Within Minaccia d'amore (1988), Jenny (Charlotte Lewis) is in the subway, hunting for her friend, Mole (Mattia Sbragia), who has volunteered to uncover the mysterious source for the dysfunctional telephone in Jenny's apartment. Jenny cannot pinpoint his exact location (somewhere in the tunnels at an electrical substation), so she runs the myriad hallways, hoping to stumble upon him. A wide-eyed and maniacal-looking gentleman is following Jenny, and he comes upon a trash bin. He knocks it over and as the trash spills out, he pulls an empty syringe from the debris. Jenny cannot find her friend and fears that he is in danger. In a panic she encounters the gentleman who has been following her who now holds the syringe to her face, before attacking her. 
Minaccia d'amore (1988), also known as Dial: Help, directed by Ruggero Deodato, is about an evil and sinister presence torturing poor Jenny through the telephone. Or as Deodato describes the film, "It was given a theatrical release in Italy and it was bought by Berlusconi for Mediaset. It's a delicious film. It's a fantasy film and this is the reason that I like it. The story concerns a telephone which falls in love with a girl who is trying to make a call to her friend, and which kills all the people who hang around the girl. This is the type of fantasy film which I like. Zombie films don' t interest me, a telephone which falls in love, yes. Hard horror is not my genre, I far prefer fantasy." (from Cannibal Holocaust and the Savage Cinema of Ruggero Deodato by Harvey Fenton, Julian Grainger, and Gian Luca Castoldi, FAB Press, Surrey, U.K., 1999, p.28.) Deodato continues, "It was not exactly my idea. It was a very old script that no one wanted to do because it was too difficult. Normally you have a monster, a zombie or killer doing the evil in a movie. Here you have a...telephone. For me a film is interesting when it is difficult to make. To be honest, I really like the finished film. With a bigger budget I think it could have been a fantastic film." (from European Trash Cinema, Vol. 2, No. 7, edited by Craig Ledbetter, Springwood, TX, 1993, p. 17) 
The "very old script" for Minaccia d'amore (1988) "that no one wanted" was originally penned by Franco Ferrini. Ferrini describes its genesis: "The film [Turno di notte] is the story of a single man who, alone at night, hears a cry on the radio, marking the beginning of a real nightmare for him and Barbara De Rossi. ¶ In fact, from this film onwards, I started using the media as the diabolical element in my stories: in Turno di notte it was the radio, in Minaccia d'amore it was the telephone, in Demoni the cinema and in Demoni 2...l'incubo ritorna the television. I would like to carry on the series..." Ferrini states that he sent the script for Minaccia d'amore to Dario Argento in 1983, who "showed a certain interest" but "decided to let it go." Despite Argento rejecting Ferrini's script for Minaccia, the two began a creative relationship which would spawn Argento's film Phenomena. (from Spaghetti Nightmares by Luca M. Palmerini and Gaetano Mistretta, Phantasma Books, Florida, 1996, p. 49) 
Whether its a story of a telephone falling in love with a girl or about a diabolical medium of modern technology, however creative these themes may be, Minaccia d'amore is above all a Ruggero Deodato film: beautifully-composed, well-paced, compelling, nasty, and perverse (-ted). Jenny's encounter with the maniac in the subway is just wrong. Despite the attempt by Deodato to overshadow his sinister implications by having his maniac attempt to violently rape Jenny in the subway, who is then saved by a machine (in a bravado move which would make all the machines in Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive squeal in jealousy), the imagery of an empty syringe as a weapon is offensive. An empty syringe is a pitiful weapon; and a sharpened wooden pencil would be far more effective in inflicting damage. If one thinks of the era during which Minaccia was made, then the potency of the damage that the empty syringe could inflict is far more frightening. A truly nasty undertone and almost signature Deodato touch. 
Jenny is a gorgeous model initially depicted as self-absorbed: she does not have time to speak to her shy, awkward, and sensitive neighbor, Riccardo (Marcello Modugno), as she is obsessed with an expected phone call from a lover (who has spurned Jenny and allows the telephone/love motif to begin). Jenny's admirers fall over her footsteps. For example, Mole. When Jenny begins to show serious distress at a party, regarding the mysterious and frightening happenings around the telephone, Mole does not suggest to Jenny to call the telephone company: he is on the job personally, tapping into switchboards at her apartment building, installing a new telephone in her apartment, and parading around the vast underground networks to uncover the source of the telephone evil. Mole might be adept at fixing telephone technology, but his initiative goes far beyond the call (rimshot) of duty. Poor Riccardo almost dies the first evening that Jenny seeks his help, but the opportunity to have Jenny desire him for any reason is quite all right. 
Deodato is attracted to Jenny's powerful beauty and sexuality as well. In an audacious sequence, Lewis's Jenny, now under the influence of the energy-derived evil, is forced to dress in her garters and corset; and with some striking compositions, she models for the viewer (as her character is all alone in the setting). Jenny gets into the bathtub, now a dangerous place with the source of water and impending doom of the energy evil, and she writhes in the bathtub in a continued benefit for the viewer. Jenny's character is a sexual object and Deodato never hides this sentiment. Yet, it is difficult to view Minaccia and not feel for Lewis's Jenny during the absurd, violent, and strange sequences that ensue. It is also difficult to not become involved in the story. Perhaps the story is so absurd and fantastic, each subsequent sequence is unexpected and unusual; or Minaccia is so attractively lurid and seductive. 
Claudio Simonetti provided the score for Minaccia d'amore, and it's not nearly as effective as the score that he composed for Deodato's The Washing Machine (1993), but it works well within the film. The look of the film is superficial and glossy, which is very appropriate, and the cinematography by the excellent Renato Tafuri is superior. Deodato's cinema never suffers from the lack of an extremely interesting montage of images. Minaccia d'amore is, like other Deodato cinema, a conundrum. William Berger who plays a small part in Minaccia, echoes this sentiment: "Deodato is quite a crazy guy, but strangely I work best with the really crazy ones. Deodato changes within seconds from the sweetest person to a complete madman." (from European Trash Cinema, No. 13, ed. by Craig Ledbetter, Springwood, TX, exact year unknown (1995 or 1996 presumably), p. 11.)
Minaccia d'amore (1988), also known as Dial: Help, directed by Ruggero Deodato, is about an evil and sinister presence torturing poor Jenny through the telephone. Or as Deodato describes the film, "It was given a theatrical release in Italy and it was bought by Berlusconi for Mediaset. It's a delicious film. It's a fantasy film and this is the reason that I like it. The story concerns a telephone which falls in love with a girl who is trying to make a call to her friend, and which kills all the people who hang around the girl. This is the type of fantasy film which I like. Zombie films don' t interest me, a telephone which falls in love, yes. Hard horror is not my genre, I far prefer fantasy." (from Cannibal Holocaust and the Savage Cinema of Ruggero Deodato by Harvey Fenton, Julian Grainger, and Gian Luca Castoldi, FAB Press, Surrey, U.K., 1999, p.28.) Deodato continues, "It was not exactly my idea. It was a very old script that no one wanted to do because it was too difficult. Normally you have a monster, a zombie or killer doing the evil in a movie. Here you have a...telephone. For me a film is interesting when it is difficult to make. To be honest, I really like the finished film. With a bigger budget I think it could have been a fantastic film." (from European Trash Cinema, Vol. 2, No. 7, edited by Craig Ledbetter, Springwood, TX, 1993, p. 17) The "very old script" for Minaccia d'amore (1988) "that no one wanted" was originally penned by Franco Ferrini. Ferrini describes its genesis: "The film [Turno di notte] is the story of a single man who, alone at night, hears a cry on the radio, marking the beginning of a real nightmare for him and Barbara De Rossi. ¶ In fact, from this film onwards, I started using the media as the diabolical element in my stories: in Turno di notte it was the radio, in Minaccia d'amore it was the telephone, in Demoni the cinema and in Demoni 2...l'incubo ritorna the television. I would like to carry on the series..." Ferrini states that he sent the script for Minaccia d'amore to Dario Argento in 1983, who "showed a certain interest" but "decided to let it go." Despite Argento rejecting Ferrini's script for Minaccia, the two began a creative relationship which would spawn Argento's film Phenomena. (from Spaghetti Nightmares by Luca M. Palmerini and Gaetano Mistretta, Phantasma Books, Florida, 1996, p. 49) Whether its a story of a telephone falling in love with a girl or about a diabolical medium of modern technology, however creative these themes may be, Minaccia d'amore is above all a Ruggero Deodato film: beautifully-composed, well-paced, compelling, nasty, and perverse (-ted). Jenny's encounter with the maniac in the subway is just wrong. Despite the attempt by Deodato to overshadow his sinister implications by having his maniac attempt to violently rape Jenny in the subway, who is then saved by a machine (in a bravado move which would make all the machines in Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive squeal in jealousy), the imagery of an empty syringe as a weapon is offensive. An empty syringe is a pitiful weapon; and a sharpened wooden pencil would be far more effective in inflicting damage. If one thinks of the era during which Minaccia was made, then the potency of the damage that the empty syringe could inflict is far more frightening. A truly nasty undertone and almost signature Deodato touch. Jenny is a gorgeous model initially depicted as self-absorbed: she does not have time to speak to her shy, awkward, and sensitive neighbor, Riccardo (Marcello Modugno), as she is obsessed with an expected phone call from a lover (who has spurned Jenny and allows the telephone/love motif to begin). Jenny's admirers fall over her footsteps. For example, Mole. When Jenny begins to show serious distress at a party, regarding the mysterious and frightening happenings around the telephone, Mole does not suggest to Jenny to call the telephone company: he is on the job personally, tapping into switchboards at her apartment building, installing a new telephone in her apartment, and parading around the vast underground networks to uncover the source of the telephone evil. Mole might be adept at fixing telephone technology, but his initiative goes far beyond the call (rimshot) of duty. Poor Riccardo almost dies the first evening that Jenny seeks his help, but the opportunity to have Jenny desire him for any reason is quite all right. Deodato is attracted to Jenny's powerful beauty and sexuality as well. In an audacious sequence, Lewis's Jenny, now under the influence of the energy-derived evil, is forced to dress in her garters and corset; and with some striking compositions, she models for the viewer (as her character is all alone in the setting). Jenny gets into the bathtub, now a dangerous place with the source of water and impending doom of the energy evil, and she writhes in the bathtub in a continued benefit for the viewer. Jenny's character is a sexual object and Deodato never hides this sentiment. Yet, it is difficult to view Minaccia and not feel for Lewis's Jenny during the absurd, violent, and strange sequences that ensue. It is also difficult to not become involved in the story. Perhaps the story is so absurd and fantastic, each subsequent sequence is unexpected and unusual; or Minaccia is so attractively lurid and seductive. Claudio Simonetti provided the score for Minaccia d'amore, and it's not nearly as effective as the score that he composed for Deodato's The Washing Machine (1993), but it works well within the film. The look of the film is superficial and glossy, which is very appropriate, and the cinematography by the excellent Renato Tafuri is superior. Deodato's cinema never suffers from the lack of an extremely interesting montage of images. Minaccia d'amore is, like other Deodato cinema, a conundrum. William Berger who plays a small part in Minaccia, echoes this sentiment: "Deodato is quite a crazy guy, but strangely I work best with the really crazy ones. Deodato changes within seconds from the sweetest person to a complete madman." (from European Trash Cinema, No. 13, ed. by Craig Ledbetter, Springwood, TX, exact year unknown (1995 or 1996 presumably), p. 11.) 
"Absolutely. Absolutely." Bénazéraf answers in response to the question, "Do you think the banning of Joë Caligula was the revenge of the authorities for your earlier defiance?" Bénazéraf continues, "It was revenge. Because of my opposition to all that administration and bureaucracy. So they fucked me and they fucked me well." (from Immoral Tales: European Sex and Horror Movies 1956-1984 by Cathal Tohill & Pete Tombs, St. Martin's Griffin Press, New York, 1995, p. 217.)
"It's a very sad story. I made the film with Gérard Blain, who was quite a star of the nouvelle vague. It was a story of incest--but intellectual incest--between a man and his sister. I made it in a kind of--in France we say 'extase'--because I believed totally in that movie. I took it very seriously. I invested a lot of money. I shot in in black and white. It was Bonnie and Clyde--the same kind of mood, the same kind of tenderness and the same kind of violence. It was Bonnie and Clyde--but two years earlier. I showed it to the censors and they said over 18 only. So I said, OK, over 18 only. I had national release and on Wednesday, the day before release, we had 30 or 40 copies across France and they said, 'No. Completely banned.' And I was left with 30 prints of the film and all the costs to pay. And I couldn't export the film or exploit it. And it's so sad because perhaps it's the best movie I ever made. The only really good one. They said I was making an apology for violence. You know--the old routine. Gratuitous violence." (Immoral Tales, pp. 216-17.)
Joë Caligula shifts in its imagery from often sexual or violent to a scene of still life whether it's characters in repose or a setting of street life or the occasional scene in the country. However, there is no overt tonal shift in the imagery. When Gérard Blain puts on his sunglasses, a quirky and raucous tune begins, like an audio cue to accompany the sunglasses--here comes cool gangster persona...now here comes me pulling my gun...check this out, it's me committing a crime. There's an energy to Blain's rampages and violence but it fades as the film continues. Most enthusiasm is shown by Bénazéraf when he captures his actresses' imagery. Overall their imagery overwhelms the violent scenes as there is more poeticism watching Jeanne Valérie take a solitary stroll at night on the streets of Paris or watching Blain and crew hanging out at the cafe with their female company.
Blain's Joë Caligula is a rebellious character in a overt nod against the old guard. Ironically, his character and his narrative arc can only channel a modicum of Bénazéraf's cinematic rebellion and willfulness. In the majority of Bénazéraf's cinema that I have seen, there is an overwhelming sense of a filmmaker filming what he wants to. And obviously was pissing a few people off. There is a scene near the end of the film with Blain all alone sitting at a table, a wide shot emphasizing his solitude. Perhaps, this is the most affecting scene within Joë Caligula.
All my films have given me lots of experience and I don't think I have a particular favourite. For a short time after making Phenomena I thought it came as close to the real me as any of my movies did. Now I look at it and I'm not so sure. That's one of the reasons why I considered going back to its themes and reinventing them again for a possible sequel after Nonhosonno. There is a lot going on in Phenomena. Ever since I was a child I've had a strange attraction to insects. I've always had a hard-to-define feeling when I'm around them. I used to impale flies on pins or else use a piece of thread to tie their legs together and watch them struggle. It was when I discovered through an American newspaper story that sleepwalkers, schizophrenics and mediums have an affinity with insects that prompted the story. When you are in another dimension it becomes possible to talk to insects. And being schizophrenic means you are practically in another dimension. Unlike animals, flies don't hear, so you can only have a telepathic relationship with them. I spent a whole year and a half immersed in insect studies and talking to noted entomologists before tackling the script. One of the many curious things I discovered was that the female fly is capable of laying as many as 5000 eggs in its brief lifespan. Thank God for us that their lifespan is only 20 days otherwise the whole globe would be covered with them. I also learnt how important insects were to police investigations. Maggots usually provide the time of death during an autopsy.
[The above quotes by Dario Argento are from Mondo Argento and Profondo Argento, respectively. The first, p.71, Mondo Argento by Alan Jones, Ed. Paul J. Brown, Midnight Media Publishing, England, 1996; and the second, p 127, Profondo Argento by Alan Jones, FAB Press, England, 2004. While perusing my collection of fanzines, magazines, and film books and the like, of which I have quite a bit, I pulled every instance of mention within each of an interview with Argento. To my surprise, Phenomena (1985) receives little mention, not only from questions to Argento from interviewers but in his responses to general questions. This fact by itself is of little value as it only shows how limited my collection is in regards to Phenomena. I chose the two quotes for I find the two highly informative, not only in their substance but also in their delivery. If nothing else, the two quotes are eerily similar but have notable differences, and I think that it's fun to play the two off of each other.] 
Dario Argento's Phenomena is an odd film and not easily digestible. On the one hand, it's neither a character-driven nor a plot-driven film, although it has elements of both. By far not a traditional film in the classic style of its predecessors in the horror genre nor is it more ethereal or symbolic in the "arthouse" style of previous cinema, especially from Europe (although, again, it has elements of both). An initial viewing by anyone would find Phenomena disorienting as the film defies many traditional modes of viewing. I am reminded of a conversation that I had years ago with a friend regarding David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997), and we were speaking about the abrupt shift in the film towards its protagonist. I was asking my friend if the events subsequent to the character shift were a rendition of events from the mind of the original protagonist. He responded, "Perhaps they are events coming from the mind of David Lynch." I first saw Phenomena over twenty years ago under the title Creepers on its American VHS release (heavily-edited) then to search out an Nth generation VHS copy of a Japanese VHS then to see it again on laserdisc in a beautiful print from The Roan Group then to purchase the first DVD release from Anchor Bay Entertainment to a recent viewing on DVD again from Anchor Bay Entertainment as a re-release (this time in anamorphic widescreen). After this recent viewing, I recalled again my friend's words from that Lost Highway conversation, and my intuitive feeling is that Phenomena is a rendition of events from the mind of Dario Argento.
In a particular sequence, Jennifer (Jennifer Connelly) is locked in room in a mansion. The door leading to an exit has a transom above it. Outside the door is a telephone that she wants to reach to dial for help. She pulls a chair against the door in order to reach and unlock the transom above. The telephone is on a table right outside the door and is connected to its socket by a long cord. Jennifer cannot reach the phone with her arms. From the bathroom in her locked room, she exits with a large metal pole which appears to have a white grip, is extendable, and has a white hook at its end. I've attempted to rationalize this object as a shower-curtain rod or a hanging-curtain rod, but its appearance leads me to the conclusion that it is an extendable rod with a grip and a hook designed to manipulate objects from a distance. After a bout with attempting to hook the phone cord and pull the phone into her chamber, while bloodcurdling screams are heard elsewhere in the mansion, the phone slips and falls into a large hole in the floor. Jennifer drops the rod and reveals that she is able to escape the chamber by climbing through the transom. The hooked rod is the very definition of a deus ex machina; and her use of the rod was not only counterproductive but unnecessary as she reveals she could crawl out of her space quite easily and use the phone. The phone had to enter the hole as Jennifer had to enter the hole to encounter what was waiting for her there. This sequence of events appears to follow from Jennifer's deductive reasoning as to how to escape; and the presence of the rod fractures the narrative technique (although it could appear in a dream). Beyond this conclusion what remains is that this contrived and discursive sequence of events must come from somewhere else. 
During the first hour of the film (and over half of its duration), the majority of the dialogue within Phenomena is exposition. Even if Franco Ferrini and Dario Argento's script were one-hundred-percent literate and compelling, an hour's worth of expository dialogue would become tiring to most viewers. Even more fascinating is discerning what does the dialogue explain. Much of the it is redundant. In the opening sequence of the film, a young tourist (Fiore Argento) is left behind by her bus. With strong wide compositions, the mountains of the Switzerland locale are focal. She shivers and shakes on the road from the fierce wind. In a medium shot of Fiore, the camera even appears to shake from the violent wind. Cut to the credits with a powerful visual sequence of an upwards tracking shot of the wind blowing fiercely through the trees. Above the forest is revealed an isolated villa where the young tourist seeks solace. More than one subsequent character will tell Jennifer about these "fierce winds" in the region which has been dubbed, because of them, the "Swiss Transylvania." While these dialogue sequences explaining the origin of the region are fun in a Gothic, Poe-esque sense, the wind motif is rendered far more powerfully visually in the film's opening sequence. Further, in Jennifer's opening sequence, she has a dialogue with Daria Nicolodi's character, much of it expository. When she arrives at her destination, the one-time appearance of a detached voice-over narration occurs. This narration serves only to reiterate what the viewer has learned from the previous dialogue scene. The majority of the dialogue during the first hour fails to explain the plot while its minority only slightly enriches its characters.
Beyond the one-time narration appearance, Phenomena has other odd creative inclusions. The soundtrack has original music from both Bill Wyman and Claudio Simonetti, for example, side by side with heavy metal songs from Iron Maiden and Motorhead. While Iron Maiden's song during its first appearance seems to match the energy of the film's events (the killer stalking a young victim), when Motorhead's song appears in the film, it is an odd juxtaposition (it plays over a sequence depicting a character being rolled out on a gurney, having been attacked by the killer). Jennifer has communicative ability with insects, and once, Argento shows his viewer the P.O.V. of an insect watching Jennifer walk away, hand-in-hand with a chimpanzee. 
Much of the energy in Phenomena is derived from its rebellious spirit. Seeing the film through Jennifer's eyes, it is easy to feel it. During her first evening at her school, she has an eventful bout of sleepwalking. The following morning the headmistress (Dalila Di Lazzaro) forces her to see the doctor, and their treatment is extreme: since no one in the school has ever left the grounds by sleepwalking, Jennifer must be seriously ill. In fact, she might just be crazy. Instead of talking to the young teenager, the adults would rather strap her down and plug her into a machine. During her first class, Jennifer causes an impromptu coup by feeding answers to her new friend Sophie, turning the students against their teacher. When Jennifer finds the headmistress and other students going through her personal letters in her room, she has had enough. It leads to a forceful confrontation between her and all of the others in beautifully odd sequence. Through Jennifer's eyes this rebellious spirit is certainly linked to a juvenile nature. It doesn't reach the heights of a lofty ideal of anti-authoritarianism, but it also does not seem the idea that Argento was trying to convey.
I greatly admire Phenomena, and if it still is Argento's most personal film, then I believe, today, I understand why. Perhaps it is just my bias, as I feel a strong kinship with outsiders. Certainly, there are few films like Phenomena--it's truly a puzzle with some very creative and audacious visual sequences. At times, it appears truly nightmarish and dream-like. The mélange of artists who comprise the soundtrack greatly contribute to its atmosphere. An overall unique experience.
Chik juk ging wan is a Category III film from Hong Kong, directed by Ivan Lai Gai Ming. For those unfamiliar with Hong Kong's rating system, here is a wonderful description:
While it does at times seem an arbitrary rating (Wong Kar-wai's Chun gwong cha sit (Happy Together) (1997) is Category III while John Woo's extremely violent Dip huet seung hung (The Killer) (1989) is Category IIB), most of the films that I've seen with the rating exploit the content restrictions (excessively sexual and/or violent) and go over the top. Within the category, however, there are some filmmakers like Herman Yau who push the limits of the film's content but also take advantage of creating more provocative and daring stories to match the action (his Bat sin fan dim ji yan yuk cha siu bau (The Untold Story) (1993); 
From its first act, it appears that Chik juk ging wan has a daring and provocative story to match its content. The casting of Jade Leung in the lead role is essential: not only is Leung dead sexy but also capable of generating an amazing intensity with accompanying emotional performance (her riff on La Femme Nikita, Hei mao (Black Cat) (1991), opposite Simon Yam, is less conflicted and more focused: she appears a born assassin with a singular, violent intensity.). What the gentleman with the video camera fails to recognize as he obsesses over Leung's legs at the shootout (as does the viewer) is that there is a specific reason why Leung's Hsuen survives the incident: she's a stellar cop. It's a clever ruse on the part of director Lai: he masks Hsuen's capabilities by shaping her image through the eyes of both his killer and his viewer. The gentleman with the video camera is the "peeping tom," of the English-language title; and he is a nasty one: a serial killer/rapist with a leg fetish. Cheng's killer is off-kilter, methodical, and obsessive as he is able to subdue his victims quite easily with his tricks and brutality. However, his obsession causes him to appear to lose focus in his method: he actually shows at the crowded police station to confront Leung and play some mind games, but she immediately picks up his weird vibe and comes close to catching him right then and there. Cheng's killer sees Leung's character as nothing more than a beautiful woman, and when the two have a confrontation, she is far from a helpless victim. Chik juk ging wan, up until its first half, appears as if it is close to becoming a fascinating exploitation film that belongs to that rare class of its type: a film which engages openly in exploitation while also simultaneously commenting upon the nature of its exploitation: it creates a very hypocritical dichotomy yet can be fascinating and disorienting viewing.
During its second half, however, the film falters and ups the ante on its exploitative content and loses focus of its main conflict between Leung and Cheng. Leung disappears for most of the second half while Cheng's character goes on the tear and performs some truly repellent acts against woman victims. It appears that those behind the camera of Chik juk ging wan just gave up: they chose to become conservative by focusing on depicting extreme behavior almost exclusively. This fails ultimately to be provocative or interesting. It should be noted that Chik juk ging wan is extremely well-shot and composed, and this makes the film all the more disturbing. It's obvious that it was made by creative people and it could have been more daring in its execution.
Jade Leung is amazingly charismatic and is the attraction here, but she fails to save this one; and Chik juk ging wan would have faded further into obscurity without her presence. 
[Pete Tombs writes, “Eden and After gave a boost to Robbe-Grillet’s reputation as a man who made tastefully kinky movies for the intellectual set. Soon he was approached by the Boublil Brothers, who ran a successful chain of Paris sex cinemas. They agreed to finance his next film, Slow Slidings of Pleasure. (from “Oddball Kinkiness & Intellectual Conceits, The films of Alain Robbe-Grillet” by Pete Tombs, Flesh and Blood, No. 9, ed. Harvey Fenton, FAB Press, 1997, p. 69.)] 
Robbe-Grillet continues, “The project I had in mind was inspired by Michelet’s The Sorceress, as interpreted by Roland Barthes in his Michelet par lui-meme. That gave me the idea of making the character of the sorceress a young woman who upsets masculine discourse. The sufferings that the masculine order subject her to are described in Michelet’s text with a certain delight. The Sorceress is an ambiguous book. One the one hand, the sorceress is the spirit of revolution, while on the other, she also serves as a sexual object. Those conflictual drives can be discerned in Michelet’s style. I took up that conception in The Progressive Slidings of Pleasure, with the fundamental departure from Michelet that she upsets the masculine order not only with her body but also through her reasoning by which she undercuts the logic of a police investigation. 
“The third origin of The Progressive Slidings of Pleasure is a structural one: to make a film in which the narration is intercut with punctuation shots that serve to separate the scenes. Little by little, “slippages” occur from the punctuation shots towards the narration, from the narration towards the punctuation shots, and from one scene to another through the intermediary of punctuation. Punctuation shots, whose origins are ‘tailpieces’ in typography and ‘fades’ in film, are gradually integrated into the narration. There is a structural slippage from punctuation shots towards the diegesis. The structural idea was, in short, this concept of slippage.” (from Erotic Dream Machine, p. 70.) 
“It was filmed in an inexpensive little studio in Paris. We shot quickly, and then we all rushed to the railroad station…And it worked because I had an excellent rapport with that young girl [Anicée Alvina]. She was quite willing to do virtually anything that was demanded of her. When she was painting her body before pressing it against the wall, she would listen to me, and I would tell her, ‘Okay, a little lower on your belly.’ She carried it out, and one does not have the impression upon seeing the film that she is listening to instructions. Yet she certainly was not a professional actress. She simply handled her body with naturalness. 
“Catherine [Robbe-Grillet] had seen her in a film called Les Remparts des béguines (The Nun’s Ramparts), where a fifteen-year-old Anicée had a bit part in which she was really not too bad. We were driving through Cognac when Catherine saw a sign announcing the showing of Les Remparts des béguines. She said, ‘That is the girl you are looking for. You should go and see that film.’ I went to see it that evening. We returned to Paris a few days later, I contacted Anicée. Catherine had perceived that she could act without any of the problems that actresses generally have with nudity.” (from Erotic Dream Machine, p. 76.)
“I did not pay myself a salary, while in general the filmmaker pays himself well from the outset. I did everything quickly, and I received a large portion of the returns. Since the film did well, my earnings from Slidings were considerable. The only expensive actor was Trintignant, and he played for free. He is like a well-known painter who cannot afford to sell his paintings for a lower price to a friend, so he performed without charge. That is why his name does not appear in the credits. One sees ‘With the participation of,’ and there is no name, only a shot of a smiling Trintignant.” (from Erotic Dream Machine, p. 127.)
Glissements progressifs du plaisir is sensual, playful, and kinky. A lot of the intellectual allusions are also infused with eroticism. Robbe-Grillet states that, “Because red is the color of blood in the film, and blue is the color of the sky. [Yves] Klein is obsessed by the sky in his first paintings. But that young girl [Anicée Alvina] does not know Klein. She has fun with the paint, and you must not forget that her interlocutor is a nun, and the question of imprints is an important one in religion. She ends up by giving her a red cloth, saying, ‘Here is Veronica’s veil.’ ¶ For me, it was simply a nod at Klein. All I did was to think that since she looks so comfortable with her body, she could go ahead and do it, and, indeed, she carried it out the very first time. There was only one take of that scene. To make a film for 500,000 francs, one cannot have two takes of any shot.” (from Erotic Dream Machine, p. 75.) This scene that Robbe-Grillet describes defies both adequate description here and upon viewing. Alvina stands nude against the stark white backdrop of her room. At her feet is a basin filled with red paint and with a brush she paints the front of her body. She then presses her body up against the wall in various poses and leaves red imprints, creating a mural. While the scene is informed by Robbe-Grillet’s intellectual nod to Klein, its sensual nature is focal. The scene, like most in Glissements, is a fun game between the prurient and the intellectual.
Robbe-Grillet is fond of games as motif and is also fond of playing them with his reader in his fiction and also with his viewer with his films. As in his previous L'éden et après (although in a different manner), Glissements is full of games. Just beyond the opening montage, Trintignant appears as a police inspector investigating a murder. He searches what appears to be one room by opening various doors and even a door in the ceiling. His character does not seem to leave the room, but the room, itself, is being altered. The space is either being manipulated by Alvina’s character or within the frame by Robbe-Grillet or both. The entire narrative of Glissements is both fractured and circular and certainly elliptical.
Even if Robbe-Grillet is playing games for the sake of being playful in Glissements, he will hear no complaints from this viewer. After several viewings of Glissements, the imagery is far too seductive to not become weaved in its web. A beautiful film and a personal favorite. 
These words are from Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla" from the collection of tales In a Glass Darkly upon which Carl Theodor Dreyer based his 1932 film Vampyr. Dreyer begins his film with these words:
The final description comes from Dreyer and Christen Jul's screenplay for Vampyr. In some sense, an understanding or an awareness of all this text is non-essential to Dreyer's film as its visuals are where its magic lies; or perhaps, all of the text is truly essential, as Dreyer's film also takes creative power in its hybrid nature of a silent film of recent past and a film of the burgeoning sound era. 
The opening text of the film which describes Allan Gray appears as exposition but also functions as a primer for viewing. Vampyr clearly adopts the sensibility of Allan Gray as Dreyer is depicting a "dreamer's" dream. The opening text allows an opportunity for the viewer, if he or she wishes, to adopt a detached or objective style of viewing, e.g. watching Allan Gray, the dreamer, and his adventures. I believe, however, this style of viewing is almost resisting the film. Having seen Vampyr numerous times, the visuals, the atmosphere, the music, e.g. its creative rendition, only allow for quick surrender. Seeing Vampyr through Allan Gray's eyes is far too seductive.
A lot of the beauty in Vampyr comes from Allan Gray's smaller journeys within his his larger adventure. Upon his arrival at the inn, he does see the reaper but does not really have an encounter. He only witnesses the man call for the ferry at the river. The "unreality," however, is very much captured.
The morning after Gray's night at the inn and his fateful encounter within, another "aimless wandering" occurs. This world is either Allan Gray's, Marguerite Chopin's, or Dreyer's. 
Once more, near the film's conclusion, Allan Gray leaves the manor after Gisele. As he runs, he trips and falls to then compose himself on a nearby bench. In an audacious move, Allan Gray never leaves the bench but has another small journey.
Despite the interplay of written text within Vampyr (and playing with the outside texts which inform it), Dreyer's film is pure cinema. Dreyer's visuals and Wolfgang Zeller's score capture such beauty, making it timeless. The visuals and music defy description; or more appropriately, the visuals and music defy adequate description.
Il trucido e lo sbirro is a damn entertaining poliziesco, perhaps one of the decade's best: swiftly-paced, exciting and excessively violent, and well-written (by Lenzi and Dardano Sacchetti). By all means a soundly commercial, successful, and almost perfect poliziesco. 
Outside of its commercial genre and within its action, Il trucido e lo sbirro calls for questions. Here's an example: Monnezza is a street criminal; and pick-pocketing and small cons are his trade. Sarti coerces Monnezza into helping him by threatening to lock him up. However, whatever methods that Monnezza chooses to find Brescianelli and the young child, Sarti does not question them. Aboard a moving train, three armed criminals attempt to rob it. The police stop the train, surround it, and make an attempt to raid it. The three criminals escape on foot and take shelter in a moored boat. Enter Monnezza and Sarti who board the boat with an offer to help: Monnezza tells the gang that Brescianelli is the one who tipped off the police about their robbery. Would they be interested in teaming up to take down Brescianelli, as Monnezza also reveals that he and Sarti were double-crossed by Brescianelli? They agree. Now Sarti has three additional criminals to help him locate Brescianelli, but these criminals are not like Monnezza. These cats are seriously dangerous and violent criminals. Can Sarti keep these criminals in line, maintain his cover, or find Brescianelli and his young hostage?
By the numbers, Il trucido e lo sbirro plays out like a Pyrrhic victory but it ain't. The entire premise of Il trucido e lo sbirro is predicated on the presumption that the state of law enforcement and its methods are wholly ineffectual in stopping crime. The kidnapping case becomes the police department's top priority when it occurs. Cassinelli's Sarti was brought into Rome to head the case. Sarti was demoted to a post in Sardinia away from his position in Rome because of his hard-lined intensity and unorthodox methods against criminals. The once-exiled policeman returns home, now embraced by those who put him exile: his methods are now necessary. In a particularly nasty and fascinating scene, Sarti and one of his violent criminal crew infiltrate the home of a promising suspect. A maid answers the door and Sarti pushes through. Sarti is going to raid the suspect's documents in his study, and would his criminal cohort mind watching the maid? No problem, he says. As soon as Cassinelli's character is out of the room, his cohort grabs the woman and rips her blouse. His intentions are clear and unequivocal. Sarti returns to his cohort when he has heard a gunshot. The suspect that Sarti needs to interrogate lays dead on the floor, a victim of Cassinelli's criminal associate. What the hell did you do that for? yells Sarti. He could have led us right to the little girl. Sarti knocks the shit out of the criminal and points his pistol directly at his head. Cassinelli (who gives another fantastic and emotional performance) has generated enough anger to appear that he is going to shoot the man directly in the head but he checks himself: as much as he wants to kill him, he realizes that he needs him.
So what are Lenzi and Sacchetti saying about current culture and crime in Il trucido e lo sbirro? Here's a scene which may hide their intentions: outside of a movie theatre, two very young men enter its lobby. One is holding a box of tissues while the other appears to suffer from nasal congestion. After a toss of the tissue box, one of the young men wipes his nose with a tissue. "Has anyone ever told you that your face is lovely?" asks the young man to the woman behind the ticket counter. "Why no," she says. "No one is going to say so in the future," says the thug and Whack! He hits her directly in the face with the box of tissues (it's hiding something to charge it up). The two young men rob the box office and run out of the cinema. Sarti witnesses the fleeing criminals and begins to give chase. One of his criminal associates stops him: "Where are you going? What do you care? It's just kids having fun." Sarti again checks himself and maintains cover. The scene within the movie theatre is quite kinetic and exciting. It would appear that Lenzi had a bit of fun filming it and maybe wants to share some of that energy with his viewer.
For all of my pontificating, Il trucido e lo sbirro is most famous for Milian's performance as Monnezza (the name roughly translates as "Trash" and he is called "Garbage Can" in the English dub). Not only is the character the most richly-drawn (and not incidentally making everyone around him look more like an archetype or a stereotype), but Milian's performance as Monnezza is the most richly-detailed. Antonio Bruschini and Antonio Tentori, authors of Citta' Violente: Il Cinema Poliziesco Italiano Volume Primo, see Milian's character having its origins in Milian's "Cuchillo" character from Sergio Sollima's masterful The Big Gundown (1966) (p.90, Mondo Ignoto, S.R.L., Rome, 2004). The authors write, "Nel 1976 Lenzi da vita al primo, mitico, personaggio quasi totalmente farsesco interpretato da Tomas Milian, il vero precursore del successivo marresciallo Nico Giraldi." (p.89) Milian's Nico Giraldi character is phenomenally popular, beginning with Bruno Corbucci's Squadra antiscippo (1976) and spanning almost a decade with numerous films. It is difficult to describe how excellent and intricate Milian's performance is: from his facial expressions, to his body language, to his character's charming vulgarity, Monnezza floats through this violent world with a smile on his face, little money in his pocket, and behind all appearances, has a very good heart. Milian is so good that he instantly becomes focal in any scene. Milian drives the narrative of Il trucido e lo sbirro and its investigation. Monnezza is a survivor of this world and his energy is perhaps borne of its chaos. Regardless, Il trucido e lo sbirro is very much worth seeing for Milian's brilliant and landmark performance. Two other interesting facts: the Western playing at the beginning is Tutto per tutto (1968) (Citta Violente, p. 90), directed by Lenzi; and Henry Silva's character, Brescianelli was "the real name of a gangster who otherwise operated in the Milan area within the Marseilles clan." (p. 56, Tomas Milian Il Bandito, Lo Sbirro, e Er Monnezza, Mediane S.R.L., Milan, 2007, text by Pierpaolo Duranti and Erminio Mucciacito with English translation by Pat Scalabrino.)