Death Walks Twice

This double feature offers Death Walks on High Heels (1971) and Death Walks at Midnight (1972), both directed by Luciano Ercoli and starring Spanish actress Nieves Navarro (under the screen name Susan Scott) and leading man Simón Andreu. Both are Italian giallo—i.e., horror films featuring beautiful women, masked killers, bloody and often sadistic murders, and stylish direction. In the first, Navarro plays a celebrity stripper in Paris who is stalked by a knife-wielding killer, and Andreu is her hot-blooded, violent boyfriend, who becomes the prime suspect when she's murdered. The film jumps from Paris to England and features a sardonic police inspector, a twisty plot, some nudity, lots of voyeurism, plenty of killings, and no shortage of suspects. The second film, which is not actually a sequel, takes a more stylistically flamboyant approach. A model (Navarro) on a psychedelic drug trip thinks she sees a violent murder in the apartment across the street, which was the site of a killing six months before. The police don't believe her and an opportunistic reporter (Andreu) thinks it's a flashback induced by the drugs, so she turns detective and discovers an insidious conspiracy. The film moves quickly through creative set pieces, wild plot twists, and a cast of quirky and erratic characters (even for a giallo). Both are considered classics of the genre, and will be of interest to horror fans. The set features separate Blu-ray and DVD copies of each film, along with extras including an audio commentary by film critic Tim Lucas, behind-the-scenes featurettes, interviews, and a booklet. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)