{"id":6357,"date":"2017-03-12T11:43:33","date_gmt":"2017-03-12T10:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/?p=6357"},"modified":"2017-03-12T19:46:03","modified_gmt":"2017-03-12T18:46:03","slug":"death-walks-twice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2017\/03\/12\/death-walks-twice\/","title":{"rendered":"Death Walks Twice"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Death-Walks-at-Midnight\"<\/a>
Death Walks at Midnight<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

\nFormat:<\/B> Blu-ray + DVD

\nRelease date:<\/B> 20 March 2017

\nDistributor:<\/B> Arrow Video

\nDirector:<\/B> Luciano Ercoli

\nDeath Walks on High Heels<\/b><\/i>
\nWriters:<\/B> Ernesto Gastaldi, Mahnahén Velasco (as May Flood), Dino Verde

\nCast:<\/B> Frank Wolff, Nieves Navarro, Simón Andreu

\nOriginal Title:<\/B> La morte cammina con i tacchi alti<\/i>

\nItaly, Spain 1971

\n108 mins

\nDeath Walks at Midnight<\/b><\/i>
\nWriters:<\/B> Sergio Corbucci, Ernesto Gastaldi, Guido Leoni, Mahnahén Velasco (as May Flood)

\nCast:<\/B> Nieves Navarro, Simón Andreu, Pietro Martellanza

\nOriginal Title:<\/B> La morte cammina con i tacchi alti<\/i>

\nItaly, Spain 1972

\n102 mins\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Hallucinations, deadly mediaeval gloves and make-up fetish are the marks of Luciano Ercoli\u2019s entertaining giallo double bill.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

This typically lavish Arrow BluRay\/DVD box set collects two gialli<\/i> from director Luciano Ercoli, following up his genre debut, Le foto proibite di una signora per bene<\/i> (The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion<\/i>, 1970) with a matched pair of mysteries built around leading lady Susan Scott (aka Nieves Navarro) and more or less the same supporting cast (though the heroine has a different duplicitous love interest in each film). <\/p>\n

In La morte cammina con i tacchi alti<\/i> (Death Walks on High Heels<\/i>, 1971), Paris-based stripper Nicole (Scott) suspects her useless layabout lover Michel (Simón Andreu) has donned blue contact lenses and a black ski-mask to terrorise her with a straight razor in an attempt to get his hands on some diamonds everyone thinks her murdered jewel thief father left with her. Nicole hooks up with eye surgeon Dr Robert Matthews (Frank Wolff), a fan-cum-stalker who whisks her off to a strange version of the British seaside with pub gossips (including a one-handed handyman with a secret fetish), an ice-delivering fish vendor (crucial plot point), voyeur neighbours and more murderous attacks. <\/p>\n

In La morte accarezza a mezzanotte<\/i> (Death Walks at Midnight<\/i>\/Cry Out in Terror<\/i>, 1972), Milan-based model Valentina (Scott), duped into taking hallucinogen HDS by her sleazy photojourno pal Gio (Andreu), has a vision of a girl being murdered with a spiked mediaeval glove in the surreally empty apartment across the way. Later, it turns out she\u2019s described a six-month-old crime which has already been solved. The heroine\u2019s alternately sensitive and vicious sculptor boyfriend (Pietro Martellanza\/Peter Martell), a desperate widow (Claudie Lange), another sinister doctor (Ivano Staccioli), some hippies and a pair of nasty drug dealers cloud the issue, and Valentina is further imperilled. In both films, Carlo Gentili plays an affably unconcerned police inspector who turns up after every violent outbreak to puzzle things out \u2013 though Ercoli prefers to resolve mysteries with shock revelations, sudden attacks, punch-ups (sound effects make fist-blows sound like planks of wood snapping) and rooftop chases.<\/p>\n

As in many gialli<\/i>, the bizarre trappings \u2013 weird weaponry, hallucinations, masked heavy-breathers, burbling lounge music, fabulously garish fashions and decors, bursts of ultra-violence \u2013 litter plots which turn out to be indecently fixated on money rather than mania. It\u2019s all about the stolen diamonds\u2026 or the smuggled drugs. Except, of course, it\u2019s not: these films are memorable because of everything else, and resemble fractured mash-ups of Edgar Wallace Presents<\/i> programmers with post-Blow-Up<\/i> swinging psychedelia. Some of the extraordinary frills are so ludicrous as to be almost transgressive \u2013 like Nicole\u2019s black-face stripping act in High Heels<\/i>, which prompts a fetish sex scene as her boyfriend is turned on by wiping off her body make-up. <\/p>\n

The vision of a soulless, exploitative modern world revolving around poor, abused Navarro\/Scott is cartoonish. Seemingly every man in these films is useless or evil, and both movies eventually despair of masculinity so much that the guy we initially take to be the most repulsive (played by Andreu) is positioned by default as the hero. The scripts \u2013 by Ernesto Gastaldi and May Flood from stories by Dino Verde and Sergio Corbucci \u2013 feel like several drafts patched together by collaborators who never met (High Heels<\/i> has a mid-film twist that At Midnight<\/i> acknowledges as a misstep by not repeating) but Ercoli ringmasters the material for maximum entertainment. Odd funny touches and lines (‘Inspector, he’s a bit less fuddled now’) alleviate the sourness of the genre\u2019s habitual cynicism \u2013 so these are among the jolliest, least downerific gialli<\/i>. When Bava or Argento batter or slice victims\u2019 faces in close-up, you flinch\u2026 when Ercoli does it, you can tell he doesn\u2019t mean any harm, really.<\/p>\n

Kim Newman<\/B><\/I><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hallucinations, deadly mediaeval gloves and make-up fetish are the marks of Luciano Ercoli\u2019s entertaining giallo double bill.
\nReview by Kim Newman<\/B><\/I><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,3],"tags":[1288,94,108,1333,1322,107,1334],"class_list":["post-6357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-check-it-out","category-dvds-and-blu-rays","tag-1970s-film","tag-crime-thriller","tag-giallo","tag-italian-crime-thriller","tag-italian-film","tag-italian-horror","tag-luciano-ercoli"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/purUP-1Ex","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6549,"url":"https:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2016\/08\/20\/the-bloodstained-butterfly\/","url_meta":{"origin":6357,"position":0},"title":"The Bloodstained Butterfly","author":"Pam Jahn","date":"August 20, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Duccio Tessari's stylish murder-mystery is a forgotten, unusually complex gem of giallo cinema. 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