"A Surveillance Of Assailants" (Noirsville)
Directed with a lot of style by Sergio Martino.
I've seen just two other films directed by Martino Slave of the Cannibal God, and A Man Called Blade aka Mannaja. They are both watchable the latter is one of the last of the Spaghetti Westerns BTW. Seems that Martino was more popular after 1986 for his work on series TV.
Written by Sergio Martino and Ernesto Gastaldi and based on a story by Sergio Martino. The really excellent Cinematography was by Giancarlo Ferrando and the Music was by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis (Keoma another of the Last Spaghetti Westerns).
The film stars Suzy Kendall (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Darker Than Amber, Spasmo) as Jane. Tina Aumont (Satyricon) as Dani (Daniela), Luc Merenda (The Violent Professionals) as Doctor Roberto, John Richardson (One Million Years B.C.) as Professor Franz,
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| Suzy Kendall as Jane |
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| Tina Aumont as "Dani" Daniela |
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| Luc Merenda as Dr. Roberto |
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| John Richardson as Professor Franz |
Roberto Bisacco as Stefano Vanzi, Ernesto Colli as Gianni Tomasso, the street vendor. Angela Covello as Katia, Carla Brait as Ursula, Conchita Airoldi as Carol Peterson.
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| Roberto Bisacco as Stefano Vanzi |
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| Ernesto Colli as Gianni Tomasso |
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| Conchita Airoldi as Carol Peterson |
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| Carla Brait as Ursula |
Patrizia Adiutori as Flo (Florence) Heineken, Luciano De Ambrosis as Inspector Martino, and Carlo Alighiero as Uncle Nino.
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| Patrizia Adiutori as Flo (Florence) Heineken |
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| Luciano De Ambrosis as Inspector Martino |
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| Carlo Alighiero as Uncle Nino. |
Here is a Giallo film that really impressed me with it's Style. Film Noir has always been on the cutting edge of Style out of sheer necessity. Usually when you don't have much of a budget, and you really care about work work, you got to get creative. If you do have a budget and creative control you can really splurge.
Sergio Martino delivers a nicely distilled mixture of thriller, beauty, blood, violence and sexploitation. Martino was obviously influenced by Sergio Leone who was a master of ratcheting up tension before a quick explosion of violence. Here he gives us elaborate sequences of beauty and clam before the storm, so to speak.
"Between subjective shots, furious zooms, slap-shot panoramas, there is all the stylistic paraphernalia of Italian genre cinema of the period. But used with a class and awareness superior to those of many of Martino's best-known and most celebrated colleagues." (Giordano Efrodini)
I'll take Giordano's word for it because most of the Giallo that I've seen are not my bag. They have characters that are almost all 'beautiful people," with actors who you can't tell tell apart at least in the US, and seem interchangeable, and they usually are impeccably dressed, never seem to have actual jobs, and appear to belong to the upper crust of society, and as Robin Leach used to put it live the lives of the "rich and famous."
Here though for a change we get international university students during the Age of Aquarius, but we get a weird mixed "scene" of a combo of bongo beatniks, drugs, orgiastic love-ins and hippies. It reminds me somewhat of Hollywood burlesqued depictions of the swinging 60's with in house studio made canned music rather than the real deal. It feels off from an American perspective but who knows maybe it was as depicted over in Europe. Hip through an Italian filter. Suzy Kendall supplies a tether of cinematic memory to one of the first American Neo Noir Darker Than Amber the only Travis McGee film to ring true even though it starred Aussie Rod Taylor both he and Kendall were superb. If Kendall had not been it the cast I probably would have passed on this film.
Ok so lets get to the film.
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It starts off with a porn shoot running under the credits, the two women, we later find out are Flo and Carol. are having a a menage a trois with an unidentified man, while someone photographs them.
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It's just T&A with your imagination filling in the rest. However there is a doll in the shots, and what amounts to a brief flash back to a different doll. A prop? A clue. Remember it. After the credits we get a general intro to all the characters who are connected by being enrolled in an Art History Class / Workshop taught by Professor Franz in Perugia about 100 miles North of Rome.
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Jane, Flo, Carol, Ursula, Katia and Dani are all enrolled for various reasons, only Jane seems to be taking things seriously the others are the "girls gone wild" of the early '70s. She is also leaning towards a relationship with Professor Franz, they seem to like what each other sees and they begin to hang out together.
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The credit sequence already shows Flo and Carol are into exhibitionism, multiple partners, porn and each other. We also find out more details of the intertwined lives of the others. Carol is also having an affair with Dani's rich Uncle Nino. Dani herself has a quasi stalker Stefano who has had a crush on her since childhood. Katia and Ursula are another couple of "lipstick lesbians."
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Things start going Noirsville. Flo is the first woman killed. She and John from class sneak away to a deserted lovers lane under an Autostrada and have a hide the sausage session in a red 1972 Innocenti Mini Cooper 1300, must have been pretty cozy.
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Flo continues to dress. John has not yet returned. She gets anxious. She turns on the headlights and gets out of the car. Big mistake.
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Flo does not see John. When she returns to the car is strangled to death with a red and black scarf by someone wearing a ski mask.
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| The dancer |
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| Nothing comes between her and her jeans |
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Personally, whenever I see characters wearing masks I think back to some of the earliest memories I had as a child. Very early Black & White cartoons on TV always depicted "the bad guys" wearing masks and if that wasn't enough also wearing prison style striped suits, like they just escaped from the joint, lol, and it looked pretty stupid even to a kid. So I got imprinted with mask = stupid, not mask = scary or cool. This film very obviously influence American Slasher films to come.
Anyway you look at it this film is an interesting ride.
Noirsville
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This film might have benefitted using some American actors like the Spaghetti Westerns did in the 1960's to bring a bit of cinematic memory to the work. Imagine it sprinkled with some misdirection with a little bit of say Timothy Carey, or John Davis Chandler in some minor supporting parts, lol
Almost every sequence we get from Martino is like the equivalent of a plot McGuffin, a surveillance of assailants that may or may not mean anything, but they advance the plot and one of them may be important but there's so many of them coming at you combined with some very stylistic camera work that you just go along for the carnal carnival ride. The Visual style phototropic-ly stimulates the Dark "Noir Stained" Story but it's on that cusp. Here, I see almost no difference between Highly Stylized Noir and Highly Stylized Giallo. For some folks it will tip either way too. 8/10
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