User Reviews

Directed by Pasquale Fanetti, who often worked as a cinematographer on movies like Lady Chatterley's Passions 2: Julie's Secret and Penombra, as well as directing Lady Emanuelle and 1990's Top Model 2, which was written by Ernesto Gastaldi and Roberto Leoni while seemingly having nothing to do with the Joe D'Amato movies, Intimate Crimes has the traditional large Italian writing room, including Albert Barney, Pino Buricchi (who wrote The Red Monks to give you an idea of this film's quality) and Gaetano Russo (the writer of Trhauma and director of Crazy Blood and Abisso Nero), as well as a late in his career Renato Polselli.

This comes in the time when the giallo has become the erotic thriller and when the sex part of the sex crimes is more important than the crime, so to speak. Yet at the heart of all erotic thrillers beats the yellow blood of Edgar Wallace-influenced murder mysteries and this is no different, even if the nudity is more abundant and some of the sex scenes seem downright painful. I mean, people do not couple in this way ever, their parts do not match or come together in this way and yet we have been instructed by not just Hollywood that everyone ruts together in such a stiff and natural way.

Gabriella Barbuti, who plays Claudia, is in Karate Warrior 6. Sometimes, the deeper you go into watching these movies, the more you realize that you are gaining arcane knowledge. However, unlike in magic or, let's say, something that would be beneficial to humanity, you only have this knowledge for yourself. She's also in P. O. Box Tinto Brass, a movie where women write letters to the famous dirty old man director and tell him their fantasies and the Sergio Martino-directed, Umberto Lenzi-written Craving Desire, speaking of giallo masters trying to remain relevant in the 90s. She looks exactly as you would expect an actress in a Tinto Brass movie to look and I mean that as the highest of compliments. Another actress he used was Sara Cosmi, who plays Valeria. She's also in P. O. Box Tinto Brass.

Sadly, so much of this feels uninspired. I always think the men who made actual giallo would gaze out the window while making these and think wistful thoughts back to the late 60s or early 70s, when life was a bit younger, when it didn't feel like work to get out of bed in the morning, when the cradle was closer than the grave. It's for them that I watch these later efforts, as if to put a hand on their sleazy shoulders and say, "I will still be here for you, even if it is only metaphorically and through the tracking of ancient VHS posted digitally through pirated files."

OK I must say that my review is great, also in part, because i am one of the Fans of Italian and Spanish Giallo's, a real commercial Euro Genre throughout the 1960's and 1970's,until the early 1980's. These movies were called Giallo's since they were based very often on low cost publications whose covers were always yellow (giallo, in Italian!0 and were considered extremely popular and amusing read's that people would buy often, while on their way to the beach, or to an airport, or to simply read something kinky and suspenseful on a train, or during a long holiday! They would generally deal with an intricate, at times, delightfully convoluted and contrived murder mystery plot, filled with lurid indiscretions, primarily over the upper class,or often involving wealthy characters, dealing with a World of betrayals, deceits, revenges, sexual addictions and dark habits.And, of course, they were loaded with highly nail biting chapters loaded with threads,perversions,fear and ultimately filled with exploitative descriptions of sex and gore: true guilty pleasure, and best sellers,indeed, that the Italians, and since the mid/late 1960's were increasingly making available in book stores,and especially on news stands or even in groceries stores/markets, always highlighted by the famed yellow (giallo) covers! Immediately after, some clever film producers were already purchasing for cheap the rights to translate these new hot sellers, generally forbidden to minors, into glossy,or at least stylish, well crafted Genre productions that for a while became ultimately very famous as well, also thanks to the help of some great directors,just having fun with the pulp material, and trying to make it a little less campy or shocking, by generally filming them with the well known, personal and elegant style, that eventually became such a cult classic: great looking sets (of course depending on budget restrictions), colorful costumes, great editing, beautiful naked women (some of them famous international actresses generally looking either for a re-launch or a quick and fat pay check or greedy upcoming starlets, not shying out of long scenes requesting at times even full frontal nudity), but most of all, what made these films so deeply interesting and yet so modern and clever even today, was normally a rather outstanding filmmaking virtuoso, rich of very eclectic camera movements,odd or visionary angles, creative and over sensational cinematography, and especially considering the times, some of these pictures introduced generally very innovative techniques both visually and esthetically. And outstanding on set F/X's that still today are way more effective for many than the use of CGI, which sort of make look everything like a dumb cartoon, lacking the way more realistic dreadful effect of such a traditional art, invented by people like Carlo Rambaldi, who ended up, leaving his Country to come to America, requested by very famous directors like Spielberg, for example! That is why we consider some of those films almost like 'classics' today! This particular one, Intimate Crimes ( not a very good choice in my opinion for the way more suggestive and inviting Italian original title) was one of those made in a moment where the Genre, was only a reminiscent of movies made a couple of decades earlier, but whose international cult, was becoming internationally well known, and that even more today is apparently generating some sort of return of this much more intriguing Genre productions. All together, Intimate Crimes has all the right elements of a classic giallo, and sometimes it is esthetically very beautiful, with its dark cinematography, almost reminding somewhat of a Technicolor's film noir (those were rare ones! But think Hathaway's splendid,little masterpiece "Niagara" launching a young and gorgeous Monroe, or Gene Tierney's superb vehicle "Leave Her to Heaven"). The plot is not very traditional, but well developed and while the ladies are all watchable, and have some satisfying nude moments, the male antagonists are two actors of cult, Domiziano Arcangeli, in a role that showcases him, almost like a younger,prettier Brad Pitt, and ex model, Rodney Harvey, in a role that actually required some serious acting skills, and it would be unfair to say they were not delivered, just because of at times halting dialogs. I truly recommend this film to every Giallo's fan, and this is a Title that definitely needs to be rediscovered, and appreciated and enjoyed like the morbid and mysterious guilty pleasure that actually it is!