Giallo a Venezia

I just watched Giallo A Venezia First off, it's not a giallo, it's a crime story. It opens with 2 bodies and a bunch of cops and goes from there with the investigation, and it's quite a while before anyone is actually killed. And when it does happen it's not a mystery, as we see the killers face. The story has some twists and turns to it though.

A good part of the film is flash-backs of the the 2 victims doing kinky sex things. Yeah, there's a decent amount of sex in this, probably on par with a typical Jess Franco film, some of it was okay, some a little boring. There's also some pretty gruesome gore stuff late in the film. Otherwise the plot is fairly simple, on par with say a typical 70's cop show.

To recap, I wouldn't say this was all that good... a lot of sex (some simulated, some female masturbation, some kinky stuff), a couple of decent gore killings, and not a giallo.

If you want a giallo with a lot of sex the best I've seen so far would be Slaughter Hotel, or maybe Washing Machine (though that one is kind of a borderline giallo).

Giallo a Venezia, also known as Giallo In Venice, has a reputation for being one of the sleaziest films produced in an already sleazy sub genre. Giallos, for the uninitiated, are Italian horror films known for their extreme violence punctuated by scenes of explicit sex. They heavily influenced the American slasher films of the late 70s and early 80s, but for the most part these American films were not as extreme as their Italian counterparts.

There are few death scenes in Giallo a Venezia but they are quite gory. There's an immolation, a graphic dismemberment, and the usual requisite stabbings. Giallo a Venezia does feature plenty of sex and nudity, but the bare bodies on display do further the plot. After finding a married couple's dead bodies on the Venice beach our main character, a detective, is baffled by the crime's seemingly lack of motive. We spend the rest of the movie inter-cutting between the detective working on his case and flashbacks of the deceased married couple. The film's flashback structure is unique telling the story of the married couple's last days before their death. Their marriage is, to put it politely, very rocky. The husband is a cocaine addict and frequently indulges in kinky sex to debase his wife.

While Giallo a Venezia may lack the social commentary of Lucio Fulci or the swooping camera-work and visual styling of Dario Argento, it is still a giallo that can comfortably stand on merits of its own. Unlike some other giallos that have been loving restored and even presented on Bluray, tracking down a copy of Giallo a Venezia may present quite a challenge. I had to settle for a sub par VHS rip.

I saw the 99 mins version of this movie for the first time recently as i got enticed into it aft reading some glowing reviews on imdb by Coventry n Harrison. The film is boring, the lead detective kept on munching hard boiled eggs, the pervert kept on his perversion while the abused girlfriend simply kept quiet, the other characters r not developed well n the killer's background story is nada. Unnecessary footage is given to weird sex scenes n less to the killer or the kills. In one scene, the killer leaves the scissor inside the private parts of a woman but the cop insists that the scissor was found at the killer's place which even the killer is not able to recollect whether he had left it at the murder site or na. The masturbation scene will give Natalie Portman's scene from Black Swan a tough competition. We have Mariangela Giordano who goes full nude n performs wild sex, the masturbatory nun from Malabimba n the pervert's mother from Burial Ground.

The film has few gory scenes but that gets overshadowed due to the unnecessary sex scenes. There is a scene where a guy gets shot by a gun n he does lots of overacting by doing writhing movements.

10:26 AM - Nov 22, 2018 #783 543) Giallo In Venezia (1979, Italy, Giallo, Director: Mario Landi)

Notable actors: Leonora Fani! Mariangela Giordani!

If Maurizio Merli and Richard Harrison got it on and had a child, that child would be actor Jeff Blynn. Blessed with Merli's bushy, fair hair and moustache, he also has the glare of real life ninja Harrison.

Jeff is a cop in Venice and he's got some case to solve: the murder of a married couple, one drowned, one stabbed in the crotch. More confusingly, the drowned woman has been removed from the water and left beside her husband. There was a witness to this, an old man who spies on everyone, but he's not talking for reasons that don't make any sense and aren't really explained at all.

Jeff goes to a friend of the couple, played by Mariangela Giordani, and there things start getting stranger. She's nervous as hell (I would be too seeing as Jeff insists on sitting right next to her and munching on boiled eggs all the time!) and seems to be avoiding Jeff's questions, until she caves in and the film descends into sleaze for what felt like about six hours.

Y'see, husband Fabio and wife Flavia (played by Leonora Fani, who is well named judging by how often the camera lingers on her crotch) are a couple of pervs, especially Fabio. Fabio likes to mix things up a bit in the sex department, as we'll see over and over and over again as Jeff conducts his investigation. This includes:

1) Getting strangers to spy on him while getting it on with Flavia. 2) Spying on strangers getting it on with Flavia. 3) Letting strangers cop a feel of Flavia in the cinema while knocking one out. 4) Having orgies with hookers and Mariangela Giordani. 5) Reading porn magazines, sniffing coke, whipping Flavia and then having sex with her for about ten seconds before blowing his wad. 6) Bumming Flavia while she was trying to put a washing on.

In a film that's just over an hour and half long, all this perversion doesn't leave a lot of time for Giallo-style antics, and maybe this is why director Landi just goes ahead and reveals the killer about half an hour in. That said, this is a giallo, not a slasher film, and things are that straightforward. They're not that great either mind you and the mystery is rather weak.

The violence and sex, however, is amped up to the max, well beyond what you'd expect. One character is tied to a table and has her leg graphically cut off while she watches on, while another is repeatedly stabbed in the fanny over and over again. You've got to kind of wonder what Landi was aiming for. The whole film is a wall to wall sleazefest that does live up to its reputation. And for the ladies, you get to see a guy having a chug in close up. It's as ridiculous as it sounds.

Giallo A Venezia opens with a swiftly edited stabbing, then a lady floundering in water. Credits roll and we discover that these two luckless chumps were a married couple, Fabio and Flavia, and its now up to egg eating, bad joke cracking detective De Paul to sort out the mess, a process which involves much delving into the sordid details of their relationship. Meanwhile, things are about to get nastier... Despite the title, this one only just about qualifies as a giallo. It has a mystery, some killings and a whole lot of perversion, but when stacked against the notables of the genre Giallo A Venezia is a terrible example, with little in the way of style (one rather nifty moment aside) and even less in the way of interesting detective work or problem solving. It doesn't matter too much though, the title just about captures the nature of the plot and the film never really tries to compete in the giallo field. The main thing on its mind is sleaze and sleaze is what it serves up in delicious helpings, comparable perhaps to a three course meal. See, our unfortunate Fabio and Flavia had rather an unconventional relationship, he a dominant deviant and she a submissive, if often unwilling partner to his lusts. A lot of the film is spent on their sex lives, delivered as seedy soft-core with a dollop of sadism we get voyeurism, rape and humiliation as the more traditional female masturbation and conventional coupling. Gianni Dei and Leonora Fani are excellent as Fabio and Flavia respectively, he commands just the right air of haughty perversion that knows no sympathy beyond its own satisfaction, and she a tragic figure of the sort who just can't make herself get out. It helps that Leonora Fani has a splendid body and the sort of bush that makes you want to go exploring, gives her degradation an even meaner feel. There's more sexy shenanigans as well, lest you be afraid that this is a two hander, we get Mariengela Giordano nude in the films best loved sequence, and at least one more partly nekkid gal so its all good. The score works wonders for the soft-core side as well, natty porno lounge from Berto Pisano that bursts into indecently rousing loudness when good stuff goes down. For all this, the film doesn't completely forget its title, as the plot does steadily develop with one or two twists and turns and a few possible suspects/motives. It isn't too taxing though, and the mystery serves mostly as a means of joining together the sexual and the violent aspects of the film. As with any giallo worth its salt, there are a few gnarly murders in here, a couple of which have earned the film a deserved infamy. I won't go into details, but one would be better served by higher quality prints than the one mostly available (though it is still pretty sweet), and the other is an absolute ripper, real squirmishly entertaining classick. The finale is a corker as well, wrapping things up nicely just when the film is looking like it might have used up all its steam. There isn't really legitimately redeeming value here, no social themes nor insight into the interesting territory of a sexually twisted relationship, there isn't much style and the cinematography makes Venice look dull. I've never been but apparently its a nice place, not so in this film. This is pretty much aimed straight at the sleaze and nastiness brigade and no one else, seekers after truth and beauty should seek elsewhere and even average giallo lovers will likely be nonplussed. But if you like 'em mean, check this sucker out pronto as it plays a mean game and it plays it well.