Page 190 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

Equally, Diabolik and, particularly, Kriminal, may have embodied a kind of permissiveness,'" but
they usually punished it, too. The aesthetic result was effecrively the same - 'Each issue (of Kriminal)
abounded in scantily attired young ladies, who frequently ended up as half-naked subjects of brutal
homicides'." Often they were the victims of the skeletal Kriminal himself, like the girl in 'Omicidio
al rigormatorio' ('Murder at the Reformatory', Kriminal 5, 1964), impaled on a spiked fence and
positioned for the best view of her knickers, stockings and suspenders. Dumontet's announcement
that 'They even looked sexy when dead!' sums up a generic imperative which informs Bloody Pit of
Horror (substituting 'screaming in agony' for 'dead'), but also Blood and Black Lace and countless
other gialli. The cinematic giallo is usually traced back to La Ragazza che Sapeva Troppo (Evil Eye,
Mario Bava, Italy/US, 1962). However, it is Blood and Black Lace that established the formula of
titillation, elaborately aestheticised murders and masked and/or gloved killers that has become the
enduring image of the giallo, an image cemented by the later films of Dario Argento. The women
in Bloody Pit of Horror conform to the iconography of the giallo, but could just as easily have been
drawn by Kriminal's artist, Magnus (Roberto Raviola) - curvy, scantily clad, in unspeakable peril if
not already dead.
The Crimson Executioner, like Kriminal, simultaneously embodies sexuality (moreover, in a
perverse form - 'an egotist obsessed with your sick thoughts' according to Edith) and chastises it.
He decries lechery just as his crimson outfit suggests a state of perpetual engorgement. Kriminal had
first appeared the year before and had pushed the sado-erotic boat further than the already quite racy
Diabolik. But by 1965, the year of Bloody Pit of Horror, a backlash had set in, a campaign against
fumetti neri not dissimilar to those which took place in America and Britain in the 1950s - debates
in parliament, police seizures, concerns about young readers.20 Travis' descent into dementia is
exacerbated by the production of precisely the kind of images that were causing so much concern
in 1965 - thus, he is both libidinous and puritanical, both Kriminal and what Heinenlotter calls 'a
Censor from Hell'.

ELECTROCARDIOGRAM THRILLS

There is another way of seeing the Crimson Executioner's quest for 'perfection' and physical purity,
but it requires a comparison with Hercules, Ursus and Maciste rather than Diabolik and Kriminal.
It also involves looking a little further back into Italy's history. The peplum is, in many ways, Italy's
first exploitation cycle, the precursor of the Gothics, the gialli, the spaghetti westerns, spy and 'sexy'
films of the 1960s. In production terms, the genre can be seen partly as a response to Hollywood
epics, some of which used Italian technicians and studio space, but the peplum was indebted to more
indigenous sources, too - silent films like Quo Vadis (Enrico Guazzoni, Italy, 1912), the strongman
hero Maciste. In distinguishing the peplum from its wealthier American rival, Derek Elley notes
that the Italian sword'n'sandals 'lacked the sheer weight and portentousness of their American
counterparts, possessing a vigour closer to comic-strips or fumetti'.21 Early pepla include Spartaco
(Spartacus the Gladiator, Riccardo Freda, Italy, 1953) and Ulisse (Ulysses, Mario Camerini, Italy,
1954), but it is Le Fatiche di Ercole (Hercules, Pietro Francisci, Italy, 1958), in particular, that seems to
have spurred on the cycle, particulatly when it opened up the American market in its dubbed version.

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