Pathos - Segreta inquietudine

It always amazes me how the 1970's giallo thrillers, which was one of the best Italian genres, could somehow degenerate twenty years later into "erotic thrillers", which was one of the worst (and one which the Italians and the Americans really deserve equal credit--or blame--for creating). Part of the problem is that "erotic thrillers" simply have too much sex in them at the expense of pretty much anything else. The 70's giallo thrillers may have been a salty dish, but the "erotic thrillers" are basically a big dish of nothing but salt. This movie definitely has a too much sex in it, but there's an even bigger problem with it: it was made in the 1980's, "the decade that taste forgot". The 70's giallo films were very style-conscious, but they had the cool Freudian, "pop" art style to them that was very big in the late 60's and early 70's. This movie, however, takes the very, very lame styles of its own day (c. 1988)--the glossy MTV look, the big hair, the fake boobs, the "Miami Vice"-style cops (complete with designer stubble)--hell, there's even "futuristic" elements (i.e. electric cars, ray guns). Also, while the 70's gialli often had original music by genuinely talented composers, this movie (at least the English-language version)merely borrows several truly awful, sub-MTV American pop songs of the era like "Midnight Blue" (You'd think in the "future" people wouldn't still be listening to bad 80's pop music).

The plot involves a female fashion photographer whose female models--and lesbian lovers--are being knocked off by a killer. The main suspect is her ex-husband who makes S-and-M videos (and who looks like a younger "New Wave" version of Christopher Lee). The murders are investigated by a cop (who is basically a swarthy Italian version of Don Johnson). The heroine shamelessly throws herself at the cop (lesbianism and feminism be damned apparently), but he rejects her for some reason. There's no shortage of sex though albeit mostly of the lesbian variety (and be warned, one of the heroine's lovers is a second-rate imitation of Grace Jones and another is a musclebound female body-builder with a "punk" hair-do). There is a surprising lack of on-screen violence here, which I found truly unfortunate because everyone in this movie is so unlikeable and annoying that I wanted them all to die in the most horrible, bloody way imaginable.

If you actually LIKE the 80's though (perhaps you're too young to actually remember them?), you will probably like this better than I did. But if this can be considered a giallo, it's definitely one of the worst of the 150 or so I've seen. It's really more of an "erotic thriller" though and pretty typical of that very lame genre--as well as very lame era in which it was made.

'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.

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.

OK, I admit it: I rented this movie only because it has Eva Grimaldi in it; well, Eva has only a minor, virtually non-speaking part, and the film is far from the conventional erotic thriller you might expect based on the video box promotion. It's really not a very good movie, but it's unlike anything you've ever seen before. Part kinky soft-core sex film, part murder mystery, set in a vaguely futuristic world, it is a very strange, very arty film, with some bizarre music ("The Man I Love"!) and casting (female bodybuilder Teagan as...herself) choices. It's obvious that one of the goals of this movie was to create (with limited means) its own world; it succeeded admirably. By the way, did the person who said that "it wants to be like "Basic Instinct"" bother to check out its production date? (**)

I have this movie in my collection and I pull it out to watch it about once or twice a year. It is a very strange movie and that keeps me coming back to examine it over and over. I would have gave it a 10, but it's attempt to look space-age kind of fizzled. However, the acting is good and the characters/actors are good-looking and interesting. The suspense and the music soundtrack make it all the more fascinating. I guess it makes me nostalgic for the 1980s when a slew of B-movies on VHS regularly flooded the small mom and pop video stores. This is one of the movies from that time period that stands out as unusual and entertaining. I recommend watching this creepy and mostly well-made, hard-to-find movie.