Strip Nude For Your Killer
Director: Andrea Bianchi

Cast: Edwige Fenech, Nino Castelnuovo, Femi Benussi
Review by Brian M. Sammons

Come on, with a title like that, how can you not want to see this movie? That’s one thing Italian ’70s giallo films were always good at; coming up with great, over the top names. There was Death Walks On High Heels, A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin, Don’t Torture A Duckling, and my personal favorite: Your Vice Is A Locked Room And Only I Have They Key. While Your Vice… is the best title of anything, ever, Strip Nude For Your Killer has always ranked high on my Completely Awesome Titles List. And yet, I have never seen it. Yes, shocking I know, but whereas I’ve heard of this movie for years, I never got around to actually watching it. Well big huge thanks must go out to Blue Underground for bringing this out on Blu-ray and thus giving me an excuse to watch it. But, cool title aside, the question was: would I like it?

Yes I would, and for all the wrong (but oh so right) reasons.

The story is a pretty good murder mystery that is actually easier to follow, and more believable, than many other giallo films. It starts with a fashion model dying during a botched abortion. Next thing you know a killer in black leather and motorcycle helmet kills the abortion doctor. Then someone connected to the modeling agency the dead woman worked for dies next. So it goes, with men and woman getting dispatched one by one. And yes, true to the title, most do die in various stages of undress. It is obvious to the audience from the start that someone is avenging the dead pregnant woman, but who could be the black clad killer? That’s the thrust of this movie, but it doesn’t even begin to go into what made this movie so memorable and damn fun to watch.

So, allow me to do that for you now.

First, yes this flick is chock-full of lovely, all natural, naked ladies. Hell, just opening the Blu-ray case reveals an inside cover photo of a nude woman. From the title, to the inside cover, to the blurbs calling the film ‘trashy’ and ‘sleazy,’ you have no one to blame but yourself if you sit down to watch this movie and get offended by all the lovely lady bits in full display. That said, if all this flick had going for it was tons of naughty nudity, it would have been a dud. I mean, we’ve all got the internet, if you want naked flesh, it’s only a few keystrokes away. So let’s move on to winning point number two.

Strip Nude… is laugh out loud funny, and I don’t know if that was completely intentional. OK I know it had to be intentional for someone, but what I’m talking about is the English dubbing. I simply can’t believe that everything the characters say here in English is what they said in the original Italian. The amount of crazy that comes out of the characters’ mouths in this movie is quite a lot of fun. I won’t give any of it away, but I will say that when the fat, greasy, sleazy co-owner of the modeling agency tries to do it with one of the models, well that part of the film could have easily been written by the Mystery Science Theather 3000 people.

Then again, the divine insanity found here might have been intentional, as after the scene I hint at above falls to pieces, the large looser turns to the only lover that ever satisfied him; a blow up doll. It’s things like that, mixed with some other out of left field turns, that do make me wonder if this movie was meant to be as hilarious as it turned out to be. Intentional or not, I laughed more here than I did at the last few modern comedies (yes I’m looking at you The Hangover Part 2) and I loved this movie for that.

Oddly enough, the kills in Strip Nude For Your Killer are perhaps the weakest part of this movie. Such things are usually the meat and potatoes of giallos films, but here they just felt sort of ho-hum. The first few are almost bloodless, and while some toward the end turn out to be glorious gory, there was nothing special about them. They weren’t especially suspenseful or creative. To be sure, they weren’t bad, they were sort of just there. Deep Red or Bay Of Blood, this movie was not, but a lot of things aren’t those movie and they’re still good, as so too is Strip Nude…

The new Blu-ray from Blue Underground presents this movie in a great looking transfer. Sure it doesn’t look like a modern HD movie, but it looks far better than any mid-seventies Italian film has any right to be. Sadly as good as this movie looks, the extras are nothing to get excited about. There are two short interviews (combined equaling just about eleven minutes) with actress Solvi Stubing and co-writer Massimo Felisatti, a couple of trailers and a poster and still gallery. That’s it. I wish there had been some more goodies in this extra basket, but at the end of the day, I’m just happy to have this movie on Blu-ray at all.

Strip Nude For Your Killer is as good as it sounds. That is, if a title like that sounds good to you at all. Sure this movie isn’t for everyone, but you know what? Usually stuff made for everyone sucks. This film was made for fans of giallo movies, and if you consider yourself one of those, then you’ll dig this movie every bit as much as I did.

About Brian M. Sammons

Brian M. Sammons has penned stories that have appeared in the anthologies: Arkham Tales, Horrors Beyond, Monstrous, Dead but Dreaming 2, Horror for the Holidays, Deepest, Darkest Eden and others. He has edited the books; Cthulhu Unbound 3, Undead & Unbound, Eldritch Chrome, Edge of Sundown, Steampunk Cthulhu, Dark Rites of Cthulhu, Atomic Age Cthulhu, World War Cthulhu and Flesh Like Smoke. He is also the managing editor of Dark Regions Press’ Weird Fiction line. For more about this guy that neighbors describe as “such a nice, quiet man” you can check out his infrequently updated webpage here: http://brian_sammons.webs.com/ and follow him on Twitter @BrianMSammons.

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