GIALLO SUNDAY: Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye

Of all the gialli I’ve seen, Antonio Margheriti’s 1973 slab of gothic has one of the most wonderfully eclectic casts. Have you ever wanted to see Serge Gainsbourg as a highlands police inspector dubbed with a really bad Scottish accent? Then this is the movie for you!

In addition to Gainsbourg, we have Jane Birkin (the absence of “Je T’Aime...Moi Non Plus” from the soundtrack is a positive disappointment), Hiram Keller (‘Fellini-Satyricon’), Doris Kunstmann (Eva Braun in Ennio di Concini’s ‘Hitler: the Last Ten Days’), Francoise Christophe (Princess Daniloff in the 1947 film version of ‘Fantômas’), Dana Ghia (a giallo stalwart with appearances in ‘Smile Before Death’, ‘My Dear Killer’ and ‘The Bloodstained Butterfly’) and Anton Diffring (typecast as a German military type in everything from ‘The Sea Shall Not Have Them’ to ‘Where Eagles Dare’ and the TV series ‘Winds of War’).

Diffring gets a break from the Nazi uniform here, playing Dr Franz, consort to the hifalutin Lady Mary MacCrieff (Christophe) who’s hellbent on retaining the ancestral castle despite the exorbitant upkeep, the isolated locale and the medical attention required by her eccentric (and possibly delusive) son James (Keller). James, a socially inept and attention seeking young man who inexplicably morphs into romantic hero halfway through, keeps a pet gorilla and paints nude portraits of his, ahem, French teacher Suzanne (Kunstmann). Suzanne has been engaged by Dr Franz to seduce James and get herself impregnated with an heir; when it becomes clear that James’s only interest in seeing Suzanne au naturel is the opportunity to complete another canvas, Franz enjoys himself with Suzanne instead.


The family’s evidently depleted spiritual needs are catered to by Father Robertson (Venantino Venantini), but Mary is more concerned about her financial needs and proceeds to hit up her sister Alicia (Ghia), recently loaded courtesy of an inheritance, for a loan. Alicia, who would rather Mary sell the castle, moved to London and have James properly looked after, outright refuses to sink any capital into old pile, creating a frosty atmosphere between the sisters.

Into this environment comes Alicia’s daughter Corringa (Birkin), a free spirit recently expelled from convent school. James takes a fancy to her (the avaricious Mary instantly equates a potential match as a fast-track to Alicia’s inheritance), as does the bi-sexual Suzanne. Murder, mistrust and sexual duplicity ensues, with the eponymous cat slinking around as portent to a series of swiftly executed killings (a rare example of a giallo not dwelling fetishistically on its death scenes).

For a while, you’d be forgiven for pegging the moggy as number one suspect (perhaps in league with the gorilla, the simian being better suited to the asphyxiation killing); the fat, waddling, lazy-eyed feline is on the scene for every murder and its alibi is non-existent. It even manages an escape from a sealed tomb after Mary has it interred with the deceased as punishment for disrupting a funeral. Which is a tad harsh.


The fate of – well, that would be telling, but let’s just say the second victim (and the first character to die onscreen) – keys into a local superstition and steers ‘Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye’ into the quasi-supernatural territory of ‘The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave’ or ‘The Red Queen Kills Seven Times’ (what is it about giallo titles and the number seven, by the way?) before the final act revelation confirms the machinations of considerably more earthly motives.

Margheriti takes a slow-burn approach, setting his characters against each other and keeping the tensions at a nice simmer for the first half before cutting loose with the first of the murders. Carlo Carlini’s widescreen cinematography provides some excellent and atmospheric compositions and Riz Ortolani’s score is magnificently overcooked. There are some good, disorientating moments, particularly Corringa’s arrival at the castle where an almost subliminal series of cuts to the watching gorilla left me bemused and slightly unsettled. Architecturally, the castle never convinces as Scottish, nor does the geography in the film’s few exteriors. Likewise, the dubbing is hysterically bad, the work of bored voiceover actors doing comedy Scottish accents. In this respect, ‘Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye’ hoves very very close to being more ‘Goon Show’ than Argento. Still, after the slow-burn first half, it whips itself into an eccentric and entertaining frenzy.

GIALLO SUNDAY: Naked You Die

Welcome to St Hilda’s College, less a finishing school for young ladies than a school where young ladies get finished off. It’s an establishment rife with jealousy, petty rivalries and lesbian crushes … and that’s just the staff!

Behind this inimically voyeuristic setting and its magnificently lurid title (a literal translation from ‘Nude … Si Muore’), Antonio Margheriti’s pacy and entertaining giallo is a classic whodunit bracketed firmly in the Agatha Christie tradition … only with a surfeit of jailbait in the kind of short skirts that immediately identify ‘Naked You Die’ as a film made in 1968. That it was released in some territories as ‘The Miniskirt Murders’ tells you all you need to know.

Things begin with the murder of a woman who remains unidentified until the final act. She’s naked when the killer strikes (in the bath), thus justifying the title. It is, however, one of the primmest bits of exploitation you’re ever likely to see, with nary a nipple or a glimpse of the delta of Venus to be seen. (Later, when another victim buys it in a shower – also unclothed – they fall with such balletic grace as to wind an entire shower curtain around their body.) The corpse is bundled into a trunk, the trunk strapped to the roof-rack of a taxi, transported to a station, manhandled onto a train, and finally transferred to a mini-van for the last stretch of the journey to St Hilda’s. Where it – and its grisly contents – are then shunted offstage for a good hour and twenty minutes.

In the meantime, we’re introduced to some of the girls: high-spirited wannabe crime-writer Jill (Sally Smith), stuck-up Betty Ann (Caterina Trentini), sexually precocious Lucille (Eleonora Brown) and her loyal friend Denise (Patrizia Valturri). Lucille is carrying on with riding teacher Richard Barrett (Mark Damon), much to the chagrin of equestrian Betty Ann. Denise knows all about it but is sworn to secrecy. Jill, though popular, pisses off the staff right royally with her tall tales and tendency to melodrama.

And speaking of the staff, a quick round-up: there’s headmistress Miss Transfield (Vivian Stapleton), newly promoted Miss Martin (Ester Masing), recently arrived relief teacher Miss Clay (Ludmila Lvova), the aforementioned Barrett, the elderly Professor Andre (Aldo de Carellis) and groundskeeper La Floret (Luciano Pigozzi). Miss Transfield tuttingly disapproves of Barrett’s popularity with the girls, Miss Martin owes her promotion to an implied dalliance with Miss Transfield, and La Floret gets his jollies spying on the girls’ shower room.

Not the kind of place you’d want to pack your daughter off to. And even less so once the murders start and the stately Inspector Durand (Michael Rennie) and his sidekick Detective Gabon (Franco de Rosa) turn up and ploddingly start putting the pieces together as the body count increases.

Between Fausto Zuccoli’s opulent widescreen cinematography, Carlo Savina’s jauntily inappropriate score (the sleazy saxophone as La Floret peeps on a disrobing Lucille predates just about every 1980s soft-core/erotic thriller soundtrack ever written), and a stratospherically high eye-candy quotient – look out for the achingly gorgeous Silvia Dionisio (she of ‘Waves of Lust’ fame) in a supporting role – it’s difficult to keep your eye on the ball, never mind an eleventh hour revelation of a crucial inheritance that tips you off to the why if not the who.

As well as being thoroughly entertaining and solidly made, ‘Naked You Die’ toys with identity, perception and gender confusion in a way that lays the groundwork for, amongst others, the two great gialli of Dario Argento’s mid-period majesty: ‘Deep Red’ and ‘Tenebre’. At the other end of the spectrum, Andrea Bianchi’s unapologetically seedy ‘Strip Nude for Your Killer’ also owes it a debt of dishonor. The sacred and the profane: ‘Naked You Die’ can claim one hell of a birthright.