Italy, 1993
Review:
JA Kerswell
Whilst THE FINAL SCOOP is enveloped by the drab fashions of the early 1990s, thankfully its gleefully ridiculous plotting adds a little more familiar colour. A straight married journalist goes undercover to investigate a series of slayings of gay men plaguing the city, but his sexual identity is tested when he meets a beautiful young gigolo. Meanwhile, a killer in black leather gloves and carrying an umbrella with a spring-loaded blade at the tip continues to stalk the night. Peddling light sleaze, the film is at its most fun with its increasingly implausible plot turns that are reminiscent of earlier Italian thrillers. Although, ultimately, this isn’t really a gay giallo—rather a voyeuristic one designed primarily to titillate straight audiences.
Marco (Tomas Arana) takes his profession so seriously that he routinely puts himself in danger to get the scoop on a series of murders happening around a gay cruising ground. He also frequents primitive online message boards for tips on the identity of the killer under the screen name “Fru Fru”. He is so obsessed that his wife, Adria (Gioia Scola), suspects that he is having an affair—which she confesses to her ex-boyfriend Roberto (Gianfranco Jannuzzo), a magistrate and Marco’s best friend. She also takes her concerns to Roberto’s elderly mother (Alida Valli), who she is still friendly with. Whilst undercover, Marco takes a man, Eduardo (Enzo Saturni), back to his apartment to see if he has information—but leaves before anything can happen between them sexually. Returning to the cruising grounds, he picks up another man, Mauricio (Rodolfo Corsato), who it turns out is a thief and knocks Marco unconscious in his car. At the same time an unseen assailant beats Eduardo—who has also returned looking to hook up—to death with a mallet.
Roberto uses his influence to deflect any suspicion with the police for Marco. However, the journalist neglects to identify Mauricio from photographs as he suspects the thief may have been the only person to have seen the killer and wants to question him directly. Finding a card for a swingers club near the site of the murder, Marco visits to investigate further and meets a handsome bisexual gigolo, Andrea (Lorenzo Flaherty). To grill him for information, Marco takes Andrea back to his apartment, where, again, he passes on the opportunity to have sex. However, later, Andrea creeps into his bed, and it is suggested he performs oral sex on him whilst Marco pretends to be asleep.
Confused about his own sexuality, Marco must navigate an increasingly sleazy and dangerous world to unmask the killer who continues to murder those close to the case …
THE FINAL SCOOP (the Italian title translates as RED LIES) has an ambiguous but not overly hostile attitude towards homosexuality—although the film unsurprisingly attracted the condemnation of a number of gay groups in Italy at the time of its release. Sure, most of the gay characters are shown to either be kinky, murderous, tragic (or a combination of all those things)—and willing to put themselves in mortal danger for casual sex. And even though the commissioner calls them “sexually deviated”. It is, however, at least an improvement on the way gay men were portrayed in earlier Gialli (outside of Dario Argento’s surprisingly progressive films) as ‘freaks’ or ‘fairies’ to be laughed at. Not a great deal of improvement, but at least some. Andrea is a largely sympathetic character—although that doesn’t mean he is safe from the killer’s wrath. Whilst the attitudes to homosexuality may have changed, the film only allows itself to coyly hint at gay sex itself. Given that this is an early 90s giallo made at the height of the popularity of erotic thrillers, there is plenty of stylised straight sex and nudity between Marco and his wife and other women. However, the film ends on a questionable coda with Adria dressed in male drag to ape the look of Andrea, suggesting that Marco’s dabble in homosexuality was simply a fetish. The director has said that the film and his intentions were misjudged and that due to the controversy from various quarters, he didn’t leave the house for a month due to his embarrassment.
An obvious comparison and probable inspiration would be William Friedkin’s CRUISING (1980), where Al Pacino’s undercover cop is on the tail of a serial killer targeting gay men—and whose straight identity is tested the more he immerses himself in that world. In THE FINAL SCOOP, Marco’s investigation goes to ever more ludicrous lengths, including being propositioned by an elderly straight couple in a sex cinema and having a plastic bag forcibly put over his head by a would-be lover who tells him that auto-asphyxiation is like yoga!
Writer/director Campanella is clearly paying tribute to the genre’s classic era with the black leather gloves, abstract close-ups that provide clues, and outlandish murder devices (the umbrella with blade combo)—and he has explicitly said that Dario Argento’s DEEP RED (1975) was an inspiration, and his film contains a number of references to it. Whilst THE FINAL SCOOP isn’t as tediously grind-to-a-halt sex-heavy as many of its contemporaries, it would have perhaps benefitted from adding more of these thriller elements at the expense of Marco’s extensive erotic odyssey. However, in its second half, it really embraces its inner ridiculousness, and it’s hard not to admire its dedication to the implausible. Something that will likely be irresistible to fellow Giallo fans. A case in point is fellow journalist Lucia (Natasha Hovey), who is tasked with following Marco around and covertly filming his investigation. I say covertly, but she is using a large broadcast-quality video camera that is the size of a tank. It reaches peak daftness when she tries to be discreet in the bushes of the cruising grounds or when her camera records a close-up of a dying victim writing the initials of the killer on the windscreen of a car that could have only been taken if she was sat inside and not twenty feet away. Other implausibilities include Mauricio apologising to Marco for knocking him unconscious and stealing his money at the cruising ground, as he says he is just violently mugging gay men to help a sick friend! Admittedly, the plot doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny, but, hey, that’s all part of the fun.
The Italian press, however, appears not to have evolved much by this point. An article from La Stampa newspaper described it as: “A Straight Reporter Turns Out Homo Among Young Wrapped Studs”—and asked how a low-budget Italian feature ended up being distributed by Warner Bros theatrically in Italy “… with so many better titles on the waiting list?” An earlier article in the same paper suggested that “… the homosexual-themed thriller seems to be a strand of some appeal” after the success of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991) and BASIC INSTINCT (1992). THE LAST SCOOP was even called the Italian BASIC INSTINCT by some Italian critics. The article also mentioned some topicality because of the then recent debate in the Italian press around gay couples (although the film does not actually show any).
THE FINAL SCOOP was filmed in and around the city of Bologna in Northern Italy, with a few scenes shot in Rome. North American-born actor Tomas Arana was in Lamberto Bava’s entertainingly whacky giallo BODY PUZZLE (1992) the year before. Gioia Scola—who also produced this—had previously appeared as a lesbian in the highly stylised, futuristic Giallo OBSESSION: A TASTE OF FEAR (1987) and TOO BEAUTIFUL TO DIE (1988). Natasha Hovey will be most recognisable for fans of Italian horror for her role in DEMONS (1985). Lorenzo Flaherty appeared the same year in the made-for-TV Giallo TV series PRIVATE CRIMES—which also starred Italian genre legends Edwige Fenech and Ray Lovelock. Talking of legends, Alida Valli also appeared in that series and here in a small but pivotal role. She is, of course, best known to fans of classic Italian horror for Dario Argento’s SUSPIRIA (1977). Despite the critical and social backlash against the movie, director Pierfrancesco Campanella returned to the Giallo ten years later with BAD INCLINATION (2003).
The film's sexual politics have not aged particularly well and, admittedly, the killer’s identity, at least to me, was pretty obvious from the off. However, as an engaging thriller, whilst it may not compare favourably to some of the top-tier Gialli released in its early 1970s heyday, THE FINAL SCOOP compares very favourably indeed to many of its more dog-eared and sex-obsessed contemporaries.
BODY COUNT 6:
Female 0 / Male 6
Thank you for reading! And, if you've enjoyed this review, please consider a donation to help keep Hysteria Lives! alive! Donate now with Paypal.
THE FINAL SCOOP Italian trailer