An Italian slasher horror mystery directed by Mario Bava, starring Luigi Pistilli and Leopoldo Trieste.
People... at a bay... murder. That was the plot.
This looks like the work of Jess Franco. Gruesome death scenes and a naked swimming scene would seemingly suggest that it was his work. An hour and 23 minutes was a very long time to watch a plotlessly rambling video about murder. If I were to interpret credits from past experience, the producer would be Jess Franco and writer would be Nathan Explosion (from Dethklock). Characters aren't worth mentioning because there were so many and they all die. Brigitte Skay's nude swimming earns female anatomy points right before she dies. I couldn't hear much dialogue, but the acting seemed just short of sincere. The narrative sections of this and "B-roll" sections seemed to be filmed by separate camera operators. The narrative looked like crap, but the B-roll was beautiful! There was a sunset across a lake, selective focus, deep focus, good exposure and composition... Special effects were all physical: blood, severed limbs, severed head, floating corpse, multiple impalements (obviously written by Nathan Explosion). The audio was spotty. All of the dialogue was whispered to microphones that were placed too far away and behind the actors. If it was dubbed, this is THE WORST voice-over work EVER. IMDB rates this 6.7/10 and Rotten Tomatoes has 80% tomatometer and 64% audience score for a 70% average. I think that gives this a little too much credit. I rate it poor. Graphic murder and nudity inclusion elevate it from bad.
An Italian French West German thriller directed by Mario Bava, starring Cameron Mitchell.
A murderer is killing beautiful women from a fashion house.
This is why I hate watching '60s Italian horror. The plot was not communicated well and did not hold my interest. The characters included some good looking women, but none were developed at all. I haven't mentioned pacing in quite some time, but the slow pacing of this film made it nearly unbearable to watch. The video was actually the best part. They had creative camera angles and lighting, but it failed to show what was going on in a coherent manner. The audio was in Italian with English subtitles that were a little bit late. The soundtrack was very much of the time and genre and very annoying. Overall, this would be a good one to skip. Nay, a good genre, country and time period to skip because they're all like this. Same with those accursed peplums. I rate this bad. DO NOT WATCH!!!
A French Italian sword and sandal action directed by Jacques Tourneur and Mario Bava, starring Steve Reeves.
Phillippides is an Athenean military leader. He meets a young woman who turns out to be royalty and they fall in love, although another woman is trying to win his heart. There are also some political issues going on, which eventually start a war.
More sword and sandal. Oh boy. This was pretty standard for the genre, so I won't go into lots of detail. What I do want to mention is the epic sea battle at the end. It basically makes the film worth watching. The opposing naval forces use lots of different strategies and tools of war. So, standard and stupid peplum with a cool naval conflict scene? I rate it tolerable.
