Italy, 1987
Review:
JA Kerswell
The director of this futuristic later 80s Giallo wanted every shot in his film to look like it could be off a neon-soaked LP cover. Fashion models are being slain in kinky bondage snuff movies. A horny bisexual fashion photographer becomes an unlikely amateur detective to solve the murders, but her efforts to discover the truth keep on being sidelined by her supercharged sex drive. Long on style but short on thrills, Piccio Raffanini’s OBSESSION: A TASTE FOR FEAR still has enough Gonzo erotic weirdness for fans of the genre and the era to check it out.
Diane (Virginia Hey) is a decadent high-end fashion snapper who becomes excited when her models are scared or injure themselves during a session. She is annoyed by any of them who find this sadomasochistic make-believe inherently ridiculous—and expresses her frustration to her assistant Paul (Dario Parisini), who reassures her that “Even an idiot can convey fear.” Her other assistant, Valerie (Gioia Scola), is a lovesick lesbian who hopes to rekindle her romance with Diane after she moved on from their brief affair.
The glamorous photographer—who pours champagne over grapes for her breakfast—is invited to a party by her ex-husband, George (Gérard Darmon), who makes a living creating bondage videos with his live-in lover Pearl (Eva Grimaldi). He has concocted a plan for Diane to seduce a beer magnet (who is continually flanked by what looks like The Blues Brothers) for reasons not entirely clear. However, Diane’s eyes wander at the party, and she briefly becomes infatuated with Teagan (Teagan Morrison), a female bodybuilder who she beds. The next morning, she photographs Teagan in her studio and becomes excited when her muscular model falls and cuts her shoulder. Despite her annoyance at Diane clearly initiating the accident, Teagan is pleased with the photographs and agrees to come back the next day.
However, she receives a mystery phone call that night and Teagan tells her flatmate Kim (Carin McDonald) that she has been offered a lot of money for a porno bondage shoot. The next morning, Diane is annoyed that she does not turn up to the arranged session and goes to her flat where she meets Kim and agrees to shoot her instead. Teagan’s body is found dumped outside the city, and a videodisc soon turns up, showing her tied to a chair and being menaced by a woman holding a knife. Given their proclivities, George Michael look-a-like Lieutenant Arnold (Carlo Mucari) is immediately suspicious of Diane, her ex-husband George and everyone in their orbit. Can Diane keep her clothes on long enough to clear her name and find out who killed Teagan and who is targeting her other models?
OBSESSION: A TASTE FOR FEAR is a veritable fever dream—something exacerbated by the whole film taking place at night. Many later 80s Gialli are exercises in style over substance, where the pop video style visuals and erotica are deemed more important than compelling story-telling and traditional thriller aspects—and that is obviously a conscious choice here. The film sets itself apart by being staged in some kind of near future. It adds little to the plot but further amps up its woozy weirdness. Diane drives a futuristic silver buggy and uses a touch screen to choose her outfit for the day. Even Lt Arnold shoots a laser gun at the killer (albeit only once). In the film’s funniest futuristic moment, George is tasked to use his high-tech video equipment in a botched attempt to enhance a video still of the killer that ends up looking like Michael Jackson’s mugshot!
To add to this sense of strangeness, the film nods back to Film Noir—with Diane providing occasional Gumshoe’sque narration. There is also a scene in a futuristic club, where women are dressed in 1940s clothes and sing jazz standards and old George Gershwin numbers such as The Man I Love. The film also features an appearance by singer Kid Creole as a speedy bookie named Non-Stop—Creole was popular in the earlier part of the 80s with his band the Coconuts for their Big Band Sound and his Zootsuit looks. Admittedly, a Grace Jones number does appear to drag us into an 1980s sci-fi future.
As is expected with this type of erotic thriller, it will depend on your personal tastes as to how titillating you’ll find this. As per usual, the guys tend to be middle-aged and perpetually fully clothed. Whereas more-or-less, every female character disrobes and indulges in various types of frottage—and in one instance just after watching a snuff film. The film’s bitten knuckles and stifled moans become a bit tedious after a while, but it is all very pretty to look at. However, like many Italian erotic thrillers of the time that try and push the envelope, it can’t help but indulge in the old look at the 'freaks’ angle—be it the little people dancers, the lesbian body builder or the gays dressed as satyrs at the appropriately titled Agony and Extasy nightclub. Given this, it isn’t that much of a surprise as to who the killer is when they are revealed with little dramatic flare at the end of the movie.
The character of Diane was potentially interesting—a character turned on by the fantasy aesthetics of violence but repelled by the reality. However, the film isn’t really interested in developing this beyond opportunities for erotic liaisons and kinky visuals. Australian model-turned-actress Virginia Hey does the best she can, but it is difficult to really sympathise with her protagonist as her character is so inconsistent and aloof. Hey had previously appeared in MAD MAX 2 (1981) and was in the Bond movie THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS the same year as this. The beautiful Gioia Scola, who plays Diane’s assistant, was something of a regular in erotic Gialli at the time, having appeared in EVIL SENSES (1986) and who went on to appear in the equally style-obsessed TOO BEAUTIFUL TO DIE (1988). Jo Ann Smith, who appears in the same year’s STAGEFRIGHT, has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it role. Curiously, Kid Creole told the Italian press he took the role after turning down offers to play shady characters because he was worried what his young teen audience would think of them—did he read the rest of the script for this?
This was writer/director Piccio Raffanini’s lone feature. He made his name on television and directed music videos and concerts by artists such as Talking Heads and Nina Hagen (which helps explain the film’s aesthetics). Raffanini said he admired the pop music video work of Julien Temple and Russel Mulchay, as well as other North American directors—with Brian De Palma’s DRESSED TO KILL (1980) being an obvious inspiration. Although he was very keen to point out that the film had a distinctly European sensibility. He described OBSESSION: A TASTE FOR FEAR as “… a rock thriller with eroticism.” He told La Stampa newspaper in 1987 that traditional thriller filmmaking had exhausted its possibilities and didn’t interest him: “You see, this is a film in which the things that happen are not so important as the consequences of what happens, so it is a film all about images, about the visual, with photography created by Romano Albani with maximum excitement, very colourful, very violent and disturbing.”
OBSESSION: A TASTE OF FEAR fails as a thriller. However, if you surrender yourself to its languid indulgence and chic visuals, there is entertainment to be had.
BODY COUNT 4:
Female 3 / Male 1
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OBSESSION: A TASTE FOR FEAR US trailer