Census Bloodbath: Arabella, Where Have You Been, Loca?

Note: The copy of this movie that I had access to was in unsubtitled Italian, so take my review with a grain of salt.

Year:
1989
Director:
Stelvio Massi
Cast:
Tinì Cansino, Francesco Casale, Valentina Visconti

Run Time:
1 hour 29 minutes

Plot: Arabella: Black Angel (originally Arabella l'angelo nero) follows the nymphomaniac Arabella (Tinì Cansino), who gets caught up in a web of intrigue when her writer husband Francesco (Francesco Casale) - who has been confined to a wheelchair since getting into a road head-related accident on the day of their wedding - witnesses her murdering a policeman (Carlo Mucari of Obsession: A Taste for Fear) who was blackmailing her into sex.

Francesco encourages Arabella - against her strong protestations to the contrary - to become a sex worker so he can use her life as inspiration for his next book. However, the twisted drama between them grows even darker when it becomes clear that a black-gloved killer is targeting the men that Arabella sleeps with. Lesbian police commissioner Gina Fowler (Valentina Visconti) is on the case, but the sexual mutilation of the killer's victims triggers memories of her own dark past.

Analysis: At about the 45-second mark of Arabella: Black Angel, I realized that I was dealing with a very particular sub-subgenre of the 1980s slasher: the softcore giallo movie. I figured at that point that I already knew exactly what I was in for. A shitshow. I've seen Killing of the Flesh after all. I know how these things go.

Blissfully, I was proven completely wrong. For one thing, Arabella is a well put-together movie. In addition to a pretty solid score that evokes the late 1980s without leaning too heavily on synths, this movie is extraordinarily well shot (by its director, Stelvio Massi, who also shot The Case of the Bloody Iris and was the camera operator for A Fistful of Dollars).

We're talking striking lighting that makes the (almost) unilaterally sexy cast's faces glow with ethereal beauty! We're talking deep focus shots where things are happening both in the foreground and background. In other words, this is a movie! Speaking as someone who just watched The Strangler of Syggrou and Terror en los Barrios, that's really not something that you can take for granted with a 1980s slasher.

It's maybe not an overly terrific slasher, however. Its startlingly small roster of five kills are doled out with a parsimonious amount of blood, though there is a brutal post-murder moment where you're forced to sit an consider exactly what it might look like for someone's penis to have been snipped off with scissors.

However, it makes up for its not-particularly enthralling kills with one of the best whodunit plots of the giallo genre, which is not only full of twists and turns, but ones that actually make sense for the most part! I wasn't even watching the English-translated version (which exists, but is currently only available via exorbitantly expensive listings on the resale market), and I still had my jaw hit the floor multiple times.

Additionally, it might just be an out-and-out masterpiece of softcore horror cinema. Not only does the sexual content in Arabella: Black Angel feel genuinely transgressive, erotic, and dangerous, it is impeccably blended with the storyline and the characters. The sex doesn't exist solely to titillate the audience (though it does do that, and there ain't nothing wrong with it). Sex informs the backstories of every major character and is the throbbing spoke around which the entire wheel of the plot spins.

Overall, it isn't a masterpiece of cinema in general, but I had a hell of a time watching Arabella: Black Angel. If this sounds like the type of thing you might be into in the first place, I can promise you it's worth taking the plunge.

Killer: Martha Veronesi (Ida Galli of The Sweet Body of Deborah, The Bloodstained Butterfly, and The Case of the Scorpion's Tail)

Final Girl: Arabella (Tinì Cansino)

Best Kill: Gina's journalist girlfriend Agnese (Rena Niehaus) gets those scissors right in the neck in one of cinema's most brutal uppercuts.

Sign of the Times: If you'll allow me to get meta for a moment, I think the only reason that this movie doesn't enjoy a more robust reputation is the fact that it came out in 1989, a decade removed from the heyday of the gialli.

Scariest Moment: The fantasy sequence where Gina sees blood pouring out of a tap isn't scary per se, but it's the scene that feels the most like it belongs in a horror movie.

Weirdest Moment: This sex worker that Arabella picks up is hot, but if I picked him up, I'd spend the first 30 minutes of my hour just having him explain the theme of his outfit.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 5; not including a dream sequence where Gina is stabbed in the crotch with scissors, which probably wouldn't have killed her anyway, even though it certainly would have ruined her day.

1. Alfonso de Rosa is bopped on the head with a mallet.
2. Nick is stabbed in the dick with scissors (and later has his penis cut off).
3. Cowboy is stabbed in the dick with scissors (and later has his penis cut off).
4. Agnese is stabbed in the neck with scissors.
5. Francesco is stabbed in the back.

TL;DR: Arabella: Black Angel is a gleefully transgressive softcore giallo movie that manages to make exploitation the point of the story it's telling while also reveling in it.

Rating: 7/10