Who Saw Her Die?

I absolutely adore Italian cult movies; I also rather enjoy the movies that UK based Shameless Screen Entertainment release, but imagine my delight when I discover that one of my all-time Italian thrillers Who Saw Her Die? Is getting a long overdue UK release, not just with a glossy print but with some long missing footage reinserted. It is like one of my greatest dreams come true, and luckily for me those nice guys over at Shameless sent me a copy of the movie to watch prior to its release on the 25^th August, enough to tide me over until the movie is out to buy.

 

Made all the way back in 1972 Who Saw Her Die? Starts with one of the most disturbing openings I have ever seen, nestled in the beautiful snow filled French mountains you see a young girl enjoying herself with her nanny and her sledge. From out of the trees looms a figure of a woman with a veil covering her face. Grabbing the young girl, the woman proceeds to smash her skull in with a stone before burying her rather carelessly under the snow. Moving forward 20 years, we are teleported to Venice in the 1970’s; and the arrival of Roberta (Nicoletta Elmi) who has come to stay with her father Franco (George Lazenby) is about to cause history to repeat itself.

 

The movie is a product of the great Aldo Lado the mastermind behind Night Train Murders, and The Short Night Of The Glass Dolls, Lado is not necessarily the best know of the Italian directors especially to the casual Italian movie viewer, but familiar or not you’d certainly agree Lado’s movies have a certain style about them. Here Lado shows a side of Venice that the Italian tourist board would not like you to see, looking dowdy and dirty you can almost smell the dirty Venetian water, add to this a vision of darkness, rain, fog, and cloud cover that you do not think of when Venice enters your mind. Everything about Lado’s outlook of Venice is dark and sinister and not the image you get with movies like The Talented Mr. Ripley or Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now even though this is hardly sun filled; on the subject of the Roeg masterpiece I’d go as far as to say that I suspect that Roeg took a little inspiration from this movie as you can easily spot similarities between the two movies, while Roeg painted a harsh image of Venice, Lado’s version is far more extreme and explicit. Now don’t get me wrong, Lado’s vision is not all dark, there are some most beautiful scenes in the movie, for those with a passion for travel, history, and architecture this movie will make you want to visit Venice even more, what is carefully delivered however is the thought “be careful what you cannot see”.

 

Lado scored well with his leading man acquiring the services of George Lazenby (former James Bond) for a song due to his incredibly high debts (caused due to his dramatic over the top spending while filming On Her Majesties Secret Service), and while Lazenby was criticised for his poor acting on Bond and his lack of sex appeal, he was still a big enough name to ensure that Who Saw Her Die? Got a few more bums on seats in cinemas across the world. I should add that if you thought Lazenby lacked sex appeal before, seeing him naked here is not going to improve your views. Sex appeal or not, this movie does prove that the world was wrong about Lazenby and certainly here he proves himself to be a very capable actor. There is a little more Bond-age here in the casting of Adolfo Celi who starred as Emile Largo in the James Bond movie Thunderball. Celi or rather his character of Serafian a sort of Mafioso boss manages to dominate the entire movie, as a shadowy and untouchable criminal mastermind, a man with fingers in many pies.  Fear not ladies it’s not a male dominated piece and the casting of enchanting Swedish actress Anita Strindberg with her devastatingly striking looks finishes the lead cast off perfectly, an actress who young in her career had already starred in two very successful Italian movies Lucio Fulci’s A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin, and Sergio Martino’s The Case Of The Scorpions Tail; few actresses have the powerful look of this actress, let alone the very capable acting skill as she plays a woman in mourning.

 

I have now seen Who Saw Her Die? A dozen times, and reviewed it now for the third time; what I love about the picture is that there is a wonderful power that the movie has, forget the horrible story of a child killer, and the further sideline of a depraved group of perverts; the movies great talent is that by the time I watch the movie again I have completely forgotten who the killer is, making Who Saw Her Die? A movie that you can watch again, and again. How many movies do you know that feel fresh with each repeated watching? And how many movies grow in power with repeated viewings? I won’t deny the first time I saw this movie I could take it or leave it, but now it makes its way to the top of my list for all-time favourite movies. From its gruelling story, its impressive visual delight by its director Aldo Lado, onto its rather impressive score by Ennio Morricone, this is an all round winner.

 

About The DVD

 

Shameless have again gone out of their way to preserve the movie well, it’s in my view a far superior print to the US Anchor Bay edition released some years ago, and greatly improved by the additional seconds of footage, and English subtitles over a couple of scenes previously un-dubbed and without text translation. At last I get to see what it is the creepy kids are singing about in an Italian variant of “Ring A Roses”.

As you progress through the movie there are a few things I had not noticed before, aided by what appears to be better framing. The movie boasts a 2.0 soundtrack, and a frame ratio of 2.35:1.

 

The cover features a front image of a hand holding a knife above a corpse the cover text reading “Before Don’t Look Now Came... Who Saw Her Die? But Who Will Survive To Tell The Tale?” As has become tradition with Shameless Screen Entertainment releases there is an alternate reverse cover featuring a child like picture with a photo of the character Roberta superimposed on it.

 

There are some trailers on the disc starting with The Designated Victim a release due on the 8^th of September and a movie that has never been seen in the UK before. Strip Nude For Your Killer is a classic Giallo thriller by the director of The Nights Of Terror, another future release is Umberto Lenzi’s long unseen Oasis Of Fear also due out with the other two titles in September. As well as a look at the future there are trailers for Night Train Murders, What Have They Done To Your Daughters, and The Black Cat.  There is also a trailer for Who Saw Her Die? That captures perfectly the magic of this spectacular film.

Of all the releases from Shameless this is by far my favourite, despite my love of The Frightened Woman, congratulations Shameless on bringing one of my all time favourites to DVD in the UK. You can purchase Who Saw Her Die? From the 25^th of August.

Puffball

It’s been near on 18 years since Nicholas Roeg made a movie for the mass audience, even though his return feature Puffball is unlikely to get much attention. Roeg picks up a novel by the ever popular Fay Weldon and delivers his own somewhat warped perspective of things, and it’s a strange mix at that.  Funded by the National Lottery, The Irish Film Fund, and a Canadian Television Channel; the movie then is kind of delivered to a Cornish based film unit, though the movie itself is set and filmed in Ireland. If you’re unfamiliar with Fay Wheldon her novels usually cover witchcraft and the occult prime examples include TV or Movie versions of the novels Growing Rich and The Life And Loves Of The She Devil; but Wheldon has a comic view to her depictions, however Nicholas Roeg has no time for comedy.

 

Puffball is a most unusual piece of filmmaking, its story centres around a young woman called Liffey (Kelly Riley) who is building her dream cottage in the calm and serine Irish Countryside. For Liffey the mistake comes when she encounters the neighbours a family almost ruled by Molly (Rita Tushingham) a Celtic witchcraft obsessed busy body, whose daughter Mabs (Miranda Richardson) longs after three daughters to have a boy.  Having been defiled by her boyfriend Richard (Oscar Pearce) on a ceremonial stone Molly begins to work witchcraft against Liffey for not only showing a lack of respect to the stone, but seemingly because she is simply there. Things become considerably worse for Liffey when Molly sends Tucker (Mabs husband played by William Houston) round for a bit of how’s your father witches brew disguised as wine in hand.

 

I finished watching Puffball obliviously unaware of whether I had watched an amazing piece of art house style cinema, or the biggest celluloid atrocity of all time. While the story was easy enough to piece together the way Roeg goes about telling the story does rely on a certain amount of head scratching. While aside from the awkward meandering of the story your then plummeted into the world of the unexplained when a series of potential plotlines are disregarded as readily as Liffey discards her underwear.

 

To add to an already strange debacle we are then thrust the pleasure of Donald Sutherland as Lars, who is Lars? What is the magical effect that the cottage and Liffey has on him? Why does he know the location of several things? And where on earth is he meant to come from because his accent moves from Canadian to Irish at the drop of a hat? All these questions remain un-concluded by the movies finale and I feel kind of robbed, especially considering I always rather enjoy the spectacle of Sutherland in a movie.

 

While the flame haired Kelly Reilly as Liffey offers a sumptuous visual spectacle for us guys, I wonder what if anything the women viewers would think of her. From beginning the movie in a fairly non sexual manner she is suddenly being thrust around all over the place and in every position, hats off to Roeg however who somehow makes quite explicit scenes completely tame with not so much as nipple or lower lady parts to be seen, although he does focus on the striding male nude backside a little too much for my liking. A scene in a barn with Tucker echoes Roeg’s earlier Don’t Look Now sex scene between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, it’s a strange entanglement that kind of borderlines rape above anything else.

 

I personally felt that I was involved in some sort if “in” joke that everyone else (movie cast and crew) were all aware of but as an outsider I was the brunt of some sort of clever and offensive bit of mickey taking. Rita Tushingham runs around with all manner of varieties of mushroom and other sorts of phallic shaped fungi, the beast fungi being the Puffball of the movies titles is not only picked and cooked, but on a number of occasions attacked during the movie, on one occasion hacked up with a sickle and on another stamped, and rather like a balloon nothing is inside the Puffball; so how on earth do they eat it?

 

Roeg’s creative camerawork and special effects are quite bizarre, a model of the cottage Liffey is working on quite often has a superimposed foetus working at a desk, a red aura frequently dominates the centre of the screen, and in case you are rather unsure what has been going on with Liffey when she is wrestling with one of two men, your are given an internal view of her just in time to see a rocket launch of ejaculate making its way towards her ovaries, nice!

 

Often one accused of being one to sit on the fence in my movie reviews, I have to today resolve myself to that position. I sort of loved it, I kind of hated it but for some unknown reason I really want to watch it again. Yes I didn’t really get it, yes there were a lot of baffling factors; but maybe, just maybe next time round I might be privy to the joke all the screen characters shared. But then just like Alice I always like to believe in three impossible things before breakfast.