Ingmar Bergman had Liv Ullman. Aki Kaurismaki had Kati Outinen. Luciano Ercoli had Nieves Navarro.
1972’s Death Walks at Midnight is one of three movies I recently saw by Ercoli starring Navarro. All three were on Arrow Video’s Giallo Essentials (Blue) blu-ray box set. I was under the misunderstanding Giallo always meant horror films, but it appears the genre is instead mostly suspense films. Alas, I have yet to see any such films that approach even the least of Hitchcock’s efforts.
This picture begins with Navarro, playing a model here, willingly taking a hallucinogen called “HDS”, and getting recorded and photographed while she trips. It will turn out the journalist arranging this (Simon Andreu, another Ercoli regular) is of the tabloid variety, and has arranged this as an opportunity for an exploitive article. Not even the doctor administering the injection was real, as he is later revealed to be the magazine’s doorman.
While Navarro is tripping balls, she sees, in her mind, a man kill a woman. The assailant wears a black glove with long spikes on the knuckles, so I thought the killer was one of the competitors in Rollerball.
The police are insistent the murder she saw while on drugs was a real murder that had happened six months earlier. I don’t know why they are so persistent about this, when that woman looks completely different than the one from Navarro’s vision. Even more confusing, when she is shown a photo of the woman she watched die, it is revealed that person is somebody who had committed suicide by throwing themselves in front of a train.
I didn’t find the mystery here very intriguing. The resolution is especially unsatisfactory. Instead, I found myself nearly obsessed with the endless series of bad wigs Navarro wears. The most memorable of these is just a bunch of metal tubes.
If there’s one positive thing I can about the film, it’s the photography. Ercoli especially makes great use of an empty office, with diagonal slashes of light from venetian blinds on the walls. But even in that scene, I found the plot to be ridiculous, as Navarro does not realize she has an appointment in this place, which is exactly across the street from her apartment.
I don’t want to make Death Walks At Midnight sound worse than it is, but it isn’t very good, either. Fans of the genre will find the most to enjoy. As for myself, I have to agree with my wife who, commenting on a flamingly gay character in one over-the-top performance: “I wish I was watching whatever movie he thinks he’s in.”
Dir: Luciano Ercoli
Starring Nieves Navarro, Simon Andreu
Watched as part of Arrow Video’s Giallo Essentials (Blue) blu-ray box set