Interrabang

Italian Gialli from the late 1960s differed in a number of ways from those made in the wake of Dario Argento's BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE. Before gore and set-piece slaying, gialli like Umberto Lenzi's ORGASMO and Lucio Fulci's ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER were bloodless, psychological murder mysteries that relied on plot twists, sexual situations, and irony for their thrills and INTERRABANG is more of the same with director Giuliano Biagetti making the most of an extremely low budget, a trio of beautiful European starlets, and an enigmatic premise. The interrabang is non-standard English punctuation (a combination question mark and exclamation point) that never caught on and was probably the equivalent of today's WTF. That's what viewers will wonder when Fabrizio, a hip fashion photographer, sails to a secluded island with his wife, Anna (Beba Loncar), his model/girlfriend, Margarita (Shoshana Cohen), and his nubile sister-in-law, Valeria (Haydee Politoff) for a photo shoot but bails out to get help when their boat has engine trouble -knowing an escaped convict is in the vicinity. The bored babes, left to their own devices, soon strike up an easy acquaintance with Marco, a vacationing writer who first intrigues then seemingly seduces them one by one. Like most Gialli, the title is explained during the course of the film: the interrabang symbol is a gold-plated pendant said to represent doubt and uncertainty in the modern world and there's more than enough of that to go around. Motivation becomes muddled as heiress Anna professes to love her husband despite the infidelities and character flaws while her sister Valeria hates her for keeping too tight a control on the family fortune -and nymphomaniac Margarita doesn't seem to care about anything. Is Marco the escaped convict? Is he a homicidal maniac? Why does Valeria keep quiet when she finds a dead policeman? Margarita also stumbles upon the corpse just before it disappears and the mystery deepens...

INTERRABANG seems to acknowledge its genre when one character, reading a book, is asked if it's a "giallo" and the murder plot, if not examined too closely, eventually comes together in the end with one surprise revelation after another. Like the killer's comeuppance, the film is silly but satisfying and the tale manages to hold the interest despite being set entirely on a small boat and rocky shoreline. Giallo geeks should have a fairly good time but some are bound to be disappointed by the lack of violence and abundance of bathing suits.

Interrabang is, superficially, a very beautiful film. The location used is serene and picturesque, and when you add a trio of lovely and often half naked ladies into the mix; you have a film that was probably a lot of fun to make. It's also not a bad film to watch as while things do get a bit silly at times; there's plenty of twists and turns in the plot and director Giuliano Biagetti manages to keep things interesting with only his small cast to rely on. The film is often considered a part of the Giallo genre; although I wouldn't go as far as to call it one myself; the film is more of a precursor to the genre. The plot focuses on a photographer named Fabricio. He has taken a boat with three beautiful women out to sea for a fashion shoot. It's long before the boat has a problem with the carburettor and Fabrizio hitches a lift to land in order to get a new one. While he's gone, a strange man named Mario approaches the boat and begins getting it on with the ladies; however, he might just be the maniac on the loose in the area.

One of the most noteworthy things about this film is the title, and it's noteworthy because most people will wonder exactly what an "Interrabang" is. Well the film is good enough to explain and apparently it's a cross between a question mark and an exclamation mark; and the film uses this to try and make some sort of social commentary...which completely gets lost under the superficial nature of the rest of the film. The film is rather talky and that's actually the main attraction. I wouldn't be surprised to find that this film was re-cut with a load of hardcore porn added for a seventies release since there's room for it; but the version I saw was very clean and there wasn't so much as a naked breast on display (which while slightly disappointing, is a lot better than having this turn into a hardcore porn affair). There's no blood either, and clearly the director wanted the film to stay on point; and this does actually benefit it quite well. The twists come thick and fast towards the end and that keeps things exciting; but the actual ending itself is completely bizarre. Overall, this is a very rare thriller and thus not easy to come by...but I'd certainly recommend it if you can find a copy.

Two clear warnings here that this is not going to be the most straightforward of movies. One, that 1969 crazy film release year and two, the title. More correctly 'interrobang', I believe was a punctuation mark invented in 1962 to combine the exclamation and question mark, in order to indicate a rhetorical question with simultaneous surprise. this never really caught on and has probably has maybe been replaced with WTF?! Anyway most appropriate for this film with three bikini clad lovelies stuck on a rocky isle with either a poet or an escaped convict, or maybe even both. the guy who was with the girls has gone to get a replacement part for the boat and the girls enjoy the new guy in his absence. All, of course, is not quite what it seems and by the end a number of swift surprises and revelations leave us reeling. Actually, not a lot of action here but pleasant enough with some great beachwear and mysterious going on.

Fifteen years after he had been a protégé of Roberto Rossellini in 1953, Italian director Giuliano Biagetti somewhere stumbled across the term "Interrabang" (now consult your dictionary, per favore) and decided to knit the ultimate meta-thriller around it. The whole intertextual stupor begins with pseudo-existentialist banter between photographer Fabrizio and three trendy dolls (among them Haydee Politoff, who had played the lead role in the first installment of Rohmer's contes moraux, La collectionneuse, two years before) while heading to a rocky island for a fashion shooting, where a blue-eyed poet/ psycho is already waiting for the bikini bunch. The ensuing beach party is refined with Fitzgerald quotes, Daft One Dialogue ("How did you kill your woman?" "I didn't kill her. She was already dead for me."), the per se not-too-bad theme by Berto Pisano varied and overused to the retchy max, plus three dozen ultra-fishy "twists" buzzing off to Spasticland, breakneck-style. When Roberto Rossellini met Biagetti after the premiere, he put an arm around his old colleague's shoulders and told him a little secret about thrillers and postmodernist stunts, though Biagetti didn't listen because he was busy shaking hands with some stunning brunette in those very seconds. "It's no use breaking the rules, amico mio", Rossellini said, "if you don't even know 'em."

Nothing happens in this until the final 10 minutes. And there's nothing at all "giallo" about it. My recommendation? Watch the 1st 10 minutes until you've had enough of sailing. Skip ahead and watch another random 10 minutes until you've had you eyeful of the lovely ladies. Then watch the last 10 minutes for the twists and turns.