{"id":17635,"date":"2018-03-20T11:22:50","date_gmt":"2018-03-20T15:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=17635"},"modified":"2018-03-20T21:51:54","modified_gmt":"2018-03-21T01:51:54","slug":"dvd-eye-in-the-labyrinth-locchio-nel-labirinto-1972","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=17635","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Eye in the Labyrinth \/ L’occhio nel labirinto (1972)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Film<\/strong>: Very Good<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: Very Good<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>: n\/a<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0<\/strong> Code Red \/ Unobstructed View<\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a01 (NTSC)<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0 December 19, 2017<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0 Giallo \/ Thriller<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0A Nervous Nellie searches for her missing boyfriend \/ shrink at a strange hippy health clinic.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0 Code Red Trailers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reportedly never released in North America, Mario Caiano\u2019s giallo was recently restored to its uncut state and released on a limited Blu-ray in 2017, and the follow-up DVD arrives at a much lower price in a similarly bare bones edition from Code Red Releasing.<\/p>\n

Few may have heard of the film, but the stars are no strangers to genre connoisseurs, with Alida Valli (Suspiria<\/strong>) and Adolfo Celi (Thunderball<\/strong>) headlining this clunky whodunnit in which a patient tracks down her boyfriend \/ personal shrink. Neither Caiano nor his three other co-writers managed to craft a fully coherent script, but the doses of ridiculous twists and bizarre character behaviour contribute to the film\u2019s enjoyable goofiness.<\/p>\n

Julie (beautiful Rosemary Dexter) can\u2019t seem to find boyfriend \/ personal shrink Luca (So Sweet\u2026 So Perverse<\/strong>\u2019s Horst Frank), but a clue is offered at her beau\u2019s mental clinic when a patient shouts the name \u201cMaracudi!!!\u201d \u2013 a locale dismissed as fiction by his doctor, but one Julie tracks down when the last entry in Luca\u2019s journal is the town name. (We know the place must be super-duper important because it\u2019s written in bold red caps, and framed in an ovoid.)<\/p>\n

What follows is a quasi-travelogue montage as Julie gets into her snazzy yellow convertible and eventually reaches the picturesque town. Brandishing a big B&W headshot of Luca fails to yield any help at the local watering hole, but a creepy man tells her she may find clues at an abandoned villa \u2013 a great location that has really nothing to do with the plot and functions as eerie mood and filler material. All that\u2019s gleaned from the sequence is that no one among Julie\u2019s encounters should be trusted. Ever!<\/p>\n

When she \u2018escapes\u2019 from the villa and returns to town, new friend & protector Frank (Celli) suggests she take a room in the local orphanage, a building he once owned. She meets troubled boy \/ burgeoning artist \/ peeping tom Michael, whose paintings hold a clue as to what happened to Luca. The next morning, Julie heads out to an isolated villa, another building once owned by Frank (What happened, Frank? Gambling debts? Stupidity?) and where she may find more clues to her lover\u2019s sudden disappearance.<\/p>\n

Typical of the giallo genre, all men are lecherous sleazebags and women exist to be admired, taunted, and assaulted, and Julia goes through each experience with a frown rather than smacking sleazebags where it hurts: before she finds Luca\u2019s diary, a sunglassed henchman whacks her across the face as a message to keep his break-in a secret; the gas station attendant is reading a girlie magazine in full view; little Michael peers through an open window to enjoy Julie, sprawled very naked in bed; and in a later scene, it\u2019s very clear from a smash cut that she’s also raped by Frank, but she isn\u2019t troubled whatsoever the next morning.<\/p>\n

Instead of driving to the villa, she parks her car by a steep cliff and decides to indulge in a refreshing skinny dip, but this spontaneous act of positive hygiene is marred by a trio of foreign goofballs who steal her clothes. Instead of swimming back to the cove, Julie uses the breast stroke to reach the dock of the nearby villa, where she\u2019s helped up and toweled by Gerda (Valli), the owner and manager of a private \u2018health clinic\u2019 who utters the incredibly welcoming line “A naked woman doesn’t have to go into explanations, especially if she’s as young and beautiful as you!”<\/p>\n

Up at the villa, Gerda\u2019s aloof twentysomething clients suntan with covered eyes and earplugs to maintain a state of peace, and among her new friends \/ possible killers is Gerda\u2019s boy toy, a gender-bending couple, a sound designer \/ composer, and artist Toni (Sybil Danning) who likes to take pictures of feet. Not landscapes. FEET.<\/p>\n

The bulk of the film unfolds at the villa, and it doesn\u2019t take long for near-death experiences and related murders to pile up, and the ever-smiling Frank returns to the narrative with a blackmail scheme that ultimately leads to Julie confronting details of Luca\u2019s mysterious disappearance.<\/p>\n

Caiano\u2019s direction is very assured in keeping momentum, and Giovanni Ciarlo\u2019s cinematography is very up close and personal, often hovering around the actors when not framing lovely vistas and connecting visual components through with Bava-style zooms. There is a classic giallo plot in this canted oddity, but it doesn\u2019t manifest until the final act when blackmail, murder, and the unraveling of Julie\u2019s troubled mind are sorted out, discerning fact from fantasy and delusions from reality.<\/p>\n

SPOILER ALERT<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In a nutshell, Julie has an Id that\u2019s responsible for the killing of shrink \/ lover Luca, but to protect \u2018good Julie\u2019 the Id blocks all memory of the killing, much in the way Psycho<\/strong>‘s Norman Bates has no memory of his killings unless \u2018Mother\u2019 takes over his mind.<\/p>\n

Frank is able to stitch together Julie\u2019s split personality and eventually blackmails Gerda to take her drug addicts & dealers and leave the villa for good, although how he\u2019ll be able to change the estate\u2019s ownership papers is never dealt with, nor the reason he leaves his real wife at the \u2018orphanage\u2019; his plan is apparently so foolproof, he can just walk away.<\/p>\n

Once Gerda & Co. are gone, Frank heads down to the basement and unfetters Julie, whom he chases around the shuttered villa until she ends up where he always intended – the master bedroom \u2013 and can engage in the copulation \/ rape he\u2019s been hungering for since Julie drove into Maracudi. Julie quietly remains with Frank because he knows her murderous ways, but he mistakes her silence for complete servitude, and along with a chilled tonic, gets a carving knife in the back just as the police sirens fill up the soundtrack (although why they’re en route is never addressed).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

END OF SPOILERS<\/p>\n

Eye<\/strong> is very slick, but there\u2019s so much back & forth action that when the big reveal is delivered, it feels almost anticlimactic, as we\u2019ve given up on the plot. Moreover, Julie just isn\u2019t a bright bulb, but the script by committee isn\u2019t supposed to do anything besides entertain genre connoisseurs with nudity, atmosphere, weirdness, beautiful women, and gore, and in the latter department, the violence doesn\u2019t disappoint.<\/p>\n

The opening murder of Luca is rather spectacular for fusing Hitchcock with Caligarian geometry: not unlike the massive close-up and pull-back of a hand smacking onto a ladder rung at the beginning of Vertigo<\/strong> (1958), Caiano\u2019s titles hold on a tense hand gripping a wall until it moves and the chase between Luca and his unseen aggressor is on. A knife is dug into Luca\u2019s back with extended details of his suffering before he bolts again, and we\u2019re treated to marvelous canted and oblique angles in what resembles the concrete supports behind a stadium; the location may well be the same as was used in the fight scene that comes early into the messy thriller The Killer Likes Candy<\/a><\/strong> (1968), starring Kerwin Matthews.<\/p>\n

Michael\u2019s charring after a car crash is also quite riveting, but it\u2019s the flashback in which Luca’s head is his being detached that\u2019s the most graphic kill, although not for the right reasons. At the tail end of the End Credits is \u201cSound reconstruction and restoration by Damoni Packardi\u201d which infers the English mix was reconstructed using what survived of the Italian M&E mix, plus very<\/em> present day re-recordings of new effects for the aforementioned kills, and the incredibly loud head-slaps endured by Julie by that overzealous burglar. The exaggerated sounds and above-normal volume do take one out of the film, and the heavy-handedness of those slaps makes the scene unintentionally cartoonish.<\/p>\n

Code Red doesn’t include any extras beyond a new trailer within their usual promo gallery, and although a clean transfer, the PAL-NTSC conversion shows some slight strobing when there’s lateral camera pans and character movement. There’s also faint but visible vertical lines when the frame is filled with a solid colour block, like the blue that precedes the CR logo, and black between some fades.<\/p>\n

The main theme of Roberto Nicolosi\u2019s jazzy score is clearly inspired by material from Miles Davis\u2019 Bitches Brew <\/strong>(1970), and it works for the film\u2019s exotic locales, the pretty cast, and all-around sleaze. Caiano\u2019s tight pacing plows through some of the more ridiculous scenes with a straight if not indifferent tone, such as Julie ducking harpoons from a killer in a very distant speedboat.<\/p>\n

During the 1960s, Caiano progressed from second unit director to writer-director, and his filmography is filled with several genre entries – spaghetti westerns, peplum, nazisploitation – but his best-known work is Nightmare Castle<\/strong> (1965) with Barbara Steele.<\/p>\n

Striking Rosemary Dexter had a supporting role in the big budget snoozefest The Shoes of the Fisherman<\/strong> (1968) but was more active in Italy, appearing in several films before retiring in 1976 with Povero Cristo<\/strong>, and passing away in 2010.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2018 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB<\/a> \u00a0— \u00a0Soundtrack Album<\/a> —\u00a0Composer Filmography<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amazon Canada<\/a>\"\"\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon USA<\/a>\"\"\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon UK<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Film: Very Good Transfer: Very Good Extras: n\/a Label:\u00a0 Code Red \/ Unobstructed View Region:\u00a01 (NTSC) Released:\u00a0 December 19, 2017 Genre:\u00a0 Giallo \/ Thriller Synopsis:\u00a0A Nervous Nellie searches for her missing boyfriend \/ shrink at a strange hippy health clinic. Special Features:\u00a0 Code Red Trailers. \u00a0   Review: Reportedly never released in North America, Mario […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[5590,5589,5586,517,5587,5588,3139,5591],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-4Ar","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17635"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17635"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17675,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17635\/revisions\/17675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}