Watch Scorpion with Two Tails For Free

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Excellent but underrated film

Don't Believe the Hype

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

There is a little game that some 007 fans play as they watch "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," the first James Bond film to not star Sean Connery: They imagine how much better the film would have been had it featured Connery instead of (the sorely underrated) George Lazenby. Well, this viewer could not refrain from playing a similar game while watching (director) Sergio and (producer) Luciano Martinos' 1982 offering, "Scorpion With Two Tails." Here, though, I couldn't stop thinking how much better this picture would have been had it starred the Martino Bros.' erstwhile muse, Eurobabe sexbomb Edwige Fenech, rather than the blond vacuity that is Elvire Audray. Audray, a gorgeous actress in the Nicole Kidman mold, simply does not have the spark and thespian chops that Edwige might have brought to the role, but even if Edwige had been substituted here, I'm not sure that the resultant film would have been any more lucid. In "Scorpion," Elvire goes to Italy to seek clues after her archaeologist husband (John Saxon, wasted in a small role) is killed, despite the objections of her father (Van Johnson, of all people). Screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi (who seems to have written half the gialli I've ever seen) must have had some kind of psychoactive substance slipped into his Chianti before penning the story for this one, as this overly plotted picture conflates giallo-type murders, drug smuggling, Etruscan history, the supernatural, reincarnation, and discussions of antimatter and antiuniverses into one mind-boggling stew. Such grossouts as maggots (and lots of 'em), neck twistings, rats and bats are thrown in to keep the viewer stunned and amused. To be honest, I must say that I could never tell just where this darn thing was headed next, especially after the entire cast seems to buy the farm roughly around the film's midpoint. The picture looks handsome enough and also features an effective score by Fabio Frizzi. Still, I have watched this thing twice now and am still confused regarding several plot points. For example, can anyone tell me just what happened to all that darn heroin? In all, an entertaining if muddled pot of stufato....

The Scorpion with Two Tails has all the makings of a great Giallo. Aside from the intriguing title, it's also directed by Sergio Martino; the same man who made some of the best Giallo's of the seventies with films such as The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, it's written by Ernesto Gastaldi; whose name will mean a lot to every Giallo fan worth their salt as he has written many of the best films that the genre has to offer, and on top of that - we've even got a performance from cult actor John Saxon. However, Martino clearly didn't have his penchant for directing by 1982, Gastaldi was having an off day and John Saxon's character lasts all of about two minutes! Like the earlier Giallo, The Dead Are Alive, this film focuses on the ancient 'Etruscan' civilisation. Joan Barnard, the wife of Arthur Barnard; a famous archaeologist is having problems. She's suffering from nightmares that focus around ancient tombs. Her woes increase when her husband calls from Italy and ends up getting his neck snapped mid-phone call! She then travels to Italy to investigate.This film was apparently cut down from a television series, and I can only assume that they left the worst parts in! There's barely any excitement to speak of whatsoever, and this ensures that the film is very hard to care about. Add in some extremely unenthusiastic performances (unenthusiastic even by Italian horror standards!) and some silly fantasy crap and what we've ended up with here is one of the worst Giallo's ever made! It's a real shame too as this film blends in a few different styles and if Martino could have just pulled it all together better, this could definitely have sat alongside his more esteemed film credits. One of the few saving graces in this film is the music; but once you recognise it from The Beyond, the credibility soon dries up! At least the film manages to limp through with a decent finale; though once you've sat through the first eighty five minutes of the film, it could be the best ending of all time and most people would be unlikely to care. Overall, this is absolutely nothing to recommend this film for and I recommend that everyone skips it!

Damn you Sergio Martino and your constant re-using of titles! Here I was under the impression that I finally tracked down a copy of "Case of the Scorpion's Tail" and then it turns out this is an entirely different movie, actually one that is even more rare but also a whole lot worse. Then I wanted to take comfort in the fact this production stars the almighty B-movie legend John Saxon, but he's only in it during the first EIGHT minutes and then he has his neck wrenched around 180 degrees! "The Scorpion with two Tails" is undeniably a disappointment, mixing too many story ideas and cult sub genres into one overly confusing film. The plot covers typical giallo-elements as well as supernatural forces of evil and even crime syndicates! However, none of the story lines are properly elaborated and the whole thing is just intolerably incoherent. Mr. Saxon briefly appears as an American archaeologist who phones his wife to announce he discovered a genuine Etruscan tomb during his research expedition in Italy. He then gets killed and the wife Joan instantly travels to Italy to investigate the circumstances of his death. She learns that her own beloved father runs an international hard drugs network, hallucinates about eerie maggots crawling around everywhere and eventually hooks up with another archaeologist that fancies Etruscan tombs. Every once and a while, a redundant character is killed off by a pair of unidentifiable hands that clearly adore twisting people's necks around! Sergio Martino is a great director, and Ernesto Gastaldi is an even greater scriptwriter, but "The Scorpion with two Tails" totally lacks all their usual trademarks. It's uninvolving, boring, slow-paced, poorly presented and the murder sequences are tame and entirely gore-free! The neck-twisting modus operandi is interesting to show once, but not seven times in one film! The search for the killer's identity – if he/she is even human – isn't nearly as compelling as in any of Martino's previous gialli and features no ingenious red herrings. Heck, even the music is lame since it's identical to the score in "Hell of the Living Dead" and that film already stole it from Goblin's soundtrack for "Dawn of the Dead". Nothing to recommend here, not even to die-hard fans of Italian cinema.

The video of this I rented features lots of "Americanized" Italian names. I get how "Paolo Malco" (from MST3k's "Escape 2000") became "Paul Malco", but how did "Sergio Martino" become "Christia Plummer"?Anyhoo, this French/Italian coproduction tells the incredibly unengaging tale of some drugs hidden in some ancient burial tomb thingee and some other stuff happens and there may or may not be supernatural forces at work. Alan Hale jr-look-a-like Van Johnson (MST3k's "San Fransisco International") gives loooong expositional scenes, and John Saxon (MST3k's "Mitchell") gets his head twisted backwards (and apparently the killer also switched his right and left hands). Another victim looks like a cross between Michael Caine and Elmer Fishpaw from "Polyester". The music by Fabio Frizzi is just the score from "Gates of Hell" used again. The special effects are just maggots- maggots on photos, maggots on hands, maggots on statues. Anyway, it should go without saying, but don't watch this movie.