GIALLO IDENTIKIT #013 [DEATH STEPS IN THE DARK aka PASSI DI MORTE PERDUTI NEL BUIO (1977)]

INTERESTING VISUAL TOUCHES ABOUND: This abstract, churning lava lamp intro (which, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with the rest of the movie) is one of several examples of how visually distinctive this goofy, tonally schizophrenic movie can be. And how much craftsmanship has been put into an otherwise wonky and amateurish film: Case in point, a plodding, ominous footfall is at first the only soundtrack we hear for the credits. (Also, in a vague way the visuals here remind me of the fetal / chicken imagery that opens DEATH LAID AN EGG.)

 

THE FIRST SET-PIECE IS THE BEST: And these credits cut to the most promising portion of the film: delivering an opening train scene that references countless past Gialli (the pleasing use of the killer’s pov is a highlight), Italian exploitation movies like Aldo Lado’s NIGHT TRAIN MURDERS (a key sequence in the train bathroom recalls the repugnant bathroom scene with Macha Meril), and the Margaret Rutherford Agatha Christie adaptation MURDER SHE SAID (1961). Pradeaux also shows solid genre chops in his use of the train compartment to introduce the film’s rogue's gallery of stock suspects—a prickish fashion photographer and his airhead model girlfriend, a suspicious looking priest, a stuck-up, buttoned-up upperclass woman, etc. That the film goes off the rails so quickly (and so consistently) makes makes one feel the letdown all the more.

The nervous woman in the train compartment gets up to leave, only to lose her pearl necklace in the process. As the rest of the group stoop to help her pick it up, the train goes into a tunnel and plunges the compartment into darkness. While the scene is blacked out, someone buries a knife into the nervous woman’s chest.

[This is the thirty-third post in a continuing series discussing and analyzing all the Krimis and Gialli I've seen. As with every post on this site, SPOILERS SHOULD BE EXPECTED.]

My Giallo Rating: ★★  (out of 5)
Subcategory (if any): 
     i. Comedy / Giallo Hybrid
     ii. Sleaze-Art-Sleaze Giallo
     iii. Train-Tracks Giallo
In My Giallo Top 50 (Y/N): No   

[THE COMEDY PROBLEM]
I’ve covered more than once the sometimes unsatisfying, hybrid nature of too many Krimis: the broad, cartoon way that “camp” elements rub up against the violent and grisly elements. And how this disconnect makes it difficult for some people to take the genre seriously. (Or, perhaps worse, how it encourages people who have only dabbled in the genre to assume that this is the default style for all 70+ Krimis made between 1958 and 1972; i.e., the “Scooby-Doo argument”.)

Roberto Curti’s book on Eurocrime, ITALIAN CRIME FILMOGRAPHY, 1968-1980, talks about this phenomenon in terms of the uneasy and ineffectual ways that slapstick and sex-comedy elements were eventually married to the Eurocrime. And how the appearance of such inappropriate, unconvincing hybrids were one signal—as they were for the Spaghetti (Euro-) Western before—that the genre had reached its last, box-office gasps.

So, too, with the Giallo. Where comedy, even in the most accomplished examples of the form, has always threatened to let the air out of the rest of the film. I’ve talked to people who simply can’t get over the juvenile, eye-rolling “battle of the sexes” conversations that Daria Nicolodi and David Hemmings have in DEEP RED. Or the painfully drawn-out “clown car” sequence that features the same characters. (Tbh, that’s the single reason I don’t rate DEEP RED more highly in the Giallo genre generally, and Argento’s filmography specifically; give me the spot-on, rarely belabored, even deadpan-by-comparison humor of TENEBRAE any day ...) ... not to mention: What do you do with a Giallo example that is, for 70 or 80% of its running time, structured as nothing *but* a comedy, something like 1977’s sublimely weird THE FIEND?

This comedy problem is the problem of Maurizio Prudeaux’s DEATH STEPS IN THE DARK. Which is almost exactly equal parts Argento-inspired suspense set-piece and Three Stooges-like routine. I was reminded of the movie when I realized that the Leonard Mann I was watching earlier this month in THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE was the same Leonard Mann (but older) who played the lead in this film. 

And, I was reminded of how thoroughly bummed I was after finally being able to watch DEATH STEPS, a film whose title puts it in a long and distinguished line of Italian Gialli and Gothics using the same construction (Death + Verb + Prepositional Phrase [or Object, or Adverb] = A Giallo Tradition). And that include such unassailable Giallo classics as Ercoli’s twin DEATH WALKS films. (If it resembles any of the other films in this tradition, it’s Pradeaux’s other Giallo, 1973’s DEATH CARRIES A CANE, which features the same sort of jarring comic sensibility [see below for some more on that film]).

Despite my disappointment, stumbling across Mann in another Giallo convinced me to go ahead and update my thoughts on DSITD (and do my usual due diligence re: screencaps).

THE SECOND MURDER SET-PIECE: The set-piece murders are the most obvious examples of Argento’s influence on the film. After the first murder, each contains multiple shots of the iconic “Argento Eye,” most memorably used in CAT O’NINE TAILS (1971) and TENEBRAE (1982). In fact, the Giallo fan could be forgiven for thinking these shots in Pradeaux’s film were directly lifted from CAT (I'm thinking esp. the burglary scene in the Terzi Institute).

[PRADEAUX’S OTHER GIALLO MISFIRE] 
The first time I ran into Pradeaux’s work was with the aforementioned CANE. Which I sought out (as mentioned above) because I had some small hope it might be in the same league as the two other DEATH films starring Nieves Navarro, those made by her husband Luciano Ercoli. This was not the case at all, and instead I found a film that felt, at nearly every turn, goofy and inept. During a key scene near the end, where Navarro and Robert Hoffmann break into a dance academy to find evidence that will reveal the killer’s identity, Navarro’s character (Kitty) declares—not once, but twice—“I need to pee-pee!”. This childish diversion is used to get her character out of the scene long enough for a plot twist to occur, but it literally makes you cringe. I.e., this is the film’s primary tone—offensively stupid, a live-action cartoon—over and over again.    

(I also discussed this comedy problem, this problem of tone, in my review of the Krimi / Giallo hybrid MONSTER OF LONDON CITY.)

It’s these ridiculous shifts in tone that kill all interest in it as a movie (for me at least), canceling out what should be a dynamite Giallo with a dynamite supporting cast (not only those mentioned above, but also Italian character-acting great Luciano Rossi and genre stalwart Simon Andreu ... the fact that both of these actors also appear in key roles in Ercoli’s far, far superior DEATH WALKS films only made my disappointment with this one sting all the more). And, beyond the tone-deaf attempts at comedy (attempts that regularly alternate with attempts at softcore sleaze), the pacing and “put together” of the film suggests that Pradeaux didn’t have a clue (or, didn’t care to have one). There are so many diversions and red herrings that the actors whose presence should be iconic in the movie instead become a blur of forgettable and unconnected cameos.

So:

What can I say about DEATH STEPS IN THE DARK? A case of largely the same. A case of a film opening in almost perfect Giallo fashion, and then finding every possible way after that to fall down. The opening introduces us to a motley crew of genre types, all traveling together on the Istanbul-Athens train. We are given a series of disorienting pov shots that lack any context (who are the characters being watched by the camera's eye, e.g.), other than the context that all Giallo fans have: We know we are watching the film through the killer’s pov. The pov shots give way as he or she—clad, must needs, in black leather gloves and coat—enters the train bathroom and sabotages some wiring inside (again, we don’t yet know why this is being done; once the train enters the tunnel, and the compartment’s lights fail to come on, we realize what the killer had been setting up [i.e., a chance to step in the titular dark]). 

After we witness the murder, we realize that the opening was at least partially a flashback, elicited by Robert Webber (playing the investigating detective) interviewing each of the people who shared a compartment with the murdered woman. Leonard Mann plays the prickish fashion photographer and appears to be the prime suspect even though he claims he’s being framed (it was his knife used to stab the victim). 

And after he’s fingered as the most likely suspect, his desperation to prove his innocence becomes the site of most of the film’s cartoon schtick. While on the run he poses as a female prostitute to evade the cops. Even though his cross-dressed disguise is outwardly ridiculous, played for stupid laughs, and wouldn’t disguise him for a second. Later, Mann has rented a hideout from an old black market buddy, a shack that’s built dangerously close to train tracks. Every time the train passes, the shack and everything in it shakes like a prop from a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. And toward the end of the movie, Mann and crew break into a house in order to burgle the contents of a safe ... except they don’t know how to crack a safe. So they sit in the dark in the house and read a manual on safe-cracking (?!?!). What makes the scene even more unpalatable is that it’s cross-cut with a gory throat-slashing that’s taking place (unbeknownst to Mann’s character) in the room next door.

BUFFOONERY 101: Comedy elements played as broadly as possible.

These skits give way to another brutal, gory, tense-as-tense-can-be murder set-piece, cycling the film back to its previously abandoned “thriller” mode:

A/V QUALITY MAKES A DIFFERENCE IN THESE MATTERS: One of the reasons I found the set-pieces so masterfully crafted no doubt has to do with the surprising quality of the a/v on the bootleg. Most of these obscure Gialli, if you ever find them on bootleg, arrive in what I call “roadkill quality”. Colors bleached, the transfer blipped and scratched, an all-around low-fidelity version of the film. That DEATH STEPS IN THE DARK looked so unexpectedly good raised its overall effect several notches. In fact, the a/v quality is even better than the two official releases I've seen of DEATH CARRIES A CANE (for info on the strange history of the German and Austrian releases, including NSFW screencaps, go here).

Also, this underwater portion of the throat slashing is the only section of the movie that seems to call back (however tangentially) to the lava-water imagery at the start.

What further confuses the viewing experience is how the hybrid nature of the movie gets another jarring element forced into its mix: Some truly eye-popping softcore scenes. Mostly eye-popping because the body parts being featured in frame are the subject of !extreme! closeups. Not quite SISTER OF URSULA territory, but close.

IMAGINE A BENNY HILL SKIT THAT SUDDENLY TURNS NC-17: These images are the tamest examples of the scene, which pushes quite a bit further into sexploitation territory than the typical “mainstream” Giallo.

Add too many subplots + derivative and aimless red herrings + a tacked-on, incomprehensible ending (the killer has the thinnest of motives imaginable) + a final gag that brings the film back around to the safe-cracking joke (and an exasperated Mann mugging to the camera) and you get pretty much what you pay for with a Pradeaux film. I.e., a live-action, R-rated, nerve-gratingly-bad cartoon.

 Leonard Jacobs

July, 2015

ps. Working through this discussion of hybrids has also inspired me to add a new sub-genre to my Giallo Master Page, the Comedy / Giallo Hybrid. I’ve listed this film, as well as a handful of others in that category (scroll to the bottom of sub-genres to find it).

[SHOW NOTES]

VERSION WATCHED: Bootleg | LANGUAGE: English (the Italian track was included, but without subs) | DIRECTOR: Maurizio Pradeaux  | WRITER(S): Arpad DeRiso, Maurizio Pradeaux | MUSIC: Riz Ortolani | CINEMATOGRAPHER: Aldo Ricci  | CAST: Leonard Mann (Luciano Morelli); Robert Webber (Inspector); Vera Krouska (Ingrid Stelmosson); Antonio Maimone (Omar Effendi); Barbara Seidel; Imelde Marani; Albertina Capuani; Nazzareno Macri; Luigi Romano; Bartolillo Palma; Susy Jennings (Ulla)