Italy’s first lunar mission isn’t going well.  I’d say the first problem is their spaceship is a paper cut-out of the Apollo 11 lunar module.  It lands successfully, but something happens to one of the astronauts, rendering them unconscious.  Another of the crew is apparently sick of their shit, dragging them away from the lunar module and taking off without them.  The abandoned astronaut comes to, and is horrified to discover they have been left behind. 

And so there are footprints on the moon, providing one of the titles the 1975 feature Footprints was released under.  I secretly hoped the title instead placed that cliched Christian poem on the surface of our only satellite.  In this version, I wanted God, in response to the narrator asking why there are eventually only set of impressions in the dust, to tell them that’s when they couldn’t take any more of their whiney ass.

Instead, the opening credit sequence is only a recurring dream Florinda Bolkan has been having.  She thinks it may be a scene from a movie she saw a young girl, one so terrifying she ran out of the theatre prematurely.  Bolkan is quite obsessed with this dream and the associated, and possibly false, memory of that film. 

It seems to me she has much greater concerns.  She has likely lost her job as a translator after failing to show up for three days.  While she thought today was Tuesday, it is actually Thursday, and she has no recollection of the days in between.  A three-day blackout would have me running to a doctor, but she is instead more obsessed with lesser mysteries such as a single earring and a dress in her apartment, neither of which she has any recollection of.    

Another curiosity is in her trash can, a postcard torn into four pieces.  The image is of a hotel in Garma, Turkey, a place she swears she has never visited.  And yet, she suddenly has vivid memories of what she believes to be elements of that hotel, especially a large stained glass window with peacock imagery.

The remainder of the film then has Bolkan wondering around Garma, where there are only more mysteries.  Various people keep telling her they saw her around the area days before she arrived.  A young girl played by Nicholetta Elmi tells her they spent a great deal of time together, except the short-haired and brunette Kolkan had long, red hair then and was using a different name.

While this is not a science-fiction picture, time keeps folding back on itself.  Cause and effect seem to be reversed sometimes, and past and present get transposed.  I doubt what we see bears close scrutiny, but this is definitely more a film about sustaining a mood than having an airtight plot. 

That is typical of Giallo, though I will leave it to others to decide whether this is a canonical entry in that sub-genre of thriller.  Also, what is about the Italian directors who made such works and their obsession with peacocks?

Typical of Italian cinema, the photography is stunning throughout.  I was unable to find an actual Turkish location named Garma in research I did after watching the film; however, wherever this was shot (largely Phaselis, apparently) is so rich in detail that I suspect one could have pointed a camera in any direction at any spot and obtained some beautiful footage.  The hotel, in particular, is stunning, and I found it intriguing the British man working its front desk is how I bet Last Week Tonight host John Oliver will look twenty years from now.

Fair warning to those who opt to watch the Italian version instead of the U.S. cut: it keeps jumping between English dub and Italian with English subtitles.  This sometimes happens even in the same conversation, which is surreal.  Really, that should enhance the experience of such a movie, which is all about disorienting the viewer, but it is instead quite irritating.  In either cut, however, you get to see Klaus Kinski hilariously dubbed in a stock American accent.

I watched Footprints as part of the blu-ray boxed set House of Psychotic Women.  This picture is in good company there, alongside the excellent Identikit and the, well, batshit I Like Bats.  Like those films, this has very solid accompanying special features, most notably an introduction by Kier-La Janisse, whose insights into the film were enlightening, as always. 

Dir: Luigi Bazzoni

Starring Florinda Bolkan, Peter McEnery, Nicoletta Elmi

Watched as part of Severin’s blu-ray box set House of Psychotic Women Rarities Collection