Una lucertola con la pelle di donna (1971)

	Also Known As: Una lagarta con piel de mujer, Lizard in a woman's skin
	Year of first release: 1971
	Director: Lucio Fulci
	Actors: Florinda Bolkan, Stanley Baker, Jean Sorel
	Country: I, E, F
	Genre: Polar, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 10.08.2016, DVD, strange original version
Synopsis: Carol (Bolkan) is daughter of a prominant English politician and keeps having recurring "nightmares" in which she makes love to a bisexual nympho who lives downstairs and conducts all-night LSD orgies. When the nocturnal wet dreams become murderous, the neighbor turns up dead. Did she actually commit the murder she dreamt about? Is she being framed by her philandering husband? Did she actually make nightly visits downstairs? Her husband (Sorel) and the Inspector Corvin (Baker) investigate.
Review: The last ingredient of the Giallo type (see La ragazza che sapeva troppo and Sei donne per l'assessino) is introduced in that movie, the music. Ennio Morricone composed for this one as for many other Gialli. And the movie gets a texture that is going even deeper in the skin. The music combined with the abstract images or dialogues. The story is full of surprises. Even if the Giallo concept is kept. Carol is the woman in a nervous breakdown. The calm husband and father balance the acting. The story made me have kind of affection for Carol and then more suspiscion for her. The mix of feelings with the different characters, also the father and the husband, is a great success of the movie. I found the red room very inspiring and it reminded me the experience of Twin Peaks by David Lynch.  As often in my DVD for Gialli, the original version is not that clean as Italian and Spanish get mixed. And obviously few actors are talking Italian. Maybe it is the reason why the acting focuses more on the face and body expression than on the way the dialogues are told, as they are told anyway by another person.
Rating: 5 /10

The Beguiled (1971)

	Also Known As: Les Proies (French), Betrogen (German)
	Year of first release: 1971
	Director: Donald Siegel (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Dirty Harry)
	Actors: Clint Eastwood (Play Misty for me, Gran Torino), Geraldine Page, Elizabeth Hartman
	Country: USA
	Genre: Drama, Thriller, Romance
	Conditions of visioning: 21.06.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Yankee soldier John McBurney (Eastwood) is found half-dead by the youngest occupant of a school for girls. They will take care of him while the civil war rages on around them. Special relationships will develop.
Review: One of the earliest movies with Clint Eastwood that is not a Western. This career change may have disoriented the distributors of the movie, by looking at the variety of the posters that were produced over the years (see at the end of this post), some trying to wrongfully sell is as a Western with an armed Clint, some other being fair enough to show the Southern flag and placing the movie correctly in context, some insisting too much on the Romance and finally a few really fair to the topic of a wounded soldier surrounded by women that lived in isolation. There is not so much action in this movie, more a display of psychology between the different characters, and how the soldier tries to take advantage of the situation. And once all the elements are in place I was quite shocked by the turn of events, filmed with utter realism. It gave me shivers. A movie that doesn't hesitate pushing the limits of what was allowed to be shown in the early 70's, and with the Master eye of director Don Siegel.
Rating: 8 /10

Play Misty for me (1971)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1971
	Director: Clint Eastwood (The Gauntlet, Gran Torino)
	Actors: Clint Eastwood (The Good, The Bad and the Ugly), Jessica Walter, Donna Mills
	Country: USA
	Genre: Romance, Drama, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 12.05.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Dave (Eastwood) is animating a radio music show which leads him to meet Evelyn (Walter), a fan he will have trouble getting away from.
Review: I came across this box-set gathering movies with and/or by Clint Eastwood from 1969 to 1975 and was immediately interested (see image at the end of this post). It contains movies that I have never seen or not in decades: Joe Kidd, Play Misty for me, Two Mules for Sister Sara, Breezy, The Beguiled and The Eiger Sanction. I started with the movie which is actually the first one he ever directed and in which he plays as well: Play Misty for me. The title vaguely reminded me something, and in fact it was the typical movie I was watching with my father on TV when I was actually too young for it. Now I get to appreciate it to a whole different level as I have grown to love movies from that period and this one contains all the right elements: jazzy music, long silent introduction scene... and the main characters are artists: Clint Eastwood playing a DJ and dating a sculptor lady. The DJ in a house along the sea may have influenced John Carpenter for The Fog. So I like the style of the movie and the Blu-ray transfer is of good quality but I can criticize that the optical quality of the lenses used is not always very good (blurry away from the center), as I had notice in another movie: The Final Countdown (same lenses?). Also, during most of the night scenes, it is too obvious that they were shot during the day and underexposed (or using density filters). I have heard about this process in the past and it works under some circumstances, you believe the shot was taken under full moon, but it is used too much in this movie and is too obvious because of bright reflexions on cars for example. Play Misty for me seems bipolar, switching between romantic scenes that I find badly written and too cheesy (including unrealistic Hollywood kisses) and utterly stressing scenes of harassment by Evelyn played to the perfection by Jessica Walter. I got really nervous just by watching the movie, imagining how horrible it can become not to be able to get rid of someone: I found that more terrifying than most horror movies! But then I could breathe during the cheesy romantic scenes, actually playing their role. For more stress in the same register I may want to watch Fatal Attraction with Glenn Close and Michael Douglas.
Rating: 6 /10

Le Mans (1971)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1971
	Director: Lee H. Katzin
	Actors: Steve McQueen (Sand Pebbles, Bullitt, The Great Escape), Siegfried Rauch, Elga Andersen, Louise Edlind
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, Documentary
	Conditions of visioning: 05.12.2012, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Michael Delaney (McQueen) is back on the circuit of the famous race of the 24 hours of Le Mans, one years after being involved in a deadly acident.
Review: This movie is 40 years old and I had never seen it. It is difficult to categorize as it was mostly shot during the Le Mans race of 1970, so there is a strong documentary feel to it, which was actually wanted by McQueen as I learned when watching the making-off. I was most impressed by the realism of the car race, and not surprised that it has been well prepared during the 1969 race. The crew actually managed to mount cameras on real race cars, entered them in the competition and at some point they were even in the top 10! The introduction of the character of Delaney is very well done and we understand all about him without a word being said by the main actors in the first 35 minutes of the movie! This is in particular quite typical of McQueen who preferred to convey feelings with one shot of his blue eyes rather than with many lines of dialogs. The introduction of the race is also well done by showing us all the activities revolving around it (police preparations, arrival of the spectators at the train station, organization of the parking places...), and the background (origin and rules) of the race is given by the commentator over the speakers, like if we were in the public. The tension then rises to the sound of an increasingly fast heartbeat until it becomes almost unbearable when the lights go green. Then the movie finds a different rythm, alternating between the race, character developement, accompanied with a very nice jazzy music. The down side of the movie is that the story is utterly simple, so much that it was a problem when the producers wanted to finish and sell the movie. But this doesn't bother me so much.
Rating: 8 /10