Masquerade (1991)

This review is dedicated to my faithful reader and frantic commenter Megatron, who when I linked the IMDB page to him wrote "THANK YOU!!!". Because of him I actually decided to find it, watch it and also write maybe the first serious English-language reviews of Masquerade aka Private Detective aka The Black Glove aka Bassi istinti. Like many other Italian hardcore movies from this time - and overall during the nineties - money was spent on the productions and they often also was released in a non-sex version, softcore or just as a "sexy" mainstream movie.

Masquerade feels more like a normal movie, a TV-production or something similar in this soft version of the film. The presence of Rocco Siffredi might give the original vision away, even if he shot a couple of non-porn movies during his career. I hate Siffredi by the way, so I'm happy to say he's not in this production so much - and I'm pretty sure his only talent is more visible in the hardcore version, something I never will watch anyway.

It's not much a story. A female cop, Linda, is sent undercover to Florence where she teams up with her curly-haired male colleague Guido (played by someone who seems to be some kinda porn-legend in the US, Joey Silvera) to investigate a shady art dealer and the businesses around him. Soon someone is killing people involved in the art business, a killer with black gloves, hat, coat and a long, sharp knife!

Masquerade is a giallo, a pure Italian giallo with everything - mostly - giallo needs. It only has three-four murders and it's not that gory, but there's some bloody and a stylish killer getting rid of annoying characters. Like it should be. It looks like a cheap TV-production, a bit flat, but with nice locations and sets and surprisingly good acting (but what do I know, it maybe the better-than-average English dub helped out here). Joey Silvera has some charisma and comic timing and the ladies looks good and beautiful and can at least move in front of the camera without looking silly.

The mystery itself is nothing special and the ending, the revelation of the guilty person, comes out of nowhere - but hey, I wasn't bored anyway. Thankfully the sex-scenes are short and not especially graphic, just a tit and ass here and there - can't even imagine how boring the hardcore-version must be. Masquerade in this version is just kinda cozy, a little bit boring, but it's easy to watch and not without talent.

When watching this and writing the review I'm also reminded how I found out about it the first time. It was Katja and Linus, who was collectors and friends a long time ago. They introduced me to a lot of filmmakers, actors, genres that I never heard about earlier and I spent many evenings at their apartments when I visited Stockholm as a young man. Linus sadly left us a while ago and I lost contact with Katja, but I'm grateful for what they taught me and the amazing worlds they introduced me to <3 span="span">

Boring, crappy fun for us who needs to see EVERY giallo made. You rest can... watch something better.