DVD Talk (original) (raw)
Strip Nude for Your Killer
List Price: $19.95 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
A model's lifeless body is dumped in her bathtub to 
cover up a back alley abortion gone wrong, but someone, somewhere knows that this is anything but a natural death. A figure decked out in biker gear sets out on a killing spree, and as misogynistic photographer Carlo (Nino Castelnuovo) and his lover Magda (Edwige Feneche) soon discover, the murders point back to their modeling agency.
It probably goes without saying that Strip Nude for Your Killer, a movie whose packaging has "trashy" and "sleazy" scrawled all over it, doesn't set out to be revered as an artistic triumph. There are blood or breasts -- sometimes both -- in virtually every scene, and nearly every woman who's on-screen for any length of time appears at least topless, if not completely nude. In particular, Femi Benussi is completely naked almost every second she's in front of the camera, and Edwige Fenech finds some excuse to bare her breasts in every other scene...not that I'm complaining. The title's truth in advertising, and there's a whole lot of stripping and almost as much killing. The aftermath of the murders are bloody and brutal, 
at least by 1975 standards, and a couple of the victims are found with their genitals mutilated. Strip Nude for Your Killer is determined to shock anyone who watches it -- the movie opens with a woman spreadeagle as she's under the knife for an abortion, after all -- but that seems to be just about all it makes any effort to do.
A movie called Strip Nude for Your Killer really shouldn't be this boring. I'm all for sex and splatter, but those are better used as...seasoning, not as a crutch. The movie's completely devoid of any suspense; even the scenes where you know someone's going to be butchered in the next twenty seconds aren't the least bit tense or surprising. The pacing drags, especially in two agonizingly interminable scenes: one has the morbidly obese Maurizio frantically driving around the scene with giddy, raspy, looped dialogue chattering relentlessly, and another has Carlo and Magda bickering at length about the place of milk in coffee. (I think Carlo wins by saying milk makes the coffee molecules bigger, which Madga is too dim to comprehend.) Nothing its thinly-drawn characters do follows any sort of logic. When one model is almost raped, she feels sorry for the tubby guy who just tried to bash her head in and freely offers herself to him, then consoles him when he can't perform. Magda forgives being strangled pretty freely, although admittedly, she's choked so many times throughout the movie that she's
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| Knife in one hand, deflated sex doll in the other: story of my life. |
probably used to it by the end. So, no: Strip Nude for Your Killer isn't a particularly good movie, but it's really not trying to be. It's mindless sleaze, and if you consider that to be a good thing, you'll probably find this DVD worth at least a rental.
Video: Blue Underground has done their typically remarkable job bringing Strip Nude for Your Killer to DVD. The 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen video looks great -- black levels are rock-solid, colors are nicely saturated, and crispness and clarity are strong throughout. The source material is clean, with only a few small specks visible throughout, and the movie's film grain hasn't been artificially smoothened out or clumsily compressed. The last few minutes of Strip Nude for Your Killer don't match the quality of the rest of the film, presumably because a better source doesn't exist, but it's hard to find anything disappointing with this presentation.
Audio: The Dolby Digital mono soundtrack (192Kbps) is in English, and although some of the looped dialogue is abysmal (whoever's stepped in for Franco Diogene, especially), it's fine in all the usual technical respects. There are player-generated subtitles that appear whenever Italian text is displaying on-screen, but for anyone who's hearing impaired and trying to get their sleaze fix, this DVD isn't subtitled or closed captioned otherwise.
Supplements: The 
featured extra is "Strip Nude for Your Giallo", a twelve minute interview with actress Solvi Stubing and co-writer Massimo Felisatti. Felisatti comments on the newly sexy state of Italian cinema at the time and comments on Andrea Bianchi's masochistic tendencies that prompted his name to be added to the screenplay to disperse the blame. Stubing makes a few comments about filming and speaks about her celebrity both before and after Strip Nude for Your Killer. The interviews aren't particularly in-depth, but they're entertaining enough, and the twelve minutes breeze by.
The only other extra is a nearly four minute long anamorphic widescreen theatrical trailer. The DVD is packaged in Blue Underground's trademark transparent keepcase, and the disc's twenty-four chapter stops are listed on one of the interior flaps. The disc also sports a set of animated 16x9 menus.
Conclusion: Strip Nude for Your Killer. Brilliant title. Not much of a movie. I can see why the sheer amount of nudity, the sadism of the murders, a kitschy sense of humor, and its mid-seventies misogyny may have earned Strip Nude for Your Killer its fanbase, but there isn't much else to appreciate about it. Viewers who know what they're getting into should be impressed with what Blue Underground have assembled for this DVD, but if you haven't seen Strip Nude for Your Killer before, I'd recommend sticking with a rental.