The Luciano Ercoli Death Box Set

Death Walks At Midnight

Death Walks On High Heels

R0 NTSC

NoShame Films

Luciano Ercoli was a writer, producer and director popular through the Sixties and Seventies. He only ever directed a small number of Giallo films, but each of these are marked by his unique interpretation of the genre. Giallo, which could be loosely defined as Italian crime and thriller cinema. It includes a wide variety of interpretations from the brutal violence of Dario Argento to the exploitation films of Sergio Martino. Ercoli takes a different approach and offers finely tuned thrillers with an emphasis on plot, character development and red herrings. At the same time he never forgets the significance of the look of the film and offers beautiful cinematography, stunning woman and unusual murders.

Death Walks at Midnight is based on a script by spaghetti western author Sergio Corbucci. It is hip, twisted and lots of fun with a very cool Euro soundtrack. Valentina is a beautiful model who wants to make some extra cash. She agrees to help her part time lover Gio, who works as a newspaper reporter, with a lead story. She is injected with a new type of psychedelic and he is to record her experiences. She only agrees on the condition that her face is covered by a tasteful mask but as soon as she is high, the mask is off and the photography begins. There is nothing better than a beautiful model high on drugs for the front page of a sleazy newspaper.

At first the trip is rather fun with loads of colour, laughter and visions. Soon all this changes, she is horrified to “see” a killer in dark glasses subduing a woman and then killing her with a large spiked metal glove. He hits her repeatedly in the face until she is well and truly dead.

At first Valentinia and Gio think this is just a hallucination, but soon they realize that she had seen a real murder and that the killer thinks she knows his identity. As they try and unravel the story of the killing, they find the police less than helpful and more bodies turning up by the day.

Death Walks at Midnight is an interesting Giallo marked by excellent storytelling, unusual killings and a real cat and mouse plot. There are lots of potential killers and it is not until the very end that you work out the story – it is definitely different than you would expect but not beyond the realm of probability. Unlike other Giallo’s Ercoli keeps the story real and it has more in common with a crime thriller than the more “sex and violence” films at the other end of the spectrum.

Death Walks on High Heels is also very different from the traditional Giallo, in many ways it wanders through murder and crime and becomes a more Hitchcock type thriller by the time it has finished. It is another example of Ercoli’s superb storytelling, while it is a very complex plot and is difficult to interpret until the very end, it does make sense and is very challenging cinema. Ercoli avoids the vagueness that marks many other Giallos and creates a story which can be deciphered if you watch closely.

Nicole Rochard is a stripper and her father is a thief well known to the police. She is shocked to find that he has been murdered during a train journey. The police believe that the murderer wanted to recover sound highly valuable diamonds of which he was a courier. Sometime later Nicole is attacked by a masked man and urged to give over the diamonds or tell him where they are.

She suspects that the attacker maybe her boyfriend Michel Aumont and hightails it to London with a married British doctor with whom she is having an affair. They spent some weeks together in passionate bliss until the doctor’s wife intervenes and wanting her hubbie back offers to pay Nicole to leave England. When she declines she is found murdered and the doctor is shot while in his clinic. The story becomes more complicated as the suspects all have alibis. A short time later the doctor’s wife is also killed and the police have no leads whatsoever.

Once again Ercoli has created an intricate tale with a complex storyline, beautiful women and superb cinematography. While Ercoli is happy to use attractive actresses and violent murders, he again avoids any extremes and instead offers a tale marked by plot and character development.

While this set can be difficult to find, it is worth the effort. It is superbly presented with excellent quality transfers, a full colour informative booklet (with some lovely poster images) and a third disc including music by Stelvio Cipriani who scored Death Walks on High Heels.

This review will appear in Volume 2 No.2 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

If you came to this page directly (and missed our menu), click here to go to the Synergy Magazine front page. (http://www.synergy-magazine.com)