Obsessão Mortal

I've been duped! This is one of those 'other' kind of gialli. You know the ones - Umberto Lenzi made about a hundred of them. Everyone lives in a big house/villa/mansion/castle with a pool, has loads of money and therefore spend most of their time playing games with each before, if you're lucky, something actually happens before the end of the film.

Andrea is the apotheosis of these rich jerks. He literally does nothing but roam around in a self-absorbed daze, spending the free time afforded to him by his rich father by stalking women, taking pictures of women, flashing back to good times with his mother, flashing back to bad times when his mother died, and telling his new sexy stepmother that he'd like a shot on her nest, while also coming on to her best friend Carol, marrying a black woman, and making photo-montages of the women he's stalking. Did I say free time? Sounds like Andrea keeps himself pretty busy now that I've typed all that out.

What first starts out as a promising, freaky deal with Andrea's hilariously crap montages and him imaging Carol being put up on a Christmas tree quickly becomes tedious as the film descends into Andrea just hanging around various women coming on to them and being weird. There's not really any mystery to this at all and although there's a bit of violence in the end, you'll just shrug and wonder why you bothered in the first place.

Sergio and Luciano Martino were involved too, so I've got to wonder where things went wrong. Let's blame Hitler!

A handsome young man (Lino Cappolichino) is traumatized by the death of his mother when he was young boy. His successful magazine publisher father has re-married to a much younger woman (Erna Schurer). He fools around with his attractive new step-mother, but is much more interested in her equally attractive friend "Carol", who he follows around filming (what we today would call "stalking"). Although she already has a lover, "Carol" is unaccountably attracted to him too, even though he does such bizarre things as try to involve her in a three-way with an African-American woman, whom he dresses up in a Ku Klux Klan outfit, drips molten wax on her breasts, and orders Carol to whip!?!(Obviously, this movie isn't suffering much from starchy political correctness). It all ends very bizarrely.

This isn't a bad movie per se, but it's hard to know what to make of it. The title suggests it's a giallo, but it is generally lacking in violent giallo-esquire elements, at least until the very end. It does, however, have the kind of weird Freudian perversity of many late 60's/early 70's gialli. It could also be considered an erotic drama as typified by the Laura Gemser "Black Emanuelle" series that became popular later in the 70's. But even though the director Brunello Rondi would go on to direct one of the better films in that series ("Velluto Nero" aka "Black Emanuelle/White Emanuelle"), this early 70's movie doesn't really hold a candle to those later films (which were basically softcore porn) in terms of sexual content. This also might be considered a straight drama, but like a lot of Italian exploitation flicks, it is simply too ridiculous and the characters too thinly drawn and unbelievable to be able to take the whole thing very seriously.

It is very beautifully filmed and has good music, so it can certainly be enjoyed on that level at least. Cappolochino isn't much of an actor, but he would later appear in two superior gialli, "The House with Windows that Laugh" and "The Bloodstained Shadow", and most of his dialogue here is delivered in voice-over, so all he really has to do is look handsome and disturbed (which he certainly manages). Collette Descombes was only in a few Italian movies in her short career, but one of them was the seminal Umberto Lenzi-Carrol Baker giallo "Orgasmo". She got to play a deliciously evil character in that, but she was obviously much more at sea here with this bizarrely motivated character (but then pretty much anyone would have been). Erna Schurer, on the other hand, was in A LOT of Italian exploitation films, and--believe it or not--this may actually be one of her CLASSIER films (just check out "Naked and Lustful", "Strip Nude for Your Killer", or "Deported Women of the SS"). Like the cinematography, the actors certainly all look very pretty, and this movie is certainly weird enough to marginally hold your interest. It doesn't leave much of an impression though.

This film is about an annoying, pampered artist who has women issues. He has a deeply-set, unresolved trauma about his dead mother. His rich publisher father has a young trophy wife whom he has an unhealthy antagonistic relationship with but that's nothing compared to the stalkerish obsession he fosters upon her friend Carol.

Your Hands On My Body is a somewhat confused psychological drama. Its story is way less complicated than it feels. The narrative is told in a manner that ensures that it's a little bit difficult to follow at times. This may be because it is sloppily constructed but it could also be because it isn't particularly interesting a lot of the time and it's not always easy to keep full concentration on proceedings. I think part of the problem with this one is that it doesn't really know what it wants to be. It can't seem to decide if it's an art film or a genre picture, so it ends up falling between the two. This is usually not a problem, indeed many of the best cult movies exist in this grey area. But this one is too silly to be believable, yet too arty to be pure pulp fiction, while never being arty or pulpy enough to satisfy. It does have some bizarre moments though and these are ultimately what I would suggest watching this one for.

It stars Lino Capolicchio who will be familiar to giallo fans for his turns in two excellent entries in that sub-genre - The House with Laughing Windows (1976) and The Bloodstained Shadow (1978). He does play awkward very well and this acting style suited his roles in those gialli. Unfortunately, in this movie he plays a character less endearingly nerdy and more creepy. As a result he isn't nearly as engaging and I suppose this is part of the problem with the film as a whole. Your Hands On My Body is not without interest but is essentially for Italian cult cinema die-hards only.

Andrea (Lino Capolicchio) is an irritatingly enigmatic loafer still living at home with his wealthy publisher father in a secluded seaside villa and Mirielle, his dad's hot-to-trot trophy wife, is sexually attracted to him but he's more interested in her best friend Carol. When he's not surreptitiously filming Carol's sexual dalliances, he teases and spies on Mirielle, fixates on his dead mother, and idolizes Marilyn Monroe -but whenever it looks like he may have to make love, the moody man-child avoids the issue. What's his problem?

A pointless, meandering movie is the problem and the self-consciously arty attitude on display only makes it worse. There's little ado about nothing and the murder in the last five minutes is the only thing that reely happens -but it definitely isn't worth waiting for if you can actually stay awake that long. This uninvolving Eurotrash is aimless at best and the hint of latent homosexuality isn't nearly enough to explain Andrea's idiotic behavior -even B-List Eurobabes Erna Schürer (DEPORTED WOMEN OF THE SS SPECIAL SECTION '76) and Colette Descombes (ORGASMO '69) in and out of colorful 70s fashions can't save it. The opening credits have Sergio Martino as doing something or other but the IMDb credits list some other Martino. Either way, there'll be no re-watch for me. This has been a public service announcement because I wouldn't want your disappointment on my conscience.