Giallo a Venezia

...if for no other reason (of which really and truly there aren't any to speak of unless the trinity of coke, sex and murder is what gets you going) - then for Berto Pisano's stellar, lush, textbook pornographic musical score, all in routinely dizzying major 7 chords, swirling strings and the bop-bop melody firmly rooted in the 60's, already horribly dated by the time this was filmed (late 70's) but very charming and very pleasant nonetheless - for those into that sort of thing - it's a standout winner. What makes this additionally twisted is that the soundtrack is often strangely out of sync with what we see on screen (people are having copious amount of often kinky sex but are also being whipped, stabbed and mutilated to some rather blissful musical sounds, adding to the perverse appeal). The film is certainly a very decadent Eurotrash oddity worth checking out, provided you watch with your ears. And with your brain on leave.

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.

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.

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.

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.