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Film: Strip Nude for Your Killer (Nude per l'assassino)
Year: 1975
Director: Andrea Bianchi
Writer: Massimo Felisatti
Starring: Edwige Fenech, Nino Castelnuovo and Femi Benussi
Review:
This was a film that I never heard about until I got into podcasts. It came up on a few of them under a subgenre that I’m still pretty new to in giallo films. I actually watched this one as it was the first review that I did for my podcast to celebrate November as Italian horror month, shout out to the 22 Shots of Moodz and Horror for starting this. The synopsis here is when a fashion model dies during an abortion, a series of murders follow this tragedy.
I actually cut a lot out of the synopsis that is listed on the Internet Movie Database as I thought the opening line for was sufficient. As the synopsis states, we see a doctor that is performing an operation of sorts and he notices that his patient isn’t breathing. He makes a call to someone and the plan is to take her body home as she has died. After the opening credits, this doctor is killed outside of his home by a person wearing leather and a biker helmet.
We then shift to a pool where the beautiful Lucia (Femi Benussi). She catches the eye of a photographer, Carlo (Nino Castelnuovo). He follows her, taking pictures and convinces her to come to the sauna with him. It is there he makes her promises and they make love.
From there they go to the agency he works for, Albatross. Carlo introduces her to his boss, Gisella (Amanda) who runs the company and she takes interest in Lucia. They can’t get her into the shoot though, as Doris (Erna Schurer) is already there. Magda (Edwige Fenech) is Carlo’s assistant and protégé. We see later that night though, she wants to be a model and the two of them make love.
Another murder occurs and it is Mario (Claudio Pellegrini). He made a copy of a picture and the person in the biker get up comes over. Mario knows them and he is murdered. He is found the next morning by Doris, when he was promising to do a photo shoot with her. This brings the police to Albatross to look into who might have done this. The problem then becomes that Gisella and Carlo lie to the police. More murders also occur with people with this agency. The question though, who is doing this and why?
The first thing I normally like to lead off when talking about gialli are if they keep my attention and if they’re too predictable. If they have good enough visuals, then you can get around it. With that out of the way, I thought this one had an interesting little story. I almost forgot about the opening scene, but for me it clicked why the murders were happening once Mario made a copy of the picture. From there it was trying to see if I could guess the killer or not.
I have to admit that I didn’t guess it correctly. The film does a really good job at presenting red herrings throughout. I’m seasoned enough not to fall for them, so I was trying to think of characters that were introduced that it could be. It does feel like a slight cheat who the killer ends up being, but I will say I thought the back-story to it was interesting. There is a callback though that the killer couldn’t know about that they use in the ritual to their killing. Doesn’t ruin it, but just something I thought about.
This film is also quite sleazy and I’m not going to lie, I kind of dug it. We see pretty much every woman in this film nude in some way. It really is a kind of a thank you movie type thing for sure. The men are also extremely misogynistic as well, where they’re slapping around women or they’re just degrading them. I’m assuming this is partially a cultural thing, but it didn’t necessarily sit well with me to be honest.
As for the pacing, I thought that it was fine. The film runs just over 90 minutes and I think that the deaths are spread out pretty well. We get a couple to start off us before learning about our characters. Something I find interesting though is that the film portrays Carlo as our hero, but I also felt like Magda was and we really don’t get to know her until a good 20 minutes in or so. I do feel like there wasn’t enough investigation for my liking, but I never got bored. The ending fits for the mystery they build and I thought the reveal was logical.
That will take me to the acting here. I’ve already expressed my issue with the misogyny and the other issue I have with it is that the women take it without really putting up a fight. Fenech I thought was fine and as I said, I thought she was actually the lead here, but the film doesn’t necessarily present it that way. She is gorgeous as well. Castelnuovo is a jerk and I really didn’t like him. His performance though did get a reaction out of me so that works. Fenussi, Solvi Stubing and Schurer are all attractive. Amanda has an interesting role as the bi-sexual owner of this agency. Franco Digoene appears as her husband Maurizio and he’s quite the odd character. There was a moment where two characters were supposed to be dead and I noticed we could see them breathing. Aside from this I feel like the acting was fine and fit what they needed.
That will shift me to the effects of this one. I thought they were pretty basic as the deaths occur for the most part off screen. I did think that the blood looked good though as that’s a perk. The wounds also look fine, but I just would have liked a bit more. The cinematography was solid and I had no issues there.
The final thing to cover would be the soundtrack. I get a bit excited when it comes to Italian films like this. I will say that it isn’t my favorite, but I still dug it. The funk music seems to fit the sleazy feel that we have here and I thought there was this odd sound they’d use to build tension. I would say that it was pretty effective. I also like the use of hearing ambient noise from other rooms, which also helped here in my opinion.
Now with that said, I’m finally glad that I checked this film out. I do believe this is my first movie from Andrea Bianchi I’ve seen and it makes me want to check out more. This is definitely a sleazy giallo film that I had fun with. We get to see pretty much all of our ladies nude. The killer has good look to them. I think that we get a solid mystery here that hooked me and definitely came to an interesting conclusion for sure. I do think there are some slight issues with the story though if I’m honest. The acting is fine I would say and the effects were as well. I did really dig the soundtrack, even though it’s not one of my favorites. Not the best giallo that I’ve seen, but definitely worth a viewing if you are into foreign films or this subgenre. I did watch this dubbed, but that does seem to be par for the era for films from Italy.
My Rating: 7.5 out of 10