Fashion
 Crimes

Slasher Trash with Panache?

Review: JA Kerswell

This lightweight Giallo feels like a TV movie but actually played in theatres in Italy (distributed by 20th Century Fox, no less). A fashion model breaks down outside a remote but luxuriously retro-styled villa; venturing inside to use the phone, she witnesses a brutal murder. Or did she? The trouble is the police find no evidence of a crime nor a body, and the villa is clearly derelict and has been abandoned for 20 years. To make matters worse, despite no one believing her story, someone is now trying to kill her. It's not quite as bad as some reviews would make you believe, but this creaky effort would have greatly benefited from some extra exploitation touches to lift it out of its relative blandness.
 
Gloria (Teresa Leopardi) is frustrated that she isn’t taken seriously after she witnesses a man bash a woman over the head—even when she barks, “He kept hitting her! Oh, the blood!” at anyone who will listen. The philosophising Commissioner Rizzo (Anthony Franciosa) is inclined to think she was hallucinating, but after Gloria says that the same killer tried to attack her in her hospital bed, he agrees to keep tabs on the case. He tells his understandably bewildered deputy, “In our line of work, facts alone aren’t enough. Know what I mean?” The glamorous patient’s glamourous blonde doctor, Olga (Marina Giulia Cavalli), suggests to her hunky psychiatrist boyfriend Gianmarco (Miles O’Keeffe) that he treat Gloria to unravel the mystery. During sessions, Gloria is adamant that she saw the murder but cannot identify the man’s face, as he had his back to her during the crime. In Gianmarco’s professional opinion, he tells her, “It was all just a dream.”
 
Gloria tries to busy herself with work and accepts a 1960s-themed campaign with designer Sebastiano (Giuseppe Pambieri). However, after she agrees to put up another model with a similar hair-do at her house for the night, the killer mistakes her for Gloria and murders her by mistake (shoving the body in the boot of her yellow-coloured Volkswagen Bettle). Commissioner Rizzo comes to the somewhat unlikely conclusion that this murder and the one Gloria claims to have seen a few days earlier are not linked and it is just a coincidence (!). 
 
Gloria continues to model and work with Gianmarco to try to understand what happened that night while also trying to dodge a killer that no one thinks exists … 

FASHION CRIMES (the direct Italian translation is DEATH IS IN FASHION) seems curiously old-fashioned for a film released in 1989. Despite the Giallo tending to become evermore extreme in its exploitative elements since its heyday, the film is very coy, with no nudity and mostly off-screen violence. This wouldn’t matter so much if the movie committed to its absurdity—especially the frankly ludicrous explanation to its central mystery—rather than the characters seeingly accepting it with a shrug of their shoulders and a whiff of faint embarrassment by its director. Despite a handful of marginally effective suspense scenes, it also doesn’t help that the whole thing is otherwise decidedly listless, from its direction to its set design—which is ironic given its fashion backdrop. The attempts to throw red herrings into the proceedings are especially clumsy—including the revelation that Gloria’s newfound psychiatrist just happens to have inherited the very villa where she claims she saw the murder!
 
The performances are largely wooden (with O’Keeffe being the worst offender), a situation not improved by the predominantly Italian cast delivering their lines phonetically (the film was clearly shot in English). These awkward line readings occasionally elicit a chuckle, but the film never quite enters the so-bad-it's-good territory. Leopardi, as Gloria, struggles as the lead, but at least her over-emoting—almost as if she is being pursued by a moustache-twirling villain in a silent thriller—injects the movie with a sense of colour that it otherwise lacks. Franciosa attempts to bring to his role the same peppy enthusiasm he displayed in Dario Argento’s TENEBRE (1982)—but by the point he has to seek O’Keeffe’s character’s help to hypnotise a fish, it's clear he is questioning his career choices.
 
FASHION CRIMES was filmed in the summer of 1988 outside of Rome. It was directed by Bruno Gaburro (under the anglicised pseudonym Joe Brenner). Gaburro—who was married to actress Erika Blanc—tended to film erotica around this time (which again makes this film’s lack of exploitation elements odd). The script was a sole writing credit for producer Luciano Appignani. Teresa Leopardi had a short screen career that had petered out by 1991. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the film didn’t exactly enthuse Italian critics. La Stampa called it a “poor man’s” NOTHING UNDERNEATH (1985) and a “not very compelling thriller filmed on a budget.” It also noticed that it resembled a made-for-TV movie with its paucity of locations and ambition. 
 
With a better script and a director with an exuberant taste for the absurd, such as Lamberto Bava, FASHION CRIMES could have been a lot more fun. As it is, these fashions were unceremoniously destined for the bargain bin. 

BODY COUNT 3: 
Female 3 / Male 0

1. Female is bashed on the head
2. Female is found dead
3. Female is found dead

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