 Thanks for checking out this movie review video. This is for the 1971 Italian giallo film release This case of the scorpions tail now this one's by Sergio Martino. So hopefully by now I keep forgetting to do this hopefully by now when this video comes out I actually have a playlist on my youtube channel for Sergio Martino films because I know I've talked about doing that and then I just keep forgetting to do that But other than that I actually have an entire playlist of just tons of giallo film reviews So you can check those out if you care about something like that and if you're checking this review out I would assume you probably are at least somewhat interested in some giallo films Anyway, the case of the scorpions tail from 1971 directed by Sergio Martino Who also did some other films such as your vices a locked room and only I have the key that is the longest title All the colors of the dark the strange vice of mrs. Ward torso the suspicious death of a minor and American rickshaw just to name a few Written by Eduardo Manzanos who also wrote scripts for satanic with a K The strange vice of mrs. Ward night of the devils and a lot of westerns That was a big thing back then a lot of Italian westerns Saro Scavelini who also wrote the script for your vices a locked room and only I have the key All the colors of the dark and of the pleasure of the torment and American rickshaw, which I still need to review that and Ernesto Gestaldi who wrote scripts for the vampire and the ballerina Werewolf in a girl's dormitory the whip and the body which is a boba film and I have a review for that Your vice I have the your vice is sorry your vice is locked room and only I have the key I've said so many times now all the colors of the dark the case of the bloody iris the strange vice of mrs. Ward torso the suspicious death of a minor and Yes, that's that's it for now George Hilton stars in this film as Peter Lynch. Yes, the Insurance Investigator who ends up being the killer There you go. This is a spoiler review because it's very old. So just know that George Hilton stars in this is Peter Lynch And he's also been in the films the moment to kill the strange vice of mrs. Ward all the colors of the dark My dear killer the two faces of fear the case of the bloody iris and the killer must kill again Just to name some of his horror related films now. I like him personally what I've seen him in I think he does a very excellent job So I was very happy to see that he was in this one and there was someone else who shows up in this one Who I've seen in other things as well playing inspector Stavros was Luigi pastilly Who's also been in the iguana with the tongue of fire, which I've not seen yet a bay of blood Which I love and have a review for and you guessed it your vice is a locked room and only I have the key How many times am I gonna say that during this review? Oh my gosh This is actually considered to be one of Sergio Martino's best films now after watching it It's a pretty it's a solid it's a solid good giallo film And I definitely enjoyed it especially on a one-time through watch I don't know how much rewatch value it's really gonna have but it's solid enough I'll definitely rewatch it at some point, but I would say in comparison to other stuff Martino's done I think the strange vice of mrs. Ward is definitely better than this film Mainly story-wise This looks good Looks beautiful not just from the standpoint of the actual filmmaking because Martino does a good job His his cinematography is really good. The directing is really good acting is really good And just the locations that they shoot at especially at the very end on the ocean with the boat and the All the rocks on the you know on the coast that they go into Looks beautiful awesome But then also within the city all the architecture and that's something that I love about Giallo films in general is there's a lot of that that ends up being shown in these films and it just makes me want to live in 1970s Italy it really does that's part of the reason I love giallo film so much Pretty boring beginning of this film unfortunately with the lady in the red hat who we Learn is Lisa or Lisa as they say her name She's just walking as the opening credits are happening. That's really boring But you do get to see a decent amount of the city. So that's kind of cool, but I was like Is this it like she's just walking but you know Older films that kind of took their time a little bit more I laughed at the really fake airplane that they end up showing here when it's it's going between that What's supposed to be the airplane, you know flying and then intercut with the scenes of Lisa having sex with her Male companion who is obviously not her husband and then baboom their plane explodes Which we find out in the end even though it's in question for a bit Her husband was on most likely and thus they were gonna do a sequel to this and they plan that out Yeah, but the intercutting was was funny just because the plane looks so fake and stupid So I laughed at that I had to Philip blackmailing Lisa is a really good scene, especially when they show the black gloved Killer type looking guy in the trench coat watching them talk And then obviously that's followed up with Philip and it ending up being killed And we find out much later that that was kind of the henchmen of laura So laura had the same idea as peter ends up having in the film To go after lisa for the one million dollars in insurance money for the Life insurance that her husband had And they both knew at that point they were both kind of vying for her So actually I think for that reason it might be good to do a rewatch to kind of see like How they're both going after her at the same time because they both know that she's Withdrawn that million dollars And has it in cash on her The music when lisa enters the ransacked apartment Is a series of discordant noises that add to the tension very very well And it makes you feel like something is going to happen Now this is the one where something obviously did happen because that's where she finds philip has been stabbed So that discordant music making you feel like something's going to happen It happens so it worked really really well and it's kind of unsettling at the same time that music So I think it worked for what she eventually finds which is you know him crawling on the ground bleeding like crazy Not sure why peter thinks introducing himself to lisa is a good idea He's supposed to be investigating her now This is when you just think because it's early on that he's just there to do his job For the insurance company, which he is that's why he's there But he you learn by the end obviously he had his own motives because he's like, you know I'm sick of my job and all the money I save for my job and I don't get any extra money So I'm going to take some of that extra money for myself. So But I just didn't understand why he introduces himself to her It doesn't make like an ounce of sense He's supposed to be investigating her and even if even if he's not going to do that And he's going to go through this plan. He shouldn't want her to know who he is So I think they do that Within the script just to make sure that people feel like he's legit in what he's doing And not really trying to hide things necessarily. They don't want them to look too suspicious So I think that's why they had him introduce himself. So it makes sense from that standpoint But from kind of like a would he really do this standpoint? It doesn't make sense in my opinion Interesting reveal with laura saying that she was about to marry lisa's husband Which makes the timing of his death extremely suspect Um that is a really good setup because it's one of those things where you're already getting suspicious of lisa But then all of a sudden Boom another twist Her husband had another lover and they were going to end up getting married Which means that she was going to end up getting that insurance money when he died. So then it brings up the question Did she have plans to have him killed as well? Because in the end you find out that she had plans to have lisa killed because she wanted that money Now did she only want that money because lisa's husband was gone? Or did she always plan to get her hands on that money by offing lisa's husband after she married him? Makes you think I definitely expected lisa to get killed much earlier in the film But she does get killed especially when she got that money out. I was just like you're really making yourself A target right now by pulling out all that money and plenty of people knew that she was getting that money because I think there was actually a I think there's a part where they actually showed there was a Newspaper article about it at the same time. So a lot of people knew that she had that money The focus on john handing a crisp bill to the guy at the restaurant is meant to kind of drum up suspicion As him as the potential killer But then it's followed by peter catching someone at laura's place When john went to talk to laura And I believe that was then revealed that it was laura's henchman who had killed philip So that kind of then takes some of the suspicion off of john But then I kept thinking back to that like they zoom in on him using that like crisp bill because it looks a lot like the Like crisp bills that were given to lisa when she took out that million dollars. So Um Like most giallo films there are plenty of moments where they're trying to just drum up suspicion in many different Directions in order to kind of throw people off which I thought they did a pretty good job because I didn't guess that it would end up being peter I really didn't Cleo casually drops the idea for lisa's husband not being dead Which is exactly what I thought was going to end up being the case I thought the killer was going to be your husband because there was a little bit of suspicion Especially with cleo dropping that saying that Oh, well, or maybe he's just not even dead in the first place and I was like Oh, I think they placed that in there and did it like kind of quick As a way to be like the information was always there But no in the end it just ended up being another one of those little tidbits to get you to think otherwise Move you further away from peter as a suspect So based on the conversation in the rain laura was planning to have lisa taken out But someone else got there first which was peter we talked about The slow motion scene of laura running to the door as the lock is being jimmied is a really good tense scene I love that scene. That might be one of my favorite scenes in the film Between the music and how they handle that the slow motion and the physical acting of the the actress who played laura I thought that was really cool It's just like going back and forth between like the lock being jimmied and her like no Going for it. That was a cool moment. I really like that one The spray of laura's blood on the window when she eventually does get killed is awesome They kind of do the shot from behind into the side where he's putting it You see that he's going for the knife in her neck and you just see the spray of the blood coming out on the window It looked really good. And then they show it from the other side Of the window very very cool I Like how it's an automatic assumption. It's a sex maniac when women end up getting killed now. It's not just in this film It's in giallo in general It's always this thing when more than one woman has been killed Well, sometimes depending on the film even when one woman's just been killed. They're like, ah, must be a sex maniac out killing again So I just thought that was funny that came up in this one because it happens all the time uh, the paprika can the moment where Cleo's has cooked for uh, peter and she made some goulash And it's still in the pot and he almost kind of like has to spit it out Because the paprika is too uh, too strong and then you find the entire can of paprika in there I felt like that was very over the top like nobody would do that like first of all some Uh, most people probably wouldn't drop an entire can in there, but even if they did by accident I'm sure they would know it and they wouldn't just leave it in there. It was just kind of It was dumb. I think it was put in there as like a way to kind of work towards them than Getting to having sex, but there's so many ways to get characters to have sex That are better than that in my opinion The sideways camera there was this weird sideways camera thing that they did During a conversation between peter and stavros. I thought it was terrible It looked bad and it was just severely distracting It was very hard to get like your bearings when you're trying to watch that scene Because it's literally sideways and it kept going like between the two of them I hated that scene. I had a big problem with it It's p. Oh, oh, this is a question that just occurred to me while I was watching the film And I wonder if this occurred to anyone else because it was just like what the hell Is peter's employer paying for all this time there because he's sure it's treating it like it's an actual vacation And not like he's working between kind of leisurely going around and spending so much time with clio Just having sex or just hanging out Sure, he shows up at all these crime scenes, but at this point, you know, lisa's been dead So what's the deal like does he even have a job at that point? Because I don't think he would actually be working with the police because he's not a police officer I mean, I don't obviously know how Uh, insurance, uh, investigating really works But especially not in italy in the 1970s But it just seems weird to me that his employer would be like, yeah, just stick around there I guess because it was a million dollars It was so high stakes that they wanted him to do all the work he could But regardless, he was still just treating it like a vacation And I guess in retrospect that was probably because he knew where the million dollars was It was in that underwater cave, which is an awesome hiding place Not just from the standpoint of it was smart because it was very well hidden But from the standpoint of it looked great for the film, especially the inside shot Yeah, I really like that about it. So Oh peter Why would clio think peter wouldn't know when she left the boat to go see what he was doing when he was Diving under with that bag which ended up being the money that he was hiding She got up and she like snuck out. She's like, he'll never know that I left the boat Well, the boat isn't that large and they were sleeping like right there And she was probably going to be gone for a long time. Also, he probably would have heard the noise of her getting into the water Obviously that did happen because he ends up showing up behind her while she's in the little Kind of like cave grotto where he had everything hidden So I just I was just like this is dumb. How does she think that he's not going to wake up? peter's plan was pretty intricate down to the duplication of the cufflinks Which is where the title obviously of the film comes from The case of the scorpions tale how he was like, I'm gonna put one of them at this crime scene I'm gonna put another at this crime scene and kind of try and throw everyone off So he basically went to killing additional people just to keep the ruse up and kind of distract Like this film tries to distract the audience in order to get away So it was cool Rough moment for cleo when peter lets her know she didn't actually call anyone for help When he's coming at her the whole plan has been revealed and she's trying to Fend him off and she thinks that she makes an sos call basically and he reveals Oh, you know, you actually have to turn it on in order to make that happen I thought it was like a that's a rough moment But she gets that spear gun nails him in the shoulder, which I thought was cool I actually literally made a noise when that happened I was like oh because that would that would hurt that would hurt The camera work through and around the rock at the end is pretty great That is one thing that surgery martino has done a lot in this film a lot of camera movement It's not really sitting still a whole lot Lots and lots of movement kind of around characters and moving with characters and moving around scenes The best of which is what I just talked about when he it was moving like you're looking at Peter coming for Cleo Through so like a hole in the rocks and then it kind of like moves back and pans to the side and you see her hiding Behind the rocks and then it kind of pans up a great camera movement very engaging for the audience and it just it looks great And like I said the the camera was pretty much just about always moving in this film, which is wonderful It really does keep you engaged Also to point out to kind of go with what I just said that there are a lot of camera shots that are end up being through things Or around things like objects And I think that gives it this interesting kind of like voyeuristic element to the film Which I think is cool in in two separate ways in one way because it's almost kind of like a little bit of the Killers POV type thing But also just from the standpoint of like you're an observer of what's going on Like it makes you feel like it's a little more realistic. It kind of sucks you in more for that reason Uh, there's a lot of focus on eyes in the film now. This is done in some other giallo films Um, most recently I'm trying to remember what the most recent one was that I watched that had that to it Was it knife of ice? I think it may have been by Umberto Lindsey. He had a lot of focus on eyes in that one um People but also the dolls and the painting in laura's attic That had a lot of focus on the eyes of the dolls and the painting of that creepy person whose eyes were just like this It was nuts and then that glass in the eye scene With the bottle Nailed in the in the head and that glass in the eye. Oh, that was an awesome scene gore wise kill wise That was a wonderful scene. It looked really really great, but such a focus on eyes This is the ultimate as far as being sick of your job goes since peter explained How much money he saved for his insurance company? It is the ultimate to go to this length of Hating your job and being jealous that you're saving all this money for this job And you're not getting enough. So um, it's Not the best motivation. I've seen in a giallo film. It's definitely not the worst. It's kind of Little in between ish So, uh, that's basically all I have to say about the film. I'd love to hear what you have to say about it So put some comments down here and let's talk about it. But out of five stars with half stars in play This one's solid I'm gonna give it a three star rating. I was between three and three and a half because of the story, but Now, you know what? I want to bump it up to three and a half actually just because The camera work is so good and the story is pretty solid and I didn't guess who it was in the end So I'm going three and a half on this one. This one's solid Um, quite like it. So like I said, let's talk. Let's get nerdy and uh, yeah Do me a quick favor though hit that subscribe button That is your best way to repay me if you like this video or any video I have ever done I really do appreciate that anytime anyone subscribes. I'm just trying to build this nerdy horror Film community so we can keep talking about these awesome films And also hit the notification bell button because that way you'll know whenever I'm putting up new videos Whether it's an in-depth review like this one of my no spoiler reviews for newer films or an unboxing video haul video Opinion piece any of that stuff. So I'm doing a lot of different videos. So Regardless, I appreciate you taking your time to watch this and until next time keep it brutal. Oh And this is what I watched it on I I meant to do that in the in the beginning But here you go the case of the scorpion's tail on arrow release on blu-ray. So anyway Once again, keep it brutal