Giallo a Venezia

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.

This is an extremely rare, hard to find movie which to be quite honest is no bad thing. The version I viewed was in its native Italian tongue and is, as far as i'm aware, the only way anyone's likely to see it. The film begins with the dockside discovery of a murdered man and woman which starts an investigation undertaken by a cop (Jeff Blynn) whose favourite past-time is eating hard boiled eggs! (well Kojak had his lollipops I guess). A series of seemingly unrelated murders start to occur, two of which are very nasty, so nasty in fact that I couldn't possibly describe them on such a family friendly site such as this. An already cheap and cheerful film is cheapened further by endless scenes of a couple participating in various sex games, all backed by a Berto Pisano score which wouldn't seem out of place in one of your dad's "stag" flicks. Needless to say these sub- plots seem to tie up in the end (well...at least I think they do). The term "giallo", is the Italian word for yellow and these thrillers (BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, BLOOD AND BLACK LACE and WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO SOLANGE? being amongst other examples of this fascinating and addictive genre) have their origins in the mystery books published years ago in Italy, which were distinguishable by their yellow covers. When all's been said and done, I cant really recommend this sleazy, sordid affair (not that it's readily available anyway!), unless your idea of a nice night in is a showing of Lucio Fulci's equally misogynistic (but more fun) THE NEW YORK RIPPER. Happy hunting.....

My god, this film is a piece of work. Rough as a bag of spanners. One of the ugliest and sleaziest giallos you could ever hope to see. Plot wise there is very little to say, the impact in this film comes from its audacious insistence on making everything look as unpleasant as possible.

But let me give you a quick plat re-cap. Two dead bodies are found at the edge of a canal in Venice. The police start asking friends of the late couple for clues, but as soon as they start their investigations, more dead bodies start piling up. What is the connection, and out of all the unsavoury characters that appear on the screen, does any of them have a clear alibi (or conscience)?

Enough of that then, what is really so bad about Giallo A Venezia? Well it's just that the sleaze factor is so high it's off the scale. The dead couple are at the centre of the plot, and the film consists of many flashbacks in which we see how the husband took pleasure in humiliating and sexually abusing his timid wife. The poor actress who plays Flavia (the wife) suffers the indignity of being stripped naked and roughed up in nearly every scene she appears...I hope she got paid well. Worse still, her husband Fabio is not blessed looks-wise, and add this to the fact that the sex scenes between the pair of them are completely devoid of chemistry makes watching them a real chore – and they go on for AGES!! You'll see a lot of Flavia naked which might have looked nicer if things were better filmed but the whole thing is done so sloppily that a lot of the time it's just not that exciting. Especially when Fabio is slobbering all over her (he's a really terrible kisser!) and trying to roll all over the place without showing his private bits, whereas of course there's no modesty allowed for his wife who is shown very graphically naked in several scenes.

The reason why I have had to devote a full paragraph to describing the sex scenes is because that's really all that happens for 75% of the films running time! Other than that, we have to sit through the police force carrying out their investigations which is kinda boring, even with the running gag of the main inspector eating hard boiled eggs in every scene (why? who knows... It must be an Italian thing), and some half hearted attempts by director Mario Landi to spin a web of mystery around the proceedings.

So that just leaves ...the murders. And just as he manages to make all the sex scenes ugly, unpleasant and graphic, Landi cuts no corners with the violence either. So prepare yourself for some very grim scenes of violence. Although the scenes are not dwelled on in loving detail like they are in a Lucio Fulci gore flick, they all seem to have a very nasty flavour to them. Scissor stabbings to the crotch and a human torch are two that spring to mind. Oh wait, did I say the gore is not dwelled on? Sorry I forgot the film's gore "highlight' in which victim has their leg sawed off while tied to the kitchen table. I have seen a lot of graphic gore but I found this intensely unpleasant. I think it's because it's just all sort of...thrown at you. No artistry to speak of, just events.

This film has absolutely no class whatsoever. And if you get a kick out of sleaze, it's almost possible to appreciate it on that level alone, but anyone with any taste in good cinema is likely to be left shaking their head in disbelief. Very hard to find - at time of writing there is no DVD or VHS release in print, so you're stuck with finding bootlegs if you want to track this down, and even then I believe it was originally released in Italian only – so make sure you get a subtitled copy if you must seek this out! A bleak, bizarre and depressing piece of grime, it's very hard to be positive about this movie. Even calling it a giallo is an insult to that genre, as the "whodunnit" value is very weak. Its just 90 minutes of bad simulated sex and some equally badly simulated murders, but if the phrase "in your face" was ever deserved, it is here.

"Giallo a Venezia" is,without a doubt,one of the sleaziest movies ever produced in Italy.Along with "The New York Ripper"(1982,Lucio Fulci)and "The Killer Is Still Among Us"(1985,Camillo Teti)this is possibly the nastiest giallo ever made.The film begins with a double murder on the Venetian docks:architect Fabio(Gianni Dei)is stabbed with a pair of scissors,while his wife Flavia(Leonora Fani)is drowned.The fact that Flavia was pulled back from the water by the killer after being drowned,intrigues inspector DePaul(Jeff Blynn)and his assistant Maestrin.As they begin investigating friends of the couple,such as Marizia(Mariangela Giordano from "Burial Ground" and "Malabimba"),they soon discover that Fabio was in fact a sex crazed cocaine addict,who could only achieve sexual gratification by violence and sick voyeurism put upon his wife.During the investigation Marizia begins to receive threatening phone calls from ex-lover and soon after that a series of brutal murders is set in motion.Director Mario Landi("Patrick Still Lives")fails to create any suspense or mystery.What Landi looses in mystery he more than makes up for with some of the most brutal violence and sex ever put on the screen.The violence in "Giallo a Venezia" is truly shocking.A prostitute is stabbed repeatedly in the crotch in one of the most sickeningly audacious murder sequences ever filmed.Another gory highlights include Giordano being tied naked to her kitchen table and having her leg cut off with a handsaw by the killer and Marizia's lover being doused in gasoline and set alight.The long sex scenes are pretty explicit and it's quite obvious that Landi's intentions were only to show as much sex and blood as he could.To sum up,if you like sleaze and extreme gore then you should check this one out.Recommended!

This is sleazy. I've seen the English subtitled Luminous print of this film, and it is safe to report that as a giallo it fails miserably on every level. Not only is there a weak plot and zero suspense, but there is also laughably no attempt to conceal the identity of the killer who is in fact revealed in the first ten minutes or so of the film. Clearly Landi was aware of his shortcomings as a giallo director and so therefore decided to make up for it with lashings of jaw-droppingly misogynistic sexual violence, which he again showed a passion for in his later film "Patrick Lives Again".

A couple of scenes really stick out for absolute, grimy nastiness. Firstly, the vaginal stabbing of the prostitute. This scene has more parallels to old hardcore porn loops than it does the giallo genre, with poorly lit and explicit prolonged close-ups, shot on grainy stock. Secondly, the scene where Mariangela Giordano gets her leg sawed up. Even though the effects are poor, the absolute sadism and overall atmosphere makes you feel pretty sordid for watching it. It kinda reminded me of the similar (but more nasty) scene in The Last House On Dead End Street...

But is this enough to make this film good? NO. This is a failure as a giallo, and is only worth anything because of the outrageous violence.