MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological* Even many of the best-regarded giallo movies are best prized not for being solid mysteries or character studies, but just for being well-crafted exercises in delirium. However, producer-director Luciano Ercoli collaborated on two noteworthy thrillers with esteemed writer Ernesto Gastaldi and starring Spanish actress Nieves Navarro (billed as "Susan Scott.") The first collaboration was the decent crime-story DEATH WALKS IN HIGH HEELS. However, the follow-up DEATH WALKS AT MIGNIGHT is not only a solid horror-mystery, but a good inquiry into the stability of the waking world.
MIDNIGHT's main character Valentina (Navarro) is a model, but she's not one of the easily condemned stereotypes propounded by, say, TOO BEAUTIFUL TO DIE. She's reasonably well-off, but even she can be deceived even by some of the people she likes and works with, like the conniving photographer Gio (Simon Andreu). One fine day, Gio talks Valentina into doing an exploitative story for his newspaper, in which a famous (but unnamed) model is photographed while experiencing the hallucinations of a powerful experimental drug, HDS. Gio uses the photos all right, but when they appear in the newspaper her name is all over the place. Though Gio likes Valentina and would like to get naked with her, he's all about selling himself first.
This piddling publicity stunt takes on fatal overtones because, during her bad trip, Valentina images that she witnesses a killer in sunglasses using a spiked metal glove on his hand to murder a young woman. Gio thinks she just made up her vision, and thinks she based her hallucination on a real murder, with the same modus operandi, committed six months ago. The alleged killer was confined to an asylum-- but then why does Valentina find herself stalked by the figure from her dream?
An investigating detective thinks that Valentina's performing some publicity stunt as well, but other strangers dog Valentina's tracks as a result of the model's bad publicity. One is a bearded man who claims that the fellow in the asylum was his mate in a band, and that he was not the true killer. A young woman claims to be the sister of the murdered woman and talks Valentina into visiting the asylum-- but then she deserts Valentina's side, which puts the poor girl once more in the sunglasses-clad sights of the potential mystery killer. Gio still doesn't believe any of Valentina's conspiracy stories, but he takes advantage of her distracted state to talk her into bed. Yet he's not a total reprobate either, since he comes through for her when he's finally convinced of the real situation.
I'm not going to try to cover all the twists and turns of this excellent giallo. Poor Valentina is put through so many ordeals that she comes close to being one of Sade's eternal victims. However, despite not being a heroic figure, Valentina has a will to defy the many forces arrayed against her, so that MIDNIGHT is properly more of a drama than an irony. Her brief psychic episode is also open to question, since what she envisions of the six-months-ago murder isn't the whole truth. The true architect of Valentina's troubles isn't precisely a "perilous psycho," though Sunglasses Guy doesn't seem to be entirely well-balanced. This was Ercoli's last trip to the giallo well, though Gastaldi would continue to distinguish himself in the genre.
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