Wow it’s been a minute since I covered a giallo. I used to watch these all the time but kind of forgot for some reason I guess hmmm I’m not sure why. I don’t think I’d ever heard of this one when it popped up in my life but here we are with our blue eyed ladies in skimpy outfits and a prosthetic arm and a wheelchair and smoking inside and talky farmers and cheese sandwiches for a nickel and lots of eye acting and super awesome interior architecture and black gloves and dummy cops and for some reason but I guess it was the time but some really really irritating music that reminded me of I Dream of Jeannie with the flutes and ding ding xylophone and the polio scars and all of that. I can’t really say this was my favorite one out of all of them – in fact it was pretty boring and tame until about halfway through but it kind of picked up even better later when they all went running off into that mountain.

Very important note: there is a lengthy and completely unnecessary, pointless and stupid pig killing scene right around halfway that I could absolutely have done without.

Important note 2: this movie stars s fellow named Paul Naschy who, I discovered upon doing minimal and lazy research, was in a shitload of Spanish horror movies and, it seems, mostly about werewolves. I am not at all familiar with his work and I hope he had a happy and lucrative career but I just wanted to point that out because every time I saw him I thought I was looking at John Belushi when he took his sunglasses off in Blues Brothers.

But, to close my opening, this was pretty boring for most of the show but picked up at the end and I’ll probably never be inclined to watch it again.

A man walks down a road! He’s hitchhiking! A farmer picks him up finally sheez how long does a man have to hang around the streets with his thumb in the air? He gets dropped off in town! “Ain’t no work around here” teaches the farmer and motors off in his tractor. Putt putt putt! “I’ll have a cheese sandwich and a glass of vino.” orders the stranger. “That’ll be the European equivalent of an American nickel unit of currency,” responds the hostess, her cigarette dropping ashes all over the sandwich. “And no freeloading you dirty son of a bitch.” she commands. “OK OK” is the retort and diligently he askes, “Is there work around here?” “Not unless you like perfuming old whore’s asses,” she says and the entire place laughs him out of town like the penniless hobo he is. “HAHAHAHAHA!!!! YOU FOOL!!!! HAHAHAHAH I BET YOU LIKE STRANGLING WOMEN!!!! HAHAHAHAHAH GO BACK TO WHEREVER YOU GOT THAT FLEMISH SUIT!!!!”

Dejected! He walks alone. Again! My gut is telling me all is lost for our man here and the movie is almost over just 20 minutes into it but NO! Wait! A car pulls up beside him! It is driven by a woman with a very 70-ish prosthetic arm but good for them for trying! She tells him to hop in! He notices her arm! She hides it under a shawl! He drams of murdering some other woman by strangulation! “Got work?” he asks when he comes out of it. “Sure, if you feel like perfuming my sister’s crippled ass!” she says and drives him on up to her stately manor where she lives with her two sisters; one the town nymphomaniac and the other a recluse in a wheelchair. Bang!

I doubt anyone who reads this wants me to go on about the movie that way but let’s just say that over the next 40 minutes or so he chops up some firewood, dreams about murdering women, bops the nympho, smokes in his bed, bops the lady with the fake arm and almost kills a guy in a knife fight who was there working the estate before they hired him on; I’m guessing because he missed bopping those three beautiful ladies. I could be wrong but this was a different generation and I don’t know what youths are up to today but back then a lot of incentive to go on living was to bop and make money for taxes and supper on the side. But I am out of touch with today’s youth so I don’t know what they like and it’s not really any of my business i guess because there’s no kids here.

But after all of that business i went on about a few minutes ago, suddenly women with blond hair and blue eyes start ending up murdered and their eyeballs are being taken as trophies maybe? So – as this is giallo, things are going to get weird and there are red herrings and what not all throughout the rest of the movie and I won’t give it away but there’s a throw away line you probably won’t even listen to or remember about half the way through that explains everything that comes up at the end and why. I honestly don’t even remember why I caught it but I did for some reason and then when the big reveal comes I was all ‘hey that’s right’ and then I could have done without the 10 minute lengthy Scooby Doo explanation of everything.

But what can we take from this? What have we learned? That cheese sandwiches and a glass of port used to cost a nickel? Who drove up these prices?? The previous generations! I know kids today blame everything on the term they heard once called a boomer. Being the son of an actual Baby Boomer I can attest that she put me to work the millisecond I turned 16 so I could start paying rent for the room I lived in at the house I lived in with my mom, so things must have already been going bad decades ago. That ladies with prosthetic hands can be hot too? You got that right hubba hubba but I don’t talk like that because I’m polite and gentle all the time. That Paul Naschy likes to strip down and chop wood with his Spanish muscles blorbing and glorping all over that mountain, seducing women of all ages and abilities, becoming the scourge of cast out handymen all over town? You better believe it!!

FILED UNDER: I REALLY NEED ONE OF THESE SO I CAN JUST WORK THAT AND BE MY OWN BOSS AND GAUC AND HOT DOG TRUCKS P.S. DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW MANY TRIES IT TAKES ME TO GET STEVE LOGGINGS TO SPELL THE WORD UNDEAD RIGHT