Bad Inclination (2003)

The brutal murder of a pretty teacher with a double life brings out the worst in the other tenants of her tony apartment building...The DVD back cover blurb for BAD INCLINATION calls the film an "attempt to recreate the films of the genre, like the ones made by Lucio Fulci and Lamberto Bava in the 1960s and '70s, that were adored by the public and hated by the critics". That couldn't be more wrong -and not just because Mario Bava's son Lamberto was an '80s horror director, not a '70s giallo one. Director Pierfrancesco Campanella's not-so-sly satire on an amoral society's tabloid celebrities wasn't an homage to a much beloved Italian horror sub-genre so much as a skewering of a new "Me Decade" with it's hedonistic abandon and self-serving values. A lady prosecutor on the case laments, "there's too many relationships" and the goings-ons in the victim's A-list apartment complex is reminiscent of SCTV's soap parody "The Days Of The Week" with its tongue-in-cheek pregnant pauses and off- the-wall couplings. The still-attractive genre fave Florinda Bolkan almost walks away with the movie as a ruthless artist who gets inspiration from the murder in more ways than one but she gets some stiff competition from the always interesting Eva Robins (the transsexual in Dario Argento's TENEBRAE flashbacks) as a Norma Desmond-ish has-been singer. The temperamental diva turns the murder into a "comeback vehicle" by insisting she's getting obscene phone calls from the killer -a nasty piece of work whose weapon of choice is an architect's metal set-square. The crimes become a goldmine of publicity with everyone making the TV talk show rounds -including the public prosecutor- and guest star Franco "Django" Nero's bit as a street corner prophet acts as a sort of hip Greek chorus. There's ulterior motives and double crosses galore and the murders, the brief glimpses of hetero S&M, and the lesbianism and nudity (courtesy of Robins) are all photographed in classy style on stylish sets. The ambiguous ending isn't, really, since it's in keeping with the film's jaded universe and, like any good giallo, the title's a big hint. This one's lots of fun, I loved it!

The first attempt since the millennium to resurrect the Giallo was Dario Argento's hugely successful Sleepless, which not only goes down as a successful attempt to resurrect the genre but also as one of the best genre films period. This attempt by director Pierfrancesco Campanella came a couple of years later and, despite being heavily flawed, does at least somewhat count as a noteworthy genre entry. The director obviously has some affinity to the genre for his willingness to cast some of it's stars; people such as Florinda Bolkan (Don't Torture a Duckling) and Franco Nero (The Fifth Cord) and he's also served up a plot straight out of the Giallo playbook. We focus on a block of flats that has come under attack from a killer who slaughters his victim with a set square (of all things). The police find a girl murdered and it's not long before another body turns up, although the detective on the case is not happy to link the murders together despite the similar modi operandi and it soon becomes apparent that there's more than one psycho on the loose! The film's main problems are, without doubt, the script and the acting. The dialogue is extremely trite and at times positively stupid; while the acting is sometimes so wooden that it's almost unbelievable and not only does this bring the quality of the film down, it also harms the credibility as it's hard to really care about the characters. It's a shame too because the plot here is really well worked and clever and could certainly have made for a good Giallo with better handling. The director does seem keen to make the film as sleazy as possible and we've got some very bloody sexual violence as well as a lesbian subplot. The cast is mostly made up of females, and a strange casting choice comes in the form of Eva Robin's; a transsexual who some may remember as having a small part in Argento's masterpiece Tenebre. The main point of interest for Giallo fans will be Florinda Bolkan, who is actually rather good as a weird artist. Franco Nero's part is small and I'm thankful for that as his character is not good to say the least. It all boils down to a good conclusion and while the film's problems are simply too much at times; this is still a film worth seeing.

Lamentable attempt at a giallo revival – it gets most things wrong (particularly the atmosphere so essential to this subgenre, completely negated here by flat TV style) and should, in fact, have been called BAD FILM-MAKING! For what it's worth, the cast includes three past exponents in the field: noted transsexual Eva Robins (TENEBRE [1982]) as a has-been TV star whose plan for a comeback coincides with a killing spree occurring in her apartment building; Florinda Bolkan (A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN [1971], DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING [1972]) as a crooked art dealer and painter with a fondness for violent themes; and Franco Nero (THE FIFTH CORD [1971]) who gets an amusing but, at the same time, thankless bit as a disillusioned-magistrate-turned-street-preaching-bum! Besides featuring one of the silliest murder weapons ever (an architect's set square), dialogue is hilariously overwritten throughout and the young cast emerges to be generally inadequate (even if virtually all of the performances here are stilted) – but, at least, it does manage a bit of the traditional nudity (courtesy of two entirely gratuitous shower scenes) and even throws in a few lesbian couplings as a bonus! Finally, while it's kind of interesting that two of the three murders attributed to the serial killer aren't actually committed by the latter (and, in fact, is never caught or even identified), it's quite stupid of him to add to his list of victims the incompetent magistrate who had hastily condemned an innocent man so as to appease the irate public opinion!!

A feeble, terrible try to renew the Italian giallo tradition, this one is one of the worst Italian movies of all time. The plot is really poor, the acting is abysmal, the death scenes are repetitive and not particularly well executed, the sex scenes are cut before they really start. It features a couple of old Italian giallo stars from the Seventies, like Florinda Bolkan (Non si sevizia un paperino, A lizard with woman skin, both by the great Fulci), and Eva Robbins (Dario Argento's Tenebre), also a cameo by Franco Nero (giornata nera per l'ariete, and the immortal character of the spaghetti-western genre, Django). It is not worth your time