Census Bloodbath: Now That's What I Call Scissoring

Year:
1985
Director:
Carlo Vanzina
Cast:
Tom Schanley, Renée Simonsen, Donald Pleasence
Run Time:
1 hour 33 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Nothing Underneath (Sotto il vestito niente) follows Yellowstone park ranger Bob Crane (Tom Schanley) traveling to Milan after having an intense bout of twin telepathy where he senses that his sister Jessica (Nicola Perring) is in grave danger while on a modeling job. When he finds that she's missing, he teams up with the local police commissioner, Commissario Danesi (noted Italian Donald Pleasence, and if I need to tell you that he's Dr. Loomis from the Halloween franchise, you probably shouldn't be starting your journey through this blog with my Nothing Underneath review).

Naturally, because we're in giallo territory after all, a black-gloved murderer wielding a lethally sharp pair of scissors is hunting down models in the meantime. But is Jessica one of the victims, or is she herself the killer? And will Bob's simmering flirtation with model Barbara (Renée Simonsen) ever come to a boil?

Analysis: If you've even seen a single giallo movie, you've probably seen between one and nineteen Italian models getting murdered. That's just statistics. So for Nothing Underneath to bust out this premise a good two decades after Mario Bava's The Man Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace kickstarted the genre is a little redundant. And guess what Blood and Black Lace was about, in the first place. A murderer hunting down models, of course! 

I'm just saying, this story is played out. So it's a good thing that Nothing Underneath is pretty fucking weird on top of everything else it's delivering. It's not necessarily weird in a way that would shock a seasoned viewer of gialli, but it's got a lot of beautifully florid stuff going on around the edges. 

For instance, that twin telepathy thing, which causes the unusually sexy protagonist Bob (by that I mean it's unusual for men to be sexy in giallo movies) to nearly tumble off a bridge when he goes into a fugue state. Or the apartment building that randomly has a spinning statue on the lawn in front of it. Or the fact that Bob convinces a telegram operator to bend the rules by helping her decide the best place to put her hamster. That is not an innuendo.

The extremely pleasant thing about watching a weird giallo movie is that the filmmaking craft is almost always on point, so you don't even have the excuse of the movie being shoddily made to explain any strangeness in the storytelling. A weird giallo just boldly proclaims its weirdness while looking from top to bottom like a major motion picture.

Give or take some audio issues, that it very much the case with Nothing Underneath. There are no Argento-esque flourishes to the cinematography that make it truly breathtaking, but cinematographer Beppe Maccari shows a real facility with landscapes. And composer-of-note Pino Donaggio (Dressed to Kill, Tourist Trap, Seed of Chucky, Night Game, Phantom of Death, Crawlspace, The Fan) provides the whole thing with a rich, lush score.

So that's basically why I enjoyed watching Nothing Underneath even though it's tedious as all hell. You'd be a fool for going into a giallo movie expecting the murder mystery to be tightly plotted, but we are forced to sit through so much of the investigation, and we get very little in the way of slasher kills for our trouble.

There are just enough murders that I couldn't strike it off my list for this project completely, but they are doled out at a snail's pace and generally disappoint once they do arrive. There are a few spurts of blood here and there, but the kill that should be a showpiece is placed delicately offscreen, and the ones we do get to see are presented in a cursory, almost resentful manner. 

[SPOILERS ABOUND FOR THE REST OF THIS REVIEW]

If you want to take a bath in mid-80s vibes, then this is the movie for you. If you want to watch a compelling slasher, pick literally anything else. At least Nothing Underneath has the decency to end with some of its best material. There is a prolonged flashback that involves a Russian roulette game gone wrong, and that does manage to wring some genuinely thrilling tension from the material.

Additionally, the lesbian panic killer reveal is gloriously overcooked. Maybe I was just grateful it wasn't the trans panic killer reveal that I had predicted, but my head was practically spinning from how loopy and deliciously unhinged it was, all the way down to the final slow motion shot of the killer (Barbara, naturally) grabbing Jessica's corpse and jumping out of the window in a full-on Thelma and Louise blaze of glory).

Killer: Barbara (Renée Simonsen)

Final Girl: Bob Crane (Tom Schanley)

Best Kill: Margaux's death via being stabbed in the back with scissors has the showiest gore effect, but it also has a cool moment where the camera sort of woozily tracks the scissors moving in the killer's hand afterward, so that's more than enough to shove it to the top of the pile.

Sign of the Times: Everything in this movie is incredibly 1980s. I mean, just look at that image up there. There's also a scene where a dude does coke in a bathroom that is done up in black and white tiles. But I think the moment that most specifically places Nothing Underneath in Europe in the mid-1980s is the incredibly random (and very welcome) needle drop where "One Night in Bangkok" plays during the big fashion show setpiece.

Scariest Moment: Babara suddenly uses her phallic power drill on the closet door, behind which Tom is hiding.

Weirdest Moment: Commissario Danesi and Bob go to Wendy's, where Danesi makes a big deal out of being unused to eating in this way and insists that he needs 10 napkins, whereupon he proceeds to chow down on sauceless spaghetti (which he always order plain because tomato sauce reminds him of blood).

Champion Dialogue: “I always notice people who don't notice me."

Body Count: 4; I'm not counting Barbara even though she jumped out the window, because the credits start before she hits the ground.

1. Jessica is scissored in the chest (but we don't find out until way later).
2. Carrie is scissored offscreen.
3. Margaux is scissored in the back.
4. Cristina shoots herself during Russian roulette in a flashback

TL;DR: Nothing Underneath is a dull late-period giallo that is sometimes pretty to look at, but really only good when it's at its goofiest.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1097