The newest box set of rare “giallos” (Italian thrillers from the 70s and 80s) ratchets up the sleaze meter to 10. These Vinegar Syndrome box sets are handsomely boxed and all are scanned from the film’s negatives and look astonishing. And I love discovering offbeat Italian thrillers I’ve never heard of.
The first of the three rarities is Arabella: Black Angel (1989) starring the buxom, Bettie Page-look-a-like Tini Cansino as Arabella, a sexually frustrated wife whose writer/husband (Francesco Casale) ended up in a wheelchair on their wedding day.
They live with his mother (cult Italian icon Evelyn Stewart) who bakes cookies but harbors her own dark secrets. Encouraged by her husband to go out on the prowl for sex with strangers (as fodder for his latest book), Arabella takes a walk on the wild side, her reckless nymphomania putting her in the crosshairs of blackmailers and a mysterious scissor-wielding killer. There’s so many soft-core sex scenes that are hilariously lurid, recalling the Zalman King– Red Shoe Diaries– era. The director Stelvio Massi directed another sordid thriller 5 Women for the Killer about a maniac targeting pregnant women. (Shhh, you can find the whole movie on Youtube).
The second Blu-ray is a weird one- The Killer is Still Among Us (1986), directed by Camillo Teti, loosely based on the brutal, still-unsolved “Monster of Florence” murders targeting young couples making out in cars. Mariangela D’Abbraccio plays a student doing a thesis on the killings but her amateur detective investigation into a bar that caters to voyeurs puts her in mortal danger. Paranoia even begins to color her relationship with her police pathologist boyfriend (Giovanni Visentin). There are some jaw-dropping murder sequences that will have you shielding your eyes and a surprising meta-ending that is gloriously whacked.
The third in this enjoyably sordid set is the wonderfully deranged The Sister of Ursula (1978), about two sexy sisters vacationing on the Amalfi coast. The hotel the film was shot at was under construction at the time and, weirdly, never opened. The more sensible sister is Dagmar (Stefania D’Amario) who cares for her beautiful, disturbed sister Ursula (played by the stunning Barbara Magnolfi) who has psychic visions of violent killings about to happen around the hotel.
Gorgeous Marc Porel (Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man) is the strung-out druggie hotel guest coming on to Dagmar and instantly hated by Ursula. Marc Porel was married to lead actress Magnolfi at the time and according to a fascinating extra with director Enzo Milioni Marc a bad drug problem himself at the time. He was finally talked into detoxing after the film but a later opportunity to do some commercial shoot in Morocco resulted in a relapse that caused his early death. The movie is hard to categorize but is so damned bizarre at times and so overtly sexual it makes it wildly enjoyable. According to the director hardcore inserts were added by producers much to his shock. Barbara Magnolfi is incredibly striking in the lead (cult fans will remember her as the catty dancer Olga in Dario Argento’s Suspiria). But her character is so disturbed and annoyingly unpleasant it’s hard to feel much sympathy for her. Still, the movie is so sleazy and bonkers it rounds out this invaluable box set perfectly.
Eager to pick this set up!