This showed up on wherever billed to me as a sequel (of sorts) to What Have You Done to Solange so I was intrigued since that’s one of my favorite giallo hanging around out there. If you remember Solange, it had to do with school girls and a serial killer and the occasional image of a knife in a hoo haw. Those crazy 70s! You can’t show hoo haws any more! So what would this be about? Well I wanted to say it early in case anyone should read this and be bothered by the subject matter but it’s about underage prostitution and not the kind with a dong. I’m trying to choose my words here so pervy googlers dont find this place but basically some unknown person on a phone sends girls to the house of rich men for those things. Now – nothing is ever shown or obscene aside from a couple of photographs of a crime scene and a bathroom clothes changing bit but if this is a subject that gets you don’t watch it. I guess also there’s tape recordings of old men telling someone to maybe sit on his lap and shit like that but nothing flagrant and grotesque.

I also felt like since there’s no heaping of hot Italian women soaping themselves for great periods of time in showers or walking around in open nightgowns, that this was relatively tame for the idea we might have of these types of movies. There is a scene where, after a man’s chopped up corpse had been found in the trunk of a car, some mortuary guys try to put him back together but that’s quick and really in the background but it was cool and fun unlike when they opened that hallway up here at work behind the break room – because someone saw a roach and no one knew there were three offices back there and some poor bastard had been walled up in there Cask of Amontillado style. Did they get the cleaning crew to get rid of that dried up carcass? Nooooooooooooo. “Let’s get Eric he does all of the bitch work around here” I’m sure the bosses said. “Someone get Eric” they called, pressing an intercom button on an old phone. “Get the gimp! That shit won’t clean itself up!” I’m not sure where that all came from but i guess I know deep down. Shit Ass Busy Work that’s what we call it mm hmmm. Cleaning up old dead bodies.

Back to the story – so a body is found hanging in an apartment and like in any Giallo style movie everyone is a suspect. Is it someone on the police force? Is it the guy who happens to be on a balcony outside innocently taking snapshots? Is it the girl’s friends? Is it the mayor? Is it the cop’s driver? Is it Scott Joplin? Is it the congressman? Is it the psychiatrist? Is it the guy who made the movie poster? Is it the guy who wants whatever that lady has on tape? Is it the lady who has something on tape?

What Have You Done to Solange is one of my more favorite of these types of movies and from what I can glean, this was a sequel although changed from the gritty knives in hoo-haws and philandering school professors to a sex ring and a conspiracy of the rich and influential because “they can do what they want and they’ll never get caught because they’ve got the money and the power and the police are helpless against them” type of non plot adjacent sequel. This would soon be followed by “What Did They Do To the Teenage Mothers?”, “What Has Become of the Female Youth?”, “Who Unstitched My Chastity Belt?”, the curiously spelled “Where Did I Put Tha Pack of Rubbers?”, “The Man With the Parched Lips” and something I only just read all about today, “Where Did That Dong Come From?”.

That last movie – the one where we don’t know where the offending dong came from or even WHO (which may be the more important question, but with the the Giallo experience was coming to a slow and creeping end. Sure some Indy studios still put out things like “The Cat Who Unhinged Doors”, “Say Hello to Your Own Ghost!” and “The Boys Who Wore Burlap Killed Three” but none of these were met with large audiences or rolling around on beds covered in cash kind of money. So the question is – did “What Have They Done to Your Daughters” mark the inevitable and flailing beginning of the end of the Giallo as we knew it? But maybe more importantly, will Eric Undead finally stop using all of those quotation marks today for gods sake please stop.

As to the question of Giallo and the rising popularity of things like Schwarzenegger’s “I Dropped By to Kill Your Countrymen” franchise (1-4 before the reboot in 1997) and Stallone’s “Up Yours!” (1, 2 and 3) there can be no reasonable question that the two go hand in hand like a couple of hos who walk in front of you but never turn around to give you the time of day. Is that even how you spell “hos”’ I can honestly say I’ve never tried before. I’m at the doctors office and The Waltons is on and some guy was ho-ing something that made me think of a couple of hos for some reason my mind drifts. Apparently this episode involves a German who moved over to Walton mountain after WW2 and some of the local folks hate him from post war fears and prejudices. They know he’s moved here to transmit radio signals to and from Germany so they can attack us. Now they just mentioned Germantown Pennsylvania so IT’S ON. But that doesn’t have anything to do with this movie today. Or does it?? I’m really not sure at the moment and I feel like I’ve written myself into a hole I might have trouble getting out of.

As Schwarzenegger heralded in the middle 80s with bullets and muscles and one liners history has shown that the significance or even stigma of watching nude people rubbing on each other for periods of time in the middle of strange plots about mystery murders and ghosts were soon better enjoyed inside one’s home in front of the TV in the event that if passion overcome you and your partner or even your lonesome Friday nights, you or the people you know could fulfill your desires and dreams there in the security of your walls instead of whipping it or other things out in the movie theater and waving it around like some sort of car antenna or bouncing up and down the aisles. Take for example the time your poor uncle was caught in that theater taking matters into his own hands during the matinee of Qually Baalen’s aforementioned “Where Did That Dong Come From?”

It was the summer of 1984 and the venue was over on 10th street. Uncle Joseph had bought his tickets and worked his way through the lobby crowd, wrangled some extra buttered popcorn and a large Coke before settling in to his regular spot n the back row, right top corner. Chomp chomp chomp went the kernels as the previews rolled. Slurp slurp slurp went the soda as the opening credits rolled. Puff puff puff went the smokers refusing to abide by the new anti smoking laws. Zip zip zip went the trousers the first time Baalen’s robe flew open and then the titular mystery dong emerged through the blackness and into, well, as you can imagine. “Ah shit!” came the groans and moans from the gallery doing unwholesome things to themselves and as the second virtue came around (depending on which record or whose accounts you read) the intruding touch of overly produced new facets came into play, effectively ruining the moods of everyone trying to enjoy a nice time to themselves. “Ejaculate this!!” Baalen hissed, pulling a large revolver out of her beehive hairdo and blasting away at the unseen villain offscreen. Similarly, later, the producers inserted a cutaway of an apartment building in flames, presumably by our heroine’s flamethrower. “Now that’s what you call crotch rot” she smiles, lighting a cigar with a burning piece of steel, thereby rending Giallo any last credibility in the skin, mystery, sex, ghosts or sex with ghosts game.

I remember, although its hazy, one last gasp in the 90s, a mystery / eros / fermenting straight to dvd starring Eary Hobte Muatine: “Who is Touching My Thigh There is No One Else Here”) where a femme fatale tried to spend a weekend alone in a chalet on some mountain and is constantly bothered to either have sex with a ghost / spectre / ghoul OR make it a series of five star Michelin dinners with THE FATE OF HER SOUL IN QUESTION. It wasn’t very good to say the least and if you’ve seen it I’d love to hear your thoughts. I mean, I’d really love it. For real, if you don’t I’ll have to. And yes that’s some sort of passive threat.

I guess it’s time to wrap things up for today. We hope that you’ve had an educational experience with us because here at Eric Undead blog we live to serve. Until next time angels on your pillows and vinegar in your piss!

FILED UNDER: WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DONG AND LEMMY KILMISTER’S KILLED BY DEATH AND QUALY BAALEN