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Released by: Shameless Films
Released on: 2/23/09
Director: Antonio Bido
Cast: Corrado Pani, Paola Tedesco, Franco Citti, Fernando Cerulli, Giuseppe Addobbati, Gianfranco Bullo, Jill Pratt
Year: 1977
The Movie:
Directed by Antonio Bido, the same man behind The Blood Stained Shadow, 1977's Watch Me When I Kill is a decent giallo that pulls heavily from the influence of Alfred Hitchcock's films with a few nods to Dario Argento's cinema along the way.
A woman named Mara (Paolo Tedesco) stops off at the drug store to pick up her latest prescription, the pharmacist tells her to come back later. What she doesn't realize is that the actual pharmacist is lying dead just out of site and she's now a key witness. Things go from bad to worse for poor Mara when the man who killed the pharmacist realizes that he'd better take care of her as well, as she's the only one who can place him at the crime scene.
Thankfully for Mara, she can turn to her boyfriend, Lukas (Corrado Pani), for help. He sets out trying to find out who his lady friend's new stalker is and what it is that he wants, but the more he uncovers, the two begin to realize that there's a lot more to this than the simple slaying of a neighborhood drug store employee.
While a little muddled in terms of plot and pacing, Watch Me When I Kill does benefit from a few memorably grisly kill scenes - a man is strangled in the bathtub, a woman has her face shoved a hot plate, and a throat is graphically sliced open. While it's hard to care too much for Mara and Lukas since their fairly cardboard in terms of character development, the film manages to entertain regardless. The film could have also benefitted a fair bit from a better motive for the killer and more involvement on his end - he simply pops up here and there to kill people, black gloves and all, but doesn't really have much of a sense of menace of purpose outside of standing as an antagonistic plot device.
What really helps the film quite a bit and elevates to 'slightly above average' giallo status is the tense and heavy score that comes courtesy of Trans Europa Express which really makes the murder scenes and suspenseful moments a lot more effective than they probably really should have been. On top of that is some nice camera work that does a good job of making the urban settings fairly claustrophobic while opening up the more rural settings to nice effect. That said, there's nothing here that Argento didn't do earlier or better for that matter.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The negative has gone missing in action so pretty much every transfer for Watch Me When I Kill is going to be taken from a video master or a theatrical print. With that in mind, Shameless' anamorphic 2.35.1 widescreen print looks, well, okay. There are some obvious compression artifacts in the darker scenes (maybe a result of this being a test disc and not final product?) as well as a far bit of noticeable print damage present throughout the scene but by and large things are definitely watachable. Compare this to the VCI DVD and it's an obvious improvement, but it is still far from perfect. Regardless, high fives for the cats at Shameless for tracking down what appears to be an uncut and OAR print and transferring it to DVD.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono English language dubbed track is sufficient. The dialogue is easy enough to understand even if there's a bit of background hiss here and there. It would have been nice to see an Italian language track included, but this was likely all recorded in post anyway so it doesn't matter that much. What does matter is that the absolutely KICK ASS soundtrack from Trans European Express sounds very nice here and will have you ordering the soundtrack in no time, and rightly so. The soundtrack rules. Deal with it.
Available as a subtitle track is the exclusive Shameless text commentary track courtesy of the Wilson Brothers (not Luke and Owen). Aside from making some welcome J&B references and throwing in some referentially humorous remarks, this track talks about the box office success of the film and notes some undeniable similarities between this picture and those that preceded it from Argento and Hitchcock.
Aside from that, check out Watch Me When I Tell (19:49), an extensive on camera video interview with director Antonio Bido who discusses how and why he decided to make a giallo film when he did as well as his thoughts on the script, cast, performances and overall legacy of the film. He openly admits the title was intended to cash in on the success of Argento's films as well as the influence that some of the Hitchcock movie's he had seen prior had on his picture (he states Psycho as a direct influence). This is a pretty interesting interview and it's nice to see Bido given a chance to talk about his best known film and about his career in general. Giallo fans will enjoy this, no doubt.
From there, check out the international trailer for the film, the American trailer for the film, some international and American titles sequences, a still gallery, and trailers for other Shameless DVD releases. Bido also provides a brief intro for the film. Animated menus and chapter selection are also included. Shameless, in the past, have included reversible cover art - this review is based on a test disc and no cover art was provided, so we've no idea if that is the case this time around or not.
The Final Word:
A decent enough giallo that borrows more than it contributes to the genre, Watch Me When I Kill receives a very solid release from Shameless.
Want more info? Hit the Shameless UK site by clicking here!