Interrabang

A photographer named Fabrizio and three women including his wife Anna,her sister Valerie and Fabrizio's model/lover Margarita anchor their yacht next to a small,deserted island for a photo shoot.Due to engine problem Fabrizio leaves his boat to bring help.Three women decide to spend their time on sunny and rocky island.Turns out there is a dangerous criminal on the island who may be a homicidal maniac.Marco seduces each of woman and plans to murder Margarita and Anna.Beautifully shot and dreamy giallo with lovely score by Berto Pisano,which was later used in Mario Landi's "Giallo a Venezia"(1979).Plenty of surprising twists and turns plus a little bit of subtle nudity provided by Shoshana Cohen.If you liked "Orgasmo" or "Island of Death" give "Interrabang" a look.7 disappearing bodies out of 10.

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.

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.

This movie is kind of a combination of an early "Diabolique"-style giallo with lots of plot twists and turns, and an island paradise sex romp in the spirit of such films as "The Seducers", "Il Dio Serpiente", and "Wave of Lust". It is more arty, or some might say more pretentious than most gialli or most island-lust flicks. It kind of resembles a couple Antonioni films like "La Aventurra" or (especially at the end) "Blow Up". A photographer is sailing with his wife (Beba Rancor), her sister (Haydee Politoff), and his nymphomaniacal model (Shoshanna Cohen). He leaves the three women alone to get a part for his boat. A mysterious man (Umberto Orsini)shows up, who might be an escaped criminal the police are searching for. This doesn't alarm the three women too much, and he rapidly seduces each of them. Nor are they particularly worried about the dead body of a police officer that appears and then vanishes. These woman are such bored, jaded bourgeoisie types that they don't even seem to care that this handsome stranger might be planning to kill them. The ending combines the surprise plot twists of "Diabolique" and the reality-confounding denouement of "Blow Up", and throws in yet another nasty surprise to boot.

The movie does look very good and both the scenery and the actors are gorgeous. There's a lot less violence than in a typical gialli (especially the later ones) and less nudity than in a typical sex romp (only Cohen has brief nude scenes, but all three of the luscious actresses spend the entire film in the skimpiest bikinis imaginable in the 1960's).

The title comes from a necklace the Politoff character is wearing of an interrabang, a question mark and a an exclamation point ("?!"). She delivers some philosophical speech early on about the existential meaning of the symbol, but it really makes little sense. Whatever the case though, it is a good title for THIS movie which is an alternately bizarre (?) and impressive (!).