Color, 1975, 98m. / Directed by Andrea Bianchi / Starring Nino Castelnuovo, Edwige Fenech, Femi Benussi, Solvi Stubing / Blue Underground (US R0 NTSC), X-Rated Kult (Germany R0 PAL) / WS (2.35:1) (16:9)
After a black market abortion goes tragically wrong, the model victim's studio, Albatross, becomes the hunting ground for a killer in black leather motorcylce gear with a fondness for sticking switchblades in people. Sleazy photographer Carlo (Castelnuovo) seems to spend most of his time bedding beauties in unlikely locations, including a tryst with potential model Lucia (Benussi) in a steamroom. Unfortunately she gets knifed soon after (while naked, of course), so Carlo moves on to sleeping with assistant Magda (Fenech) and pries around to uncover the killer. Meanwhile, other characters continue to lose their clothes... and their lives!
Tacky, profane, and crammed with gratuitous skin from start to finish, Strip Nude for Your Killer was directed by genre-hopper Andrea Bianchi, whose career spans all the way from Burial Ground to hard porn. Fortunately this outing is a bit slicker than usual thanks to the visual sheen of cinematographer Franco Delli Colli, whose colorful, shadowy scope compositions manage to make this look like a first-class affair even when busty, naked women are being groped by hairy, overweight men in baggy underwear. Once the boyish star of films like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Camille 2000, Castelnuovo is virtually unrecognizable here as the slimy "hero" who chauvanistic treatment of women is so ludicrous it can't even be classified as offensive. Meanwhile the women all perform their duties as required by the film, though as usual Fenech (with a short, boyish hairstyle) injects more charm and pluck into her role than anyone probably expected. Underrated composer Berto Pisano also contributes a fun, funky score that sorely deserves a CD release. Giallo fans may be disappointed in the
For years most viewers had to seek this film out in unsubtitled Italian bootleg tapes, though an English dub did circulate throughout Europe briefly in the '70s. The English track first appeared on DVD via Germany's X-Rated Kult label in an adequate transfer, though any curious parties will be much better served by Blue Underground's attractive DVD which sports a much cleaner English audio track and a steadier anamorphic transfer. Unlike the phony video-generated "trailer" on the German DVD, the Blue Underground disc also sports a genuine international trailer that's far more entertaining, with a ridiculous Marquis De Sade quote thrown in for good measure. The only other extra is a 12-minute featurette, "Strip Nude for Your Giallo," in which co-writer Massimo Felisatti and actress/victim Solvi Stubing talk about the making of the film. (Note that the featurette is in Italian, and the English subtitles wouldn't activate on some DVD players.) It's a fun but brief short, complete with a look at Stubing's extra-giallo career and coverage of the filmmaking scene at the time.
As anyone who's dabbled in Eurocult cinema for even a shot period of time may have noticed, Italian thrillers tend to fall into two categories: complex, artful mysteries peppered with aesthetically beautiful scenes of cruelty (Blood and Black Lace, Deep Red, etc.) and sleazy,
junky exploitationers whose threadbare plots serve to deliver the maximum amount of nudity and gory thrills (Black Belly of the Tarantula, New York Ripper). As you may have guessed from the title, Strip Nude for Your Killer falls squarely in the latter category and delivers all the guilty pleasure expected from a mid-'70s cheesecake slasher film. Will you respect yourself in the morning after watching it? Probably not, but the ride's certainly fun while it lasts.
thriller aspects here; the storyline's not that involving and any bloodshed consists mainly of a few unconvincing splashes of red paint. Still, most will be having too much fun to notice.
