Tropique du cancer

The giallo universe takes the plane and lands in Haiti. A young faltering couple, Fred (Gabriele Tinti, La Morte risale a ieri sera) and Grace (Anita Strindberg, Una Lucertola con la pelle di donna), seeking for exoticism, goes on holidays in Haiti "expecting the heat of the tropics to rekindle their flame". But they come just in the middle of a perilous plot where is involved Fred's friend, Williams (Anthony Steffen, La Notte che Evelyn usci dalla tomba), an idealist doctor settled in the island, and inventor of a revolutionary aphrodisiac formula.

A bunch of unscrupulous businessmen lust for the new drug, from Peacock (Gordon Felio), an "ugly and fat man" found of young ephebes, and his greedy partner Garner (Stelio Candelli, La Morte scende leggera), to Prater and his violent henchman Murdock (Alfio Nicolosi), and all gather to the luxury hostel of Philippe (Umberto Raho, Sette scialli di seta gialla). And is Fred himself only in Haiti for vacation? Nevertheless, all those who track the marvelous potion become murdered through POV shot sequences by a mysterious killer gloved and shod in black, the corpses being found fully drained of their blood. Seeing she has been embarked in a very dangerous and deadlocked adventure, Grace seeks to flee away, but she might succumb to the call of the goddess Erzulie, mistress of "life and felicity", whom voodoo trances invite her to love.

The killer happening to be very ingenious, murders are always inventive and sophisticated. Unfortunately, the plot remains pretty confused, the motives of the murderer rather fuzzy, and the junction between the voodoo background and the pharmaceutic issue very wobbly, in spite of the fleeting appearance of the cursed Tetraodon fish of zombie poison. A very fine sequence full of reverie and eroticism with an Anita Strindberg under narcotics raises the level, but finally we stay much less far from Craven's Serpent and the Rainbow, not to mention Hitchcock's Capricorn other tropic. This movie shall however get attention from giallo addicts, and perhaps those interested in the Haiti under Duvalier, festal crowd sequences being put as "authentic in every details". (Viewed in the Italian 1h35 version.)

This is a unique film. It is like a time portal into 1972 Haiti. Some reviewers will demonise it as racist etc but I found it to be quite neutral really. It had a gay character which was unique in 1972 & while he was stereotypical, he was basically accepted as another human with his strengths & weaknesses. It is quite sexually open for its time & seems to explore a lot of voodoo culture in a way that seemed more documented than acted. A sense of the climate of the tropics imbues the film and a regard for Haiti.

"Death in Haiti" is by no means a stellar or exceptional Giallo, but it's nevertheless a modest pioneer of some sort. Its release year was 1972, and that year is widely considered as the peak-performance for the Italian Giallo. In other words, up until 1972, and still even 2-3 years after, all Giallo writers and directors largely followed the proven success formula. It wasn't until after the mid-70s, when the popularly of these films started to decrease, that they began experimenting with filming locations outside of Italy or mixing typical Giallo plots with elements from other exploitation sub genres. Directors Giampaolo Lomi and Edoardo Mulgargia were among the first ones to take the authentically Italian concept abroad, evidently to Haiti in this case, and added the aspects of psychedelic drugs and traditional voodoo rituals. Who knows, maybe they just wanted to treat themselves to a tropic holiday destination, but at least they also grabbed the opportunity to make an enjoyable Giallo at the same time!

Co-writer Anthony Steffen, formerly a Spaghetti Western star, invented a nicely glamourous role for himself as the respected Doctor Williams; surgeon and businessman on the island of Haiti. He's always surrounded by rich, dubious and sleazy people because Williams also happens to have invented a powerful new drug. Grace, the beautiful blond wife of William's childhood buddy Fred can confirm the drug is quite efficient, because it causes her to hallucinate about dozens of naked black men and having sex with a voodoo priest! With drugs and money involved, it naturally doesn't take long before people are getting killed in various gruesome ways by an unseen assailant. The Haitian locations are beneficiary for the film, even though the obligatory tribal/voodoo dance rites are rather tedious and basically just form a cheap excuse to depict gratuitous nudity. Those gorgeous native Haitian girls obviously dance topless, or what else did you think? The genuine typical Giallo-whodunit plot is naturally the best thing about the film, and I must say there's a fair amount of mystery and suspense around the identity of the sadist killer. The extremely brutal murder taking place in an abattoir already makes "Death in Haiti" worth tracking down.

There are a couple of moments, with a pair of dark trousers, that we could say was like a giallo but the rest of the time it is really rather confusing. There are one or two rather good scenes, as the film was made in Haiti, but it is all a bit of a mess. There are some odd people but the dubbing is even more odd which makes it seem really silly. We have to mention Gordon Felio the rather large man had done a couple of films especially with What's New Pussycat (1965), uncredited as the 'fat man'. Anthony Steffen is usually rather good and was in The Crimes of the Black Cat (1972) and The Night Evelyn Came out of the Grave (1971) otherwise he was in many great spaghetti westerns. Anita Strindberg can be good and certainly her best giallo was Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only Have the Key (1972). Of course she had her breasts enhanced and she usually bares them and also with a 'blacksploitation' moment in this one.

Giallos are known to be a little incoherent at times without being a complete mess but this movie certainly is the latter. It's a real mess. Many scenes of the movie look spectacular, especially the outdoor shots in the Haitian streets with full of crowds. The movie's certainly got elements that could have made it into a much better film than it actually is. It's just too bad that the Italian sense for style doesn't always work and this time even the plot stank so bad that it should have been rewritten almost completely. In my opinion the main problem is that the film doesn't engage at all and the pacing is just lame. I didn't care much what would happen to the characters in it. It's a kind of a problem when i was supposed to sit down and keep myself watching the film for its entire length of one and half hour.

The dream sequence with Strindberg and the voodoo priest made me laugh really hard. It's really the moment that was supposed to be surreal and scary but ended up looking like a skit.

What really is disappointing is that how much better this film could have been. I can only recommend this film for giallo fans who don't care much if the film is good or bad.