Strip Nude For Your Killer (1975)

The funniest (or most disturbing) thing with Blue Underground's DVD of Strip Nude For Your Killer is the interview where screenwriter Massimo Felisatti decided to stop working for director Andrea Bianchi because the latter one was too sadistic and couldn't stop himself when he was behind the camera shooting a violent scene. That says a lot about the perverted genius of Bianchi!  But before he made such trashy masterpieces as Burial Ground and Command Mengele (and Massacro, a movie I need to review sometime) he made this fairly normal giallo - and normal for him means a lot of female nudity and hairy Italian studs!

It begins with a failed abortion. The mother also dies, of a heart attack, and the people doing the surgery cover everything up so it looks like a natural death. Some time later we're following the usual business at the Albatross studio, where naked models are being photographed by always horny Carlo (Nino Castelnuovo), who starts the movie by abusing a woman into being a photo model - but that's a different story. Soon the generic and glamorous  intrigues in the world of super models comes to a brutal end when they one by one gets brutally killed by a person in a leather outfit and helmet!

At a first look this is a pretty normal giallo, until you wait like... five seconds you see that it's a sleaze-movie disguised as a giallo. Nothing bad with that, it's fine and actually feels refreshing in a sick way. Not that Italian movies usually don't have nudity, but it's something voyeuristic about Bianchi's creation. Most of the actresses - and the actors - looks terrible normal for example. This is a movie in Jess Franco-mode. Even if your tits is a bit saggy and your ass has cellulites you're welcome to show it off completely in front of Bianchi's curious camera. And then men, well... it's hairy. A lot of hair. On the back. And way to tight speedos on Castelnuovo!

As a mystery it works quite well, but don't look too close, because nothing really hangs together. The murders are plenty and violent, but not especially graphic, and mostly there to just be murders and pad out the stuff between the nudity and sex. This also makes it extremely entertaining and I would dare to say that it's not the least boring, even if some critics out there has claimed so - but they're wrong as usual and they don't have the same sense of quality as Ninja Dixon! ;)

Strip Nude For Your Killer is a nice-looking thriller and only if it wasn't for the copious amounts of sleaze this would probably have a much better reputation as a "real" giallo. Sure, the script could have needed a little bit more work and that classic first scene at the spa borders to mega-silliness, but that's also one of the strengths with it - it just doesn't care. It goes almost all the way and ends everything with a very cheap and tacky joke about anal-sex that you would never see in a modern movie.

This is a twisted, sick, depraved and sleazy giallo that delivers on everything - except the gore. But Bianchi left the rest to Burial Ground and we should be happy for that, or else it would just have been yet another zombie movie and not the masterpiece of trash it is now!