Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972)

Aside from having one of the greatest titles in cinema history, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key is an interesting take on the giallo film.

Oliviero is a washed-up author, obsessed with his dead mother, battling writer’s block with booze, drugs and decadent parties at his crumbling villa, where he regularly humiliates and abuses wife Irina. When one of his flings turns up dead, he becomes the prime suspect. As more murders occur and the paranoia grips Olivero, his life is thrown into even more turmoil by the arrival of his long-unseen niece Fiorina (Edwige Fenech), who takes a shine to Irina. What mysterious secrets could she be hiding? And why is Irina so afraid of their black cat, the one that used to belong to Olivero's mother?

As usual with this genre the plot is a little wild and not always lucid, but the more outré elements simply reflect the increasingly delirious mental states of the characters. In addition, the script benefits from borrowing some ideas from Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Black Cat, meaning the story wraps up in a relatively rational and satisfying way (and having the protagonist live in a crumbling villa feels very Poe as well).

As well as including many of the standard Giallo tropes, such as sex, violent death, knives, and J&B whisky, director Sergio Martino creates a hothouse atmosphere of insanity, decadence and suppressed anger, helped by some excellent cinematography, crazy camera angles and clever editing, particularly during one scene of a motorcyclist having an unfortunate meeting with an oil slick. All of this is supplemented by a lush score from Bruno Nicolai.

The emphasis is less on baroque set pieces (although there is no shortage of blood), more on the destructive nature of the relationships between the characters. Fenech is excellent as Fiorina, her icy cool demeanour providing a good counterpoint to the hysteria of Oliviero and Irina.

Your Vice also predates The Shining in terms of using an alcoholic writer's literary frustration as a metaphor for frustrations in life and relationships.

The Love Witch (2016)

The Love Witch is not just an intoxicating homage to both 1970s sexually charged exploitation films, and the dreamlike psychological thrillers of the Giallo genre, or Vertigo era Hitchcock. Beneath the lush colours, nudity and violence, writer / director Anna Biller has also crafted a thought provoking exploration of female identity.

Elaine (a breakthrough performance by Samantha Robinson) is a beautiful, self-absorbed witch who breezes into a Californian town to find a new husband to replace her previous murdered one. Her search leads to men falling at her feet - and then falling down dead. As Griff, the police officer investigating the deaths gets closer to the truth, will he be next to fall under her spell?

The heady intoxicating world in which all this takes place looks like a mix of classic Hollywood Technicolor and a perfect pastiche of the rich colours (and hairy characters) of sixties and seventies European exploitation cinema. This is all complemented by the sort of soundtrack of lush strings and female solo voice often found in those sorts of films.

Writer/director/editor/producer Anna Biller has Wes Anderson levels of detail in creating her completely self-contained cinematic universe, which, like Anderson's, feels both real and completely imagined. When late in the film, one character pulls out a mobile phone, the effect is jarring, making you wonder if the whole thing is set in contemporary times after all, albeit completely re-imagined in Elaine's mind. 

The story is pulpy, melodramatic and absurd but works better for taking place within this slightly artificial environment. The acting style ranges from (deliberately) am-dram to understated, all of which seems inexplicably chilling, as artificial and persuasive as a nightmare.

Beneath the masses of style is substance too, in the examination of some of the stereotypical roles men and ascribe to themselves and each other. Elaine in particular seems to have swallowed the idea of presenting herself as a sex object for men to take care of. This buys her some power over them, but when they crave an emotional connection, she seems to find the cognitive dissonance between fantasy and reality too much to take.

THE LOVE WITCH Trailer (Romantic Comedy, 2016) by hotmovietrailer

The Lodger (1927)

Coming before the droll British chase films of the 1930s, the glamorous Hollywood psychodramas of the 1940s and 50s and the controlled cruelty of his later work, the silent films of Alfred Hitchcock can get overlooked. Despite lacking the budget, resources and superstars of the later work, there is still much to enjoy as well as some pointers as to where the career of Mr Hitchcock was going to go, most particularly in The Lodger.

The plot sees a sinister Jack the Ripper style killer called The Avenger on the loose on the foggy streets of London, a killer who only targets blonde women. A mysterious man (Ivor Novello) arrives at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Bunting, looking for a room to rent. The Buntings have a daughter, Daisy, who is a fashion model, and has a police detective boyfriend, Joe  - and blonde hair. As Joe investigates the murders, he begins to suspect the Bunting's new lodger - just as Daisy starts to find herself attracted to him. Does Joe have the right man? Moreover, is he about to lose his woman to him?

The Lodger was Hitchcock's third completed film but already we can see many of the themes and tropes that would crop up time and time again in his work over the next 50 years. The plot revolves not just around murder, but the murder of women, and blonde women at that. There is also a man wrongly accused of a crime, a slightly buffoonish police officer, a streak of black humour, and a twist ending. We also see in Ivor Novello, a leading man cast in a different light to how the public were used to seeing him – think of James Stewart as a neurotic weirdo in Vertigo.

In addition, Hitchcock is already starting to not just hint at sex and violence in his films, but draw a link between the two. This is most explicitly shown here, not just by the killer, but by Joe the detective, who gleefully talks of putting a ring on Daisy's finger after he has put a rope around the neck of the Avenger, implying that the perfect climax to a violent death is consummating his marriage.

However, the Lodger is more than just a dry run for Hitchcock's career, and is a great thriller in its own right. The cinematic style is at wonderfully audacious, with some brilliantly designed shots and scenes that show Hitchcock had grasped the unique power of the medium, and was also paying attention to and learning from some of his contemporaries, particularly the German Expressionists, such as Robert Wiene and his silent classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

As always with a silent film, the soundtrack that accompanies your screening will be a definite factor. While previous viewings have been on DVD with a soundtrack played by the London Symphony Orchestra, a recent watch on the big screen for me had music by drums/bass/guitar trio Minima. This was in itself an eclectic affair, moving seamlessly between jazzy noire, eerie atmosphere psychedelic noodling and loud, dramatic rhythm and may initially feel somewhat anachronistic, compared to the large ensemble or organ score of the time of the films release, However, it actually gives the film a completely different feel, one that is to my mind somewhat closer to the Giallo genre, and given that one of the progenitors of Giallo, Dario Argento, made his name with visually stunning films about sexually charged murder (with great soundtracks) this actually makes sense.

The Dark Mirror (1946)

The Dark Mirror is an entertaining melodrama, fusing elements of film noir, psychoanalysis and an old cinematic trope about good twin vs bad twin. Although the psychology has dated badly, the film is more than lifted by clever direction, great lead performances, and some, for the time at least, astonishing special effects

Terry and Ruth Collins (both played by Olivia de Havilland) are identical twins, one kind and caring, the other a very disturbed individual. However, both are caught up in the murder of a doctor after witnesses place one of them with the victim just before his death. The police agree, but are stumped as to which, so they call in the help of psychiatrist Doctor Scott Elliott to see if he can shed any light on them. However, is Elliot putting his own life at risk, by falling in love?

Although the events in this film are triggered by crime, director Robert Siodmak favours mind over murder, with the focus on Elliot delving into the psyche of the sisters, rather than any police investigation. Olivia de Havilland wisely plays the pair as having distinctive characteristics, particularly in their attitudes to men, without being too dissimilar, or too extreme and theatrical.

Her performance is greatly helped by the extraordinary (for the time at least) optical effects used to place both twins in the same shot, which, when combined with clever editing and body doubles, means it is often possible to forget you are watching the same actress.

She gets able support from Thomas Mitchell as the baffled police detective, Lt. Stevenson, bringing the same sort of likeable enthusiasm he gave to the role of Uncle Billy in It's a Wonderful Life. Lew Ayres is less successful as Dr Elliot, although this may be down to the character being fundamentally unlikeable, a slightly pompous know-it-all, whose actions, particularly taking a patient out on a date, can seem a little unethical.

Siodmak is considered, in some circles, “the primary architect” of Film Noir, and there are enough elements of Noir, both in style and character, for it to be counted in that genre. The film is shot with plenty of stylised light and shade, which helps keep an air of suspense and unease, the plot revolves around crime, and, of course, if there is a woman who is aggressive confident, and intelligent, she has to be evil. Siodmak has also taken the time to put plenty of mirror themes into the imagery and characters, such as the symmetrical Rorschach inkblots in the opening and end credits, or the total opposite character pairing of the old-fashioned cop and the ultra-modern doctor.

What also makes this film so fascinating is the portrayal of psychoanalysis, something Hitchcock had started putting into his films with Spellbound, which was released a year before this. Perhaps it was the hope it seemed to offer in healing the minds shattered by the traumas of World War Two, but it is shown as something that can provide, quantifiable, empirical, definitive answers, and quickly, in the same way a treatment of drugs can for the body. At one point Elliot subjects the twins to a Rorschach inkblot test, showing them a series of pictures and noting their answers. He is then seen crosschecking these against some sort of textbook, before going on to tell Stevenson that from the results of this alone can he tell for certain that one of the twins is insane. This kind of thinking looks clunky and simplistic nowadays, although this film was not the only example. The idea that a psychological test or the uncovering of a single traumatic event can provide the key to unlocking a mystery would crop up in other Film Noir movies, throughout Hitchcock’s work, and in the giallo films that came out of Europe in the 1960s and 70s. This suggests a pattern of thinking in directors (maybe also in audiences) that, no matter how baffling a mystery may be, it cannot, under any circumstances, go unsolved.

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

Steeped in the sexual and violent films coming out of Italy in the 1970s, collectively known as Giallo, Berberian Sound Studio is a confused and frustrating mess, which sees writer/director Peter Strickland on one hand seem to want to celebrate the genre, while on the other, want to look down at it.

Toby Jones plays a character called Gilderoy, an English Sound Effects artist who flies out to Italy to work on the audio track of a fictional Giallo film, The Equestrian Vortex. Initially, uncertain about working on something so violent and disturbing, his mind starts to unravel as he gets sucked into the oppressive world of the studio, and the images and noises facing him every day; can he keep his sanity and make it back home in one piece?

A good chunk of Berberian Sound Studio is based around Gilderoy and his interactions with the film crew. The contrast between the outgoing, garrulous and tactile Italians and the shy, repressed and awkward Englishman are played for laughs, with polyester shirts, big moustaches and testosterone on one side, and meekness, hesitancy, and cardigans on the other. The differences are there to provide tension, via the dramatic staple of the fish out of water and this starts to build from awkward comedy into more sinister mind games, with Gilderoy trapped and penniless, forced to stay and finish the film. Frustratingly, these are never properly resolved, as the film breaks down into David Lynch style weirdness before fizzling out, as if Strickland had simply run out of ideas. A shame, as Toby Jones delivers a great performance, giving the dorky and awkward Gilderoy, a likeable vulnerability.

Aside from Jones, there are some things to enjoy, at least for genre fans and audiophiles. For the former, a host of in-jokes, from the opening credits of the fake film, The Equestrian Vortex, a perfect and believable parody with its lurid animated credits and prog-rock soundtrack, to the studio projectionist, who remains unseen apart from his black gloves, and the end credits which list Suzy Kendall as "special guest screamer".

For the latter, the other big star, apart from Jones, is the sound itself. Screams, gongs, squashed fruit and vegetables, and, eerie singing are recorded and then manipulated and distorted into a disorienting cacophony. Very cleverly, the origins of the sound are obscured or played around with, blurring the line between the soundtrack of the fake film, the soundtrack of the film that we are watching, and soundtrack going on in the head of Gilderoy.

Unfortunately, Berberian Sound Studio does not give us anything other than clever, and disappointingly, considering the genre the film is set in, we also get no real horror, of either the psychological or cheap shock kind. Instead, we get a lot of, at times, fascinating, disturbing and baffling sounds and images, that ultimately add up to nothing.

Ultimately, Strickland seems to want to have it both ways, celebrating the outre elements of the Giallo genre, but then suddenly seeming to remember that by contrast, Berberian Sound Studio is also a "proper" film, and that we are supposed to be tut-tutting at this trash for what it is doing to Gilderoy and his morality and mental state. By the way if you are not sure what it is doing, the repeated close ups of the rotting vegetables used as sound effects for the violent on-screen deaths MIGHT GIVE YOU A VERY SUBTLE CLUE.

The Card Player (Il cartaio) 2004

What if no higher force such as God or Karma has its hand on the tiller of the ship of life, and our existence may be snuffed out by something as random as the turn of a card? The thought is not a comforting one, and it is this idea that is at the heart of Dario Argento's The Card Player. However, a messy and rather silly script coupled with too few of the director's trademark stylistic flourishes, leaves us with a failed attempt by the one-time master of the Giallo genre to reinvent himself for the cyber age.

Someone is kidnapping women in Rome and forcing the police to play internet poker for the lives of his victims, all the time showing their fate in gruesome close-up via a webcam. A detective, whose father was a gambling addict, teams up with a forensic scientist and a card shark to catch him. However, is the killer a lot closer to home than they realise?

Dario Argento is in one respect very much like Woody Allen, who having made his breakthrough in the 60s, and his bona fide classics in the 70s is subsequently seeing everything new he produces compared to this earlier body of work, understandably, perhaps, given the impact that work had.

The Card Player contains some familiar tropes from Argento's previous films, such as a black gloved killer, women in peril, cod Freudian pop psychology, some odd camera angles, plot twists that are slightly too convenient, and forcing people to voyeuristically watch murder, but it also represents an attempt to give the Giallo genre a 21st century spin. Consequently, rather than using the more familiar character of the amateur detective usually seen in Argento's murder mysteries, large sections of the film follow the "police procedural" style seen in TV shows such as the CSI franchise, with the focus on forensic examinations of the crime scene and the corpses.

In addition, the elaborate, highly stylised, murder scenes have been jettisoned in favour of webcam footage of the victims being tortured and killed, which feels more reminiscent of the "torture porn" genre. While there is certainly nothing wrong with trying something new with a genre, in this case, the end result is a little unsatisfactory. With his landmark early films, Argento took an existing genre, the murder mystery, and injected it with his own brand of twisted sex and violence, as well as a distinctive cinematic style, but here it feels like a clone of modern cop shows with a few diluted elements of his own style.
 
The sad decline in the filmmaking standards is paralleled in the musical score, with Argento stalwart Claudio Simonetti leaving behind bombastic or creepy Prog-Rock, and instead plumping for a pounding, nervy electronic score. Thematically the hi-tech approach ties in the subject matter, but apart from sounding a little tinny and weak at times, it is so generic it could have been written by anybody.

The actors do their best with the characters they are given, but neither John Brennan (played by Liam Cunningham) or Anna Mari (Stefania Rocca) are in the slightest bit original (he is burnt out, she is a female detective in a macho world) or fleshed out. Meanwhile, their boss the Police Commissioner shouts a lot, initially refuses to negotiate with the killer, and is reluctant to bring in any outside help.

This timid, disappointing, and dull film makes you long for the Argento of old, who was not afraid to take chances, and whose outrageous, and, at times, out of control films, truly felt like the stuff of nightmares.