Being Film #31 for Hooptober 2023
And so we come to end of the 10th annual Hooptober Marathon. And it had to end with a giallo, the mixed up genre I’ve been feverishly catching up on this year. The second I saw the title Strip Nude For Your Killer I knew I needed to see it: with a salacious title like that how could you not? By 1975 the genre was waning, and directors started blending in other genres (see Sergio Martino’s The Suspicious Death of a Minor, reviewed here) like police procedurals to give their films boost. Others, like Andrea Bianchi went the software porn route, and sadly, despite a great Edwin Fenech performance, it does this film no favors.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: After a model dies during an illegal abortion, someone dressed in a jet black motorcycle getup has decided to kill everyone at the modeling agency where she was employed. Was it Gisella, the sexual tiger who owns the agency, acting the jilted lover role? Perhaps it was her lecherous husband Maurizio, big and hairy and prone to assaulting young women, only to turn to his beloved blow up doll when his ardor finds no outlet? What about Carlo and Magda, the photographers with a sexual history who may have their own secrets to hide? When the bodies aren’t undressing and getting down with abandon they’re getting carved up like sausage as time runs out to figure out the identity and motive of the assassin who only sometimes kills them nude, despite the title of the film…
I’ll be honest: this was a chore to get through. Bianchi seems only remotely interested in the thriller/giallo aspects of the script by Massimo Felisatti and more in making sure he has every opportunity to show some T&A. The kills are also really lackluster, and that’s when they make sense: there’s one scene where a woman and her abusive boyfriend are killed – we see them naked and dead on the floor (somehow the woman’s bra is conveniently ripped off as she falls to the ground); when the police arrive, their privates are mutilated, I assuming by the makeup team who decided last minute it needed to look “more brutal” for shock value.
This level of focus is indicative of the entire film. I think this also really, really suffers from its time period, moreso than other films of its time. I’m willing to let some toxic masculinity get by because of time period, but one of the major issues with Strip Nude For Your Killer is that Carlo, ostensibly one of our leads is a scumbag of the highest order, unapologetically so. There is no reason I want to root for this gut to solve the murders, and there is definitely no reason I want this guy paired up with Edwige Fenech, who is reduced to being hopelessly in love with an asshole ands play the damsel in distress, even though earlier on she is set up as an equal to Carlo. That equality goes away literally a few scenes later as she strips, then sleeps with him in an overlong scene that does nothing except make me feel sad for Fenech, who deserved better in this film.
I’ve seen a few videos that talk about this as one of the greats of the genre. Rather than make me re-think my views of Strip Nude for Your Killer, it makes me re-think the value of watching those videos.
Them’s the breaks, I guess,
Cinema Dual 
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