Being a fan of Tessari's other gialli, The Bloodstained Butterfly (1971) and Puzzle (1974), and his excellent foray into the poliziesco genre Tony Arzenta (1973) I had always wanted to see Death Occurred Last Night, his first addition to the giallo canon. To my knowledge there has never been an official English friendly release of this the only available version being a poor quality English subtitled bootleg available from Video Search of Miami. Even though I own a copy of the latter I was never able to watch it because of the poor video quality. The excellent Italian DVD label Raro had intended to release the film but it never surfaced. An Italian DVD was released by Ermitage but, again, the picture quality, though better than the Video Search of Miami Bootleg, was still poor. I had intended to use this DVD as the video source for a fan DVD project but Polla of Pollanet Squad was very kindly able to supply me with a rip of a widescreen Italian television broadcast. I enhanced this high quality rip for 16x9 playback and added subtitles which were built by DjangoLi of the Lovelockandload forum. Screenshots can be found below:

As you can see, the station logo is unfortunately burnt-in to the video. I tried to remove it in VirtualDub but the result was not very impressive. Thankfully most of it has been cropped off during the 16x9 enhancement and the remaining half is not that noticeable. Below is the motion menu I created and also a screenshot of the chapter selection menu:

The film, though not as good as The Bloodstained Butterfly which would be Tessari's next entry into the giallo canon, is a gripping police procedural giallo with no straight-razor wielding black-gloved killer to be found. Berzaghi (Raf Vollone) approaches Police Commissioner Lamberti (Frank Wolff) to help find his mentally retarded daughter Donatella (Gillian Bray) who has gone missing. Lamberti, along with his assistant Mascaranti (Gabriele Tinti), begin to search for Donatella whilst Berzaghi continues his own investigation until they both uncover the shocking truth. Death Occurred Last Night is very well acted and well executed. It is a pity that Tessari did not make anymore gialli, his offerings are more thoughtful than the majority. Obviously, it comes highly recommended.

Some of you may have noticed that this is my tenth fan DVD. It is quite fitting that number ten is a Tessari film as my first fan DVD was a fan dub of The Bloodstained Butterfly. I have been quite busy producing fan DVDs over the past few weeks. Look out for posts detailing my 16x9 enhancements of:

Blazing Magnum (1976)
The Sweet Body of Deborah (1968)
Death in Haiti aka Tropic of Cancer (1972)
Spirits of Death (1972)

My next fan DVD will be an English dub of Luigi Zampa's little seen giallo/poliziesco The Masters (1975) starring Franco Nero. I also have a few other surprises up my sleeve.

I wrote about this forgotten film last year after watching it via a murky avi file. I was very pleased to find that someone has recently built a fan composite DVD of the film using a widescreen French television broadcast and audio from a US VHS. The DVD also includes the original drive-in trailer. Screenshots from the disc are a revelation, no more struggling to see what is going on during the night time scenes.

The only downside is that DVD is only available on the torrent site Cinemageddon. I am no fan of torrent downloads as they seem to take an age but I am currently downloading it. Hopefully it will be finished tomorrow. As the the DVD is non-anamorphic I will be using VirtualDub to crop the video and enhance it for 16x9 playback. I am very much looking forward to seeing this again. Here's hoping that an official DVD release will surface soon.

UPDATE 21/07/08

After nearly two days of downloading I was finally able to build my version of this great fan DVD and am quite happy with the results. I enhanced both the main feature and the original drive-in trailer for 16x9 playback and created some simple menus. Below are some screeshots from my DVD:

I had been meaning to purchase the Italian DVD of Illustrious Corpses (Cadaveri Eccellenti) for some time only to recently find that it had gone out print. Typical! After months of searching a copy finally showed up on eBay.it; a great resource for those hard to find Italian DVDs and VHS. As the DVD has no English options I was keen to build a fan DVD of this forgotten film. DjangoLi of the lovelockandload forum managed to locate a subtitle file online and was kind enough to make it available for download. Jim Quigley, who built the English subtitles, certainly deserves a pat on the back as this is a dialogue heavy film and it must have took an age to subtitle.

The DVD did not take long to build and was my first attempt at making a dual layer DVD. I also used my new favourite software, VirtualDubMod, to crop and 16x9 enhance the thirty minute extra feature "An interview with Franceso Rosi". Even though the extra feature does not have any English options I still thought that it would be worthy of inclusion. Again, I created a motion menu and used some of the shots of the "Illustrious Corpses" as the background pictures for the other menus. They look quite effective. Below is a video of the motion menu and some some screenshots taken from my fan DVD:

I have not had time to watch the film yet but even though it is little discussed it is one that is highly regarded by those who have seen it. It is also quite hard to classify: is it a giallo, a poliziesco or an Arthouse film? From what I have seen while building the DVD it bears some similarities to Investigation of a Citizen Under Suspicion (1970), The Masters (1975) and some of the other Italian political thrillers from this period. Plot wise the film is about a detective who is investigating the murders of several respected judges only to find that the Italian Communist Party are involved. Hopefully I will get round to watching it over the next few weeks.

Next up will be a16x9 version of Death in Haiti (aka Tropic of Cancer, 1972) using the colourful widescreen Eire VHS as the source. I had a tinker around with the video in VirtualDubMod and was quite impressed with the results. I might also have a few surprises up my sleeve over the coming month. Stay tuned!

Jay from the lovelockandload forums recently sent me a widescreen, uncut screener of this underrated 1980s giallo. The film itself is based on the unsolved 'Monster of Florence' murders which began in 1968 and were to influence a certain Thomas Harris who created the infamous character Dr Hannibal Lecter. Most reviews of the film tend to focus on the nastier elements such as the graphic murder scenes but there is more to this rarely seen thriller. In style it is more reminiscent of a television film than any of the quintessential gialli of the late 1960s and 1970s.

Christiana, a criminology student researching the case, becomes highly involved in the case, receiving threatening phone calls and begins to suspect that her boyfriend Alex might be the murderer. But is he? There are some nicely shot scenes such as the one where Christiana is terrorised in her apartment and the seance scene, which although seemingly out of place with the rest of the film leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. The murder sequences are well filmed and very realistic. Even the most desensitized horror fan might wince during the final scene. Surprisingly scripted by legendary giallo screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi and well directed by Camillo Teti, whilst no masterpiece there is much more this film than its violent set-pieces.

After a long wait I first viewed the film last month via an English subbed avi made by lovelockandload member Luca Caneli. The source for the avi was the fullscreen Italian VHS which, although uncut, was overly dark, so much so that it was difficult to make out what was going on during the darker scenes. The widescreen screener I received was in similar shape seemingly taken from a print that was not in pristine condition. After viewing the fan DVDs of Queens of Evil (1970) and Formula for a Murder (1985) which used widescreen VHS as the source and were 16x9 enhanced and slightly remastered I have wanted to try my hand at producing something similar. The Killer is Still Among Us presented the ideal opportunity for such an effort.

To 16x9 enhance and remaster the video I used VirtualDubMod, a modified version of the original VirtualDub software which offers MPEG-2 support. I was surprised how easy it was to crop and 16x9 enhance the video and also alter the contrast and overall brightness of the image. Within two hours I had edited, mastered and encoded the new MPEG-2 file. Unfortunately it is still overly dark during the night scenes but is now a little better than the original source. Subtitles were a pain to synchronise as per usual but they seem to be timed correctly. Again I used DVD Lab to build the final DVD and create a motion menu. Below are some screenshots taken from my DVD:

And here is the motion menu:

Next up will be fan sub DVD of the forgotten poliziesco Illustrious Corpses (1976). I was finally able to purchase the out of print Italian DVD and hopefully it will arrive this week. Also on my list is Duccio Tessari's Death Occured Last Night (1970). I would like to work on some other 16x9 enhanced versions of gialli taken from widescreen VHS. Any suggestions?

As many followers of this blog will know, I have spent over five months trying to build a fan DVD of Anima Persa (1977) using firstly the Czech DVD and then the Spanish DVD of the film. DjangoLi, a member of the excellent Lovelockandload forum who built the subtitles used on my previous fan DVD of Pensione Paura (1978), kindly pointed out that there was a fan built subtitle file currently available for Anima Persa. I really do hate building subtitle files. There is no simple way to produce them and it can take forever. Having one to work with obviously makes the job much easier. So my thanks go out to the original subtitler McDuck, whoever you may be, thank you so much for your excellent work! All I had to do with McDuck's subtitles was resynch them using Subtitle Workshop to fit with the print used for the Spanish DVD and that was that.

Like my Pensione Paura DVD, I took the 4x3 letterbox video file and converted it to 16x9 using DVD Rebuilder. The result is not exactly amazing but it is a major step up in quality from the Video Search of Miami bootleg that has been in circulation for a few years. I also decided to use motion menus for the first time rather than just copy the menus from the source DVD. Thanks go to Julian for his work on the logo used on the main menu. I am usually not one for flashy menus but I have to say that I am quite happy with how the motion menu looks. Below are some screenshots taken from the DVD:

And here is the motion menu taken from the DVD:

So enough about the DVD, what about the film? Anima Persa (which translates into English as Lost Soul and is also known by title The Forbidden Room) is generally regarded as a giallo even if it does not follow traditional conventions. If anything, Anima Persa, like Pensione Paura, allows to consider the giallo as a movement or a cycle of film rather than a distinct genre (a point I intend to discuss further in a forthcoming article). The basic plot of the film involves Tino, a young man visiting his aunt and uncle's house in Venice, who finds his uncle's insane brother locked away in their attic. This discovery leads Tino to find out more about his unusual relatives and the mystery of the man in the attic. This is a tense, well directed Italian thriller that certainly deserves a wider audience.

I had intended my next fan DVD to be Murder in an Etruscan Cemetery but the audio needs quite a lot of work and I just don't have the time for it at the moment. I also have Death Occurred Last Night on my list but apparently there is a nice quality Italian television recording of the film out there which is miles better than the very poor Italian DVD. This might mean that, with help from DjangoLi, my next project will be Illustrious Corpses, another little seen Italian thriller.