Las trompetas del apocalipsis

This obscure film mixes two film types I am a sucker for - the giallo with counter-culture hippy antics! Needless to say, when I discovered this one, I had to check it out. It seems to be primarily a Spanish production but it is partially Italian and, like so many of gialli, its set in yet another location, in this case London of the swinging 60's variety. Given that this one came out in the 60's, it should be no surprise that this is an entry from the sub-genre which is low on violence. The appeal of it comes mainly from its psychedelic trappings. All the scenes involving the hippies were great fun and were scored with an entertaining psychedelic soundtrack by Gianni Ferrio.

The story is fairly half-hearted and involves a mystery involving a series of suicides, where the victims throw themselves to their deaths from windows. All this stuff has the usual gaggle of eccentric characters and sprinkling of red herrings. But its all sort of made worthwhile with a resolution which incorporates a truly - and pleasingly - crazy premise. Trumpets of the Apocalypse right enough! The female cast add a bit of class to proceedings as well, with the dependable Marilù Tolo in a central role and the gorgeous Romina Power appearing as a face-painted hippy chick.

This film is yet another example of the annoying alternative title trend that plagued Italian cinema in the sixties and seventies - the film goes by the name 'Perversion Story', which is also an alternate title for Lucio Fulci's masterpiece 'One on Top of the Other', as well as Fulci's period drama 'Beatrice Cenci' - and all three films were released in 1969! This gets even more annoying when you consider that this particular film actually has an excellent title as one of it's alternates in 'Trumpets of the Apocalypse', yet it most commonly takes the title given to two other movies from the same year (which doesn't make sense by the way). Madness! Anyway, what we have here is a little known Giallo, and I'm not really surprised about that as the film doesn't stand up too well against other genre entries. The film starts with a sequence that sees someone fall out of a window screaming, right in front of a copper. It turns out to be a music professor. The death is ruled as suicide and soon another follows. From there, we follow an investigation into the murder carried out by the brother and roommate of one of the victims.

The film is set in London and the style of it could be summed up as 'sixties swing'. Director Julio Buchs, more experienced as a director of westerns, also implements a psychedelic feel into the movie which isn't badly done in itself, but doesn't add much to the story. The film features most of the Giallo trademarks, such as murder, an investigation red herrings etc although the plot doesn't flow very well which does the film no favours. There's not a lot of tension or suspense in the film and it does get boring on more than just a couple of occasions. The plot is very surreal even for a Giallo but whatever point it was trying to make doesn't come through very well. The plot focuses on a musical score, 'The Trumpets of the Apocalypse' and the film has a musical feel all the way through; although Umberto Lenzi did the musical Giallo (slightly) better in 1969 with Orgasmo (a.k.a. Paranoia). The ending comes as something of a surprise - though in truth I wasn't all that bothered who the murderer was by the end, but at least it mostly makes sense. I wouldn't recommend anyone goes out of their way to get a copy of this film...but it's a decent enough watch if you can find it.

The undeniably groovy 'Las Trompetas Del Apocalipsis (1969) (aka) Murder by Music is somewhat of a curate's egg; as with most gialli it is positively agog with laboured McGuffins, and is, again, festooned with an atypically absurd premise; in this case the fug-headed scribe suggests that a certain piece of esoteric music is able to engender such a profoundly distressing malaise in the listener, that the desperate individual must immediately hurl himself bodily from the nearest window after listening to it. (this is clearly a prototype for Katy Perry's indigestible, saccharine horrors!) It must be noted that all said victims are fortuitously close to a high enough window that would cause a permanent case of death, should one take the final plunge,as it were. Much of the film has a gloomy, almost Edgar Wallace- style view of London: dingy backstreet's; even dingier bars enlivened with funky, ass-swinging psychedelic pop, and primordial-looking opium den lend the film a wildly expressionistic feel, which captures the tale end of the sixties as a beatnik apocalypse!

The welcome groove is supplied in mammoth doses by Gianni Ferrio's sublime score, a personal fave of mine, and he certainly doesn't disappoint with his wall-to-wall psyche-hippie-funk.

For those more jaded gialli fans who require their sleazy celluloid entertainments to include a plethora's of squeaky, be-gloved, ice-cool razor slashing into hot nubile flesh will be wholly disappointed, as this seems to be more of an anti-drugs polemic than a slinky extravaganza of high-octane misogyny.

My copy of this Spanish/Italian co-production, directed by the Spaniard,Julio Buchs, is titled, 'Murder by Music'. A lovely, ridiculous title that surely can have no pertinence to the story. But yes, it does! The more sombre sounding 'Trumpets' title refers to the actual piece of music that we are asked to believe can do the deadly deed. So far, so fun but although we get two deaths before the credits there is nothing particularly sensational going on and although we get some dance sequences, this becomes a plodding who dunnit. The fact that my print carried an English dub added to the feel of this being some 'Inspector of the Yard', Agatha Christie yarn rather than a full on giallo. Indeed there is barely a sex or bloody moment and disturbingly we actually get a couple of old fashioned 'romantic interludes'. The cast perform well and Romina Power impresses. I see that over the years she did not make more than twenty films, even though one was a Jess Franco and that she is still working today. It is a novel film but just a little bit irritating.

The Italian title for this Spanish-Italian co-production, I CALDI AMORI DI UNA MINORENNE (which literally translates to "The Hot Loves Of A Minor") leads one to expect a mildly saucy sex comedy which proliferated in the Italian cinema between the late 60s and early 80s; the presence in the cast of Tyrone Power's daughter, Romina - who had previously appeared in the title role of Jesus Franco's MARQUIS DE SADE'S JUSTINE (1968) - only adds to this impression. However, what we actually get is something a lot different and even less appetizing. As it happens, despite being top-billed, Power's role is only secondary, and serves only as a red herring to boot. The plot deals with an inexplicable spate of suicides among London's Swinging 60s hippie youths and the subsequent investigation by one of the victims' brother among the underbelly of dope-addled, peace-loving, long-haired freaks who go by such tell-tale names as "The Fool", "The Prophet", "The Romanian", etc. Ultimately, the film isn't entirely disagreeable to watch, thanks in no small measure to its horrendously dated 'hipness', awful would-be psychedelic songs and risible dialogue. Apparently, the moral of the piece is that listening to music while under the influence of drugs eventually leads to suicide! Go figure...