Pathos - Segreta inquietudine

'A Taste For Fear' translated from the Italian is a decent title and presumably derives from the rather surprising but brief bondage set-ups in this mish mash of a movie. As soon as this got under way, after the astonishingly daring opening, I wasn't sure I was going to last the course. If you love the 80s, you will be fine but for me the blasts of dance music coupled with music video style photography had me worried. Actually, this is so uneven that there is something for everyone and in the end I quite enjoyed it and its gialloesque features will permit me to add a very late title to my giallo list! So, there is SM, Kid Creole acting, Grace Jones singing, naked girls frolicking, risqué photo sessions, big men in dark glasses bending forward and back as they torture a saxophone, plus gory killings. You cannot say you were not warned.

Yes, it takes place in the future, but I think that's just because the producers had access to a futuristic car and wanted to work it into the plot. In reality, it is a conventional erotic thriller, but it's a fairly worthy one. Alone worth the price of admission is an absolutely stunning brunette in one of the supporting roles. She and Virginia Hey get into a little romantic tryst that absolutely revolutionized my adolescent fantasy life when I saw this picture back in the 80's.

My review was written in March 1989 after watching the film on Imperial Entertainment video cassette.

This thriller is an excellent example of a recent Italian genre little-known Stateside: the glamorous horror/fashion pic. Direct-to-video release should generate interest in other pasta couture shriekers.

Pic aroused interest in Europe last year (and was featured in photo spreads in "Lui" and other magazines) under the title "Pathos". Helmer Piccio Raffanini has adapted the style of Jean-Jacques Beineix' "Diva" (and cast Beineix' regular thesp Gerard Darmon) to this tale of decadent photographers using high-tech equipment to stylize erotic fashion photos.

Virginia Hey is the antiheroine, whose sexy models are being murdered. Identity of the assailant is possible to figure out, and getting to the bottom of the mystery is made exciting by an excellent musical score, vivid pastel-lit photography by Romano Albani and a very attractive cast (frequently nude).

Hey, an Aussie thesp in tv series "Dolphin Cove", is solid s the shutterbug with a sadistic streak, while Teagan Clive and Carin McDonald offer diverting beauty as muscular femme models. August Darnell, Kid Creole of the vocal group, pops up in a small role.

Gabriele Ducros' hypnotic background score is augmented by well-chosen songs, including Chrissie Hyde's "Private Life", sung by Grace Jones. Tech credits, including English postysynch, are way above average.

A fashion photographer's models are being picked off one by one by a deranged redhead who lures them to phony photo shoots and stabs them to death.

Obsession: A Taste for Fear looks absolutely gorgeous even in its obviously cropped and muddy VHS transfer. It's part giallo and part erotic thriller with a little futuristic Blade Runner vibe throughout. Everything is bright, colorful, and futuristic. Unfortunately, the plot is both too convoluted and sluggish to keep one's interest for much time. You might find yourself nodding off midway through as the film's unlikable heroine tries to seduce yet another person for no apparent reason.

One of the two-hundred-and-forty-six cinema related hobbies I have includes tracking down as many Gialli as humanly possible! The true Italian Giallo flourished from the mid-sixties until the early seventies, and uniquely combined extreme violence with gratuitous sleaze and flamboyant whodunit-plots. Throughout the late eighties, there were a couple of noteworthy attempts to revive the genre, but not too many titles from this era are worth seeking out. "Midnight Ripper", "Spider Labyrinth", "Formula for a Murder", and "Nothing Underneath" are fine 80s Gialli; "Obsession: A Taste for Fear" is not.

"Obsession: A Taste for Fear" is a very curious hybrid of a Giallo and a few other genres, and although the set-up is definitely original, it doesn't work at all. For starters, it's a Sci-Fi story for no apparent reason and without any added value. The lead heroine drives in a silly electric vehicle and chooses her outfit and make-up via a digital application, but furthermore the script doesn't do anything with the Sci-Fi elements. The story revolves around a headstrong and confident feminist photographer whose models (and lesbian lovers) are getting killed. She then also starts a passionate relationship with the investigating homicide detective. Sure, this may sound like an intriguing plot, but the film is painfully boring and unnecessarily complex.

It takes an incredibly long time before the first murder occurs, and the onscreen violence/bloodshed is disappointingly tame. Most of the running time exists of endless photo shoots full of nudity (not the exciting kind, though) and boring monologues of lead actress Virginia Hey. If I browse around the user-comments, "Obsession: A Taste of Fear" clearly has several devoted fans, but I - for one - can't find a lot to recommend.