Who Saw Her Die?

Thursday, March 27, 2008

I do enjoy a good giallo. I saw this one a while back with my uncle and my brother, where we kind of made fun of it even though it's actually a decent one. I ended up with my own copy, and popped it on while relaxing on Thursday night, as a way to hole up in my room and maybe relax my brain a little after watching Persona. This one is no Deep Red... hell, it ain't even a Case of the Bloody Iris, but it's an entertaining one, and it stars worst James Bond ever George Lazenby. IMDB audaciously claims that he lost 35 lbs for this role... I have no idea why that would be necessary, but I'd like to think this guy was pulling crazy weight loss/gain shit years before DeNiro tried it, only he did it for Italian b-movies.

A few things I've picked up about Italian horror flicks:

- Most protagonists are American or British dudes who are living in (or just happen to be in) Italy. Apparently, intrigue doesn't happen to the native Italians.

- If a priest shows up in the movie, 9 times out of 10 he will be the killer.

-If a priest shows up and is not the killer, he will die a violent death.

- If the killer appears to be a woman, most of the time he will turn out to be a transvestite. (Who Saw Her Die goes the extra mile and makes the killer a transvestite priest).

- If there is a little girl in a major role, for some reason she always has red hair, and all children, boy or girl, will have their voices dubbed by an adult woman.

This one looks good, but isn't a visually stylish as my favorite giallos. Much of the entertainment comes from the weird details that director Aldo Lado (silly name!) throws in. Like when the main character is investigating his daughter's death, and he's asking this one dude questions, and they suddenly both start playing ping pong during the heated exchange. Or when the main character appears to be getting stalked by a man on crutches.

It's got the requisite violence (not too gory, but good stuff like when a guy gets lit on fire and falls out a window and they show it like 5 times) and more than its share of naked ladies. It strikes a nice balance between classy and trashy (although doesn't make it an extreme dichotomy, like in an Argento flick). I enjoy this one, and also Lado's Short Night of Glass Dolls, which I've thought would make a good remake and I should watch again soon. Supposedly, his Night Train Murders is really trashy and I'm a little curious to see that one because these other two are relatively well made genre entries. Maybe after my K2K, I'll do an Italian Horror Movie-a-thon and check that one out.