I wanted a voice, do you hear, Marko?
I wanted a voice!
Hello, and welcome to Hello, This is the Doomed Show.
I am Richard.
Folks, it is a Saturday night.
Maybe if you listen to podcasts on Saturday, I don't much, but I'm here with Mark.
Hello, Mark.
Hello, Richard.
How are you?
I am great.
I am totally not confused about what day it is, but that's my comedy jokes.
I don't know.
So Mark, you know, this is your first time in the show.
Welcome.
I am so excited, Richard.
You have zero idea how excited I am to be talking with you.
Well, I am palpably excited to talk to you as well.
And so I sent you a request of, hey, Mark, send me a big list of movies and I'll pick something from your list that you're excited to talk about.
And you happily provided me with a list.
A plethora.
And it was a large grab bag of amazing titles.
But since Giallo Meltdown 2, the sequel to Giallo Meltdown, colon.
A Moviethon Diary, is now available at amazon.com.
Since the book is out, I said, let's do a Giallo.
And one of the Giallo suggestions you'd made was Smile Before Death.
Which is amazing.
It is not a prequel to Death Before Dishonor.
That is a totally different movie, unrelated.
This is directed by Silvio Amadio.
Or if you're me, who can't edit his own book, in Giallo Meltdown, the first book, I have it as a motto, with no I at the end.
So embarrassing.
Man, this is what happens when you have no budget and you don't want to impose on people to edit your book.
So you just kind of have mistakes.
Like Silvio Amadio.
It's just a gift to have the books, Richard.
So don't be hard on yourself.
It's like, Silvio, I don't know him.
We're talking Smile Before Death, 1972, aka the translated Italian titles, The Hyena's Smile.
I wish there was a little doggy giggle.
I know, yes, a laughing hyena or something to drop in.
I'm sure I could find one.
I'm sure the YouTube would provide me with that.
But this is written by Silvio Amadio and his pals Francesco DiDio, and then another Francesco, Francesco Villa.
Now, I love trailers, but this movie has no trailer, and if it did, a typical Italian giallo trailer would probably be three minutes long, show the good stuff, and it would be in Italian with the song.
I know you know its song.
Oh, yes, the song.
Yeah, and it would never get out of your head.
So instead of a trailer, I'm going to play a little bit of that song and just totally break all the copyright laws.
So when this episode's on YouTube, hopefully the composer Roberto Pregadio, hopefully his children or family or whatever are kind and don't force people to take the stuff down.
So what were you saying?
I was going to say while it's playing, I would hope that the audience listening would kind of picture me in a different like montage of outfits and wigs.
See, you're very good at dressing up, whereas when I dress up, it's just, you know, a plaid shirt, some slacks, New Balance sneakers, you know.
But hey, I'll wear different colors of plaid.
I'll get funky.
It's amazing how much you can dress plaid up with just a scarf.
I have like one scarf.
I need to have my game.
Anyway, so before we continue, folks, we're going to spoil this movie.
We're going to not do every scene.
We're going to do a selection of key scenes, but we are absolutely going to talk about the ending of Smile Before Death.
And if you haven't seen it, you should absolutely check it out.
I don't even think a spoiling it could ruin all the fun.
Exactly.
There's stuff in this movie that is, it's not like a traditional black gloved killer giallo where, you know, it's like 13 victims.
And in the last minute, we find out that it was the priest, or it was the priest, but he wasn't really a priest.
You know, that one, that cop out was always funny to me.
But this is absolutely a jet setting, fancy people behaving badly.
So upper upper class or wannabe upper class people behaving badly, which was a whole subgenre unto itself in the movie.
What would they call it?
Cosmopolitan?
That's a great word for it.
I don't know if that might even be the official.
All I know is that these rich people got problems.
Mo money, mo problems.
Exactly, totally.
It's hard to be wealthy.
Right?
Yeah, you and I.
Same.
Yes.
Same.
Yeah, it's hard.
If you hear the sound, it's us patting ourselves on the back.
That's what that sound is, I think.
But the cast, let's talk about this cast.
We got Jenny, Tim.
I would order Jenny Timburi, which sounds like a delicious food.
I would order Jenny Timburi at every restaurant.
So she was in the psychic and the suspicious death of a minor.
For some reason, she's not credited on this film as Jenny Timburi.
She's credited as Luciana Della.
I have to open the screen to view.
Come on, there is Luciana Della Rabia.
There was some confusion.
There's an interview with Silvio Amadio's son, and he just mentions that they changed her name, even though she was already sort of an established actress.
No idea what happened.
Well, and she was only like 19 when she did this film.
Like this wasn't her first film, though.
No, but she was just so she was so young.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Oh, yeah.
God, this was only a third thing.
Okay.
So, yeah, maybe they just didn't know who she was yet.
I like her.
She's a very unusual looking young lady.
She's not your typical Giallo starlet.
I mean, she's lovely, but she just has a look about her that's very different.
To me, like, well, we're spoiling this.
So the movie is pretty duty heavy, I would say.
For her character.
But there's something about her that she pulls this off without it coming off as super sleazy to me.
Her look, I don't know.
There's something about, like, she's kind of like that girl next door.
Like, so it doesn't come off as, like, super, like, pervy or anything.
Yeah, you think she's innocent.
Right, right.
Well, yes, yeah, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Next up, we got a good old Silviano Tranquilli, who is all over the freaking Giallo genre.
I kind of think of what I know him best from.
He's just one hundred and twelve credits.
Oh, man, I love this guy.
He's very dashing.
Absolutely.
Especially when he's chasing those young ladies.
He's quite the jet setter.
Oh, yeah, I was in one of my least favorites.
He was in.
It's called My Wife, A Body to Love.
But I saw it as my wife has a body to die for.
And I was like, I definitely like his other film.
So Sweet, So Dead a lot more, which I recently rewatched that and I was like, wow, not a lot of laughs in this movie.
So Sweet, So Dead takes itself very seriously, just like another movie he did called The Bloodstained Butterfly, which I have not seen in years.
I remember liking that one.
I'd have to look at Giala Meltdown and see what in the world I thought about it.
But then again, my problem with the first Giala Meltdown book was I kept not saying if I liked a movie or not.
I would just talk about what happened in it and then move on.
So I don't know why I did that.
I didn't leave myself any clues, but I'll just rewatch it.
I remember I've seen a butterfly one time.
So yeah, that counts.
Yeah, yeah, that's it.
That's it.
I definitely heard about a murder weapon.
So what next is Rosalba Neri, a lady who needs no introduction, even though I'm just giving her one.
Ever since I saw on a little cheapo DVD horror compilation, a little film called Lady Frankenstein, I was in love with Rosalba Neri.
Same here, except mine was on late night TV.
They showed it on my local TV channel.
That is too cool.
It was amazing.
I've seen movies where I didn't like the movie with her, but she's always good.
She is.
She's very consistent.
She always gives strong performances.
She's fascinating to look at.
Totally.
She's got a moment in this movie that blew me away.
Even after seeing 10, 12, 15 movies with her, there's still a moment in this movie where her performance blew me away, away, like all the way away.
Then we got Hiram Keller, who he played.
He plays an accredited character named Dorothy's Lover.
Hiram Keller, according to the trivia, he was actually carved out of stone.
The first time I ever saw him was years ago.
Fellini's Satyricon, of course.
But, you know, he didn't do as much as I thought he did.
No, apparently at the time he was supposed to be like a big get, but his star trajectory didn't quite take off the way they thought it was going to.
Well, I absolutely adore him in Seven Deaths and the Cat's Eyes.
Yes.
Wow.
What a movie.
I think that one is underappreciated by Giallo fans.
You know, I love that one too.
So good.
Then we got Dana Gia.
Dana Gia.
I'm not sure how to say that last name.
Oh, man.
My Dear Killer.
Nuff said.
I love.
I love this lady.
She's always just playing a very.
I don't want to say plain.
She always plays a character that seems very plain.
She always plays a mother.
She always plays someone who's like very reserved.
Oh, there's the word I was looking for.
Frickin reserved.
She also the bloodstained butterfly and seven deaths in the cat's eye.
Man.
One of the people that shows up in this movie that totally blew my mind, of course, was Barbara Boucher, the legendary Barbara Boucher, whose has a uncredited role as a party guest.
She is breaking out her dance moves.
Oh, man, she could do it.
I think about her in Milano Caliber 9, like her big dance sequences, like an entire set piece in that frickin movie.
It's great.
So, yeah, let's jump into this plot.
We'll come back to some of the other key players in this film, as far as the production goes.
But this movie, of course, opens with a murder.
We get a lady named Dorothy, and she spilled some weird red paint of some sort on her throat.
Just on her neck.
And she's having an allergic reaction to it.
She's rolling around screaming, no, she's dying.
That's supposed to be the most brutal throat slashing ever captured on film.
And the biggest bathroom, I think, known to man.
Yes.
It's like I don't know where the bathroom begins or ends and the master bedroom begins or ends.
It's just a giant place.
It's so much tile and mirrors.
Yeah, well, at least it's not carpeted.
I don't get into that.
It's not carpeted.
No, you're absolutely right about that.
Yeah, it's very slick.
It's easy for cleaning up the blood.
Right, right.
To me, all the furnishings of this movie are almost a character in and of themselves along with everybody else you just mentioned.
Absolutely.
This was definitely a using the trendy styles of the time.
This movie is like a pop art sensation and the furniture is absolutely a part of that.
So after Dorothy dies, we find out that she was the mother of Nancy, who we'll be getting to in a second.
But her ex, her now widowed husband, is Marco.
And he is, we're going to call him stepfather of the year.
He has never even met Nancy before because she's been off at boarding school.
Maybe he met her as a child?
As a child, yes.
But apparently paid no attention to her really.
Right.
And his lover is Rosalba Neri and she's Gianna.
And she's a photographer who just moved in or was living there.
Don't know how she was living there, but that's neither here nor there.
Right.
The whole point of all of this fun and time is an inheritance scheme.
We love inheritance schemes in the old Giallo country.
They need to spend the money that Nancy is going to get when she turns 18.
So they need to kill her before she turns 18 or else Marco can't get the cash.
At least that's how my brain is remembering it.
And then and then poor Gianna is just up a creek without a paddle because she's just kind of like living there on Dorothy's Dine, basically.
Yeah, which cracks me up because she has a profession.
She's a photographer.
Yeah, like go to work, asshole.
You're already basically doing your job.
You look like an expert.
So like go photograph some shit, go photograph a wedding.
But anyway, so so Nancy rolls up into town and they're shocked by how mature she is.
And she's given a tour of the house, specifically her dead mother's bedroom.
You want to tell us about this interaction with Gianna?
So like Richard said, they don't really remember this girl very well, even though apparently Gianna was very good friends with Dorothy.
So Nancy does show up and they end up in Dorothy, her deceased mother's bedroom.
And Gianna's kind of showing Nancy the wardrobe and then just within maybe five minutes of meeting her, talks her into taking her clothes off and trying on the mother's clothes.
And she's fine with it.
Everyone involved is fine with this.
It just seems so very awkward.
But I do love that Nancy's kind of shy, so she turns away from Gianna and she's undressing, but she tries to face a full size mirror.
So there's nothing hidden.
She's young, she doesn't know how mirrors work.
Just so odd.
This is like one of my favorite moments right here.
This is where Rosalba Neri just blew my mind.
So as soon as Nancy starts undressing, they do a really hard zoom in on Rosalba Neri's reaction to seeing this girl undress.
Like she instantly is just, I'm going to go and guess, filled with lust.
Rosalba Neri looks turned on.
It's wild.
It's like me with a pizza.
It's me with my tacos I had for dinner tonight.
Like, wow, wow, wow.
Yeah, I will be consuming that one way or another.
Yeah, yeah.
While flirting with Nancy, Gianna is like, you should totally be a model, bro.
You're so hot.
And so they have the mother of all fashion montages.
Mark, would you please tell us some of this?
It's amazing.
It's replete with Dorothy's wigs.
So she's now donning her deceased mother's wigs.
It's outside in some of the most bizarre fashion.
There's one thing where I'm pretty sure she's skinned like an Ewok.
She just pops up in this fuzzy coat, but with a straight face, which I'm like, no one could wear that in public with a straight face.
And it just montage after.
And the wigs are not really put on like correctly sometimes, but they're still snapping photos.
Yeah, it's it's great.
I'm not in no way, shape or form.
Should anyone take what I'm saying is like a negative about this film?
Because these are things that I find the most endearing about this movie.
I love all of this more than anything.
Like, I want to be Nancy.
I want to be in that photo shoot with Gianna.
Like just wearing got a whole wig after got up a wig.
You're like, I'm going to keep everything you let me try on.
Oh, exactly.
Yes.
And it'd be better if I stole it and they didn't know that I took it.
It would mean more to me that way.
And again, Richard, is this like maybe 10 minutes in?
Like the girl hasn't really had a chance to like maybe go to the bathroom or like, you know, just take a nap from her travels.
It's like a photo montage.
Time is compressed.
Time is very compressed in this movie.
So Marco loves all of this.
Marco is like, wow.
So they have schemes.
These schemers are scheming.
But Marco gets a little too into it and starts to immediately try to get Nancy to fall in love with him or something is happening.
And he takes her on a boat.
And they have this wonderful lake scene.
And this is where I love movie magic.
And by movie magic, I mean hopelessly broken bullshit where Nancy gets knocked into this lake and Marco either falls into or goes in after her.
And they do this shot of the two of them splashing around in, I'm assuming, a swimming pool.
That's heated.
Or they just pump in some freaking smoke.
I don't know what they were trying to hide.
They were trying to hide in the bottom pool.
It's amazing.
It is darker.
It's like it's broad daylight.
Oh, no.
It is not good.
It is so not good.
I love it.
But, you know, we get some malfeasance with some sleeping pills after she gets miraculously saved by some fishermen.
And then her and Marco keep hanging out, keep partying.
And then we have the Marco Boner moment, where now we have another photo shoot with drunk Nancy.
Tell us about this totally messed up scene.
So there's so many.
So she's supposed to be very young, but it's like of age over in that country.
But still, she's like very young.
She's his stepdaughter, and he's all handsy.
And so they go down to basically Gianna's, what would you call it, her like studio.
And then now Nancy's like, you didn't capture the real me within that first 10 minutes when I arrived.
I want you to capture the real me now, you know, like maybe like what, 20 minutes into her visit.
So she's set herself up, so she's like juxtaposed next to the old photos, and then she's doing this other one, but then all of a sudden her clothes kind of like just come off.
And now she's nude in front of both of them, Marco and Gianna.
It's very uncomfortable, and she's kind of coming on to her stepdad in front of Gianna.
I don't know what to say.
All I know is when I did this, I was at Welcome Back to the Formula Union for like a good decade.
Oh, see, they shouldn't judge you.
Didn't they see this movie first?
I know.
I'm like, hey, the Italians are fine with this.
Why can't, you know, people in Missouri be okay with this?
Eventually, Marco gives in to Nancy trying to seduce him, and she starts playing everybody against each other.
And of course, meanwhile, there's this mysterious character that's always just out of camera.
We don't know who he is.
We don't know what's going on.
You know, we start to think that maybe the person who's being schemed upon is also a schemer herself, and they discover that she has a letter.
She supposedly has a letter that her mother sent her is why she's there, which is why she showed up so suddenly.
Through all kinds of conniving, they finally get a copy, they get to the letter, and Marco has one of my favorite lines in the movie.
He's reading this letter that supposedly Dorothy wrote, and he goes, You know, she must really have hated me for the right of pilot crap like this.
Beautiful.
Which I want to know what it said.
I wish we would have had those one little scenes where they were put in the films before we get to read over someone's shoulder.
Yeah, with Dorothy's voice reading us.
It would have been amazing.
Amazing, yes.
And we do finally see what happened.
We find out what actually occurred between Marco and Dorothy where they had this big fight and she was like, you have this fancy title from your family, but you have no money.
That's why you married me, you son of a bitch.
Then she's taunting Gianna and unfortunately she doesn't realize Gianna doesn't take such things and Gianna kills her.
Fast forward to now where they have just convinced the police that Dorothy killed herself and now they're going to try to convince the police that Nancy killed herself.
They do this thing where, you know, locking the garage with the cars running, but Gianna has decided that she's going to end up with Nancy.
So she's going to go ahead and lock Marco in his own trap that she helped him set up.
And this was my other favorite scene where he's locked in the garage with exhaust fans going blowing smoke in and the cars are going and he's locked in.
And he turns off the engines to save his life, but then he's still locked in and there's still smoke being pumped in from some rando machine that pumps out.
Like a generator.
Yeah, like a generator they hooked up.
There you go.
Thank you.
I was like, I wonder what the hell that was supposed to be.
He doesn't get in a car and just crash through the doors.
Thank you.
Well, I was just yelling at the TV like, hey, moron.
Same thing.
Yeah, no.
Oh, God bless him.
He never thought this would happen to him.
He's just so distraught over every woman that he's ever loved turning against him.
He just couldn't think to like, you know, back out real hard against that garage door.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
Sad state of affairs.
So believing that Marco is dead, Nancy and Gianna should be celebrating and, you know, getting their stories straight and everything.
But Gianna is surprised that Nancy's a little icy in her treatment over what happens there.
So I love how you can tell that she's totally done a total like 180 because once she gets that cigarette, Nancy like she's a different chick.
Gianna's thinking, hey, you know, we're going to become lovers.
We're probably going to spend all this cash and we'll just live happily ever after.
But like Nancy quickly puts a kibosh on that and Gianna goes to like touch her.
She's like, take your hands off me.
And then Gianna's like shocked and she's like, no, the gig is up.
It's just me.
And you're getting no part of this because this was all a skeet.
But the cigarette is like the real tip-off.
And she becomes a totally different person.
Amazingly, like right before your eyes, she transforms.
I love it.
So this is when we meet Hiram Keller's character again.
We saw him earlier.
He was Dorothy's lover.
So Marco was sleeping with the much younger Gianna, but it looks to me like Dorothy was doing one better by sleeping with an even younger man.
We find out that he's this guy that Gianna has been like secretly meeting with.
He's her pimp.
Gianna is a prostitute.
Nancy, Nancy.
I'm sorry.
Nancy is a prostitute.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Rosalba would come and slap you if you said that about her.
Hey, I mean sex worker, everybody.
Sex worker.
Right.
My favorite line here that Hiram Keller gets to say, he was mad about Dorothy getting killed and he says, And I don't like having my dish taken away from me while I'm eating.
So I think you have it down pretty much exactly word for word what he said.
So he didn't love her.
His pride was her.
Like, hey, don't murder that.
Well, I guess she was his, for lack of a better term, his cash cow.
Although she was a very fancy woman.
She was not in any way a cash cow to me.
No.
I love how she kind of she's like, I'm old enough to be his mother.
And I thought mother or grandmother, grandmother, maybe.
Yeah.
I like how delusional Dorothy is with her with her choice of blood.
Hey, Hollywood men do it all the time.
It's why can't the ladies?
Oh, yeah, I'm fine with it.
But I'm like, not his mother.
No, Dorothy, not his mother.
Yeah.
Well, obviously, she has a very maternal instinct, you know, shipping her poor kid off boarding schools her entire life.
Right.
Yeah.
Like even her closest friend who was sleeping with her husband didn't even recognize the girl.
Like that.
That's how much contact they had with the girl.
They didn't even know what she looked like.
I completely forgot about that character.
Oh, my God.
The housekeeper didn't realize that Nancy wasn't Nancy.
The best friend didn't realize the stepdad didn't realize.
I mean, what a really crappy mom.
Yeah, I didn't even mention Magda, the housekeeper.
We mentioned her earlier, but she is suspecting.
She's like suspecting some shit's going down, but Marco and Gianna kill her.
It ends up all being for nothing.
So Marco isn't dead.
Kerem got him out in time because he wants him to write him a check with lots of zeros.
Yeah, don't be stingy with the zeros.
So that they can live this like he and Nancy can live this lavish lifestyle.
And you know, once you pay a blackmailer, they'll never come back.
That's always good.
But he has a very incriminating cassette tape he made of Marco's where Marco thought he was dying.
He's like, I'm going to hold on to this tape and we'll see you later.
And they ride off into the sunset laughing like, haha, we got them.
And of course, that my favorite laugh out loud moment is when they turn the corner out of the courtyard on the motorcycle immediately.
Tires screeching crash.
Tell me about this amazing finale here.
So I also like how it in the beginning of the film, there's also like in the same driveway, there's almost a little car crash there.
So there's the whole foreshadowing and it's a little sidecar.
So there's a motorcycle with with the lover driving and then Nancy's a little sidecar, which by the way, Nancy has also helped herself to like clothing and stuff.
And she's like, I'm going to take this, which kudos to her.
I love the fact that she's just still robbing them blind.
So they're in their sidecar and they basically hit crash into the taxi with the real Nancy arriving.
Yes, this crash causes the tape recorder to start playing the confession made by Marco.
So this poor girl has arrived to see her mom who really doesn't care about her, but to find two dead people who have basically blackmailed her stepfather and the woman who killed her mother.
And she gets to hear about this all on tape while she stands there and looks horrified, dressed like an orphan from Madeline.
It's amazing.
Yes.
So that's pretty much the whole film.
That is like in a nutshell and hopefully not too painful for the audience nutshell to where you still want to watch the whole movie because, you know, obviously we skipped over a lot of stuff, but amazing stuff.
Yes.
Fashionable.
Very fashionable stuff.
Also fashionable.
Yeah.
It's so good.
So as far as trivia goes, there, you know, there's not a lot.
But one of the things I'm really bad at is listening to audio commentaries.
So the audio commentary that's on the arrow video, I have not heard a word of it.
I'm so bad about those things.
But I did watch some of the interview with Silvio Amadio's son who looks just like him.
It is hilarious.
Like how much he looks like his dad.
But the trivia I got from it, one that Silvio Amadio's son was very young.
He was like five or six when he visited the set of this film.
And he was like, you know, he got to meet everybody and everything.
And they show a picture of him on set with like his sisters.
And one of his sisters looks a lot like the real Nancy at the end of the film.
So whoever played that role doesn't have a speaking part.
Nancy, I think maybe Silvio Amadio is like, hey, daughter, go pretend you're this girl, please.
I mean, this is my theory.
Interesting.
I don't know.
That might be solved by the commentary track.
Because I did watch that.
I couldn't get the one you were talking about to work with.
We were talking about earlier, but I watched the other one.
I don't know if you want me to kind of go through stuff.
Yeah, please.
They were saying the year this came out was 72 and there were 33 Gialli released that year.
And for the longest time, the film here, Smile Before Death, was rarely seen outside of Italy because there was so much produced.
It just didn't really have a wide release.
And then, of course, this director also did a muck, which also had Rosalba Neri in it as well.
Let's see.
I don't want to go over stuff I talked about.
Oh, yeah, that's true.
I got this from earlier when we were talking about the cosmopolitan giality or sexy giality, where it mainly focuses on a lot of nudity, depravity, and sexual things as opposed to the black blood killer and things like that.
It's mainly focused on wealthy people.
And they kept referring to how the ending of this was very reminiscent of orgasmo.
Totally.
And this is not from the commentary, but I wanted to point out how Nancy, because I had a co-worker that would do this, the phone rings and she grabs something and then takes a bite of it and then answers the phone, which I never understood why people did that.
Just to share their meal.
Right, I guess so.
And this is another thing.
This is me and just my weirdness.
So at the party, Gianna is wearing a series of like five star brooches.
And there's like they there's four of them that make a box.
And at the bottom, there's a star brooch.
But then when she's killing Dorothy, the brooch is flipped.
And I just found that interesting.
Do with that what you will.
And then did you notice in the movie how Gianna's turtleneck sometimes is not the right way and sometimes it's halfway and sometimes it is the right way?
No, I did not pick up on that at all.
Oh, Richard.
Yeah, that just because I've watched this so many times.
I'm like, you know, is that is there something more that we need to know about something going on with her sanity with her turtleneck?
Is that like revealing her sanity?
I like it.
There's a point in the movie where Nancy goes to meet up with her boyfriend, slash pimp, whatever.
And it's a doll's house.
It's called the doll's house.
It's basically it looks like a toy store.
But it has some of the weirdest, creepiest dolls ever.
Totally creepy.
Then just real quick, Nancy in this movie, her name is the same as the Nancy on Nightmare on Elm Street.
It's Nancy Thompson.
Oh, wow.
That's crazy.
I can't believe I didn't notice that.
Man.
Yeah.
So that's really kind of all just the trivia that I kind of gained from the, well, I threw some things in, but that I garnered from the commentary for the most part.
The only other thing is they mentioned that in Kill Baby Kill, it's Inspector Kruger.
And they were like, is it just coincidence that like these Nightmare Elm Street things kind of pop up from giallo or was like, you know, Wes a fan somehow?
That'd be so cool.
The cinematographer on this was Silvano Ippoliti.
He shot the greatest giallo of all time, Caligula.
He shot some interesting stuff.
He shot Spetri or Spectres from 87, which I've seen, but I don't remember very well.
He also shot, oh, he shot the Iguana with the Tongue of Fire.
Oh, yes.
Yes.
And he also shot a movie I like, but it's almost too artsy to exist on this planet called The Howl before Tinto Brass would emphasize the ass in his name.
He made a little artsy movie.
I mean, one called The Howl and another one right around the same time.
It's really interesting.
This guy also shot Satanic from 1968.
Have you seen that one, Mark?
Satanic.
Let me, because, you know, I love all things Satanic.
Let me look it up.
If you don't have it, I will send it to you.
It is wild.
I don't think it's pulling it out.
Okay.
Let me hang on.
What's it?
Can you tell me what it's about?
Let me help you.
I'll read the IMDB to you.
A withered old hag turns into a beautiful young woman after drinking a youth formula and then she has to go around killing to protect her secret.
Oh, I don't know, Richard.
It sounds like right up my alley.
You will love it.
It's the whole movie.
That's the whole movie.
I love stuff like that.
Very stylish.
It's very 1968.
So I think that's amazing.
I enjoy it.
Oh, thank you.
Yes.
Yeah.
So Robert Pregadio, the composer who I think that's his voice going to do.
That's probably not.
He did the score for something that I love, which is actually my favorite Silvio Amadio film.
In 1980, he was the composer on Ill Medium, which I would love a Blu-ray of Ill Medium.
It's about psychic premonitions.
It's a giallo, a supernatural giallo or a giallo fantasy.
And it is so good.
And the copy I have looks OK.
But man, it's just I love it.
That's easily my favorite that Mr.
Amadio lent his massive talent to.
But this guy...
Where are these things in our lives?
I know.
Why do we have to wait for...
Seriously, Richard, I know.
I mean, this is a great time to be a movie collector, but we're still dealing with all this lost shit where it's like, OK, the person who had a copy that they actually were able to make a bad VHS of 30 or 40 years ago, what did that person do with that copy?
Put it in a fricking freezer, dude.
I don't know what a movie geek you are, but I like to listen to podcasts about vinegar syndrome and saffron films.
And some people, they'll find these in barns.
I mean, people don't even take care of these things, and that's always so heartbreaking to me as a movie lover.
It's like, oh my gosh.
I'm so thankful for the work that some of these companies do just to get these films to us.
Like people can't even keep the rights sorted out.
Like there are people who don't even know they own movies.
Right.
Yeah, it's insane.
This composer also did Death Carries a Cane, which is just now, speaking of movies, I never thought I'd see a Blu-ray for.
Death Carries a Cane just got a freaking Blu-ray.
From?
From vinegar syndrome.
It's on the parts.
Forgotten Gialli Part 6, I think.
Awesome.
Oh, awesome.
I love those things.
I don't know.
Yeah, same here.
Yeah.
I just, I just start making a room of my Giallo box sets.
So the actual room is the box sets.
Build an edition on your house.
I love it.
Made of the box sets.
Yeah.
Well, you have definitely shown through your words and actions that you love this film.
Did you have anything else you wanted to add about Smile Before Death to get people to watch it?
Please, people.
I can't.
My only thing is I wish I could be there for people when they experienced it the first time because it is so much, it really is fun.
It's not your traditional black love killer.
I don't even really think that there's a bottle of J&B in there.
They were trying to say there was, but I'm like, I think that's wishful projecting on their part.
But it's so much fun.
It's got like, oh, the fashions I'm just like to die for, the furnishings, it's just on point.
I just, the character is so well cast.
I love it all.
And I don't really even think we touched on so many other things this movie has to offer.
It's just a feast for the senses.
It's amazing.
And that song that they play again and again in so many different ways.
It's a blessing.
Yeah.
Please, people, please, put this one down.
I like this one.
I wouldn't say I love this one.
I definitely like it.
I am a bigger fan of a muck, which crazily enough came out like two months before this.
Yeah, same year.
Yeah.
And it was such a surprise hit, like right out of the gate, that they went ahead and greenlit Silvio Amadio to do another movie back to back and, hey, what else you got?
I think it's incredible that he managed to pull this off in such a short succession of films.
But yeah, I lean more towards a muck.
This reminds me not as uncomfortable as Orgasmo, because Orgasmo just makes me seethe with rage.
Those characters just drive me fucking crazy.
Then, on the other hand, the other film this reminds me of is Oasis of Fear, which has the two hippie kids driving somebody crazy.
Which I love how those are both Lenzie movies.
Like, what?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure Lenzie did both of those.
There's no one likable in this cast.
Please don't be looking for, maybe Magda, if you want to hang your hat on someone, but there's no one likable in here, but yet they're so watchable.
The rest of the score that isn't that song, now that song could be your favorite song of all time.
I'm not going to judge people who like that song, but the score, it introduces it in interesting ways, where the composer is like, he slows down that song and just ditches the vocals for a few moments, and it gets really jazzy and smooth, and all of a sudden it starts to pick up again, and then that girl comes in and does a cutesy laugh, and at the end of the movie, Jellers laugh over it.
Oh, yeah, this movie is really horny, and oh, yes, yeah, oh, my God, the pop art stuff is crazy.
The colors, the colors in this movie are why Blu-ray was invented.
Oh, my Lord, yeah, there is a J and B sighting, but the labels always turned away from the camera.
I wrote that down, and Lillietta had a comment, she did not like Nancy's mullet.
Now I don't know if you're going to know what I'm talking about, but to me, it looked very Christy McNichol.
Of course.
Yes, of course.
Yeah, to me, it looked very Christy McNichol.
Oh, she probably beat her to the punch, right, because I don't know if Christy McNichol, was she a thing in 72?
Was she more of like a late 70s gal?
Probably more late 70s, yeah, but then I automatically went to Two Moon Junction with poor Christy McNichol.
Yeah, that's a Smile Before Death, the movie, not the teleplay as read by Norman Lear.
Or the Marvel comic.
That's the Marvel method right there.
Wow and wow.
So before we go, I want you to tell us, let me start that over, that didn't come out right at all.
So before we go, I have a little segment that I love to do, is to ask my guest and myself about one movie that you recently watched that you loved from any genre, can be anything.
What's the film that you recently enjoyed?
So with me, I am a sucker for like cult movies, anything to do with Satan, stuff like that.
And I got the Ray Dennis Steckler box set and I've been making my way through that.
And I stumbled upon Cynthia the Devil's Doll.
And it's the most non Ray Dennis Steckler movie I've ever seen.
It's just so weird.
Are you like familiar at all with like a lot of his films or any of his work?
I know of his work.
I've seen like one or two.
Yeah.
But this one is so odd.
You've got like color gels.
You've got the lead actress like giving it her all, just chewing up scenery, overacting beyond belief.
And like, this is all great to me.
This is like my kind of jam.
You've got people and I'm not making fun, but like people delivering dialogue and with very thick accents so you can barely understand what they're saying.
Barely dressed cultists doing odd dances that really a cult member wouldn't be doing.
It's just amazing.
And this is like a play with time where Cynthia could go back and not dispose of her parents.
She could like save herself.
It's just so weird.
And I love every minute of it.
It's just amazing.
And it's only like 78 minutes long.
It's great.
Like if I could live in this world, I would.
Nice.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
But what's yours, Richard?
I'll absolutely check that out.
That sounds crazy.
I was going to pick a movie that I strongly enjoyed, but I don't necessarily recommend it.
It's a little movie called Lovers Lane from 2000.
It is a bad slasher.
Yes.
It is not good.
And I don't know if I talk about it, people will watch it and it'll be mad at me.
Hopefully it has its fans.
I mean, it has a great blu-ray from Arrow that came out last year and everyone told me it was terrible.
But I was like, I need more Valentine's Day movies.
And so Liet and I watched it last night on Valentine's Day and we both really enjoyed it.
But with that bewildered, holy shit, that's wow, that's bad.
So I'm cheating.
I have a movie I really loved that's actually good called Flesh and Fantasy from 1943.
Now the title.
Oh yeah, that's amazing.
Yes.
The title is very provocative.
Very provocative.
There's definitely not, there's not a lot of flesh, but there's plenty of fantasy.
This is a anthology film with some loosely connected occult tales as IMDB is saying, very, very accurate, loosely connected.
People like Edward G.
Robinson and Barbara Stanwyck is in it and she's, of course, incredible.
Robert Benchley, you know, this is just a great cast.
And the reason we watched it recently was it has a Mardi Gras segment.
The first story is a Mardi Gras movie, Mardi Gras story.
And so we watched it on Mardi Gras, but it's 1943.
It's classic Hollywood.
Everything is shot beautifully.
Everyone is giving their all.
It's just a fine, fine film.
I really enjoyed it.
So I love the mask shop.
That's a really cool scene.
Yeah, that's it's amazing.
Yeah, that's an awesome pic, like a really awesome pic, Richard.
Thank you.
I really, really bad about old Hollywood.
I'm really bad about when I was younger.
I had a cutoff date where I wouldn't.
I just said, I don't like any movie older than 1960.
I don't know where I got that.
I used to watch Turner Classic movies when I was a teenager, when it was new, and I didn't like it.
I didn't like anything from the 30s.
I just didn't have the patience for old black and white movies.
I've cured that.
I totally love old black and white movies now.
I'm still working up the excitement about silent films.
I don't dislike them.
I just still don't have the patience for them.
That's my last thing I want to conquer is silent films.
I've seen some great ones, obviously, but it's a block.
Getting to some of these movies that just have all this pedigree behind them, it feels like coming home.
Because when you've watched movies that the directors were inspired by these older films, then you watch the originals and go, oh, you know, like, and it's not even a tangible thing.
It just feels like you're seeing the OG version of whatever you've watched for years.
You know what I mean?
Right.
Yes, I do know what you mean.
Yes, that's very cool.
That's very cool thing.
Now, can I go back to Lovers Lane real quick?
Please go back.
I feel like I shouldn't have said anything because I like I cheat and I pick two.
I'm just trying to I'm trying to get in my head is Lovers Lane the one that's kind of like Urban Legendy?
Yes, the artwork looks like the looks like a rip off of Urban Legend.
Very OK.
They were definitely trying to make I know in the last summer scream and on one three hundredth of the budget.
Right.
Now, is there a scene where there's a couple on a motorcycle or am I thinking of something else?
And they there, I think I might be thinking of a different movie and they wait for the train to go by because that is death screams.
OK, I'm mixing the two movies together.
OK, this is this is from 2000.
This is maybe Anna Faris debut.
Yes.
OK, yes.
Yeah, I'm just matching the two together.
I love Anna Faris so much.
Yes, you will love her in this.
It's interesting to see.
I've seen it.
I'm just trying to I just that the other scene I was putting in that movie, if that makes any sense.
So that's why I was asking about it.
I've just stuck that scene in the other movie.
It's really fun seeing Anna Faris not have her shtick yet.
There's one moment when she acts like the Anna Faris.
We know there's one moment where she kind of like does that, oh, yeah.
You know, you can hear her voice.
I can hear her voice in my head because I watch May a lot.
She's that vamp in May, that freaking psychic vampire asshole in that movie.
And she's so good in May.
I love her.
I love horror because you get these thespians in horror that like they're just kind of starting out or whatever.
And the people that have them don't really know what they've got, you know, starting out or whatever.
And so they turn up in the weirdest movies like Grizzly 2.
It's got like George Clooney and Laura Dern and oh, I'm drawing a blank.
Not Emilio Estevez, but Charlie Sheen.
But they're all murdered like in the first like 10 minutes.
Because nobody knew who they were.
No.
Yeah.
But I love horror for that very reason because people always just get into that to start with.
Yeah.
But I jerk your ass and I apologize.
Yeah.
So please, we always digress on this show.
I like both of your picks, Richard.
I do need to say that I don't really recommend mine to anybody, but I love it so much.
See, that's why I said about Lovers Lane, you know?
Yeah.
Before we really go this time, Mark, how can the folks at home find more?
Mark, tell us about it.
Well, gosh, okay.
So if you're not sick of me yet, you can listen to my bi-weekly podcast that I co-host with my friend Rob.
It's called the Midnight Mass Creature Cast.
We cover mainly, if it's monster related, we try to cover that.
But by monster, it's a very broad net we've thrown out there.
And then I'm always lurking around on Instagram, Mark and a movie, and you have to put little underscores between all the words.
But I basically set that up to talk about every film I watch.
So if I've watched it, I cover it.
I don't know if that's good or bad, but that's what I do with my life.
Oh, it's great.
That's how I found you.
I was like checking out your Instagram feed and it was fricking amazing.
Then you started busting out the fangorias, like every issue of fangorias.
And that's near and dear to my heart.
Then I was like, hold on, you're podcasting?
Well, you got to do Doom show.
You've got to come on the show.
So I was very excited that you were into it.
Oh, you have no idea how long I've been listening to your show and what a fan I am and your books too.
Your books are amazing.
Well, thank you.
And this one will absolutely have you back for real.
This is a great time.
Thank you.
I had a blast.
Well, folks, go check out Mark's stuff, Midnight Creature Cast and Mark in a Movie.
And we'll talk to you next time.
I forgot how to say goodbye on my own.
Folks, thanks so much for listening to this episode.
If you'd like to write into the show, please send an email to doomedmoviethon.gmail, or hit us up at Doomed Moviethon on Instagram, or at Doomed Moviethon on Twitter, or at Doomed Moviethon at Discord, or go to Hello This is the Doom Show on Facebook and message us there.
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