Voyeur pervers

It's a shame, 'L'occhio dietro la parete' has a promising cast, including the great Fernando Rey, who starred in some of Buñuel's best films, including 'The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie', as well as some good Italian genre films, like 'I Due Volti della Paura'. Unfortunately, despite the 'Rear Window'-inspired plot, there's not much suspense and it's pretty far-fetched stuff.

Rey stars as a wheelchair-bound man who uses some sort of contraption that looks like a periscope to spy on his neighbour (John Phillip Law from 'Danger: Diabolik') with his partner played by Olga Bisera. Then there's the butler, played by José Quaglio, who is obsessed with Olga in a creepy way and chases schoolgirls, which seems to have little to do with the story.

There is a giallo-esque twist at the end, but the rest of the film is pretty slow, with no real suspense, no violence, just a whole lot of sleaze like full-frontal male nudity, male on male action, pubic hair collections, but none of it is very sexy.

Normally, I'll find some redeeming quality in a giallo with mediocre reviews, but this one was a snorefest.

Well, this is something else! I had a copy of this Fernando Rey film that sounded worth a watch but it was such a terrible print, I kept putting it off. Now I have a sparklingly bright and colourful copy and many would wish that they were watching my old murky copy for this is not a pretty sight. Rape and murder to set things off, male gay rape follows and we are also treated to incest and a butler who seems to have a unhealthy interest in what looks to be a very young girl. All this while Rey, who is wheelchair bound, spies on his neighbour with some very sophisticated equipment and even encourages his 'wife' to go round so he watch them. Yes, its all happening here and I haven't even mentioned the very effective disco scene where we get the most exhilarating performance from one lady dancer who feels so much better with nothing on. This is part thriller, even a little giallo like with the music but is essentially a marital drama gone wrong. Nothing turns out as expected and yes things are even worse than imagined. Some have referenced Rear Window but I was more reminded of Michael Reeves' The Sorcerers with Boris Karloff and his wife getting far too interested in their neighbour. Great stuff.

Although sex was an important element in Italian gialli, its importance is sometimes overstated. In the 1970's, not only gialli but even the staid Hammer films in England were injecting gratuitous full-frontal nudity into their movies in order to compete with the hardcore porno that had taken over low-budget cinema in much of continental Europe. In addition, since collectors and DVD buyers today always demand "uncut" versions of these films, the prints sometimes contain near-hardcore footage that was not in the original film but was only put in as "inserts" to sell them in more liberal territories (i.e. the scenes of an obvious body double for Rosalba Neri pleasuring herself in "Slaughter Hotel"). This movie, made late in the gialli cycle, is somewhat unusual therefore in that the sex is not just commercial and gratuitous, but is an essential part of the plot.

The movie starts with a scene (missing from some prints) of a young man (John Phillip-Law)raping and murdering a woman on a train. Later he rents a room from an elderly wheelchair-bound voyeur (Fernando Rey) and his much younger "wife" (Olga Bisneros). The elderly man enjoys watching the younger man through the a hole in the wall where he has set up a periscope-like device. There is something decidedly homoerotic about this. The first thing he sees, for instance, is the younger man get forcibly raped by a big black guy he has picked up at a cheesy disco (where a German-looking extra takes all her clothes off to a wretched disco beat). Then he sends his "wife" over to seduce the young man, and its eventually revealed the true nature of the couple's relationship and how he came to be in the wheelchair. And if the main plot isn't sleazy enough there's also a subplot involving the chauffeur who, when he isn't collecting the wife's pubic hair from the drain in her bathtub, is talking a naive teenage girl (Monica "Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals" Zanchi) into giving him oral favors.

Obviously, this movie is quite a collection of psychopathia sexualis (people like Freud and Reich would have loved it). Which is not to say it is necessarily very sexy (unless impotence, voyeurism, rape, gay interracial rape, pubic-hair fetishes, wife-swapping, child abuse, incest, and bad disco music really turn you on). But there is something fascinating about the sheer wretched excess of perversity on display here. The only thing I could compare it to is the (obviously much better) David Cronenberg movie "Crash" which also takes sexuality beyond titillation into a pathologically perverse and almost alien realm.

This odd and obscure Italian mix of giallo and drama tells the strange story of an old paralyzed writer (Fernando Rey), his younger wife (Olga Bisera) and a young man (John Phillip Law, "Delirio di Sangue") who lives in an apartment the couple rent him. What the young man doesn't know: the writer watches him on a telescope whose lens has been installed in the wall of the apartment. The paralyzed man, who shares a subvert secret with his wife, "needs" to spy on the tenants to find inspiration for his writing work. With this new tenant, however, the writer becomes obsessive and urges his wife to follow him to find out more about his personality. The wife becomes fascinated by the mysterious man too, and - needless to say - this "triangular relationship" won't come to a happy end.

"L'Occhio Dietro la Parete" is a really strange picture. All characters in it obviously have a psychological problem concerning relationships towards the other sex. Everyone has weird or even wicked desires and hides a depraved secret: The young man has an urge to kill, the couple's butler preys on teenage girls, and the couple... well, I won't give that away. The film is very atmospheric, shows quite an amount of nudity without becoming too sexploitative, and boosts a moody soundtrack. Sadly, this obscure oddity remains extremely hard to find. But if one can get hold of it, he shouldn't waste the opportunity and watch it: It's a really remarkable and quite unique film. Rating: 7 out of 10.

It's often said that Italian cinema is based on repeating itself, and this is never truer than when it comes to the Giallo sub-genre; but every now and again, you'll come across a completely absurd effort that isn't like any other Giallo, and Eyes Behind the Wall is one of those films. However, despite its originality, it has to be said that the film really isn't all that good. Despite the themes of voyeurism (obviously inspired by Hitchcock's Rear Window), Eyes Behind the Wall is a rather tame film. Ideas of the spied-upon neighbour's more sordid antics aren't really explored, and even the final sickening twist doesn't feel too bad because of the matter-of-fact way that it is presented. The plot revolves around a wheelchair bound aging writer who has set up some equipment in his house so that he can spy on his next door neighbour, who apparently fascinates him and inspires him for his work as a writer. He soon gets his wife Olga involved in the voyeurism, and even convinces her to get involved with the neighbour in order to give her husband more information on the man he's spying on...

I'm not sure if the version I saw was cut or not (77 minutes long); but considering that this film is about sex, there's very little of it present. There's also not a lot of violence or murder, with most of those themes seeping in almost as an afterthought, probably to ensure that the film was considered a Giallo. It's actually more of a psychological thriller, with all the characters having some sort of vice that makes them sick enough to even be in this story. Aside from the central theme and the final twist, there's also a subplot involving a butler who obsesses over the lady of the house, which he does by taking her underwear and pubic hairs to worship them! The acting is actually quite good, and even though nobody stands out too much; it seems obvious that director Giuliano Petrelli wanted his trash film to have a little more class than most of its counterparts. Overall, I really wanted to like this more, as aside from being one of the more original entries in the genre, I can also admire the film for it's trashy themes. However, the execution is poor and the lack of blood and nudity is none too pleasing, meaning the resulting film feels a little flat.