Watch Watch Me When I Kill For Free

Just perfect...

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Another enjoyable entry into the Italian giallo genre, although this veers more towards 'solid' than spectacular. The locations are less arresting than usual in these films, but there is a fine conveyance of squalor and run-down industrial landscapes which, when located within the rolling landscapes, provides a particularly stark backdrop to the gloomy events.I think the word 'gloomy' covers things really. There are no real standout characters; no Edwidge Fenechs of Rosalba Neris, or even a stubbornly chauvinistic male hero to hiss at. We have instead, nice Lukas, played by Corrado Pani, who attempts to investigate the dark goings on.Paola Tedesco plays Mara, a young dancer, who witnesses the murder of a local pharmacist. A string of killings then take place, all nicely staged. 'Watch me When I Kill' is a decent rather than engrossing giallo that only occasionally captures the sinister atmosphere of others of its type.

Nightclub dancer Mara (a solid and appealing performance by the fetching Paola Tedesco) finds herself being stalked by a killer after she witnesses a murder. It's up to Mara's sleazy, but overall decent boyfriend Lukas (a fine and likable portrayal by Corrado Pani) to figure out who the killer is before he claims Mara as his next victim. Director/co-writer Antonio Bido does a bang-up job with this nifty entry in the popular Italian giallo thriller genre: The tight and tricky plot unfolds at a swift pace, Bido creates and sustains a substantial amount of tension, the killer's true identity is a real surprise, and the brutal murder set pieces deliver the savagely satisfying goods (a vicious bathtub strangulation rates as a definite exciting highlight). Moreover, this film further benefits from sturdy acting by the able cast: Tedesco and Pani do praiseworthy work in the leads, with sound support from Fernando Cerulli as the scared and secretive Giovanni Bozzi, Franco Citti as angry convicted killer Pasquale Ferrante, and Bianca Toccafondi as the paranoid Esmeralda Messori. Mario Vulpiani's polished and dynamic cinematography makes inspired use of a smoothly gliding camera and gives the picture a neat stylish look. The lively and throbbing jazzy prog-rock score by Trans Europa Express does the pulse-pounding trick. Recommended viewing for giallo fans.

Purely by coincidence, I found an old & dusty videotape in the horror closet of an acquaintance of mine and the cover displayed the bizarre title (in Dutch) "Revenge of the Cat". I had to perform a search on the actors' names in order to find out that it actually was "Watch me when I Kill" (a.k.a. "The Cat's Victims", a.k.a "The Cat with the Jade Eyes") and initially that was a pleasant surprise, since this Italian late 70's giallo has been on my purchase list for quite some time now! After seeing it, I'm even more glad that I didn't spend money on a fancy DVD-version, as it is quite a disappointing and overly confusing horror effort. Surely not the worst film of its kind, but pretty bleak compared to the works of Sergio Martino or, of course, Dario Argento. The main problem with Antonio Bido's film is that it makes absolutely no attempts to involve the viewer in the search for the maniacal killer. Someone, who stays off screen all the time and deforms his voice whenever he leaves messages to his next victims, is seemly randomly killing people and it nearly takes half of the movie before we get informed that all the victims sat in the same jury committee during a lawsuit against a criminal who recently escaped from prison. That still doesn't reveal the killer's identity, but at least you can guess along from this point. Due to the lack of background during the beginning, "Watch me when I Kill" often feels a bit slow and dull. There's not much atmosphere and ever fewer tension, and the private detective character isn't the least bit amiable. The murders, on the other hand, are lusciously gore, with a close-up slit throat, a woman suffocated in a dish of food and the must brutal strangulation I ever saw. The cinematography sadly is too dark, although that might have been due to poor videotape quality, but the score is terrific (probably the best thing about the entire film) and the climax is fairly surprising.

The Cat's Victims is reputed to have 'borrowed' all of the elements that have made other Giallos successful. Things such as black gloves, stylish murders, a pumping soundtrack and a gritty look about the film are all present, but unfortunately; so are bad dubbing, terrible acting and a very incoherent plot. Basically, The Cat's Victims is successful for the same reasons that many other Giallos down the years have been successful; but it falls down on things that it could have avoided, given that writer-director Antonio Bido has obviously seen a lot of Giallos prior to writing this one. There's two types of Giallo; namely, urban and rural; and this one belongs to the urban side of the equation. The rural often gives way to more beautiful settings, but the cityscape makes for a better set-up for a mystery. The plot here is muddled, and it follows a young woman who, after witnessing the murderer leave the scene of the crime, finds herself as his next target. Her boyfriend is taking none of this lying down, however, and makes it his business to get to the bottom of the mystery.One of the most important things about Giallo for me has to be the murder scenes. The ones featured here are very brutal and serve the film well. We get treated to scenes including someone having their face scolded on a hot oven plate, a man being strangled in the bath and a great car park scene. The death scenes are said to take influence from Argento's films, and while none of them are actually the same; the brutality is definitely there. The music for this film is a little over the top and doesn't always fit the scene, but all the same; I quite enjoyed it. It's much heavier than the usual music found in this sort of film, and it actually serves it quite well as the pumping sounds get the heart going, which is generally what you want from a thriller. As for the acting...nobody goes into a film like this expecting greatness on that front, and it's a good job because the acting here is quite rubbish. Of course, the bad dubbing doesn't help matters and it can sometimes be hard to tell which is to blame. Still, if you're a fan of Giallo; this is definitely worth seeing. I'd recommend catching the more highly rated ones first, though.