Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Asad Almond A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Bezenby Tinto Brass is one of the more critically applauded Italian directors, what with the films Salon Kitty and the one called Caligula that had Malcolm McDowell as Caligula bumming some unwilling guy. That's how I felt watching this uneasy mash-up of Giallo and sixties groovy crapfest. This was truly a struggle from start to finish.French Guy gets involved with Jane, a groovy chick whom he finds in a room with a dead nightclub owner. French Guy thinks she didn't do nothing, and the two embark on a journey to find out who really killed the nightclub owner. Sadly for them and us a relentless barrage of sixties references assault them and the viewer until you don't care what happens, as long as the film ends some time soon.Jane has a brother who has gone missing and there's a load of bad guys following the two around everywhere trying to kill French Guy and kidnap Jane, including a dwarf who gives French guy a kicking. Jane gets herself kidnapped and French Guy hooks up with her brother to rescue her. Other stuff happens but you'll have killed yourself long before then.The problem with this film is that it's crap. Brass has the bones of a giallo film but for some reason feels the need to constantly refer to the 'swinging' sixties, with constant references to pop art, the Beatles, freak-outs, all that stuff. It's like a film being made these days with constant references to fidget spinners, fake news, and people voluntarily micro-chipping themselves so that they can programme their heating from their hands (what's wrong with those morons?) A lot of the time I was suffering from a very large Jess Franco vibe from this film, and by that I mean there was a lot of messing around on nothing that seriously disrupted the flow of the film and making me not care at all about anything that happened at all.

nuclear_division This film is very stylized, liked a lot of the editing effects, the split images in-particular, also how it cuts to war images of Vietnam and changes to black and white in parts. The sets, costumes/wardrobe are elaborate and detailed, the lighting is very good also. Interesting to see London in the 60's, notice how the trains are still powered by steam in the scene behind the graveyard. The casting is quite strong especially Jean-Louis Trintignant who plays the lead role, he is supported by the beautiful Ewa Aulin, the cast of nefarious mob type figures is also a standout. The storyline although a little weak leaves you guessing until the end. It is quite enjoyable overall, but seems a little experimental and doesn't really mesh, but I liked the fact it had a sad ending.

lazarillo This pop psychedelic giallo is an early film by the Italian "master of eroticism" (he's definitely "master" of something), Tinto Brass. Unfortunately, it's VERY derivative of Michaelangelo Antonioni's "Blow-up" from the previous year, and while some find that movie borderline pretentious, this movie is well over the borderline. It also compares pretty unfavorably to the OTHER pop psychedelic giallo released in 1967, "Death Laid an Egg", which also features French actor Jean Trintigant and Swedish nymphet Ewe Aulin. But just because it isn't as good as two excellent movies like "Blow-up" and "Death Laid an Egg" doesn't necessarily make it bad. It's well filmed, and it has good acting and good music. I actually liked it better than "Salon Kitty", "Caligula" or any of Brass' other later, more erotic, but much more tedious ventures.The story is pretty insubstantial. A man spots a a young girl at a disco and is immediately drawn to her. Later he finds the disco owner dead and the young woman standing over his body. Since the disco owner was apparently blackmailing her recently deceased father, the girl suspects that the killer might be a member of her own oddball family--her androgynous twin brother, her grasping mother, or her sinister gangster stepfather. As the couple are chased all over Swinging late 60's London by all kinds of colorful characters, including a hulking black man and a dwarf, they try to piece together the bizarro plot (while the viewers try even less successfully to do the same thing). Brass also throws in a lot of black and white footage--perhaps in an homage to American film noir--however, this style really clashes with the colorful psychedelic pop art and the principal story, which far from being downbeat and noirish, is often as light and airy as a soufflé.Trintigant was one of the most famous French actors of the period. He was kind of in the same mold as Jean-Paul Belomondo, Jean Sorel, and Alain Delon. But he didn't seem to rely as much on his good looks as some of his fellow French leading men, and he was often in more interesting, offbeat films like Robbe-Grillet's "TransEuropean Express", "The Angry Sheep", and, of course, "Death Laid an Egg". Ewe Aulin, who was only seventeen at the time, did this film as part of a 1967 trifecta which also included "Death Laid an Egg" and the big-budget celebrity-train-wreck sex comedy "Candy". Only one of these was really a good movie, but SHE is definitely very memorable in all three of them. If nothing else, this is certainly a prime example of a European co-production of the era--an Italian film shot in London with a French leading man and a Swedish leading lady.This is by no means a great film, but it is worth seeing.

dianevallere Just saw this tonight uncut on the big screen here in Hollywood. Visually very nice. But not really a giallo, I don't know why people keep calling it that. There is a murder which basically occurs off-screen and has almost nothing to do with the "story." Virtually no violence, some eyebrow-raising sex, obviously inspired by Antonioni, et al. Little story, lots of avant garde/graphic style, references to Pop-Art/Lichtenstein, comics, "Blow-Up" and other movies/the Viet Nam War/other issues of the day. Nice visuals/editing/soundtrack (which was remarkably clear in the print I just saw, supposedly soon to be out on DVD). At times notably innovative and fresh. A bit of a surprise ending. Wandering narrative, quick cuts, lots of color and gritty flair. Swinging London backdrop. In b/w and color.