believe part two, you know that's here's some part two, yeah, and and also the uh kill with I believe it's a bill hook of the uh, the the slightly nervous uh gentleman who gets it right in the face, you know, know, swung through the door. That, I believe, was actually the basis of the kill of the kid in the wheelchair in the movie as well, and some, you know, rolling down the hill and no one is safe, not even people in wheelchairs, you know, as in both movies.

Speaker 2 1:25:10

The old lady is not safe at all. That was shocking to start the movie like that where she gets hanged from her wheelchair, all in her wheelchair. That scene is a very haunting scene. There's no dialogue for the first five, six minutes of the movie. It's wonderful as the spokes of her wheelchair stops spinning.

Speaker 3 1:25:35

That is one of my favorite bits. That is one of my favorite wonderful, as the, the wheels, the spokes of her wheelchair stops that she, you know, kicks the bucket that is one of.

Speaker 3 1:25:39

That is one of my favorite bits with that. And the great thing about that scene too is that it kind of echoes bava's earlier gothic work, because while the manor itself isn't innately this you know ancient castle-like place, it's still ornate enough and still carries that haunted quality of a lot of his earlier, like the Body and the Whip and Black Sunday. It carries some of that ambience with it. And of course you have that very classical piece of music by Stelvio Cipriani, which is in complete contrast to the summery Baroque pop stuff that comes on later, or the very eerie opening with the kind of Latin percussion and everything and he just it's a very melancholy opening. It's a very melancholy opening and he also is very unflinching about it. You really sit and squirm with these murder scenes too. That's the other thing I do agree with George, though about too.

Speaker 2 1:26:36

That's the other thing. I do agree with George, though, about the entire middle of the film is kind of like it is gratuitous. It does grind the movie to a halt. I think it would have been a much better way to somehow develop other characters that were involved in the history of the plot.

Speaker 3 1:26:54

In all honesty, as influential as those kills have become?

Speaker 3 1:26:58

Because, in all fairness, those two scenes basically gave two very famous kills to one of the most famous slasher franchises.

Speaker 3 1:27:06

And although I do like the poetic flourish of having this cartoonishly happy dune buggy and then you just get that slow zoom in on it after they're all dead dead with the sad piano music of the theme from the opening of the film, I'm like bava be still my beating heart.

Speaker 3 1:27:24

Uh, I think if they actually did take time to at least flesh people out more, I think it would have lost that idea of the farshal tone. But at the same time, I think he also weaves it in enough to the point where, when she finds the you know, the four dead bodies in the businessman's house, that at least he uses it as fuel to propel us later on in the film. So I can understand why it still works and why it's still part of the picture. But yeah, if they had actually taken that out and had focused on developing the characters we are that are already in play, that are relevant to that plot, um, I think it would have cut down on that and I think it actually would have made the ending feel even stranger, though, if that I think it would have been a classic if we had a little more time with all of our yeah uh, haughty lead characters.

Speaker 2 1:28:19

I I uh, there are a lot of people in this movie, and keeping track of all of them too is is a little challenging. Hey, would you guys mind if? I tapped out for like three or four minutes here do you want to take a break or something, or no?

Speaker 1 1:28:34

we haven't. Is that okay if we take a little break? We haven't done that in a long time. Everybody used to do that where we'd be like, we'll be right back. I don't have any fucking screen to put up for anything.

Speaker 2 1:28:42

Is it?

Speaker 1 1:28:42

okay, guys, if we take a five minute break, yeah. I'm fine with that Okay, cool, we'll be right back.

Speaker 3 1:28:47

We'll be right back after these messages, exactly.

Speaker 1 1:28:50

Thank you, you, you, you, you, you, you. Okay, I'm back everybody, sorry about that. All good that, all good they are. So you haven't seen joker 2 yet right, can you hear?

Speaker 2 1:31:42

me I can, I can have you. You haven't gone to see joker yet. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? I can hear you.

Speaker 1 1:31:55

I don't think you can hear me. Can you hear me?

Speaker 2 1:31:57

I can hear you. I don't think you can hear me. George is having some technical difficulties at the moment.

Speaker 1 1:32:14

I can't hear you.

Speaker 2 1:32:16

Yeah, I know, there we go. Can you hear me now?

Speaker 1 1:32:27

Yes, I'm back. I'm back, sorry, thank you very much.

Speaker 2 1:32:30

Very good. Yeah, that'll be a good outtake.

Speaker 1 1:32:33

Yeah well, is that a bad break? You still have seven viewers that are hanging with us, man yeah it's pretty nice. Sorry guys, I've told the guys before I have a little bit of a head cold so I need to do a little maintenance. Oh my god, I know I have eyes glasses.

Speaker 3 1:32:50

I'm like, I'm like the Dwarven torso, Trust me. What about a comedy of errors myself if I'd walked out there with the shades on in the dark fucking hallway? Just walking in the fucking everywhere.

Speaker 1 1:33:08

No, that's cool. We were talking before about character motivation, the psychosexual sort of things that are plaguing the killers, and I found that, whatever was going on with the killer in Torso, is that our next film?

Speaker 3 1:33:23

No, Don't Torture a Duckling, because Duckling's 72 and Torso's 73.

Speaker 1 1:33:27

Well, good, because I'm happy to end with Torso. I really liked it. But yeah, let's talk about Don't Torture a Duckling. So, jake, you said yesterday on Twitter you go, liked it, but yeah, let's talk about tortura duckling. So, jake, you you said yesterday on twitter, you go uh, this is my, this is my the best movie that's ever been made. Uh, I'm going hard what right first I want to ask ryan I want, I want your.

Speaker 1 1:33:43

You set the ground rules here, but I want to get ryan's straight up, real reaction. What did you think of? Don't torture a duck, go for it.

Speaker 2 1:33:50

I liked it. Didn't love it as much as bird with the Crystal Plumage, for sure. I put this probably second of the four. I agree In terms of quality, in terms of because, like I was describing with the other film, this has a very, very good plot that we are able to to follow very strongly to the. You're invested in this plot. Right, torso has no plot whatsoever. I mean, it is mayhem on bay of blood is like it's there, but we're going to park it between.

Speaker 2 1:34:24

you know, a mad romp of sex in between, um, this one has a very um, you know, a more shocking uh aspect to it in terms of the victims are children, which I was not expecting by any means in a movie like this. In terms of graphic violence, it was kind of shocking to me Maybe I'm wrong here Is that how kind of tame it was. In terms of I've only seen a few other Lucio Fulci films, but my God, those are like outrageously gory.

Speaker 2 1:34:58

And this is like very tame and not sophisticated, but like tasteful, I guess you would say. And I think you have to do that, given the subject matter of your having children be the victims of murder. So you can't show that in a graphic way the same way you would in torso, for instance. So there's that.

Speaker 2 1:35:19

It has a lot of interesting societal themes to it that I don't think are explored in a lot of other of Fulci's movies, from what I from my limited experience, like you know, I look at the New York Ripper, which is like my baseline for when I tried to get into this genre years ago and I was like what the hell is this?

Speaker 3 1:35:40

stuff, famous. Last words, my first giallo, the New.

Speaker 2 1:35:44

York Ripper. My first giallo was the New York Ripper.

Speaker 1 1:35:47

I haven't seen this. I need to see this and um.

Speaker 3 1:35:52

Let me just quick pitch to George Should you or should you not see New York Ripper?

Speaker 2 1:35:57

Honestly, yes, yes, yes, just remember, it's a fucking wild experience.

Speaker 3 1:36:04

It's a very violent. It's very, it's very uncompromising and I look at it as the ending.

Speaker 2 1:36:13

The explanation is like the stupidest thing I've ever seen.

Speaker 3 1:36:16

But anyway, it's utterly insane. But at the same time it's also this weird crossbreed between the New York City grit and grime of, like the 70s urban crime thriller craze on with all the giallo trimmings and trappings, gloved killer, bizarre modus operandi, gruesome deaths that you know anyone could be. It sort of structure, but with a heaping helping of perversing quacking a phone.

Speaker 1 1:36:47

Uh, quacking killer on the phone talking as yeah that very we have a little donald duck in this movie too, though.

Don't Torture a Duckling: Rural Horror

Speaker 2 1:36:56

And that's the segue that you know. Back to this one is there's a Donald Duck weird connection to this movie too, and I read is it true, one of the titles alternate titles is Don't Murder Donald Duck or something like that. It might be.

Speaker 3 1:37:09

I wouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't be surprised one bit.

Speaker 2 1:37:11

Don torture donald duck. Yes, uh, listed at the translation, apparently, of one time.

Speaker 3 1:37:17

Gosh, that's wild that's on a sign at disneyland, right, right, yeah, yeah, interesting since I, since I interrupted you, then keep going. Oh, I was gonna say.

Speaker 2 1:37:30

The only other thing was, um, the implications of the movie in terms of differing from the other films in our list is that this was the rural, this is the rural Jalo compared to all the other urban ones, which was a very jarring change compared to everything else that we've seen. So there's that we're dealing with a much more simple kind of characters here. We're dealing with a much more simple kind of characters here and, of course, the I forget her name, but the character who is the oddball city slicker who comes to the village, the beautiful young lady who's there- I know they're talking about the play by Barbara Boucher.

Speaker 3 1:38:08

I believe yes.

Speaker 2 1:38:09

Yes, I hear Patrizia, she's, she's, you know it's. How do? How do rural people view city people's? Vice versa, there's that. There's the implications about what it says about, um, organized religion in the church, and the movie goes explicitly to say that these children were not, you know, molested or sexually, uh, molested or anything like that. Um, they were all murdered. But you know, you can't help but wonder there's also some kind of implication that it's having about the future revelations of the Catholic Church sex standards.

Speaker 1 1:38:41

That wouldn't have been a thing until the 90s right. That wouldn't have been a thing.

Speaker 2 1:38:45

I don't think how much of that was not implicitly known among people. That was never widely. Oh I get what you mean there.

Speaker 1 1:38:56

It didn't break out in the Washington Post.

Speaker 3 1:38:58

That might explain part of the very part of the big backlash in the immediate local backlash to the film that led to its limited release. I can see that now, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:39:10

How much did we know about Weinstein before it was revealed in the late 2010s?

Speaker 1 1:39:17

Did he?

Speaker 2 1:39:19

Or did he yeah?

Speaker 1 1:39:20

But he didn't do it.

Speaker 2 1:39:22

So there's that, which is an interesting thing. There's the superstitious aspect to it about people taking scapegoats out on people who are different, and and very other in terms of this movie being. Perhaps there's an element of mental illness, perhaps it's just a weird devotion to, you know, superstitious practices and all that. So there's a lot of interesting ideas that are put forth in this movie that you're not seeing in a lot of the more typical slasher aspects of slasher movies in the genre.

Speaker 1 1:39:57

Yeah, yeah, I felt like it was a more sophisticated film than the others and the photography was beautiful in it. I thought it felt like a more elevated film of the genre Right, very much, yeah, no, it's all good.

Speaker 3 1:40:13

Yeah, I'll put it this way, Just much. Yeah, I'll put it this way just for the record. It topped the charts as my new favorite Lucio Fulci thing Because my old favorite and this is going to be a bit jarring, but I'll explain why. My old favorite and it's still like number two is 1981's House by the Cemetery, but with a very specific caveat.

Speaker 1 1:40:35

That's a tough one it must be.

Speaker 3 1:40:36

No, here's the thing, though. It has to be watched in Italian, because the issue is, the English dub is so cram-packed with ADR. It's not just the voice of Bob, there is just dozens of lines that are not there in the Italian dub. Everywhere there's atmosphere. In the Italian version of House by the Cemetery, there's like a bazillion fucking useless lines used to fill the soundtrack. In the English dub, like we don't even have to talk about Bob, just the opening, a simple line of you know, kind of like a hello is the thing that the girl opens with at the opening when she's in the basement, and that is just silence and the atmosphere of it, instead of in the english dub, hello, are you there? Where are you? None of that, none of that.

Speaker 3 1:41:27

In the italian dub there's so much more room to breathe, so much more atmosphere, that the dreamlike, surrealist approach he takes holds a million times better. Um, unfortunately, don't torture. Duckling doesn't have that problem, because even though there was an english language track made, it didn't really see the light of day. So it's kind of. For all intents and purposes, italian is the intended version you're listening to, for you know all, all recordings, but what made it top? That for me, is the fact that, once there are beats of this film that hit you, some of the reveals of how these children died do freak you out. I mean, it's not even like a oh, that's a dummy. It's that if you're buying into the film, you're buying into the logic. Everything is a tool to tell you this story. These aren't dummies, these aren't makeup effects, props. This is real violence happening to effectively real people. It's grounded nature gives almost every aspect of it legitimacy, and so when you see the boy who drowned, or who strangled and then drowned, and you see the way Florinda Balkan leaves, this film is A-class filmmaking. The use of diegetic music from the car radios, the editing, the gruesome uh makeup effects, the switchblade, you know just the it's. It's brutal, it is an agonizing scene to watch.

Speaker 3 1:43:11

And the coda of and, in all fairness, she is not a victimless woman. She's still in her mind willed the deaths of three children for the crime of accidentally trespassing on her stillborn son's grave. You know, it's like she is still clearly not of sound mind. And the poetry of car after car after car on the freeway filled with families passing her by and one of the last things she sees, if we're just going off of. You know, camera as POV is that little. I think it's either a boy or a girl, but this child gliding past in slow motion and that's the last thing she sees before she dies. There is so much Incredibly well done stuff Mechanically and the thing is there are a lot of subtle things too, because I went into this knowing the twist, because I had seen it years ago. But that brilliant. There's brilliant moments all throughout, where in the scene with the funeral, in the funeral, and the mother starts crying desperately. The murderer is here. The murderer is here. Who's the first person?

Speaker 3 1:44:24

the camera pans to the priest right that is the first person in the frame. It's. It's like bernard herman Rosebud motif. If you know what the music means, you know it means the sled and like the first time you hear the music at all, it's wonderfully.

Speaker 3 1:44:42

It's beautifully constructed and so clearly done with intent and so you're buying into the reality of this and it's a terrible thing where everyone's going through in this and I like the ensemble quality of it too, because you're, we're, everyone's going through in this and it's. I like the ensemble quality of it too, because you're not looking for heroes and villains, you're just kind of watching this unfold and you're keeping track of the bait and switches, faulty plants, and you know plants and pays off where kid picks up phone, hangs up and girl who hangs up at the other end, shot of Barbara Boucher. So you don't know, is she preying on these kids or you have. You know, obviously they try to deflect from the priest, but there is still that you know, ambience of, obviously, if he's being made a major character and no one's off limits, for God's sakes, one of the cops could be revealed to have been, you know, the killer.

Speaker 2 1:45:35

Well, she is definitely in, like I'm made to be, the most red herring of of anyone in the movie. Exactly how provocative her presence is in terms of especially as a naked to a small child is you know favorite scene in the movie?

Speaker 1 1:45:53

Yeah, yeah. It was my favorite scene. I thought it was terrific yeah.

Speaker 3 1:45:58

It is so frank and it is so you know. And the thing is obviously you know there is a bit of the you know, not really libertine per se, but because of the laxer censorship standards in Italy, there were still censorship issues there, but it's nothing compared to if you tried to make don't torture a duckling on united states soil, you know the feds would be running in on you from like day one I don't think that would be, but what would that?

Speaker 1 1:46:29

the studio?

Speaker 3 1:46:29

no, no yeah no yeah no, exactly but that. But the beauty of that is that sort of frankness, but the fact, but the way it's played out and the way you know what I was just gonna say.

Speaker 1 1:46:43

I think it's more of a cultural thing. I think, like obviously that scene is played. That's strange that she's doing this to a young boy and so setting her up as a red herring. But think about um leone's once upon a time in america there's a whole sequence where, like young boys want to see a naked woman, and like that wouldn't happen in an american, from an american voice that would be too odd, even though it does resonate as like truthful.

Speaker 3 1:47:08

You know what I mean no, exactly, because because the whole, the whole thrust of the whole thrust of it is that you have these characters that obviously there are because I believe they're 12, is around the age they're on, so they're basically just about, if not, hitting, puberty at that time. So they are starting to think about these things and think about everything.

Speaker 1 1:47:31

Well, and I have to wonder too, with the theme of the film where the priest is worried that these kids will be corrupted exactly I mean, what does that have to you know? Does that play into a theme at all? That there's corruption all around these children and they're being tempted all the time by sort of by? I think you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 1:47:45

There is yeah, there is a bit. There is a bit of that element too, and that's kind of the reason why it's such a fascinating take for the killer to have, because obviously it could so easily have been turned into this schlocky. Oh, he's preying on these little boys and this, that and the other, but it's this idea that he wants to. He does not want them to be corrupted by the world, yeah, but he sees corruption all around and so the only thing, the only way out, is, you know, ship them up to heaven, get, get them up there, get them up there quick. You know it's right it's and again it's.

Speaker 2 1:48:21

The modern world, though, is also what I think. What he's seeing is the most corrupting moral influence on them, and and it's by her well as this person outsider from the city who comes in, and it's corrupting these young children by giving them and not even just that, it's something it can also be something as simple as Thomas Milan's character, offering him that cigarette, and at first he takes it and

Speaker 3 1:48:44

he's like, and at first he takes because clearly, obviously he's like I cannot be indulging in any vices, not this or that or the other. And then, of course, later on in the film, before he gears up for the final act, he refuses the cigarette outright. So there's kind of that interesting again, an interesting bit of temptation, and I think that's also a bit of a sleight of hand to prove that not even while the character is not being, you know, pitched as the red herring is red herring, he is still shown to be human, flawed, corruptible well, you know, that's weird, though, because, like with with I mean with catholics if you believe in original sin, which is one of the tenets of religion.

Speaker 3 1:49:25

His plot is no good right, and also I know that catholic priests smoke and drink but I believe, if I'm correct, is that you're, by being baptized, you're forgiven from original sin right, or at least, uh, partially you might have me on that one, yeah so I think so, yeah, and and the idea, and you know obviously the, the idea of catholic guilt is something falchi is very familiar with because he jokes about that in interviews and stuff like that, and it's also just one of those you know conditions of the religion in many ways. You know it's always always weighing on your mind. The idea, you know, the idea of the sinful world, of that you were born with sin and that you're basically stuck for the rest of your life repenting for that. But you also have to remember too is that he is technically um, but you also have to remember too is that he is technically, if you never hear his age.

Speaker 3 1:50:20

But I'll go on a gamble and say if they cast a man in his early 20s to be a play the role of a priest, I assume the character is in his early 20s as well, like he's been, or like he must have been, ordained, like he went to school, did everything got ordained?

Speaker 3 1:50:35

You know, really young he, that there is a sort of zeal, zealotry of youth, I guess I'd say where because and you see it a lot in like modern, you know, online discourse surrounding religion is that a lot of younger people, when they're adopting religion almost seem more puritanical than any of the old guard in many ways, because they're not fresh and they understand the tenets and they're like we must adhere to this. You know lock, stock and barrel, and I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, obviously, once the mental illness kind of became readily apparent, uh, if that was kind of the warping that was. What became warped is that he has all these teachings ingrained in him but he's clearly mentally unwell and all of a sudden those two things just kind of fuse together in his mind, saying my God, they're going to be despoiled by the world, despoiled by all these horrible things.

Speaker 1 1:51:29

Like perhaps, what can I do? Yeah exactly, is he perhaps an obstacle, a victim of something? Yeah, yeah exactly, is he perhaps an?

Speaker 3 1:51:35

obstinate victim of something? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so he's thinking you know, what can I do to stop this? And unfortunately, his answer is to kill them, because he believes that they'll have died without committing any of these, you know egregious sins. So you know he will die with this misguided idea of preserving innocence does he see himself as this messianic figure, then?

Speaker 2 1:51:58

that he is saving them, that he's saving?

Speaker 3 1:52:01

there's part of that at the price. There's part of that because the first, because literally the first scene. You see, it's almost, he's almost pitched in in a way, almost like a jesus, like a jesus-like figure, because he's walking to the first scene of the crime with the children in arm. I think I can't remember he prays over the body, yeah he prays over the body in multiple instances and there's we cut to the smiling face of the witch yes, which gives you?

Speaker 1 1:52:27

some kind of right? Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 1:52:29

yeah, exactly, and of course that then plays into her motivation of her. Hex is coming to fruition Right, and it's one of those things where you know, obviously people might try and take. You know, oh, there is, it's, it's these. You know, oh, we're showing up the, the Christian people are the true, you know. You know, they truly just filled people where it's like no, it's there. Religion and spirituality exists in this strange space where it's almost the excuse for people wishing and willing these horrible things to happen.

Speaker 2 1:53:03

It's a total perversion I mean in that you break. You break, you know, a commandment thou shalt not kill in order to save other people from Exactly kill in order to save other people from exactly.

Speaker 1 1:53:17

Yeah, it's like, or it's totally warped in a in a fundamentalist point of view, um, you know, totally finding the wrong message well, here's where I wish I had more knowledge of italian culture, because you guys ever see that documentary that was on um shutter woodlands, dark and days bewitched, which was about was about British folk horror movies In England, as far as I can understand. You guys should check it out. It's really good, it's like six hours long. It's terrific and sort of it's about this like conflict in the British psyche. That also was sort of inherent in Tolkien too, of this idea of the pagan ways conflicting in an ancient way with the imposition of Christianity and how paganism and that kind of like stay off the moors. You know which mentality still informs British horror to this day?

Speaker 3 1:54:06

I would be very interested to learn sort of the mythology of witchcraft or paganism in Italy as it, as it exists, yeah right, because I don't know much about I assume it's there though yeah, and and obviously the implication, even you know it's probably a regional variant, but you know you can recognize what she's trying to do with the mud dolls. It's obviously a you know, it's obviously a takeoff on voodoo witch doctor practice with the pins and the certain rituals that you have to do to commune and direct these demons to carry out what you wish to be carried out.

Speaker 1 1:54:47

Yeah, wouldn't you imagine, though, that any sort of Italian witch folklore would come from ancient Rome, would come from that pantheon of gods?

Speaker 3 1:54:56

Exactly exactly.

Speaker 3 1:54:57

So you're one, so I'm always interested to see how many of these practices parallel inter-variance from around the world, like, obviously I'm looking at it from the American perspective of oh, we have, you know, a lot of voodoo history down in, you know, down the southeast. So you know, how does that compare to what's happening with, you know, this idea of witchcraft within this very regional, regionally Italian picture? That is something I'd like to learn more about myself and I think that might actually enhance, help us understand a bit more of Balkan's character, because they don't really get into the weeds of the actual practices themselves. Obviously, she explains you know, this is what I did after she, you know, has her convulsion on the floor and finally comes to but, she's still.

Speaker 3 1:55:54

You know she's convulsion on the floor and finally comes to, but she's still. You know, she's still very closed about it. It's almost like you know we can't. It's almost like we can't talk about it.

Speaker 1 1:56:03

I hate to say the rules, you know yeah. Because, like when, when we have witches again in Suspiria, it's in Germany, right In a place where it's more like there was pagan religions, that was separate from.

Speaker 3 1:56:18

And it's also a more classical conception of it. You know, witches, covens and these gatherings and these sorts of things.

Speaker 1 1:56:25

Yeah right, which is more European because it was based on the paganism of, like, the Germanic and sort of, you know, those tribes that pre-existed, sort of prehistoric, if you will. Like you know, right, european right. But um, I hate to try to wrap this up too soon, guys, but I do have to go soon. I don't want to cut our conversation too short, but um, just, in that case, let's move on to torso should we move on to torso? Is that all right?

Speaker 3 1:56:50

yes, yeah okay, yeah to round it out okay, I apologize.

Speaker 1 1:56:53

I like torso a lot, I thought it was fun I I.

Speaker 3 1:56:57

My weird thing is that I had this sliding scale moment with all four films. Bay of blood kind of stayed where, where I have it at, where I'm like, I enjoy it, I like it. It's not my favorite bava film, that's always blood and black lace, but I've always neat. Burr with the crystal plumage came down just slightly, just because I felt there was a little drag in a few places. Um, obviously, yeah, yeah, just yeah, and obviously don't torture a duckling. I was not expecting it to work the way it did for me last night, but after it hit me emotionally like a sledgehammer I'm like, okay, I guess this is now one of the films I really like. It's my favorite fault, you know, I guess didn't plan on it, it happened torso, I joked about it earlier in the show, but it really is. This played better when you were a horny teenager.

Speaker 3 1:57:43

This is a mid, this is a proper midnight movie and I'm glad I picked it as the representation of martino, because that kind of does characterize a lot of what he'd do later on, because he was. He would go on to do a lot of the weird italian ripoff monster movies, like I believe he did the great alligator. I believe he did what? Um, I can't remember the name of the original film, but I know it was turned into screamers by roger carman and new world pictures where they shot french material. But the point is he'd go on to be kind of the continue to be this jack-of-all-trades in the exploitation film industry. And torso, coming off of a bunch of these more summery high society films, like case of the scorpion's tail, like all the colors of the dark, like I you know, like your Vice is a Locked Room, and moving into what is ostensibly the perfect template of the proto-slasher, this is about as near a classic slasher.

Torso and the Birth of the Modern Slasher

Speaker 3 1:58:43

The only other film that I can think of and it came out the same year was 1973's the Severed Arm, where it's, you know, these people did this terrible thing and then the curse comes back to haunt them, as he, you know, tries to kill them forever, hacking off his arm in the mining accident, basically timothy by the buoys, but as a movie, uh, that is the only other film this early that compares to anything like pre-black christmas and the most frightening thing is how, on the money, torso is in anticipating everything about 80s slashers. It's specifically college students, it's specifically sexed up to the nines. The killer has a very psychosexual motive. There is some terrible trauma that happened to him. Uh, there are very grisly kills, like you know the uh guy who tries to extort him getting fucking his head slammed into the goddamn wall.

Speaker 1 1:59:43

That was awesome. Yeah, that was great, that was that was.

Speaker 3 1:59:45

That was a raw.

Speaker 1 1:59:46

That was a raw one, uh I like how they cut back to his head after we saw the dummy head get completely smashed and they cut back to him and he's like oh.

Speaker 2 1:59:55

And the thing is the only other time I've seen that. It's also quite shocking too, the girl in the mud.

Speaker 3 2:00:02

The swamp scene's a classic.

Speaker 1 2:00:05

And after she leaves the hippie love-in and they're like let's kill that bitch.

Speaker 2 2:00:10

I was like.

Speaker 1 2:00:11

Jesus Christ. And then they shove her head down in the mud. I was like, god damn. And I thought too like at the end, when he's just like, let me just uh, since I have some free time, just start like sawing off arms.

Speaker 3 2:00:23

I was like god, jesus, exactly, exactly it's.

Speaker 1 2:00:26

It's utterly brutal, utterly just even though you don't see a hundred percent of it, you hear a lot of it off screen while he's sawing body parts off you know, like when you think about it just in terms of like, let me open up this girl's shirt here and let me feel her breasts. It's like what you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 2:00:48

like yeah and the other thing too. Yeah, the other thing too is that every cinematographer before now had a really solid emphasis on contrast Vittorio Storaro, sergio DiFinesi I can't remember the guy's name who did Duckling, and of course, mario Bava lensing his own film. They all have this idea of light and dark. Here everything is flooded. All have this idea of light and dark. Here everything is flooded. It's lit like daytime television. But that kind of makes it even more disgusting because it's like we're not trying to hide anything. We're going to show you, in as much detail as we feel necessary, this guy chopping fucking limbs off, putting them in bags, blood all over the fucking floor.

Speaker 1 2:01:34

It is truly anticipatory of everything that would happen in the 80s and the fact it happened a half decade before halloween and everything the imitators would do afterwards I was thinking about the car scene when the the two kids, are making it in the car and we see the pop from behind and I was like, yeah, I've seen this before. I was like wait a minute, no, no, you haven't. You know. I mean like in terms of like chronology of you know, when these films came out.

Speaker 3 2:02:04

That is completely innovation. Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1 2:02:07

That was like oh wow the cat aspect of him stalking.

Speaker 2 2:02:12

Uh, the final girl in the house too, is also quite good, especially my favorite moments where she's trying to get the key out of the door and then she knocks it out but it doesn't land on the paper and he just gently puts the key onto the paper for her so that she can get out of the room and then he can continue the hunt. I mean, that's just exactly brutal.

Speaker 1 2:02:32

This is one of those films that made me think. You know, everybody thought the guy who wrote Scream, what's his name? Kevin.

Speaker 1 2:02:39

Williamson, kevin Williamson was such a genius. He literally just like took the Giallo recipe and just was like what if we did a slasher film and there was, like you know, red herrings and a mystery as to who the killer was? Because in America it always seems like the killer is, with the exception I guess, maybe a freddy krueger, who has sort of a psychosexual origin of revenge or whatever, but most of the time it's just kind of like this ambiguous supernatural evil force right where there's no real mystery about it, right?

Speaker 1 2:03:04

whereas in this film that, however ham-fested or or successful it is, we have this kind of like uber horny guy who is the ultimate red herring dude, who's you know, and I thought the scarf was a little much yes, he was wearing the inverted colors of the scarf.

Speaker 3 2:03:23

That so his was black with red and this guy's was red with black, it's like that was a comical stretch, honestly that was and the.

Speaker 2 2:03:33

Thing they call her up and say stop pretend, stop looking for the man with the scarf, otherwise you're gonna get exactly. And it's like the thing is.

Speaker 1 2:03:41

This is where you can tell that it's clearly being done for pure audience entertainment that there is no greater artistic pursuit happening, happening with torso the food delivery guy is the audience surrogate who walks in on the girl's sunbathing and is like you know, you know exactly but the funniest, the funniest thing about this, to me too, is one of the co-writers of it, ernesto gastaldi.

Speaker 3 2:04:08

I wanted to make sure there was a gastaldi picture in here, but the funniest thing is I accidentally picked probably one of the tamest of his ovure, because Ernesto Gestaldi is kind of renowned as this sort of Cirque du Soleil, m Night Shyamalan in the space of mystery writing. Because what happens specifically in Martino films is there's like five million twists in the final act keep hitting left, right and center out of nowhere. You're like disoriented. For the final reel of his pictures it happened in your vice is a locked room, it happens with the switches in. I believe he. I believe he wrote on scorpion's tail uh, all the colors of the dark benefits terrifically. So does the strange vice of mrs ward.

Speaker 3 2:04:57

Ernesto gastaldi kind of became a go-to of. If I want to do a murder mystery and I want to flummox the audience to hell and back, I get gastaldi, and he also has done tamer versions of that. He had written one of my favorites and one that I encourage everyone to go watch after this, which is forbidden photos of a lady above suspicion, which is part of this. Well, oh, it's fantastic and it's part of this small trio of uh, hitchcockian flavored films where he kind of plays off of the old gothic trope of drive the woman insane until she dies, basically like gaslighting, kills herself yeah, exactly yeah, and he is really built for that kind of a structure.

Speaker 3 2:05:38

So it's kind of fascinating that I I was thinking torso in oh, this is a great prototypical slasher. But ironically enough, it also is one of the tamer structures of eddie gestaldi script because, compared to the others, if this was a gestalti from 71 or 2, it probably, it probably would have been the, it probably would have been the professor, but then the professor would have gotten bumped off and then you would have found out that suzy kendall was secretly the craziest pervert of the whole bunch. And then somehow she gets it in the end. That is the kind of twist he likes pulling off. So it's. It is a bit of a letdown actually, because of the finale too, where it's just he gets. There's the poetry of oh, he was traumatized by seeing a sibling or a friend falling off a cliff, and then all of a sudden he gets thrown off the cliff, but then you don't see any of it.

Speaker 2 2:06:30

He just gets thrown off the dark. Trying to the sibling was trying to rescue the doll of the girl, and that's what sets him off.

Speaker 1 2:06:39

A lot of people fall off cliffs. While you were gone, I was telling Jake, when I watched the Psychic, which is Bava's, not Bava's sorry, fulci, fulci, fulci's sort of attempt at making a film to appeal to American audiences right, there was a character that falls off a cliff and hits their head like 15 times on the way down the rock. Exactly like Don't Torture a Duckling. Like he just did it again. Like he couldn't get enough, did we lose Jake.

Speaker 2 2:07:14

It's a good ending, you know, no, no, yeah, can't go wrong with that but no, there's a lot of falling off of cliffs. There's, yeah, yeah, go ahead now did you put together that the opening um menage toit was the explanation for the ending?

Speaker 1 2:07:31

forgot about that till the end, when they honestly.

Speaker 3 2:07:34

I'll be honest. There's a reason why I was joking about it being the 70s swedish movie ending. Oh yeah, and I'm not talking beigman, because literally it is, it is summers with monica yeah you know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 2:07:49

That's got a little nudity in there.

Speaker 3 2:07:50

I'm stealing that you don't have stealing that. You don't have to, no, but it's like it is so frank and it is so chock full of yes. We're sending this to the grindhouses the world over. You're only allowed to watch this on 42nd Street in the Big Apple, nowhere else. You have to make a transcontinental pilgrimage to see this film.

Speaker 1 2:08:14

Well, that's like one of those bits where, like tarantino writes about when he worked at the theater and the projectionist was like hey, here's my envelope of every film strip I clipped with uh tits, right you know where.

Speaker 1 2:08:22

He just kept it in like a yeah, in an envelope and he's like here's all the nude scenes, right you know it's like instead of a paradiso, but less wholesome exactly yeah, but uh, no, that was I almost, because it's a cheat, because, like the professor, there's no evidence that he was you know, you know, I mean it's it's, it's, he is the killer by virtue of being kept off screen the longest.

Speaker 3 2:08:45

It's one of those kinds of twists, and that's why I was surprised when revisiting this, where I'm like, yeah, this isn't Ernesto Gestaldi writing his triple axel somersault backflip of an ending. It's oh it's more conventional, but not as rewarding.

Speaker 1 2:09:05

You know what you talk about, how this is.

Speaker 2 2:09:07

It doesn't present itself as a whodunit, though in my opinion, I always think Friday the 13th is the worst whodunit in the history of like writing in terms of like they're. They're making it into this thing about who's the killer? Oh, is it this person? Is it this person?

Speaker 3 2:09:22

it's more about.

Speaker 1 2:09:22

No, it's a random lady that we've never met before and it's like oh yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, I will tell you, there's good atmosphere in this film. There's a pretense to a whodunit because we get little shots like oh, suzy kendall notices one of the girls and an older guy talking in a car. What are they doing? Is this part of a conspiracy? You know right. But like I think about we mentioned jake mentioned this is the most like a slasher film. It's still classier because these are kids at an art school in what? Rome or somewhere in italy. Right, we get nice little shots like perugia yes, they're discussing perugia at the opening.

Speaker 1 2:09:59

Yeah, get a nice little dolly shot remember when suzy kendall was walking with her, the professor, and she walks down to the bridge and then we get a little dolly shot where it moves and it's like they use, like the atmosphere, and if you film a slasher film in italy, it's just, it looks like a chanel commercial, like you know, just by virtue of you being there, right, and the greatest thing is too, is that a lot of it's in where you're shooting, like I.

Speaker 3 2:10:20

I didn't mention this with bay of blood, but what of? Bava was renowned for a lot of his micro budget movie tricks. He was just known for creating all these very clever special effects with like cartoonishly limited resources. And I believe his trick on Bay of blood was that all the tracking shots. Because of the confines where they were shooting, he had to do the tracking shots by mounting the camera in a radio flyer wagon, so they're just dragging this child's wagon around to do the tracking. And when you see that shot of the, I believe it's the German girl who runs onto the pier. That's smooth, that's perfectly smooth. They're really insanely smooth shots like that. What?

Speaker 1 2:11:01

kind of camera was he using to where that would fit in a radio flyer wagon like a 16? What the hell was he shooting?

Speaker 3 2:11:06

I have, I have no idea, maybe he built it on like a plank or maybe like how? Like maybe it was slightly bigger, maybe built it on a plank or something like that. But it's really, really clever stuff they're doing over there with that kind of camera work. Because I believe the guy who did Torso, giancarlo Ferrando, is not really one of the well-known guys. He isn't Estorado, he isn't even like Sergio Salvati, who did a lot of Fulci's films in the the 70s and 80s.

Speaker 1 2:11:35

he's just kind of a hired gun, but he happens to be fucking gifted as yeah absolutely all right, I guess no, the film was well staged, well shot and, like also, the girls looked beautiful, you know, I mean it was a very enjoyable watch for me, like I didn't enjoy watching the kids in uh bay of blood because they were all gross.

Speaker 3 2:11:56

Like I didn't think any of those kids.

Speaker 1 2:11:58

They were all bad looking people like that's not, that's not wrong criticism right.

Speaker 3 2:12:03

I mean like this is this is hollywood, baby, you know, and again and again, falch. Well, the falch, I'm doing it. Baba's thing is, of course, like we said earlier, is that you know he isn't using sex to be like, oh, let's titillate the audience some more. No, his idea is that, fuck it, we're just gonna use this. As you know, what are horny teens gonna do in a dune? Buggy, trespass and fuck on the fucking couch. Who knows?

Speaker 1 2:12:26

yeah, right run around grab stuff. Yeah, yeah, my only.

Speaker 2 2:12:29

My only other comments on this is, uh, number one I like that we also had an identifiable villain though for the movie, like we did in Crystal Plumage, where we had Crystal Plumage, we had the man in black who didn't turn out to be a man, but regardless this one. We have the guy wearing the I don't know what. Do you call it Speed mask or whatever over his head. He had a distinctive, look to be a character, and it's a very creepy.

Speaker 3 2:12:51

look too it is creepy. And it's not just the fine Italian leather gloves, it's that they're driving gloves, yes, and that you have that. The eye holes are barely slits. The mouth is barely a slit. It's very, very freaky to look at and some of those shots where they catch the light On the blade are just Fantastic.

Speaker 2 2:13:15

That and the guys in the movie look very similar to me and I was losing track of who was who.

Speaker 3 2:13:21

There is a lot of who was who.

Speaker 2 2:13:26

When the one guy shows up at the door to the mansion where the girls are staying and he's been killed and he has the scarf around his neck and I'm like, is that the professor? Yeah, yeah. Like totally, he was the guy he was the stalker who was with the hooker. Yeah, earlier in the movie, but yeah, which it's like what?

Speaker 1 2:13:48

Okay, yeah, you know yeah.

Speaker 3 2:13:51

Well, there's your scene of impotence, Ryan. There you go.

Speaker 1 2:13:54

That is the impotency. That's the impotency.

Speaker 2 2:13:56

Yes there's the impotent lead of the Giallo.

Speaker 1 2:13:59

Literally.

Speaker 3 2:13:59

Exactly the impotent lead of the Giallo made a side character. Slash red hair.

Speaker 1 2:14:05

But that was very Scream too of like open the door, like oh, the red herring guy is out in the door. Remember that great scene in Scream where we have the two guys yelling? He did it. I saw it. That's a favorite of mine. I love Scream. It really just is an American. That's a JALA film.

Speaker 3 2:14:22

I'd say so structurally. Yeah, there are a few films that I keep hearing that get thrown around. I know Dressed to Kill Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill I know people have considered it an American JAL jello. I think a lot of that's purely in the whole black glove, disguise killer and all that I heard eyes of laura mars eyes of laura mars

Speaker 3 2:14:44

is and I just see it, because what you, because what you have, there is an example of that bizarre structure, or rather the conceit of it, that strange psychic link with the killer. That is very much, that, that is very much in the spirit of a giallo it's because there's that pov in that film.

Speaker 3 2:15:03

Yeah, yeah, exactly because you have this idea of mental recall and trying to piece together elements within the mind, really. So I can definitely see the case for those. Scream as giallo, I think, is an interesting idea. I think that's definitely something I might explore once I sit down and watch them all together, I think also. The problem, though, is that it also gets buried under the whole metacommentary thing where it's like okay, how many times are we going to feel clever about ourselves with this conceit?

Speaker 2 2:15:30

But as far as you Only up to four.

Speaker 1 2:15:33

That that's my pretty much the new I haven't seen any of the new ones. I haven't seen them, yeah I haven't seen them. Five was the last one I saw four.

Speaker 2 2:15:41

Four is a good, four is good. It's west craven, you know it's still good.

Speaker 1 2:15:44

Five and six are absolutely garbage. I I absolutely hate those movies well, I heard they killed deputy dewey.

Speaker 2 2:15:51

She can't, yeah come on, they do number five. Yeah, come on.

Speaker 1 2:15:55

And then they didn't want to pay nev campbell for six if she's not in it oh, bummer, but no, I, I, overall, I uh, I liked her, so I appreciated what it was doing yeah, I.

Speaker 2 2:16:06

I liked all four of these movies for all these movies were good.

Speaker 1 2:16:09

Yeah, these were all good you know, sliding scale.

Speaker 3 2:16:11

Absolutely, you, actually, if they're no, just like if we're gonna use, you know, number ratings, which I honestly I'm starting to be really, you know, I kind of agree with coppola's whole things like dude, do we call the taj mahal? Is the taj mahal four out of five stars? Like I'm at that point with number ratings but literally that was a great.

Speaker 3 2:16:32

That was a great fucking clip but going off like my letter. That was a great fucking clip but going off like my letterbox numbers. None of these went below four out of five. I genuinely recommend all of these and they're great examples of the giallo, for different reasons. There is Burma, the Crystal Plumage as an archetypical giallo, there are the elements of the Slasher and Bay of Blood and Torso, and there's also, if we want to be pretentious and say the elevated giallo. Now, anytime I hear elevated again, I'm just throw me out the window, please. Uh, you know, don't torture a duckling is, like I said, it's not just. It's not just genre fair, it is a genuine, really rock-solid thriller. Regardless of whatever the hell you call it, it's just a rock-solid fucking film.

Speaker 1 2:17:24

And I would say that Don't Torture a Duckling doesn't have a real exploitative element to it that is pronounced Not at all. It's very much an artfully done piece, very much right right well, jake, I think you did an awesome job curating for us, because you could have gone with the staples and, uh, you know it would have been rather predictable, but I I've really been pleased with our conversation here tonight. I think we had a good good talk. You're clearly a wealth of information.

Speaker 1 2:17:53

You, you're welcome back anytime. I was actually working on a script to do a review of Tenebrae. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to reach out to you and have you fact check it or throw out some more recommendations. There have been a million recommendations thrown out all night long. We need to put a bibliography together for people if they're watching. Honestly, we might have to. I have to go over the vod and be like what's that? What's that? I think we do, I, because I, I obviously you're, you're incredibly knowledgeable and we've really appreciated having you on and this was a great show. So, and and in the chat too sorry, chat, we didn't really get to the chat this time because there wasn't really a dull moment in our conversation.

Speaker 3 2:18:33

I completely abducted George and Ryan for a full two hours.

Speaker 1 2:18:39

Yeah, dude, we were your vice and only you had the key. Bro, we were locked up. No, I had a great time. I had a great time. We have some great recommendations. A dragonfly for each corpse Eye of the labyrinth. We've got a very educated audience here.

Speaker 3 2:18:56

I appreciate it thanks, a lot of good names too thanks for coming on.

Speaker 1 2:19:00

I I wish we could go longer. I'd love to, but it's friday night. I have to take my wife out on a date.

Speaker 3 2:19:05

I'm so sorry, but uh, it's crime of the age. What's that?

Speaker 1 2:19:11

it's a crime of the age I know I I wish we could do more talk about Megalopolis, but it's been a lot of fun, guys and everybody in the audience. Thanks so much for tuning in and we will see you next time.

Speaker 3 2:19:23

Godspeed.