Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975)

Any film with that title has a certain set of expectations that demand to be met, and on the basest level of things Andrea Bianchi's giallo fulfills its obligations. He delivers exactly what the title promises: There's women who get naked, and there's a maniac who kills those women. Anyone looking for anything beyond that, though, is bound to be disappointed -- this is a wan, bare-minimum effort whose fashion milieu clashes with the stylelessness at the film's core. For one thing, it's extraordinarily dumb, even by the loose standards of the giallo genre. The obligatory police-investigation subplot is the worst offender; I know the police never have any of the answers in this sort of film, but when your attending officers fail to recognize the fact that two suspects were killed in the same location, and that location happens to be the home of their primary suspect... well, you have to wonder what the hell they're doing in the film other than stopping it cold. Furthermore, while Bianchi delivers manfully on the first portion of the title's promise (titties everywhere!), his handling of the second requirement is disappointing; his crude, dull murder setpieces have little of the panache or tension of Dario Argento's or even Sergio Martino's. There's one memorably grody bit involving mutilated genitals, and I'll admit that a late-film stalking setpiece included a fantastic jump-scare, but otherwise this is pretty rote. Third strike: All the male characters are jackoffs (our intrepid chauvinist hero included) and almost all the female characters are cockteasing bitches. This last bit certainly makes the film feel seedy and ugly, as it properly should, and I'll be a liar if I don't admit to getting a certain level of entertainment out of this. (Edwige Fenech: sooo gorgeous.) Mostly, though, this isn't that great. It's leering, supersleazy (check that anal-rape blackout joke!) and very, very stupid. Some of you might consider that a recommendation. I almost do myself.

Grade: C