L'occhio dietro la parete

Fernando Rey stars as Ivano,a wheelchair bound man with some strange perversions.He gets his sexual kicks by spying on Arturo,their tenant in the apartment next-door and forcing his sexy accomplice Olga to watch as well.To increase his perverse thrill,Ivano persuades Olga to seduce Arturo and to have sex him as he watches.Unfortunately for all involved,the sex game starts to get very deadly as it is learned that Arturo is a psychotic serial killer."The Eye Behind the Wall" is a bizarre and very sleazy sexual thriller.Sadly writer/director Giuliano Petrelli never made another film after this.It actually reminded me Alfred Hitchock's masterpiece "Rear Window".The film is atmospheric and features a good amount of nudity and sleaze.Check it out.8 out of 10.

Although sex was an important element in Italian gialli, its importance is sometimes overstated. In the 1970's, not only gialli but even the staid Hammer films in England were injecting gratuitous full-frontal nudity into their movies in order to compete with the hardcore porno that had taken over low-budget cinema in much of continental Europe. In addition, since collectors and DVD buyers today always demand "uncut" versions of these films, the prints sometimes contain near-hardcore footage that was not in the original film but was only put in as "inserts" to sell them in more liberal territories (i.e. the scenes of an obvious body double for Rosalba Neri pleasuring herself in "Slaughter Hotel"). This movie, made late in the gialli cycle, is somewhat unusual therefore in that the sex is not just commercial and gratuitous, but is an essential part of the plot.

The movie starts with a scene (missing from some prints) of a young man (John Phillip-Law)raping and murdering a woman on a train. Later he rents a room from an elderly wheelchair-bound voyeur (Fernando Rey) and his much younger "wife" (Olga Bisneros). The elderly man enjoys watching the younger man through the a hole in the wall where he has set up a periscope-like device. There is something decidedly homoerotic about this. The first thing he sees, for instance, is the younger man get forcibly raped by a big black guy he has picked up at a cheesy disco (where a German-looking extra takes all her clothes off to a wretched disco beat). Then he sends his "wife" over to seduce the young man, and its eventually revealed the true nature of the couple's relationship and how he came to be in the wheelchair. And if the main plot isn't sleazy enough there's also a subplot involving the chauffeur who, when he isn't collecting the wife's pubic hair from the drain in her bathtub, is talking a naive teenage girl (Monica "Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals" Zanchi) into giving him oral favors.

Obviously, this movie is quite a collection of psychopathia sexualis (people like Freud and Reich would have loved it). Which is not to say it is necessarily very sexy (unless impotence, voyeurism, rape, gay interracial rape, pubic-hair fetishes, wife-swapping, child abuse, incest, and bad disco music really turn you on). But there is something fascinating about the sheer wretched excess of perversity on display here. The only thing I could compare it to is the (obviously much better) David Cronenberg movie "Crash" which also takes sexuality beyond titillation into a pathologically perverse and almost alien realm.

Well, this is something else! I had a copy of this Fernando Rey film that sounded worth a watch but it was such a terrible print, I kept putting it off. Now I have a sparklingly bright and colourful copy and many would wish that they were watching my old murky copy for this is not a pretty sight. Rape and murder to set things off, male gay rape follows and we are also treated to incest and a butler who seems to have a unhealthy interest in what looks to be a very young girl. All this while Rey, who is wheelchair bound, spies on his neighbour with some very sophisticated equipment and even encourages his 'wife' to go round so he watch them. Yes, its all happening here and I haven't even mentioned the very effective disco scene where we get the most exhilarating performance from one lady dancer who feels so much better with nothing on. This is part thriller, even a little giallo like with the music but is essentially a marital drama gone wrong. Nothing turns out as expected and yes things are even worse than imagined. Some have referenced Rear Window but I was more reminded of Michael Reeves' The Sorcerers with Boris Karloff and his wife getting far too interested in their neighbour. Great stuff.

This odd and obscure Italian mix of giallo and drama tells the strange story of an old paralyzed writer (Fernando Rey), his younger wife (Olga Bisera) and a young man (John Phillip Law, "Delirio di Sangue") who lives in an apartment the couple rent him. What the young man doesn't know: the writer watches him on a telescope whose lens has been installed in the wall of the apartment. The paralyzed man, who shares a subvert secret with his wife, "needs" to spy on the tenants to find inspiration for his writing work. With this new tenant, however, the writer becomes obsessive and urges his wife to follow him to find out more about his personality. The wife becomes fascinated by the mysterious man too, and - needless to say - this "triangular relationship" won't come to a happy end.

"L'Occhio Dietro la Parete" is a really strange picture. All characters in it obviously have a psychological problem concerning relationships towards the other sex. Everyone has weird or even wicked desires and hides a depraved secret: The young man has an urge to kill, the couple's butler preys on teenage girls, and the couple... well, I won't give that away. The film is very atmospheric, shows quite an amount of nudity without becoming too sexploitative, and boosts a moody soundtrack. Sadly, this obscure oddity remains extremely hard to find. But if one can get hold of it, he shouldn't waste the opportunity and watch it: It's a really remarkable and quite unique film. Rating: 7 out of 10.

John Phillip Law (Night train to terror, Death Rides a horse) is a strange man. When we first see him he's on a train apparently murdering and raping some girl, and now he's moved into a house owned by Fernando Rey (High Crime, Price of Power). What Law doesn't know is that the wheelchair bound Rey has rigged his house with some weird sci-fi periscope gadget, allowing him to spy on Law in order to get ideas for his books or something to do with psychology. Far fetched? You betcha. An Italian film? Oooooh, yeah.

Rey's also got a hot wife and a butler who really likes Rey's hot wife, to the point where he's got a life size photo of her in his cupboard which he either punches in the crotch or rubs his face on, and collects her pubes after she has a bath to either smell or pretend he's got a moustache. She hates him though, so he turns his attention to some local girl and puts on a pretend rape show for Rey's wife's benefit. Rey's wife by this point has got the hots for Law after watching him exercising naked (and it's scrotum bouncingly funny).

Meanwhile, just in case anyone doesn't think this film is sleazy enough, Law picks up some joint smoking black dude at a disco (where some chick dances in the buff) and gets botted in the bott by the botter while screaming at the top his voice while Rey and his wife watch on. I actually burst out laughing at that which I'm not sure was the director's intention. It was just the screaming and the look on Law's face.

Rey's wife is all "You didn't tell me he liked his tea towel holder being stabbed by a chocolate javelin" but Rey convinces her to put the moves on Law. For some reason. So she toddles over to Law's house with a lease to sign and the next thing you they're walking around, going out for food and walking around some more while Law spouts philosophical crap about life. Usually buying a couple of bicardi breezers works for me, but before you know it Rey's wife back at Law's house, listening to Tangerine Dream records and getting all naked, while Fernando Rey watches on, having a flashback I won't reveal here. Rey's wife is shouting "Not there! No!" at this point which makes me think that Law was trying on a bit of back door action. Who knows with this film.

While the overall tone of this film is sleazy as hell (even more so with the twists that come later in the film), it's not overall graphic, thankfully, unless you want to see John Phillip Law's knackers, which I'm certain you do. Other than that it's all about the twists, and how everyone in this film is fecked up. It's a not bad thriller but from this genre you'd expect a bit more. Worth a watch though.