Play Motel

Italy, 1979

Directed by Mario Gariazzo

Cast:
Anna Maria Rizzoli, Ray Lovelock, Enzo Fisichella, Marino Masé, Mario Cutini, Antonella Antinori, Anthony Steffen, Patrizia Webley, Patrizia Behn, Marina Frajese, Mario Novelli, Bob Balisteri, Vittorio Ripamonti



Welcome to Play Motel, a nice little motel just outside of town, where rich and respectable men come to secretly live out their perverted sexual fantasies with busty call-girls. In the film’s opening sequence we are introduced to Rinaldo Cortesi (Enzo Fisichella), a respectable upper-class citizen who discreetly picks up a sexy blonde woman named Loredana (played by the notorious Swedish porno diva Marina Frajese) in the lobby of Play Motel, and brings her to a room upstairs. Here, Mr. Cortesi reveals his depraved nature as he dresses up in a devil’s costume while Loredana dons a nun’s habit. Her half-naked body is soon caressed with a pitchfork before they get down to the nitty gritty.




The nun and the devil


But unbeknownst to Mr. Cortesi, his raunchy bed-hopping is secretly photographed from the room next-door through a two-way mirror, and it doesn’t take long before he receives an envelope with compromising photos and a letter with instructions to pay up unless he wants the pictures handed over to the media. And Cortesi is far from the only one to suffer this fate. It turns out that an organized blackmailing ring is operating from Play Motel, and there is no shortage of rich and kinky clients for them to prey on.


Forbidden photos


When Cortesi’s estranged young wife, Luisa (Patrizia Behn), who is having an affair with her husband’s lawyer, finds out about the blackmail plot, she immediately delivers the photos to police inspector De Sanctis (Anthony Steffen). Thanks to the police’s “archive of pornographic publications” (!!), De Sanctis is able to determine that the girl with Cortesi in the blackmail photos is pornographic photo model Loredana Salvi. Wow! Who knew the Italian police kept an archive of porn magazines!? It sure came in handy, though!

Anyway, inspector De Sanctis is quick to seek out Loredana but this is observed by the other employees at the porn publisher she works for. One of Loredana’s co-workers is clearly afraid that she will expose the profitable blackmail operation because later that day she is strangled by a mysterious black-gloved killer hiding in the backseat of her car.

After hearing of the murder, Luisa Cortesi decides to play amateur detective and rents a room at Play Motel. While snooping around, she enters the linen room and discovers the two-way mirror used to get the blackmail photos but before Luisa can do anything more, the black-gloved killer sneaks up behind her and strangles her.




The killer claims another victim


At this point we are finally introduced to the film’s main characters: handsome theater actor Roberto Vinci (Ray Lovelock) and his hot, blonde girlfriend Patrizia (Anna Maria Rizzoli), who have just rented a room at Play Motel so they can enjoy a little quickie. After checking out, they start driving home but get a flat tire. Upon opening the trunk of the car they are shocked to discover that Luisa’s corpse has been dumped there. They immediately call the police, and inspector De Sanctis figures that Roberto and his acting skills might be an asset to the investigation. He asks the couple to do some amateur sleuthing at Play Motel and they agree – thereby putting themselves in inevitable danger...



"Honey, there's a corpse in the trunk!"



Wow! A giallo taking place in the world of porn and prostitution! Play Motel must surely be a real giallo classic, right? Well, no, not really. It is actually a rather poor giallo in the sense that it is unable to mount any discernible suspense or tension. This is no doubt because writer-director Mario Gariazzo is far more interested in bombarding the audience with one sleazy, explicit sex scene after the other. However, I must hasten to add that this isn’t really a bad thing because it makes the whole film amazingly fun to watch. I mean, how can you not get a kick out of watching a guy in a devil costume doing a hooker dressed as a nun, or a nutty old guy who likes to put champagne bottles where his dick ought to go? It’s not classy, no, but one has to admire the incredible level of sordidness on display here.




Kinks aplenty!


While the numerous kinky softcore scenes really push the envelope in terms of sexual explicitness, that is clearly not enough for Gariazzo, who seems hell-bent on pushing the sleaze factor to its absolute maximum – a goal he achieves by throwing in a couple of scenes featuring full-on hardcore pornography.


Porn!


It must be said that the amount of hardcore footage is pretty sparse (it is mostly relegated to the opening sequence with Marina Frajese, as well as some brief bits here and there) but it nevertheless adds that extra layer of sleaziness that you only find in the seediest of Italian thrillers from this period, such as Mario Landi’s infamous Giallo a Venezia (1979). It is quite interesting to compare Play Motel to Giallo a Venezia because they are obviously similar in that they are both ultra-trashy gialli with a strong emphasis on the sexual content. But at the same time they are very different – the main difference being that Giallo a Venezia has an extremely grim, joyless and nihilistic tone that enhances its sordidness even further, whereas Play Motel has more the kind of jolly tone that you’d expect to find in a sex comedy. This prevents it from having any serious impact as a thriller but as a trash film it’s all great fun.

Obviously, one of the main appeals of a film of this type is the attractive female cast. Taking center stage is the blonde and shapely leading lady Anna Maria Rizzoli, who looks absolutely stunning and whom the camera appears to be in love with. She is ably supported by an impressive assembly of voluptuous trash movie regulars who have no qualms of any kind about shedding their clothes at regular intervals. Busty blonde starlet Patrizia Webley, who appeared exclusively in grade Z trash such as The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance (1975) and Malabimba (1979), is delightfully uninhibited as a kinky blackmail victim; raven-haired Antonella Antinori from the endearingly silly zombie flick The Nights of Terror (1980) gets the dubious pleasure of being fucked by a champagne bottle; while porno queen Marina Frajese (not yet a star at this point) ups the sleaze value by dressing up as a nun for the film’s most prominent porn sequence.






There's certainly no shortage of sexy ladies on display


In addition to doing numerous sex scenes, the film’s sexy actresses also get plenty of opportunities to strut their stuff in several nude photo-shoots accompanied by a soundtrack of very cheesy but deliriously catchy disco songs. These trashy songs fit the film’s atmosphere perfectly and are very amusing. The title song ("Stop on by at Play Motel and have a lot of fun" etc) is a particular hoot and it’s very catchy so don’t be surprised if it gets stuck on your brain for days and weeks after watching the film. The musical score is good too – with top honor going to its addictive and oft-repeated bass-driven suspense track.

Naturally, this isn’t the sort of film you look to for great acting but Ray Lovelock and Anna Maria Rizzoli – who also starred together in Umberto Lenzi’s enjoyable comedy Excuse Me, Are You Normal? (1979) around the same time – are quite nice together as the attractive leading couple. The most fun is provided by the male supporting cast, though, with Marino Masé, Enzo Fisichella and Vittorio Ripamonti pulling out all the stops and no doubt having a ball playing the various perverts that go about conducting their "business" at Play Motel.

As you can probably tell, I quite enjoyed Play Motel but I’m not really sure if it is something I’d recommend to serious giallo fans, who might be disappointed by the lack of genuine thrills and gory set pieces. Furthermore, the film never really pays proper attention to its mystery plot, which is little more than a hook to draw us in, while the real raison d’être are the non-stop scenes of kinky and graphic sex. So, yes, Play Motel is no great shakes as a thriller but it is, however, an absolute must-see for anyone who prides themselves on being trash movie lovers.


© 2011 Johan Melle



The cast:


Anna Maria Rizzoli as Patrizia



Ray Lovelock as Roberto Vinci



Enzo Fisichella as Rinaldo Cortesi



Marino Masé as Max Liguori



Mario Cutini as Willy



Antonella Antinori as Anna De Marchis



Anthony Steffen as Inspector De Sanctis



Patrizia Webley as Valeria Marzotti



Patrizia Behn as Luisa Cortesi



Marina Frajese as Loredana Salvi



Mario Novelli as Play Motel receptionist



Bob Balister (???) as Attorney Alfieri



Vittorio Ripamonti as Guido Toselli

Grand Hotel gallery #5: Susy Andersen

This autographed photo of 1960s starlet Susy Andersen was originally printed in Grand Hotel issue No. 921 from February 15, 1964. Honestly, this photo does her no justice at all as Susy was far more attractive than this picture would have you thinking.


In spite of her blonde hair and Nordic-sounding name, Susy Andersen is actually an Italian actress, and she was born on April 20, 1940 in the Italian town Pola (which is now a part of Croatia) as Maria Antonietta Golgic. She started her career as a fashion model, and under the name Susy Valgoi she made her film debut with a supporting role in Pietro Francisci's peplum adventure The Warrior Empress (1960), which starred American actress Tina Louise. When interviewed by Grand Hotel, Susy revealed that she and Tina Louise didn't get along at all during shooting. Apparantly, Tina felt intimidated by Susy and was particularly bothered by the fact that Susy had better-looking legs, so she ran to director Pietro Francisci and demanded him to not film them below the knees. Francisci, however, doesn't seem to have paid much attention to Tina as both her and Susy's legs are prominently displayed throughout the film. Of course, it's hard to say whether or not this story is actually true - especially since just about every European actress I've read interviews with have made similar claims about driving famous Hollywood divas mad with jealousy - but it's a fun little story nonetheless.


Susy in her first film, The Warrior Empress


Anyway, Susy soon changed her her last name from Valgoi to the more internationally sellable Andersen and quickly started to get leading roles. She appeared in two more peplum adventures: Antonio Leonviola's silly but enjoyable Thor and the Amazon Women (1963) and Giuseppe Vari's interesting War of the Zombies (1964). However, most people remember Susy best for her performance as the beautiful Sdenka in the famous "The Wurdalak" segment from Mario Bava's anthology horror film Black Sabbath (1963). And it's no wonder people tend to remember this role with such affection, as Susy really looks enchantingly beautiful here.


Susy as the gorgeous Sdenka


Susy spent the rest of the 1960s appearing in a wide variety of different films, such as Antonio Pietrangeli's comedy The Magnificent Cuckold (1964), Antonio Margheriti's Eurospy adventure The Killers Are Challenged (1966), Nunzio Malasomma's spaghetti western Fifteen Scaffolds for the Killer (1968), Alfonso Brescia's exploitative mondo-style sex flick The Labyrinth of Sex (1969) and Siro Marcellini's crime movie Gangster's Law (1969).

Unfortunately, Susy seems to have vanished off the face of the earth after 1969 and I have no idea what became of her. She is fondly remembered by a lot of movie fans, though, which is impressive for someone who only appeared in 13 movies - most of which were done over a 7-year period.



Black and white photo of Susy from 1964


Susy in Thor and the Amazon Women

One of Susy's final roles was as a nymphomaniac in the trashy The Labyrinth of Sex

Grand Hotel gallery #4: Ingrid Schoeller

Finally! The Grand Hotel gallery returns - this time with an autographed photo of sexy German starlet Ingrid Schoeller. It was originally printed in Grand Hotel issue No. 1046 (published July 9, 1966).


A considerable star in her time, Ingrid Schoeller is one of all too many 1960s starlets who have since faded into obscurity. I haven't been able to find out too much about Ingrid's background, other than the fact that she was born in Munich in 1942. At some point she went to Italy to persue a career in acting, and she started appearing in films in the early 1960s. She made her debut with a supporting role in Duccio Tessari's adventure film The Titans (1962), and went on to appear in several comedies, including Lucio Fulci's spy spoof 002 - Those Most Secret Agents (1964), in which she appears alongside the legendary Italian comedic duo of Franco and Ciccio.

Ingrid's big breakthrough came in late 1964 - thanks to a stint on the TV show Napoli contro tutti (translation: Naples Against Everybody), a hugely successful music show in which a group of Neapolitan singers challenge famous singers from various world capitals. Originally, Elke Sommer was set to appear in an episode as both emcee and musical competitor but she fell ill at the last minute and had to be replaced. Her replacement was none other than Ingrid Schoeller, who stepped in on very short notice and really won over Italian television audiences with her charming personality and impressive singing. After this performance, everybody wanted a piece of Ingrid. She was quickly signed with Italian record company Durium and would go on to release several singles, such as "Ieri, domani", "Se passerai di qui" and "Se cerchi amore". Ingrid was also photographed for the "Girls of Germany" spread in the November 1964 issue of Playboy, and the following month she was chosen to guest star in an episode of the highly popular British spy series The Saint, starring Roger Moore.

With this newfound stardom, Ingrid's cinematic career blossomed and she was given the starring role in Umberto Lenzi's excellent Euro Spy adventure 008: Operation Exterminate (1965), in which Ingrid plays Agent 008, a sort of female James Bond. The film is notable for being the first to portray a female variant of James Bond and is a real starring vehicle for Ingrid, who not only plays the lead but also gets to perform the song "Good Bye to Cairo", which she co-wrote with the film's composer, Angelo Francesco Lavagnino.

Ingrid's popularity continued throughout the rest of the 1960s and her face graced the covers of countless magazines as she kept herself busy with singing, appearing in films and on television. She proved herself a versatile actress and managed to avoided being typecast as she swithced between playing sympathetic and unsympathetic characters - in both leading and supporting capacity. It's also impressive that she nearly always appeared in different kinds of genres: the comedy Ischia Love Operation (1966), the spaghetti western Son of Django (1967), the caper movie Mission Phantom (1967), the costume adventure The Son of the Black Eagle (1968), the gangster movie They Paid with Bullets (1969) etc.

Unfortunately, Ingrid's film career came to a very sudden end in 1969, and I have not been able to come up with any information about what became of her. According to reports in Variety magazine, she was supposed to appear in Demofilo Fidani's crime flick The Electric Chair (1969) but she dropped out of the project for reasons unknown. While Ingrid's cinematic career ended in 1969, it is very possible that her singing career continued into the 1970s. If anyone has any more concrete information about what happened to Ingrid, I'd love to hear it.


And, finally, here are some pictures to remember the beautiful and talented Ingrid by:


A funny picture of Ingrid and legendary comedian Franco Franchi


Ingrid as a female James Bond in 008: Operation Exterminate


Another gorgeous shot from 008: Operation Exterminate

Ingrid together with a very young Edwige Fenech in the enjoyable adventure movie The Son of the Black Eagle

School of Fear/Il gioko

Italy, 1989

Directed by Lamberto Bava

Cast:
Alessandra Acciai, Jean Hebert, Daria Nicolodi, Viola Simoncioni, Stefano De Sando, Fabio Iellini, Morena Turchi, Giuseppe Pianviti

In 1987, when the Italian horror movie industry was dying a slow death, director Lamberto Bava struck a deal with production company Reteitalia to produce a quartet of horror movies for Italian television. The four movies were: Graveyard Disturbance (1987), Until Death (1987), Dinner With a Vampire (1988) and The Ogre (1988), and the package went under the series title Brivido Giallo. Although most of these films are fairly toothless "kiddie horror" efforts aimed at younger audiences, they nevertheless did very well in Italy and were also successfully distributed in English-speaking territories. In fact, the whole project was so successful for Reteitalia that in 1989, Bava was assigned the task of directing another quartet of TV horror movies – this time under the series title Alta Tensione (or High Tension in English). The four movies in this package are: The Prince of Terror, The Man Who Didn’t Want to Die, Eyewitness and School of Fear. Interestingly, this second quartet of tele-thrillers is quite different from the first. One of the more noticeable characteristics of the High Tension films is that unlike their predecessors they seem to have been aimed at a more mature audience – and this is particularly true of School of Fear.

The plot takes place at the renowned Giacomo Stuz private school, and begins with a creepy scene set during a stormy night with heavy rain and lightning. A terrified young girl is lurking through the dark basement of the school – looking for a way out. She tries climbing her way out through a shaft but her escape is blocked by a solid iron grid and her desperate cries for help are drowned by the pouring rain and crashing lightning.

A chilling opening sequence


Cut to sometime later when the beautiful, young schoolteacher Diana Berti (Alessandra Acciai) arrives at the Giacomo Stuz school for her first day of teaching. Unfortunately, Diana gets a rougher time than expected at the school: she is frightened by the hostile caretaker’s deformed son, who lurks around and spies from shadowy corners, and gets reprimanded by the headmistress (Daria Nicolodi), who disapproves of Diana’s mini-skirt and advises her to dress more conservatively.

Diana arrives at the school of fear...

...and meets the schoolchildren


It also turns out that the schoolchildren are playing a mysterious “game” that they keep hidden from the adults. Diana soon starts to get concerned about this secretive game – especially when she reads an essay in which one of the schoolgirls, Roberta (Viola Simoncioni), writes about being afraid of the game. The essay was written to the children’s previous teacher, a certain Mrs. Curiel, and Diana decides to have a little chat with her. But when she asks about how to reach her predecessor, the headmistress reluctantly tells Diana that Mrs. Curiel is dead. In fact, she died rather mysteriously one night at the school when she apparently fell out the classroom window and was impaled on the spiked iron gate below. What she was doing at the school in the middle of the night and how she managed to fall remains a mystery. And this isn’t the only dark cloud from the school’s past – there’s also the matter of one of the schoolgirls who was kidnapped and never recovered. “Naturally, it had nothing to do with our school”, the headmistress is awfully quick to point out.

A strange essay upsets Diana

The headmistress tries to put Diana's worries to rest


Things become even more sinister when Diana turns on the TV and sees herself on the screen getting killed – impaled on the school’s iron gate just like poor Mrs. Curiel! The next day at school, a student named Anna (Morena Turchi) is inexplicably missing. Everyone seems to assume she has gone on holiday with her parents, and no one except Diana finds it strange that the school hasn’t been notified about this. Diana is convinced that the children and their mysterious “game” are responsible for the death of Mrs. Curiel and the disappearance of Anna, and she fears that she might be next on their list. But neither the headmistress nor Diana’s new love interest, Mark Anselmi (Jean Hebert) – who is conveniently a police inspector – seem to believe in her suspicions...

Diana starts to get paranoid



With School of Fear, Lamberto Bava has come up with an odd little chiller that goes for a different approach than expected. The opening sequence where a frightened young girl tries to escape from the school effectively establishes a chilling atmosphere, and the subsequent introduction of Daria Nicolodi as the headmistress who suspiciously avoids all talk of mysterious deaths and kidnappings raises expectations of a Suspiria-style plot with villainous teachers bumping off unfortunate students. But in a very welcome twist, famed horror movie screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti and co-writers Roberto Gandus and Giorgio Stegani skew our expectations and head in a completely different direction – making the young schoolchildren the villains of the piece. Fortunately, the writers avoid drawing upon the bland Children of the Corn (1984) for inspiration, and instead approach the subject matter as a psychological thriller in the spirit of Polanski’s excellent The Tenant (1976). The viewers are never completely sure about whether or not Diana’s suspicions towards the children are actually justified, and this is one of the film’s greatest strengths.

Luckily, Lamberto Bava compliments the script’s maturity and directs with surprising restraint – dropping the expected bloodshed and instead focusing his efforts on the psychological thrills and chills. That’s not to say that School of Fear doesn’t have its share of more classic horror moments, though, because it certainly does. The opening sequence with the frightened young girl is particularly creepy and very atmospherically shot, and various scenes of Diana exploring the large and seemingly empty school building are quite well-handled too. Not to mention the freaky flashbacks to Diana’s childhood trauma, which are definitely memorable. Gianfranco Transunto (who shot most of Bava’s TV movies) delivers some very stylish cinematography and he photographs the large, old and sinister-looking school to eerie effect. Aiding the visuals is a solid musical score by Simon Boswell, which is quite chilling and very fitting for the atmosphere of the film.

The sinister school building

Gianfranco Trasunto's stylish cinematography is a great asset to the film


The only really familiar face in the cast is horror legend Daria Nicolodi in the role of the conservative headmistress whose only concern is to maintain the good name and reputation of the school. While I wish that her role had been a tad more substantial, Nicolodi is an accomplished actress who is capable of delivering the goods in both big and small roles and she does not disappoint this time either. She’s very believable in the part and brings a touch of class and elegance to the proceedings. Leading lady Alessandra Acciai (who played a supporting role in Luigi Cozzi’s god-awful The Black Cat the same year) may not be the world’s most brilliant actress but she acquits herself well and is both sweet and likable. None of the other actors are given too much to do but they all deliver adequate work – including the child actors.

School of Fear is not without its flaws, however, as there are a couple of disruptive elements that don’t serve much purpose in the film, such as the deformed child of the school’s caretaker. The film is also quite generously paced – perhaps a tad too much at times. Normally I don’t have any problems with films that are deliberately slow-paced as long as the denouement it carefully builds up to pays off. Unfortunately, School of Fear fails to deliver a fully satisfactory pay-off, and this is without doubt its most serious flaw. It’s not that the ending is downright terrible, mind you; but it does fall somewhat short of delivering the necessary punch that the film has slowly been building towards for 90 minutes – especially on the first viewing.

The deformed child


In short, School of Fear isn’t entirely successful but it’s an interesting little psychological thriller with some inspired ideas. It’s not a film for everyone’s taste and if you’re looking for another A Blade in the Dark (1983) or Demons (1985), you might be disappointed. But if, on the other hand, you are among those who consider Macabre (1980) to be one of Bava’s better films, you might want to give this one a chance as you may very well come to like it.



A note about the availability of the High Tension films

Unfortunately, School of Fear (as well as the other three films in the High Tension series) is fairly tricky to get hold of. Whereas Bava’s first quartet of TV horror movies were very successful and sold well abroad, the High Tension movies did not fare as well. None of them were given TV screenings in Italy until in 1999 – ten years after they were first made. All four of them were dubbed into English but failed to attract buyers and have not received any sort of English-friendly release on either VHS or DVD. English-dubbed screener tapes with a non-removable ‘Not for commercial use’ text at the bottom of the screen were sent to potential buyers, though, and poor-quality bootlegs of these tapes are doing the rounds among collectors. This is not a very ideal way to watch the films, though.

As you can see from this random screenshot, the screener version ain't too hot-looking


Recordings from Italian television broadcasts are also out there and they look a lot nicer but, alas, they’re in Italian only. Let’s hope someone decides to put out an English-friendly High Tension box-set someday. In the meantime, I have made due with watching a rip of an Italian TV broadcast with the soundtrack from the English screener tape. It worked well enough for my needs.


© 2010 Johan Melle




The cast:

Alessandra Acciai as Diana Berti

Jean Hebert as Inspector Mark Anselmi

Daria Nicolodi as The Headmistress

Viola Simoncioni as Roberta Sassi

Stefano De Sando as Mauro Lamberti, the Headmistress's assistant

??? as Giorgio Musy

Morena Turchi as Anna Giusti

??? as Claudia Testi

??? as Alberto, the caretaker

Thanks to my friend Emiliano for helping to identify Viola Simoncioni and Morena Turchi.