I Suspect This Film Has Its Defenders, But...
Strip Nude For Your Killer from 1975 has one good suspense scene. A model (Femi Benussi) walks naked in a house, looking for the source of strange sounds. Her voluptuous body, pretty face, her majestic walk, add to the suspense since she's unshielded from danger. We already know the killer has stabbed three people to death, all of them connected to a modeling agency. It's the best scene in the film, known in its original Italian as Nude per l'assassino (Nude for the Killer).
The killer wears black all the way to the top--a motorcycle helmet. The graphic murders employ many splashings of red liquid resembling paint more than blood. Showing dead naked women and at least one dead naked man splattered with blood appears to be a goal of the filmmaker, Andrea Bianchi, one of whose films, Commando Mengele, has this for an IMDB description:
"A Jewish commando unit hunting Nazi war criminals tracks down the infamous Dr. Mengele in the jungle, and find that he is torturing nubile young virgins and performing horrible medical experiments on the locals."
Along with the bloodshed in Strip Nude For Your Killer is the sex, skin, lingerie, the face of Edwige Fenech. Gratuitous nudity abounds, distributed among men as well. In one shot, Edwige Fenech enters her bedroom to find her photographer boyfriend standing on his head, naked, ass facing the doorway. He explains that this stimulates the flow of corpuscles. He's also a suspect in the murders due to his hot temper, flippant attitude with the police, and sudden violent rages.
The homicide detective investigating the murders looks like Robert Culp. I point this out for no reason other than having been struck by the resemblance.
The main problem with this film is its pace and how the simple situation (employed effectively by Agatha Christie in her novel And Then There Were None) works with the filmmaker's management of time. Once it's been established that a group of people associated with the modeling agency are being targeted for unknown reasons, we watch the characters drop dead one by one to the point where it's not very interesting. When I found out the killer's identity, I had no sense of the character's importance. Femi Benussi's walk through the house, resulting in her death, gets reproduced by one of the male characters doing the same thing later on. The second time it's not interesting to watch, we know what will happen, the movements he makes through the house are prolonged and lacking in suspense. At this point I wanted Dr. Mengele to show up.
Can a movie with gorgeous naked 1970s European women be boring?
Vic Neptune
Strip Nude For Your Killer from 1975 has one good suspense scene. A model (Femi Benussi) walks naked in a house, looking for the source of strange sounds. Her voluptuous body, pretty face, her majestic walk, add to the suspense since she's unshielded from danger. We already know the killer has stabbed three people to death, all of them connected to a modeling agency. It's the best scene in the film, known in its original Italian as Nude per l'assassino (Nude for the Killer).
The killer wears black all the way to the top--a motorcycle helmet. The graphic murders employ many splashings of red liquid resembling paint more than blood. Showing dead naked women and at least one dead naked man splattered with blood appears to be a goal of the filmmaker, Andrea Bianchi, one of whose films, Commando Mengele, has this for an IMDB description:
"A Jewish commando unit hunting Nazi war criminals tracks down the infamous Dr. Mengele in the jungle, and find that he is torturing nubile young virgins and performing horrible medical experiments on the locals."
Along with the bloodshed in Strip Nude For Your Killer is the sex, skin, lingerie, the face of Edwige Fenech. Gratuitous nudity abounds, distributed among men as well. In one shot, Edwige Fenech enters her bedroom to find her photographer boyfriend standing on his head, naked, ass facing the doorway. He explains that this stimulates the flow of corpuscles. He's also a suspect in the murders due to his hot temper, flippant attitude with the police, and sudden violent rages.
The homicide detective investigating the murders looks like Robert Culp. I point this out for no reason other than having been struck by the resemblance.
The main problem with this film is its pace and how the simple situation (employed effectively by Agatha Christie in her novel And Then There Were None) works with the filmmaker's management of time. Once it's been established that a group of people associated with the modeling agency are being targeted for unknown reasons, we watch the characters drop dead one by one to the point where it's not very interesting. When I found out the killer's identity, I had no sense of the character's importance. Femi Benussi's walk through the house, resulting in her death, gets reproduced by one of the male characters doing the same thing later on. The second time it's not interesting to watch, we know what will happen, the movements he makes through the house are prolonged and lacking in suspense. At this point I wanted Dr. Mengele to show up.
Can a movie with gorgeous naked 1970s European women be boring?
Vic Neptune
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