Claudie Lange Movies
- 1972
A favorite among fans of outrageously bad films, this bloody, convoluted thriller deals with a model named Val (Nieves Navarro), whose tabloid-reporter boyfriend, Gio (Simon Andreu), talks her into experimenting with drugs. While she hallucinates, Val looks out the window and sees a man in dark glasses smashing a spiked iron glove into a woman's head until blood splashes into the camera lens. When Gio publishes the story, Val gets fired and is stalked by a psychopath. Before it's all over, there are trips to mental hospitals and graveyards, as many as four different killers taking part in three separate frame-ups, a cat with a slashed throat, and a ludicrous rooftop fight scene featuring choreography rarely seen outside of bad Asian karate films. The high point has a hitman (who laughs like a hyena) throwing a knife between two buildings only to have Gio catch it in a shovel-handle. Most of the film consists of people calling Val crazy or stupid, only to have Val slap them or knee them in the groin, spitting "Go to Hell!" before marching out of the room. The remaining scenes have Val herself being slapped around, followed by all the men she previously told to go to Hell smashing each other through skylights and pushing each other's faces into bags of quicklime. The screenplay (by Ernesto Gastaldi, Sergio Corbucci, and others) makes very little sense, but is such laughably camp fun that it doesn't matter. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nieves Navarro, Simon Andreu, (more)
- 1971
Like his more famous La Morte Accarezza a Mezzanotte (1972), this delirious Italian-Spanish co-production from filmmaker Luciano Ercoli is a star vehicle for his wife, Nieves Navarro, who appeared in several giallo thrillers (among other genre roles) under the name Susan Scott. Navarro plays Nicole, a famous French stripper whose father is stabbed to death on a late-night train. The police question her about some missing diamonds, she begins receiving threatening phone calls, and the poor woman is even assaulted in her own bedroom by a masked maniac with frighteningly blue eyes. Nicole's personal life is hardly less complicated, as she runs off to the seashore with a British eye surgeon (Frank Wolff), causing her insanely jealous boyfriend (Simon Andreu) -- who happens to own a pair of blue contact lenses -- to follow in a murderous rage. The loopy Ernesto Gastaldi screenplay is loaded with some outrageously contrived set pieces, and bears more than a passing resemblance to another one of his scripts, Lo Strano Vizio Della Signora Wardh (1970), in its concluding intrigue. The similarity is notable precisely because that film starred Edwige Fenech, whom Navarro was doing her best to unseat as the queen of giallo heroines at the time, as the lady in distress. She does a fairly good job here, burdened as she is with a demented screenplay and her husband's often overreaching direction. The overall effect isn't likely to win much crossover viewership, particularly in light of an avalanche of the genre's more noteworthy examples on DVD in the early 2000s. Giallo devotees, however, are likely to enjoy the film for its very artifice, as well as a nice score by Stelvio Cipriani and a cast including genre regulars Jorge Rigaud, Jose Manuel Martin, and Luciano Rossi. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nieves Navarro, Frank Wolff, (more)
Though Roger Moore was born in England and established himself as star of the British TV series The Saint, Crossplot represents Moore's very first British theatrical film. He stars as an advertising executive swept up in a plot to murder a visiting African statesman. Lensed in "swinging" London, the film is "mod" to an almost depressing degree, obscuring what is at base a solid espionage thriller. Moore ultimately thwarts the villains by decoding a message secreted in a crossword puzzle -- hence the film's title. A climactic shootout in Hyde Park tops this dry run for Roger Moore's subsequent stint as James Bond. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Roger Moore, Martha Hyer, (more)
- 1967
Made in Italy is a multistoried film, set...in Italy, of course. An all-star cast appears in brief seriocomic vignettes about rich and poor, tourist and native. Director Nanni Loy exhibits the realistic and somewhat earthy technique he'd used on his earlier documentaries, with heavy emphasis on ironic punch lines. Filmed in 1965 by a Franco/Italian production team, Made in Italy received the best possible exposure upon its 1967 American release when clips were showcased on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Best bit: The "give to the poor" poster in an impoverished Italian mountain village. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anna Magnani, Marina Berti, (more)
- 1967
In this Italian comedy set in the 16th-century, a prince and a princess marry. Trouble ensues when a rumor that they have not consummated their marriage is circulated. The prince's father is most concerned, as a virgin marriage means he will have no heirs. He insists that the marriage be annulled. He then requires his son to marry another, but his current wife's family will not agree to the annulment until the prince proves he is a capable lover. The prince refuses to cooperate until his father threatens to cut him off financially. The prince then is paired with a virgin, and eventually passes his test. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
