Rings Of Fear

RINGS OF FEAR aka TRAUMA aka Enigma Rosso (1978)

Dir. Alberto Negrin

Written by (seriously!) Marcello Coscia & Massimo Dallamano & Franco Ferrini & Stefano Ubezio & Alberto Negrin & Peter Berling. All named in the opening credits. IMDB goes on to name Thomas Danneberg (dialogue: German version) and Miguel de Echarri (screenplay). Maybe they didn’t have room on-screen to include them?

Starring Fabio Testi, Christine Kaufmann, Ivan Desny, Jack Taylor, Fausta Avelli

(WARNING: in case the following pullquote doesn’t ring your alarm bells, this is probably one of those reviews you shouldn’t read if you would be the type to get upset about things which it would be completely reasonable to get upset about. Italy, man, what can I say?)

“The pace is brisk and the school shower scene is truly gratuitous.” -- IMDB reviewer HumanoidOfFlesh, Nov 19, 2010.

  

            RINGS OF FEAR starts out by ogling the nude breasts of an underaged corpse. But before you get too judgmental, I have some reassuring news: except for one scene where it blatantly ogles a bunch of 16-year-olds playing together in the showers (the camera reluctantly follows the action of our leading girl as she leaves the showers, and then zips back in for one more peek before it cuts) and one scene where a girl is murdered at an orgy via penetration by a giant dildo… well, other than those scenes and a few others it gets a little classier as it goes on, at least as far these things go! I wasn’t aware of this going in, but apparently RINGS OF FEAR is considered the third film in the loose “schoolgirls in peril!” trilogy which began with WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE? and continued with WHAT HAVE THEY DONE WITH YOUR DAUGHTERS?, and would have continued seamlessly here if not for the death of director Massimo Dallamano* (still one of the six credited co-writers). But the dream was too beautiful to die with its author, and so, just as it looked like we might have to live in a dark world with only two sleazy "schoolgirls in peril!" Italian movies from the 70's, in stepped TV director Alberto Negrin (the Secret of the Sahara miniseries starring Michael York, Andie MacDowell, and Ben Kingsley[!]) to offer us one last wild ride with those schoolgirls who, darn it, just can’t seem to stay out of peril.

            The peril these particular schoolgirls have found themselves in began prior to the events of the movie, as our protagonist, Inspector Gianni Di Salvo (Fabio Testi, THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS, but most known for having a name which literally translates as “Fabulous Testicles”**) discovers when he steps in on a case which concerns a 16-year old schoolgirl. This particular schoolgirl is now thankfully out of peril, as she is currently deceased, having been killed by a giant dong (hey, I warned you!). Her classmates seem to know more than they’re saying, which becomes a real problem for them when they start to get targeted by a mystery avenger operating under the nom de guerre “Nemesis,” who may be a vigilante trying to avenge the dead girl, or the real killer trying to intimidate these co-conspirators into silence. Either way, Di Salvo is on the job, and he knows just what to do: kick his way into the school in the dead of night, rouse everyone from their beds, and shout at everyone incoherently that a girl was murdered and raped with a huge penis. When that somehow fails to produce the desired results, he’s gotta get creative.

            Despite the three “M”s prominently on display,*** this is probably more poliziotteschi than giallo, with a tough-guy cop as the main character, and most of the movie devoted to his hard-nosed attempts at shaking down the local underworld characters for information on this mysterious fiend with the killer johnson. Its style is more gritty than surreal, with a handful of action-packed chase scenes and fights, nearly always shot on-location during the daytime. But it has a few appreciably nutty stalking/suspense sequences too, probably just barely enough to justify describing it as a horror-thriller, if you were inclined to be generous about such things for some reason, such as if you were a person who blogs mostly about horror movies and saw this during October and was consequently honor-bound to write about it, for example.

It is a whodunnit, anyway, and, in fact, one with a batty enough solution to please even the most discerning connoisseurs of psychotic Italian exploitation cinema. (SPOILERS FOLLOW!) It turns out, in fact, to be a double mystery -- “Nemesis” and the dildo murderers are actually unrelated, and Di Salvo has been unknowingly chasing two perps, not one. The whole thing with the dead schoolgirl actually ends up mostly only being a sex conspiracy, not a murder conspiracy; it seems the young woman in question was just an participant in a totally normal and consensual school-wide orgy between underaged classmates and creepy old men, and one of the participants simply miscalculated what size of dildo he could use on her without fatal results. You know how that goes. What a faux pas! Anyway, just a completely understandable misunderstanding; in fact, I’m not even sure the movie ever bothers to actually identify the person responsible for the original death, it’s much more interested on the subsequent coverup. “Nemesis,” though, turns out to be a little more interesting: it is, in fact, the adorable little sister of the dead girl, resorting to some straight up fucking SAW shit to punish her sisters’ complicit classmates. The movie seems pretty comfortable with her assessment that these terrified 16-year-olds are equally culpable (if not more!) than the adult males who presumably put together this sordid little soiree; so much so that when Di Salvo finally figures it out, he doesn’t even punish this little fucking psycho, and in fact the movie implies that they may team up from here on! Seriously, it ends with an unmistakable "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" scene! Jesus, this has to be the most depraved, Machiavellian little kid since… well, I DRINK YOUR BLOOD only eight years earlier. What the fuck was up with the 70’s and thinking murderous little tykes were cute? (END SPOILERS)

Anyway, that’s a pretty nutty solution to a pretty nutty mystery, but still, it does basically kind of make sense. Not, like, in the way real things in real life make sense, of course, but in the sense that most of the basic questions posed get answered, and the solutions roughly conform to the basic tenets of the plot up to that point. Frankly six screenwriters (and possibly as many as eight!) adding up to a whodunnit which even vaguely coheres is kind of a miracle in itself, and when you throw 1978 Italy into the mix, we’re basically talking about quantum probability here. Nice work, RINGS OF FEAR. Not that the solution really matters, of course; the real enjoyment of this sort of thing --if you are, like me, the sort of person who has it in them to enjoy this sort of thing, and if you’re not, I sincerely commend you on being a better person than I am-- is in the journey, not the destination. A lot of it is disappointingly down-to-earth, considering the ludicrous premise, but it’s peppered all the way through with colorful details. You got a red herring character with a mysterious fake hand, a death by spilled marbles, an interrogation on a real roller coaster which absolutely looks none-too-safe (featuring the venerable Jack Taylor, THE GHOST GALLEON,  something of a Euro-sleaze staple), and one of the most hilariously abrupt suicides of all time. So it’s a pretty good time, especially when it’s rockin’ the jazzy, uptempo title track by Riz Ortolani (DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST), which is as funky and catchy as it is wildly inappropriate. RINGS OF FEAR is by no means essential cinema, even by Italian trash standards, but it is both idiosyncratic and sleazy enough to satisfy the only people on Earth who would ever come across it.  

Which is all, now that I think about it, just a unnecessary longwinded way of saying exactly what we began with: “The pace is brisk and the school shower scene is truly gratuitous.” Next time I’ll let it go at that.

* Dallamano, by the way, directed a handful of giallo and poliziotteschi flicks, but is most known as the cinematographer for A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS and FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE. Seriously!

** Warning: translation may not be accurate.

*** Murder, Mystery, and Misogyny

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2018 CHECKLIST!

Searching For Bloody Pictures

TAGLINE	No Girl Can Ever Feel Safe, warns the poster.
TITLE ACCURACY	Yeah, no idea what that means. I think the Italian title is just “Red Mystery,” which also is inaccurate, in fact I’m not sure there’s even any blood in here.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	Nope
SEQUEL?	None.
REMAKE?	No
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	Italy
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Giallo (sort of), Whodunnit
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None, although Fabio Testi worked with Vittorio di Sica, which is pretty baller.
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	None
NUDITY?	Yes, but you’re obligated by law not to enjoy it, so don’t get too excited you creep.
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	Yes.
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	No.
THE UNDEAD?	None
POSSESSION?	No
CREEPY DOLLS?	None
EVIL CULT?	No.
MADNESS?	Nah
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	None
VOYEURISM?	Just by the camera.
MORAL OF THE STORY	It is entirely possible to have a productive conversation with a murder suspect while also riding a roller coaster, and you should do it.