Death Walks at Midnight [Blu-ray]

Director: Luciano Ercoli

Overview

A favorite among fans of outrageously bad films, this bloody, convoluted thriller deals with a model named Val (Nieves Navarro), whose tabloid-reporter boyfriend, Gio (Simon Andreu), talks her into experimenting with drugs. While she hallucinates, Val looks out the window and sees a man in dark glasses smashing a spiked iron glove into a woman's head until blood splashes into the camera lens. When Gio publishes the story, Val gets fired and is stalked by a psychopath. Before it's all over, there are trips to mental hospitals and graveyards, as many as four different killers taking part in three separate frame-ups, a cat with a slashed throat, and a ludicrous rooftop fight scene featuring choreography rarely seen outside of bad Asian karate films. The high point has a hitman (who laughs like a hyena) throwing a knife between two buildings only to have Gio catch it in a shovel-handle. Most of the film consists of people calling Val crazy or stupid, only to have Val slap them or knee them in the groin, spitting "Go to Hell!" before marching out of the room. The remaining scenes have Val herself being slapped around, followed by all the men she previously told to go to Hell smashing each other through skylights and pushing each other's faces into bags of quicklime. The screenplay (by Ernesto Gastaldi, Sergio Corbucci, and others) makes very little sense, but is such laughably camp fun that it doesn't matter.

Product Details

Release Date:	03/07/2017
UPC:	0760137976288
Original Release:	1972
Rating:	NR
Source:	Arrow Video
Region Code:	A
Language:	English
Time:	1:42:00
Sales rank:	6,193

Special Features

Brand new 2k restoration from original film elements; High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation; Original Italian and English soundtracks in mono audio; Newly translated English Subtitles for the Italian Soundtrack; Optional English Subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for the English soundtrack; Audio Commentary by film critic Tim Lucas; Introduction to the film by Screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi; Extended TV version of the feature; Crime Does Pay - Screenwriter Gastaldi reflects on his career in the crime film-writing business, including a look at Death Walks at Midnight; Desperately Seeking Susan - visual essay by Michael Mackenzie exploring the distinctive giallo collaborators between Director Luciano Ercoli and star Nieves Navarro; Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Simon Andreu	Gio Baldi
Carlo Gentili	Inspector Seripa
Pietro Martellanz	Stefano
Nieves Navarro	Valentina
Claudie Lange	Verushka Wittenburg
Gianni Ferrio	Composer

Technical Credits

Ernesto Gastaldi

May Velasco

Ernesto Gastaldi	Screenwriter
Luciano Ercoli	Producer
Alberto Pugliese	Producer
May Velasco	Screenwriter