Ladykiller: Ihre Brüste wackelten im Todestakt

Quite ludicrous but bright and breezy enough to be likable this is, wait for it - a comic giallo. I know, obviously, we are on dangerous territory straight away because, what with all the twists and turns and often daft denouements, gialli, are sometimes laughable enough. Yet here we have a particularly complicated one, albeit with simple enough start, Agatha Christie style with six people in a railway carriage, light goes out, one dies, who dunnit? But this is complicated by the fact that one gets involved in blackmail and then maybe another and there are characters chasing characters, we are struggling to keep up only for the characters to start making jokes (sometimes amusing, sometimes not). On the positive side, it looks tremendous, great costumes and furnishings with the girls not afraid to slip off their clothes, the killings are fairly gory and the score keeps things bobbing along as the cast seem to be genuinely enjoying themselves. Just wish I had as much fun watching.

Luciano is a press photographer travelling to a photo shoot on the Istanbul-Athens express with his girlfriend. While passing through a tunnel, his girlfriend is stabbed to death with Luciano's dagger. He is naturally the prime suspect for the murder, but he believes he can solve the case himself and so goes on the run to clear his name. On the face of it a classic giallo theme, but what we have here is a film that is an odd mix of authentic Giallo, black comedy and at times, outrageously bawdy comedy, in the vein of Airplane movies, the killer leaving his fingerprints in $hit might give you an idea of its level. Still though, some of the humour is spot on and never reaches the level of being tiresome, there are also enough gruesome murders and suspense to keep real Giallo enthusiasts intrigued.

Another giallo, but this time we get a delightful mix of murder, great visuals, nudity, and comedy! It's not a comedy per se, but it really does have its tongue in its cheek. If films had tongues. No you shut up.

On a train from Istanbul to Greece, a compartment contains one victim and five suspects. The victim is a young French girl about to be stabbed in the chest with a letter belonging to our first suspect, photographer Leonard Mann. The other suspects are a suspicious looking man, an angry looking woman, a priest, and a dopey Swedish model who is Leonard's girlfriend and who also will be delivering some of the broader humour of the film. There are also two people out in the corridor important to the plot - a young fella and his girlfriend, both of which witness the killer going to the toilet to cut the electricity (please don't think about that or anything else that occurs in the film because you'll get a nose bleed). The killer also drops a pair of gloves, quickly snatched by this duo in order to do some blackmailing later.

The cops think Leonard did it and when there's a strange coincidence involving two separate illegal $10,000, he has to go underground, living in a fishing shack next to a railway line. This is after he dresses in drag for a bit, which may give you an indication of where this film is in tone. The killer gets blackmailed and kills the blackmailer with a straight razor to the neck, but what he/she didn't reckon on was that the blackmailer's girlfriend was having an affair with half the population of Athens, which complicates things greatly.

Character wise, you have a heart-burn suffering cop and his daft sidekick, Leonard and his really daft Swedish sidekick, the remaining suspects (the priest isn't a priest and the angry woman is going through a divorce), the local crime family also being daft as brushes and owning a Minah bird who calls everyone an asshole. The suspicious guy follows everyone around and is basically the red herring and the kidnapper's girlfriend has rather a lot of nude scenes. This weird mix of nudity, gore, great visuals and slapstick really works. We even get a song in the middle of the film and the cinematography is amazing. The stupidity lasts right up until the last second and I'm still not sure if the method used to catch the killer was genius or borderline racist. Who knows? This is a really outstanding entry into the giallo genre. For those who have a sense of humour.

Infrequently discussed, the playful blood-spiller 'Death Steps In The Dark' still sparkles seductively in the gaudy pantheon of Vintage Italian terror! While maestro Maurizio Pradeaux's no less watchable 'Death Carries a Cane' is better known, I found his 1977 outing to be far more entertaining than the latter. Not only do you get the requisite full-frontal nudity so ubiquitous in the genre, including a gloriously prurient Sapphic montage near the opening of the film! Pradeaux's compelling thriller is suffused a light, comedic touch not generally found within the idiom; so amongst all the black-gloved, razor-wielding, fear-flocked frenzy, the narrative is leavened by a welcome sardonic tone, admittedly far-from subtle, it nonetheless adds an amusingly quirky sheen to the generally humourless genre.

Graphic razor-slashings, gratuitous nudity, plentiful guzzles of J&B whiskey, the veritable elixir of Italian exploitation! And a mesmerizing, booty-humpin' jazz-funk score by sound master Riz Ortolani makes 'Death Steps in the Dark' one of the more memorable and re-watchable Italian thrillers. Whether Pradeaux's delightful film was specifically designed as a Giallo parody certainly doesn't detract from the myriad lurid pleasures the hyperbolic genre is infamous for; since 'Death Steps In The Dark' actively remains an exciting briskly-paced, scintillatingly sanguineous 70s whodunnit, not oft mentioned, this high quality, full-blooded Giallo is well worth rediscovery!

The giallo has since the genre began employed humour, from at least the time of Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much spots of comedy have leavened the intrigue and stylised violence. Not a bad thing either in my book, gialli operate in a realm outside of normal human experience and to pursue their concerns with deathly seriousness is not always the best approach. Still, there aren't many substantially comic gialli, perhaps because the earthy nature of a lot of Euro exploitation comedy of the time was ill fitting with the rarefied nature of the giallo. Death Steps In The Dark is an example of a substantially humorous giallo and it actually works out pretty nicely, while never especially funny the film carries its humour with an unforced daftness that is a little charming, and only grating in a short sequence of the hero in drag. Then again I've never been a fan of drag humour and others may think more of it. The general plotting is serious stuff and fairly convoluted, whilst travelling through a tunnel the lights go out in a train and a nun is murdered, suspicion falls on fashion photographer Luciano and he must prove is innocence, murder and intrigue continuing all the while. Maurizio Pradeaux of the similarly lesser seen Death Carries A Cane directs here, bringing style and colour, the pace is quick and there are some memorable moments including a use of defiantly unerotic ultra close up during a sex scene that could pass for one of Jesus Franco's craziest dalliances and a particularly fine murder with nice bloodshed. The suspense scenes are for the most part taken seriously with good use of killer POV shooting, and while never especially gory the kills get a bit of the red stuff flowing, satisfying enough in a film like this where the tone is lighter and the emphasis not so much on shocks. Acting is generally decent, Leonard Mann sympathetic as the confused and somewhat frazzled hero, Vera Krouska a delight as his dim witted girlfriend and Robert Webber suitably dry as a police inspector just trying to get the job done, despite plot convolutions, idiots around him and heartburn. The Riz Ortolani score is solid too, has a smooth and romantic feel to it that works with the surroundings and general style. There are a couple of drawbacks here, one easy to point out and one less so, but they conspire to bring the film down a few notches. Though often amusing the humour is pretty basic and tends towards sexism, it may all be in good fun but the lack of sophistication is pretty glaring. And the explanation for events is based on information that doesn't appear anywhere in the prior proceedings, the film lays clues as to its killer, but the ultimate explanation is pretty left-field and its a bit of a downer that it wasn't hinted at earlier, it feels a bit of a cheat. Still for the most part this is fun stuff and giallo completists could do worse than check it out.