A Morte Caminha de Salto Alto

A good plot, coupled with good editing, makes for a good noirish giallo. Direction drags at times, hence a lower rating. Woman-in-peril film with all of the standard giallo tropes. Becomes a little surreal once she arrives in the UK. An entertaining Ercoli effort, albeit slow pacing at times.

A really fun giallo that is more than a little of a fishy tale. We get a strange seller of fish on the beach, always popping up, an extraordinary attempt at erotic fish eating and absolutely masses of red herrings. But aside from all that this is a most convoluted tale where nobody could predict the outcome, let alone the hilarious pair from Scotland Yard. Indeed more humour than usual in this slightly longer than usual sparkling giallo. Not filled with killings but when they come they are most effective and explicit, and the sexiness of the opening with the Crazy Horse setting continues throughout, mainly thanks to Nieves Navarro. Opening in Paris then, we move to London, some fine night shots near The Windmill, and finally to 'the countryside, which I had always assumed to be somewhere in the UK but, the clue is in the co-production status and is I learn in fact Spain. Highly recommended.

Seems boring for just a while, as the plot builds, then WOW! The ending is twisted just like all Giallos, and you can't figure out who did it. This one has plenty of skulduggery, but it's not the "psycho" style like many Giallos. I don't want to spoil it,but it is well worth the watch. I was delighted. Like almost all Giallos- this would have been banned in the USA in 1971, or at least X rated. This is a WHO DONE IT mystery, and a good one. It satisfied my itch for the classic mystery.

A jewel thief is brutally murdered on a train by a masked assailant. But when the murderer is unable to locate any diamonds, the murderer immediately suspects that the thief's daughter, a Parisian stripper named Nicole (Nieves Navarro aka Susan Scott), may have the diamonds. Nicole, however, claims to know nothing of the diamonds. After a series of threats, both verbal and physical, Nicole decides to flee France with a man she hardly knows. The pair begin a seemingly ideal relationship in a secluded seaside village. But Nicole is unaware that the killer has followed her to England and will stop at nothing to get his hands on the diamonds.

What a fun Giallo! Death Walks on High Heels has one of the most convoluted plots I've run into - even by Giallo standards. While the movie may lack the quantity of murder scenes found in other Gialli (although at least one murder scene is as violent as they come), Death Walks on High Heels makes up for this shortcoming with more plot twists than a mountain road and boatload of red herrings. It had me guessing (incorrectly, I might add) up to the very end. It's all about the mystery and director Luciano Ercoli skillfully casts the shadow of suspicion on just about everyone in the cast. Much of the movie is told quite nicely in flashbacks with bits and pieces of the story being revealed as each person confesses to what they may or may not have seen. There's even a pair of bumbling Scotland Yard detectives who are (surprise, surprise) actually funny. Overall, Death Walks on High Heels is very well done.

The acting is a notch or two above what I've come to expect in a Giallo. The highlight, at least for me, is Nieves Navarro. She is amazing as Nicole. I didn't think I would ever say this, but I think she might have been capable of challenging Edwige Fenech in my mind as the Queen of the Giallo had she made a few more of these movies. I'm looking forward to checking out more of her work.

As much as I enjoyed Death Walks on High Heels, it's not without its flaws. Chief among them, at least to me, is a "cheat" with respect to one of the murders. I don't want to give anything away, but there is one particularly nasty murder that the killer could not have committed given the circumstances immediately following the murder. Hopefully, with repeat viewings, I can reconcile this point in my mind and just enjoy the movie for what it is.

Finally, and I'm really starting to sound like a shill, NoShame's new DVD is fantastic. I would have never dreamed that a movie like Death Walks on High Heels would look this good. Bravo NoShame!

A famed jewel thief named Rochard is slashed to death on a train. His daughter Nicole, a famous nightclub performer in Paris, is questioned by the police about some missing diamonds but she claims to know nothing about this. Nicole is then terrorized by a masked man with piercing blue eyes who demands to know where her father has hidden the stolen diamonds.

The film is written by no less a figure than Ernesto Gastaldi, who is considered by some to be the father of giallo. The director, Luciano Ercoli, is interestingly perhaps better known as a producer or production designer. He more or less fell into directing as a cost-cutting measure -- one less person to hire. (Tim Lucas compares Ercoli to Brian DePalma... and there is some truth to that.)

Who doesn't love composer Stelvio Cipriani, probably among the top composers in Italy (behind perhaps Ennio Morricone and Goblin for genre film). What we get here is rather sparse (many scenes have no music at all) but the man does what he does well. Not surprisingly, his work has been used by Quentin Tarantino, the champion of such films as this.

A note on the lead actor, an American. Frank Wolff had bit roles in his first two films, Roger Corman's "I Mobster" and "The Wasp Woman". On Corman's advice, Frank Wolff remained in Europe and became a well-known character actor in over fifty, mostly Italian-made, films of the 1960s, including crime/suspense "gialli" and spaghetti westerns.

Director Ercoli obviously does not have the name recognition of Mario Bava or Dario Argento, but he still knows how to make a great giallo (with a dollop of influence from Argento's "Bird With the Crystal Plumage"). A masked and gloved killer, a bit of mirrors, and an unhealthy fascination with eyes -- close-ups of eyes, false eyes, windows that look like eyes. Nobody knows eyes like the Italians!

The Arrow Video blu-ray allows the viewer to watch either the Italian or English versions (because sometimes you need a dub, and sometimes you don't). The disc also comes with: Audio commentary by film critic Tim Lucas, by far the most knowledgeable non-Italian scholar of the Italian genre film. Introduction to the film by screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi. A featurette comprising newly-edited archive footage of director Luciano Ercoli and actress Nieves Navarro. A career-spanning interview with composer Stelvio Cipriani. Italian genre fans (which includes pretty much all horror fans) will love this disc, part of Arrow's "Death Walks Twice" set.