Casa d'appuntamento

Wahey! I didn't expect this one to be as delightfully bonkers as it turned out, but then why did I expect it to be normal, knowing fine well that the police inspector in charge is played by a Humphrey Bogart impersonator, complete with mac and the constant presence of a cigarette?

Ol' fake Bogey is out to catch the killer of hooker Barbara Bouchet, beaten to death in a classy French brothel run by Anita Ekberg. At first it looks like her boyfriend did it, which would make sense as he was seemingly the last person with her, and was badly beating her up last time we saw Babs alive. Her boyfriend gets captured and sentenced to death during a court scene shown mostly in negative (?), curses all the witnesses to a violent death, escapes from prison, then accidentally decapitates himself while speeding on a motorbike. Saves wear and tear on the guillotine I guess!

Those relieved witnesses are not so relieved as someone starts bumping them off, starting with the beating to death of Anita Ekberg (in a weird, multi-coloured scene), but who would want these people dead? Is it singer Rosalba Neri? Her husband, Pepe? Pepe's lover, (I can't be bothered looking up her name)? What about the author who lives in the brothel, 'researching a book'? The judge seems to be involved too, as does his doctor mate who wants to operate on the boyfriend decapitated head. Gordon Mitchell also shows up for a quick cameo which has nothing to do with anything and is totally pointless. I think he was drunk and just wandered on set.

Upping the madness factor is your usual sleaze and some gore thrown in for good measure, and the killer's motivation for killing is remarkably tasteless, even for a film that's shown up two decapitations and a doctor cutting up what looks like a lamb's eyeball. I like my gialli short, daft, with plenty of sauce, so full marks to Bogey!

Wait – didn't the doctor's assistant say he saw the boyfriend's eyes move while examining his severed head? What was that all about? He was just told to shut up and not mention it again.

Ferdinando Merighi's "Casa d'appuntamento" aka "French Sex Murders" of 1972 sure is anything but a Giallo-highlight, and yet I warmly recommend this delightfully trashy little flick to all my fellow fans of Italian Horror cinema. The plot is overall pretty silly, but the film scores with a trashy atmosphere, some sleaze and cheap but cool gore-effects, and a cast that includes quite a few familiar faces for cult-cinema fans. "Killer Nun" Anita Eckberg shines in the role of a brothel madam and the regular Eurocult actress Rosalba Neri has the role of a seductive bar singer. The film furthermore stars Jess Franco-regular Howard Vernon and Robert Sacchi, who is basically a low-budget Italian version of Humphrey Bogart (Sacchi looks just like Bogey, and it's hard to believe he was only in his early 30s when the film was made) in the role of the investigating police detective. Even veteran B-Movie star Gordon Mitchell has a tiny role! My main reason for looking forward to seeing this film was the ravishing Barbara Bouchet, a true cult-cinema goddess and the female star of two personal favorites of mine, Fernando Di Leo's masterpiece "Milano Calibro 9" (1972), and Luci Fulci's Giallo-highlight "Don't Torture A Duckling" (also 1972). Even though she sadly has little screen time, Bouchet is once again ravishing, and her sheer presence grades the film up a bit in my personal appreciation.

The film, which mainly takes place in a Paris brothel, revolves around murders of prostitutes, investigated by a cynical and Bogart-ish police inspector... I don't want to give away too much of the plot, but I can assure that it is somehow messy and yet very entertaining. The film is overall quite (but not exceptionally) sleazy and has a delightful trash-factor. The gore scenes are, of course, not too professionally made, but nonetheless quite effective. The funky repetition and colorization of murder sequences was very odd, but also somehow amusing. I would recommend to look for a subtitled Italian version - the uncut DVD I watched was a messy mixture of English, German and French, which was even more odd as two characters, who are husband and wife in the German language version, were obviously Father and Daughter in the English dubbed version (as from the context, they must have been Husband/Wife in the original Italian language version). Overall, "French Sex Murders" (or, "The Bogeyman and The French Murders", as one of the many aka. titles reads) is certainly not a good Giallo, but it is nonetheless an entertaining low-budget production that my fellow Cult-cinema fans should enjoy. Recommended.

THE FRENCH SEX MURDERS (Ferdinando Merighi - Italy 1972).

Formerly, the usual UK title was THE BOGEY MAN AND THE FRENCH MURDERS. There's also a Greek video with the sleeve title, CALL GIRLS FOR INSPECTOR BOGART. The inspector is not named Bogart, nor does he get any call girls, but who cares? It's a title that sells.

There's a killer in Paris, a suicide from the Eiffel Tower, a brothel as the main setting, insane professors, an eye-ball thief, an inspector who looks like Humphrey Bogart (for no apparent reason), a truly creepy Anita Ekberg, and an impressive line-up of Euro-stars. How Dick Randall assembled this cast is beyond me, but he did it. Besides Anita Ekberg, there's Rosalba Neri (who even sings a song in a nightclub), Barbara Bouchet, Evelyn Kraft, Howard Vernon, and Robert Sacchi as inspector Pontaine or Humphrey Bogart. The title is pretty accurate. The murders take place during, before or after sex in a brothel in Paris. In between, the Bogey-man snoops around trying to track down the killer, but he is not too bright. You'll probably have figured it out long before he does.

The film's producer was American Dick Randall who took residence in Rome in the '60s but basically was wherever the deals where made, which meant Rome in the '60s, Bangkok and Hong Kong in the '70s and London in the '80s. Whilst residing in Italy, he payed close attention and decided to take a shot at the giallo as well, and produced this piece of cinematic soufflé. It's a perfect example of totally round the bend Euro-tosh, with a rather tame execution actually. The direction is not wildly imaginative, a workman's job at best, so don't expect outrageous Italian craftsmanship and style here, but some spicing-up in the editing by Bruno Mattei.

The special effects were done by future Oscar-winner Carlo Rambaldi of ET fame. I guess he learned a lot since this one. Of course, the presence of Robert Sacchi, among some other ingredients (mostly the cast) give this film a certain weird identity of its own. All together, it's pretty much a poor man's interpretation of an Italian Giallo.

The version on Mondo Macabro's DVD never existed in this form. From various copies, they assembled the longest version they could possibly paste together. There's an English audio-track, but a couple of scenes appear in Italian with subtitles.

Camera Obscura --- 5/10

The first frames of the movie are of someone falling from the Eiffel Tower. Police arrive at the Eiffel Tower and chase someone up it, who then falls from the Eiffel Tower. At first, I wondered if this was a copycat, or a jumper who failed to kill himself the first time, ala The Tenant. No, it's the same guy and we're just seeing the same thing twice. And in fact, towards the end of the movie, it's seen again, since the movie jumps back further in time for the bulk of the story.

There's repetition in the movie with most of the kills, too. We'll see it once, then the footage is repeated with the screen tinted red, then again tinted blue, green, purple.... Odd choice.

So, after we see the figure fall from the Eiffel Tower for the second time, a Bogart-looking police inspector tells us "it all began the last day of Carnival." A thief steals some jewels, then sneaks his way into a brothel, where he is known and not very welcome. He meets up with his girlfriend, leaves, and it's discovered that one of the women has been killed. The emotionally disturbed thief is a pretty good suspect, and he's caught, tried and convicted pretty quickly. But did they get the right person or not?

For a movie set around a brothel, there's relatively little nudity, I thought. The women don't wear even very revealing outfits, though the ones they do wear are unusually fetching.

It's a pretty good movie. It's certainly helped by the good picture and sound quality on the DVD by Mondo Macabro, and by a good collection of extras. It's interesting how a movie can wind up with different scenes in different markets - they compiled the longest version they could, which evidently had never existed in that form anywhere. There are also two cut scenes, one with alternate dialog for the French version, and the other featuring a cut scene that was in pretty rough shape.

The whole movie, except for a few foreign-language scenes subtitled in English, has all English dialog. It's too bad they didn't add English subtitles or closed captions for the hearing impaired, which can be useful even for people who aren't. It might have been nice to have a full length-foreign language track, but this is nitpicking.

Although this is definitely one of your lamer Italian gialli, like all gialli it has some points of interest. It has two different chase scenes involving the Eiffel Tower, just so you know (if the title doesn't clue you in) that it's set in Paris. It has an ironic scene where a condemned murderer is decapitated while fleeing police on a motorcycle. It has a strange scene where the police then turn over the disembodied head to a mad scientist, played by Jess Franco regular Howard Vernon, for him to conduct vague "experiments" on. And perhaps strangest of all it has a lead detective who is played by a Humphrey Bogart impersonator, which no one in the movie remarks on, but will have everyone at home scratching their head.

The plot involves the murder of a prostitute in a Paris brothel (run by early 60's sex symbol Anita Ekberg). It's blamed on a jealous client, but the lead detective ("Bogey")suspects otherwise. And when the murders continue after the suspect's ironic-if-he-were-actually-guilty demise, his suspicions are confirmed. The movie has all the standard giallo elements but it's directed without much flair. There's a lot of sex and female nudity (perhaps too much), but it doesn't involve the "name" actresses for the most part who are pretty much wasted in general. Barbara Bouchet is good as a bitchy prostitute but she is murdered before she can even strip out of her sexy red lingerie. Rosalba Neri has a brief nude scene but also a completely throwaway part as the condemned man's ex-wife. And Anita Ekberg, looking middle-aged and none to svelte, also has pretty phoned-in role that pales not just to her early sexy roles, but to the over-the-top trashy stuff she'd do later in movies like "Killer Nun".

Howard Vernon is about as good as he usually is in Franco movies, and as for the Bogart impersonator--well, nobody ever saw him again after this movie. I would definitely not recommend buying an overpriced DVD of this disappointing movie, but it might not be a total waste of 90 minutes of your life, especially if you're kind of a giallo completist like I am.