Giallo a Venezia

...if for no other reason (of which really and truly there aren't any to speak of unless the trinity of coke, sex and murder is what gets you going) - then for Berto Pisano's stellar, lush, textbook pornographic musical score, all in routinely dizzying major 7 chords, swirling strings and the bop-bop melody firmly rooted in the 60's, already horribly dated by the time this was filmed (late 70's) but very charming and very pleasant nonetheless - for those into that sort of thing - it's a standout winner. What makes this additionally twisted is that the soundtrack is often strangely out of sync with what we see on screen (people are having copious amount of often kinky sex but are also being whipped, stabbed and mutilated to some rather blissful musical sounds, adding to the perverse appeal). The film is certainly a very decadent Eurotrash oddity worth checking out, provided you watch with your ears. And with your brain on leave.

This is sleazy. I've seen the English subtitled Luminous print of this film, and it is safe to report that as a giallo it fails miserably on every level. Not only is there a weak plot and zero suspense, but there is also laughably no attempt to conceal the identity of the killer who is in fact revealed in the first ten minutes or so of the film. Clearly Landi was aware of his shortcomings as a giallo director and so therefore decided to make up for it with lashings of jaw-droppingly misogynistic sexual violence, which he again showed a passion for in his later film "Patrick Lives Again".

A couple of scenes really stick out for absolute, grimy nastiness. Firstly, the vaginal stabbing of the prostitute. This scene has more parallels to old hardcore porn loops than it does the giallo genre, with poorly lit and explicit prolonged close-ups, shot on grainy stock. Secondly, the scene where Mariangela Giordano gets her leg sawed up. Even though the effects are poor, the absolute sadism and overall atmosphere makes you feel pretty sordid for watching it. It kinda reminded me of the similar (but more nasty) scene in The Last House On Dead End Street...

But is this enough to make this film good? NO. This is a failure as a giallo, and is only worth anything because of the outrageous violence.

Giallo a Venezia, also known as Giallo In Venice, has a reputation for being one of the sleaziest films produced in an already sleazy sub genre. Giallos, for the uninitiated, are Italian horror films known for their extreme violence punctuated by scenes of explicit sex. They heavily influenced the American slasher films of the late 70s and early 80s, but for the most part these American films were not as extreme as their Italian counterparts.

There are few death scenes in Giallo a Venezia but they are quite gory. There's an immolation, a graphic dismemberment, and the usual requisite stabbings. Giallo a Venezia does feature plenty of sex and nudity, but the bare bodies on display do further the plot. After finding a married couple's dead bodies on the Venice beach our main character, a detective, is baffled by the crime's seemingly lack of motive. We spend the rest of the movie inter-cutting between the detective working on his case and flashbacks of the deceased married couple. The film's flashback structure is unique telling the story of the married couple's last days before their death. Their marriage is, to put it politely, very rocky. The husband is a cocaine addict and frequently indulges in kinky sex to debase his wife.

While Giallo a Venezia may lack the social commentary of Lucio Fulci or the swooping camera-work and visual styling of Dario Argento, it is still a giallo that can comfortably stand on merits of its own. Unlike some other giallos that have been loving restored and even presented on Bluray, tracking down a copy of Giallo a Venezia may present quite a challenge. I had to settle for a sub par VHS rip.

I saw the 99 mins version of this movie for the first time recently as i got enticed into it aft reading some glowing reviews on imdb by Coventry n Harrison. The film is boring, the lead detective kept on munching hard boiled eggs, the pervert kept on his perversion while the abused girlfriend simply kept quiet, the other characters r not developed well n the killer's background story is nada. Unnecessary footage is given to weird sex scenes n less to the killer or the kills. In one scene, the killer leaves the scissor inside the private parts of a woman but the cop insists that the scissor was found at the killer's place which even the killer is not able to recollect whether he had left it at the murder site or na. The masturbation scene will give Natalie Portman's scene from Black Swan a tough competition. We have Mariangela Giordano who goes full nude n performs wild sex, the masturbatory nun from Malabimba n the pervert's mother from Burial Ground.

The film has few gory scenes but that gets overshadowed due to the unnecessary sex scenes. There is a scene where a guy gets shot by a gun n he does lots of overacting by doing writhing movements.

My god, this film is a piece of work. Rough as a bag of spanners. One of the ugliest and sleaziest giallos you could ever hope to see. Plot wise there is very little to say, the impact in this film comes from its audacious insistence on making everything look as unpleasant as possible.

But let me give you a quick plat re-cap. Two dead bodies are found at the edge of a canal in Venice. The police start asking friends of the late couple for clues, but as soon as they start their investigations, more dead bodies start piling up. What is the connection, and out of all the unsavoury characters that appear on the screen, does any of them have a clear alibi (or conscience)?

Enough of that then, what is really so bad about Giallo A Venezia? Well it's just that the sleaze factor is so high it's off the scale. The dead couple are at the centre of the plot, and the film consists of many flashbacks in which we see how the husband took pleasure in humiliating and sexually abusing his timid wife. The poor actress who plays Flavia (the wife) suffers the indignity of being stripped naked and roughed up in nearly every scene she appears...I hope she got paid well. Worse still, her husband Fabio is not blessed looks-wise, and add this to the fact that the sex scenes between the pair of them are completely devoid of chemistry makes watching them a real chore – and they go on for AGES!! You'll see a lot of Flavia naked which might have looked nicer if things were better filmed but the whole thing is done so sloppily that a lot of the time it's just not that exciting. Especially when Fabio is slobbering all over her (he's a really terrible kisser!) and trying to roll all over the place without showing his private bits, whereas of course there's no modesty allowed for his wife who is shown very graphically naked in several scenes.

The reason why I have had to devote a full paragraph to describing the sex scenes is because that's really all that happens for 75% of the films running time! Other than that, we have to sit through the police force carrying out their investigations which is kinda boring, even with the running gag of the main inspector eating hard boiled eggs in every scene (why? who knows... It must be an Italian thing), and some half hearted attempts by director Mario Landi to spin a web of mystery around the proceedings.

So that just leaves ...the murders. And just as he manages to make all the sex scenes ugly, unpleasant and graphic, Landi cuts no corners with the violence either. So prepare yourself for some very grim scenes of violence. Although the scenes are not dwelled on in loving detail like they are in a Lucio Fulci gore flick, they all seem to have a very nasty flavour to them. Scissor stabbings to the crotch and a human torch are two that spring to mind. Oh wait, did I say the gore is not dwelled on? Sorry I forgot the film's gore "highlight' in which victim has their leg sawed off while tied to the kitchen table. I have seen a lot of graphic gore but I found this intensely unpleasant. I think it's because it's just all sort of...thrown at you. No artistry to speak of, just events.

This film has absolutely no class whatsoever. And if you get a kick out of sleaze, it's almost possible to appreciate it on that level alone, but anyone with any taste in good cinema is likely to be left shaking their head in disbelief. Very hard to find - at time of writing there is no DVD or VHS release in print, so you're stuck with finding bootlegs if you want to track this down, and even then I believe it was originally released in Italian only – so make sure you get a subtitled copy if you must seek this out! A bleak, bizarre and depressing piece of grime, it's very hard to be positive about this movie. Even calling it a giallo is an insult to that genre, as the "whodunnit" value is very weak. Its just 90 minutes of bad simulated sex and some equally badly simulated murders, but if the phrase "in your face" was ever deserved, it is here.