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rjlfilmcollection · 8 years ago

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Directed by Mario Bava

Starring William Berger, Ira von Furstenberg, Edwige Fenech

At the private island retreat of wealthy industrialist George Stark (Teodor Corrà), a group of people have assembled for a weekend getaway. Among the guests is Professor Gerry Farrell (William Berger), a scientist badly in need of a vacation. The first night passes uneventfully, but Farrell is enraged the next morning to discover that Stark and several of the guests planned the weekend to coerce him to sell his latest invention: a formula for industrial resin.

Farrell is immediately established as a decent man, and although his marriage to his wife, Trudy (Ira von Fürstenberg), appears to be content, she is actually involved in a secret romance with Stark's artist wife Jill (Edith Meloni). Stark's business partner, Nick (Maurice Poli), is verbally abusive to his coquettish wife Marie (Edwige Fenech), but does not object to her sleeping with other men, one of whom is the houseboy and manservant Charles (Mauro Bosco). Stark is less of a husband to Jill than he is a business manager. He arranges for her to have her paintings and artwork publicly displayed and is also a source of constant criticism. The sole happy couple appears to be Nick's co-worker Jack (Renato Rossini) and his wife Peggy (Helene Ronee). Also among the guests is Isabelle (Justine Gall), a teenage girl who is in Stark's care while her parents are away.

As Stark, Nick, and Jack badger Farrell for the secret of the formula by offering him $1 million each from their Swiss bank accounts, Jill discovers the dead body of Charles on the beach. Having already sent the motor launch away to prevent Farrell from leaving the island, and with the radio out of commission, Stark has no way of contacting the mainland. So, Charles body is moved into a large walk-in freezer where it hangs with other 'chunks of meat'.

The next morning, Farrell himself is the next victim. While he is walking alone on the beach, a sniper shoots him down. Trudy and Jill, walking hand-in-hand nearby for some alone time, hear the gunshot and find Farrell's body and run away to tell the others. The sniper is revealed to be Isabelle, who drags Farrell's body to the sea.

As tempers flare to Farrell's killing and "disappearance", the killings then escalate. Peggy, standing on the balcony of her room, is shot to death by an unseen assailant. Jack arrives on the scene first and accuses Stark of being responsible, which he denies. Marie turns up dead, having been tied to a tree with a knife sticking out of her chest. Jill turns up dead in her bathtub after being electrocuted. Each of the bodies is placed in the freezer. Rather than risk any more bloodshed, the four remaining survivors of Stark, Jack, Nick, and Trudy hold up in Stark's living room for the night. In this way they believe, the killer cannot strike without revealing him or herself. After bickering with Trudy, Nick storms off into the night. The next morning, he too is found dead, and his body is placed in cold storage.

Up to this point, Stark is the most probable suspect when he sneaks out of the house and uncovers a motorboat which will take him to the mainland. As he returns to the house to get supplies, Jack confronts him and reveals himself to be the killer, having killed off everyone to steal the $1 million cashier's checks from their bank accounts. Before Stark can do anything, Jack shoots him dead. But it is revealed that Jack has not been acting alone. After killing Stark, Jack meets in the freezer with Trudy, who is the real mastermind behind the whole scheme. Trudy had met with Jack sometime before arriving on the island and offered to kill everybody so she can steal the million dollar cashier checks from Stark, Nick, in order to hand him over the formula for the resin. Jack was even forced to kill Peggy because she got too close to discovering his plan. Jack then offers to hand Trudy over the three $1 million cashier checks, as she produces the microfilm for the resin formula. But Trudy tries to pull the same trick on Jack, by shooting him in the head, and stealing the checks for herself. But having anticipated Trudy's betrayal, Jack manages to shoot her with his gun before expiring. At this point, Isabelle, who has been hiding in the secret passageways in the house throughout the film, enters the freezer where Trudy and Jack killed each other, and calmly collects the three checks from Trudy's handbag.

Several months later, a well-dressed Isabelle arrives at the state prison to visit a very much alive Farrell who is incarcerated there. It turns out that Farrell did not develop the resin, but stole it from the real inventor after murdering him. He concocted the entire murder-for-money scheme with Trudy; Jack was an unwitting stooge. To conceal his involvement, Farrell convinced Isabelle that the others were trying to kill him, and had her drug him to make him appear dead. Isabelle pushed him out to sea, hoping someone would rescue him. His rescuers were the police on their way to Stark's island; the drug Isabelle used made him so delirious that he confessed the entire scheme. Isabelle gloats over her possession of the $3 million, and leaves Farrell behind to be hanged for his crimes

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rjlfilmcollection · 8 years ago

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4 FLIES ON GREY VELVET : GERMAN RELEASE

Directed by Dario Argento.

Starring Michael Brandon and Mimsy Farmer

While confronting a mysterious stalker in sunglasses, rock drummer Roberto Tobias (Michael Brandon) inadvertently stabs the man when the stalker pulls out a knife. A mysterious masked figure shines a spotlight on the incident and snaps several photographs. Roberto reads about the man's death in the newspaper the next day, and receives a letter identifying the man as one Carlo Marosi. During a recording session with his bandmates, Roberto's maid Amelia catches a glimpse of him with the photographs, but does not intervene.

That night, Roberto begins having recurring dreams of being decapitated in a Persian arena. He awakens to find himself being attacked by a masked person, who tells him that he could kill him now, but won't because he "isn't finished with him." The person knocks Roberto out and flees. When Roberto's wife Nina (Mimsy Farmer) returns home, he confesses to her about the accidental stabbing and subsequent harassment, telling her that he can't go to the police.

Roberto goes to see his beatnik artist friend Godfrey (Bud Spencer), who lives at a shack with his con-artist colleague nicknamed the Professor (Oreste Lionello), confiding in them about his problem. Godfrey (known as 'God' for short) suggests having the Professor keep an eye on him. His tormentor has a flashback of being committed to an insane asylum and being tied down to a bed. When the maid Amelia (whom the tormentor evidently knows) attempts to blackmail Roberto's tormentor, the person locks her inside of a city park after hours and kills her with a straight razor.

That evening, Nina picks up her cousin Dalia (Francine Racette) from the train station. She comes to stay with Nina and Roberto, despite Roberto's reluctance. His bandmate Mikro asks why he skipped rehearsal. Nina receives a phone call informing her of Amelia's murder. Roberto has the same nightmare of being decapitated again and awakens to a loud noise. He investigates but only hears his pet cat hissing. The next morning, the couple find a note from the killer, frightening Nina.

Carlo Marosi is revealed to be alive and well, in league with Roberto's tormentor to blackmail him. Carlo, however, wants out, and is killed by the tormentor with razor wire. Meanwhile, the Professor tells Roberto that he saw someone last night in his back garden, holding his cat wrapped in a blanket. The Professor tells Roberto that he may need to seek outside since he is too afraid to continue watching Roberto's house anymore.

Roberto meets with Arrosio (Jean-Pierre Marielle), an eccentric and flamboyantly gay private investigator. Arrosio admits to never having solved a case, but is optimistic his bad record will be broken. Arrosio asks Roberto questions about his life and about Nina; when they met and how long they were married. Roberto mentions that Nina received a large inheritance. Roberto drops Arrosio off and returns to his house, where Nina is leaving with police officers investigating Amelia's murder. She tells Roberto she is unwilling to remain in the house anymore with someone stalking them. Roberto, however, resolves to stay and invites Dalia over.

That evening, Dalia confesses romantic feelings for Roberto, and the two have sex. Afterwards, Arrosio arrives and gives Roberto some photos of his past and his family as well as Nina's and Dalia's. They find the pet cat's head severed and wrapped in plastic. That night, Roberto has his nightmare again.

Arrosio phones Roberto to say that he’s found a "strange physical resemblance" in one photo, while going through Roberto's old papers, but that it may only be a red herring. Arrosio tells Roberto that he's found the name "Villa Rapidi" and asks if anyone ever mentioned it; Roberto claims ignorance of it. The ‘Villa Rapidi’ turns out to be the name of a psychiatric clinic. Arrosio travels there where he enquires with a doctor about a patient (whose name and gender are not mentioned), who stayed there for three years as a teenager after being deemed a homicidal maniac. Arrioso learns that the patient's father, who had institutionalized the patient, died suddenly of a heart attack. The patient’s mental symptoms then inexplicably disappeared, and the patient was subsequently discharged. The doctor relays his suspicion that the man who committed the teenager was not the patient's real biological father. Arrosio tracks down the killer’s residence in a boarding house, and follows the killer into a metro station only to be killed in a bathroom stall by the killer with a poison-filled syringe.

Learning of Arrosio’s murder, Godfrey insists Roberto leave Rome immediately, but he refuses, determined to find the killer himself. Meanwhile, Dalia notices a strange similarity between a recent photo of Roberto and Nina and some unseen person in another photo. Before she can contact Roberto, the killer breaks in. She hears noises and climbs stairs to an attic, hiding in a wardrobe, but when she emerges, the killer stabs her to death. Roberto returns home to find the body. The police perform an optographical test to see the last thing Dalia saw before she died, but only get a blurry image of four dark smudges against a gray background, an image which the technician refers to as "four flies on gray velvet." They are unsure what this means.

Knowing the killer will likely come for him next, Roberto loads a gun and waits. Dozing off, he has the same recurring nightmare (which now includes the actual decapitation of the victim in the arena). Godfrey rings to ask if he’s okay; then the line goes dead. Just then, Nina arrives home from her long getaway, Roberto almost shooting her as she enters the front door. Roberto tries to make her leave, when Nina's pendant necklace (a fly enclosed in glass) swings, giving the appearance of more than one fly.

Roberto realizes Nina is the killer and tries to fight back. Nina grabs Roberto's gun and shoots him in the shoulder. As he lies wounded on the floor, Nina explains how she was placed in the asylum by her abusive stepfather, who both raised her as a boy, and beat her. His death cured her condition, but when she met Roberto years later, he reminded her of her stepfather. So she married Roberto and planned a murder/blackmail scheme using Roberto as a surrogate for the stepfather, due to his Roberto's striking similarity to the stepfather. Nina repeatedly shoots Roberto, but Godfrey arrives, allowing Roberto to knock the gun from Nina's hands. Nina runs to Roberto's car and speeds away. But in a twist of fate, she rams into the back of a truck. Nina is decapitated by the truck's rear bumper as it smashes through her car windshield. The car then explodes in a mass of flame

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