Fans of Italian giallo thrillers will delight in NoShame Films' latest release, The Luciano Ercoli Death Box Set, a package that includes Death Walks on High Heels (1971) and Death Walks at Midnight (1972), as well as a music CD: The Sound of Love and Death - The Very Best of Stelvio Cipriani. The two movies fall well short of greatness but are solid examples of the genre, and both star the gorgeous Susan Scott (nee Nieves Navarro), also the director's wife.

For the uninitiated, the giallo - so named for the yellow-jacketed (giallo) pulp paperback thrillers popular in Italy during the 1960s and '70s - was a surprisingly rich genre for ambitious talent trying rise above budgetary limitations and program picture expectations. The best giallo compare favorably with the work of Alfred Hitchcock and other genre masters; they're often quite im...Read the entire review

The Film:

Stationed in a remote corner of the North Kingdom lieutenant Drogo (Jacques Perrin) has been impatiently awaiting to face the threat everyone talks about- the Tartars. Day after day Drogo and his comrades are tormented by the idea that the isolated garrison, the last stronghold of the almighty North Kingdom, could fall victim to an enemy too skilled and too powerful to withstand. With the sun mercilessly beating down and an enemy which the soldiers are yet to see moral, honor, and patience will soon be tested.

Based on the novel by Dino Buzzati and directed by Valerio Zurlini The Desert of the Tartars (1976) is not a film of exceptional contrasts. On the contrary this multinational production (the film was co-produced by West Germany, Italy, France, and Iran) offers an impressive amount of subtle character exploration typical for European features from the late 70s....Read the entire review

The Film:

I revisited George Cosmatos' Massacre in Rome (1973) a number of times during the years and with each viewing my admiration for the story and to a larger extent the acting which the great Richard Burton, Marcello Mastroianni, Leo McKern, and John Steiner among others provided became more and more questionable. More than thirty years now George Cosmatos' take on the Nazi occupation of Rome seems rather unpersuasive as neither the acting nor the script allow this otherwise very ambitious project to be referred as "classic".

Massacre in Rome follows the Nazi occupation of Rome at a time when the fascists are getting ready to stage a huge parade through the streets of the Italian capital. At the same time a group of partisans is planning an attack on an SS brigade which is heading to a local Nazi commanding post. A huge explosive is detonated and the partisans ma...Read the entire review

Italian genre filmmaking treads water with A Man Called Magnum, a competent but undemanding police-chase thriller from the late seventies. The NoShame DVD label has been importing scores of Italian horror and crime movies from that decade, proving more or less that the average Italo programmer was on a par with American television work. The main difference is in the setting - instead of generic New York streets as a backdrop the cops patrol for drug-runners in scenic cities like Rome or Naples.

When these pictures reached America they became grind-house fodder, often shorn of nudity so that they could sport an all-ages PG rating. The original title of this particular cop show is Napoli si rebella, which translates as "Naples Turns on Itself." On a 42nd street marquee A Man Called Magnum would read more like a blaxploitati...Read the entire review

The Film:

When Marco (Carlos Monzon) arrives in town with nothing else but a music box and a few folded pictures looking for a job everyone sees him as just another stranger ready to try his luck in the big city. Marco quickly confronts a few of the local Manzetti guerrillas and after a violent brawl which leads him straight up to their boss Rico (Luc Merenda) he is offered to join the "organization". After a quick testing period Marco is fully accepted and he slowly begins to work his way up the ladder. Soon, the Manzetti clan is faced with a difficult dilemma-they have to confront another rivaling group and as it seems blood is going to be spilled. But what is Marco's role in all of this?

Obviously influenced by the classic Italian spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars (1964) impeccably directed by Sergio Leone Il Conto e chiuso a.k.a Last Round (1976) attempts to fo...Read the entire review

The Film:As strange as it may sound political propaganda films have been around for quite some time now. Only recently however I began noticing that the "old classics" started receiving the much needed polishing, maybe because of the rather polarized political climate we are currently experiencing or maybe because their time has just come, so when I found out that Love and Anger was set to be released in North America the news put a smile on my face.

For those unfamiliar with Love and Anger this is a rather biased experimental project by five classic European directors well known for their political views- Marco Bellocchio, Bernardo Bertolucci, Jean-Luc Godard, Carlo Lizzani, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. As you could guess each director contributed with a short story that at least in my opinion does not shy away from professing a passionate support for the cause of the progressi...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Eurocult stalwart Tomas Milian (of Almost Human) plays Ravelli, an Interpol agent whose wife is murdered in cold blood by a group of gangsters. With her gone, he falls into a state of depression and despite the fact that others around him like his sister in law are reaching out to him, he's cold, pulling inside himself, and falling completely into his work. While working to track down a gang of bank robbers, he discovers that the leader of this gang, Marseilles, may in fact be connected to his wife's death as the bullet that recently killed someone during the robbery matches the bullet that killed his wife. When Marseilles latest robbery attempt doesn't work out as planned, the cops begin closing in on him and Ravelli plans his revenge.

OK, so the plot isn't going to win any points for originality but what it lacks there it more than makes up for in gritty action. P...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Michele Massimo Tarantini (responsible for such classics as Massacre In Dinosaur Valley and Women In Fury) directs this odd Eurocrime comedy hybrid starring Luc Merenda (of Gambling City) in the lead role of Inspector Dario Mauri. He arrives in Naples with the specific task of fighting crime alongside the local police department, who are currently involved in figuring out the specifics of the local drug trade which seems to revolve around a crime lord named Domenico Laurenzi (Claudio Gora of Beast With A Gun).

When a shipment of Laurenzini's contraband is stolen while en route to its drop off point, he hires a deadly assassin named Cerullo (Giancarlo Badessi of Caligula) to figure out who stole his goods and make them pay. Luckily for Mauri he's got two things working in his favor – the first is a loyal, if kind of dopey, sidekick in th...Read the entire review

If showing an anti- Vietnam poster being plastered on a tree could make a film into a counterculture hit, Bernardo Bertolucci's Partner would be a masterpiece. This interminable exercise in abstract theatrics and irrational characters is probably a rarity for good reason; it plays as if it had been deconstructed into its constituent parts: Shouting fanatics, doppelgänger hijinks and revolutionary rhetoric. Pierre Clémenti's crazed acting teacher spends most of the movie spouting non-sequitur lines at the camera, which roams the streets of Rome but never really grasps the nature of the revolution it wishes to celebrate.

The No Shame DVD label proves its fidelity to the entire spectrum of Italian cinema by presenting Partner (often spelled without explanation with a period at the end) in a handsome two-disc package with a second f...Read the entire review

The Film:

In 1968, the year of the notorious student riots in Paris, Bernardo Bertolucci was quietly putting together the final pieces of his fourth picture Il Sosia a.k.a. Partner. An enormously complex film which to this day remains one of the maestro's most ambitious yet elusive projects Partner very much feels like a theater play. Partially based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's work The Double this is a film that reexamines the social climate in Italy from the 60s shattered by a severe political and cultural crisis. Partner is also a reflection of Bernardo Bertolucci's attempts to echo the social awakening which the events f...Read the entire review

A feeble Jaws wannabe with little to recommend it, The Big Alligator River (Il Fiume del grande caimano, 1979) nonetheless gets a fine DVD presentation with both an excellent transfer and good extras courtesy NoShame Films. After Steven Spielberg's 1975 powerhouse, Italian filmmakers especially rushed to imitate its thrills, but this Johnny-come-lately is a tired, unenthusiastic effort, lacking even the goofy appeal of even worse films like the all-star Tentacles (Tentacoli, 1977). Despite some picturesque locations, The Big Alligator River is dull with inept effects.

The film is basically Jaws with Sri Lankan beaches - the same beaches overwhelmed by the December 2004 tsunami - substituting for Amity Island in Spielberg's film (from Peter Benchley's novel). In both stories, vacationers are threatened by a man-eating menace, but an authority figure with both eyes o...Read the entire review

The Film:
There are three key ingredients that make an excellent giallo production. First, you need a drop-dead-gorgeous starlet that will readily take at least two showers in front of the camera, naked of course, and during the course of the film will not shy away from further revealing her "acting skills". Second, you need a good amount of red paint, preferably not the Ferrari-red type. And third, you need a relatively good mystery story complimented with a few catchy tunes to bring that extra bit of chill. Now imagine that you throw in the mix one of the sexiest European stars to ever grace the exploitation genre canvas-Edwige Fenech, a legendary Italian director-Sergio Martino, and a script based on a short story by celebrated writer Edgar Alan Poe…and there you have it…Il Tuo vizio e una stanza chiusa e solo ion e ho la chiave a.k.a Your Vice is a Locked Room and Onl...Read the entire review