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| Images courtesy of Mondo Macabro |
Prolific Spanish writer-director Xavier Setó’s career dates
back to the early 1950s, starting with the postwar drug trafficking drama Mercado
Prohibido before working across many genres throughout the 1960s including
but not limited to the Spanish western ala El Escándalo or the period
drama such as The Castilian.
However, it wasn’t until around 1966 with La Llamada he had his
first stint with gothic horror and while he’d go on to do two more musicals,
the subject of today’s Mondo Macabro review concerns his 1969 Spanish giallo
offering Macabre or as presented by the boutique label in their limited-edition
release Shadow of Death.
Previously only available in a truncated Italian version before the
unedited Spanish cut was located for this release, Shadow of Death is a visually
striking piece of labyrinthine gialli that messes with our perception replete
with confusing doppelgangers, mistaken identities and plentiful double
crossings quadrupling unto themselves.
Ex-showgirl Denise (Teresa Gimpera) is leading a rich but
dull life with her dandy husband John and his identical twin Vietnam Veteran
brother Peter (both roles played by Larry Ward). Sharing the same home in a small Spanish town,
she quietly begins an affair with Peter and the scheming twosome are keen on
figuring out a way to get their mittens on John’s life savings. Out of nowhere, Denise’s dangerous facially
scarred ex Gert Muller, a German criminal, shows up intending to blackmail them
by exposing their affair. But before he
can do so, they begin drugging and driving John mad with drugs and then proceed
to murder Gert with the intention of pinning the blame on the intoxicated
bewildered John. As expected, the film
becomes something of a shape-shifting twisty turner as at times neither we nor
the characters themselves are entirely sure of who is really who.
Replete with the trademark motifs of the giallo thriller
such as the masked and/or black gloved villain, the scenic vacationing
travelogue film via the femme fatale living in high luxurious lifestyle, the
drugging and eventually the double-crossing murders, Shadow of Death is
like a film noir gialli. Intentionally zig-zagging
about with fake-outs and surprises sprinkled throughout so you’re frequently
thrown off course, hanging on for dear life almost. Full of visually innovative camerawork
including tight closeups of the drugged-up John with pale white light
illuminating his inebriated face and medium close-ups of the principal
characters with key blocking hiding the use of doubles in between shots by
Antonio Piazza and a rousing soundtrack by They Call Me Trinity composer
Franco Micalizzi, Shadow of Death is surprisingly classy gialli
fare.
Special thanks go to Gunsmoke actor Larry Ward for
taking on the now trendy practice of actors playing dual roles and given the
characters take turns posing as one another, he does a great job of
differentiating their personalities while still throwing the viewer off. As the bored housewife turned scheming
adulteress is Teresa Gimpera of Victor Erice’s renowned fantasy classic The
Spirit of the Beehive and despite being administering drugs to her husband
John, even she can’t always tell if it’s really Peter she’s with. And of course there’s The Last Man on
Earth actor Giacomo Rossi Stuart as the nefarious facially scarred German
criminal Gert Muller whose dark sunglasses, top hat, black gloves and trench
coat all but point to him as an outright giallo adversary.
Making its US blu-ray premiere through a new digital
restoration of the original 35mm camera negatives from Mondo Macabro and a
sizable amount of extras including deleted and/or alternate scenes and an
interview with the director of the Sitges Film Festival, Shadow of Death is
a taut little Spanish giallo gem for those keen on scouring and scooping up
every ounce of world cinema the Italian gialli movement bled into. With its painterly cinematography, high
fashion and lifestyle, sexy femme fatale and the film playing the viewer and
its characters like a piano, it represents a solid acquisition and release from
the boutique label. While not quite
living up to the company’s moniker of ‘the wild side of world cinema’, it nevertheless
is a strong Spanish giallo feature sure to get one’s mental gears driving about
with its brand of trickery. While
proving to be one of Xavier Setó’s last films as a director outside of his
crime drama ¡Viva América! released that same year, it is the first (and
perhaps best) of his oeuvre taking on a subgenre completely new to him, a
mind-bending giallo thriller with a difference.
--Andrew Kotwicki
