The Sweet Body of Deborah is an early giallo that is more of a straight up mystery rather than the body count thriller that the genre would evolve towards. There’s a lot of groovy late Sixties style in the dress and locations but it doesn’t have much cinematic style. That said, the mystery is solid albeit somewhat predicable and it does feature Lawn Twister™.
My series of wood engravings based on Italian giallo thrillers continues with Dario Argento’s “lost” classic, Four Flies on Grey Velvet. A lot of what would gel together and become the giallo masterpiece Deep Red is in its embryonic form in this film. I watched it multiple times while I hashed out ideas for this print and it has grown on me.
As with the other prints in the series, I am trying to compile my strongest memories of the film into a single static image. It’s not necessarily a depiction of a certain scene or attempt to capture the entire narrative. Although, I broke some of my rules here by using photographic source images to create my initial design.
This was a murder mystery about a hooded strangler who carves the letter M into the foreheads of his victims. Apparently, Blackmoor Castle is one of the first of the German Krimi films based on the novels of Edgar Wallace. There many similarities with giallo, but overall there is a lighter tone. Absolutely beautiful black and white photography on display here and a fun mystery to boot.
Slow but true to the book, which, admit it, wasn’t the most exciting of reads—those first 100 pages are a test of a man’s will. Every frame of this film is an exquisitely designed composition. Yet, there is something dull about the art direction, especially when compared to the Lynch version. Overall, I liked it but I hope it picks up a bit in part 2.
This felt like every early 90s art film I saw as a college kid. A few memorable scenes that are technically amazing (midnight water skiing amidst a fireworks display), but the story about dirty, horrible people finding themselves is just boring. I’m sure there is deep, high school level poetry meaning here, but I was not buying it.
I read a large chunk of this book in draft form as he serialized it on his Substack blog. This is the definitive refutation of “anti-racist” woke culture (a more apt term that he uses is KendiDeAngeloism). He frames it as a religion devoid of reasoning and logic. Not like a religion, but an actual religion. McWhorter’s arguments are detailed, well-informed, and often delivered with wit and humor. The book is not intended to change the minds of his targets, but rather to frame their positions in a way that makes their irrational behavior a little easier to understand (and avoid).
A no-budget Italian ripoff of Escape from New York. Apparently, this is the sequel to Bronx Warriors so maybe I’m missing some key character details, but this is pretty terrible. The hero looks like The Barbarian Brothers’ younger brother as he runs around, arms daintily off to his side, showcasing his visible panty lines. If anything, this movie should have been more over-the-top with gore and explosions. As it is, it’s repetitive and dull with no consideration for plot or characters. Henry Silva is its only saving grace.
In this crime mystery, Franco Nero plays a police detective whose methods include warrantless entry, lying, threatening, and smacking the living crap out of every woman he meets. He’s our hero. The version I watched on YouTube slipped in and out of Italian but was not completely incomprehensible. Any puzzling aspects were due to the scattershot plotting. Frankly, I was rooting for the various ne’er-do-wells, especially Florinda Bolkan.
This is Ray Harryhausen’s excuse to animate a rampaging T-Rex. The plot is cowboys versus dinosaurs which sounds a lot cooler than the actual end product. The characters are dull and so is the Southwest setting. While I always like me some stop motion animation, it looks especially dated here in a post Jurrasic Park world. Noteworthy: movie makers did not know the sound an elephant makes in 1969.
The guy from the new Star Warses is a card player and gambler who learned his trade after 10 years in military prison. He hooks up with a kid bent on getting revenge on the ex-marine who avoided punishment for war crimes. The card playing and the revenge plot lines are there, but they take a back seat to the characters and the relationships that build between them. This could have gone the route of Tarantino violence or a Mighty Ducks-style sports movie and it avoids both.
