Death Walks at Midnight
HORROR-THON 2024 • SEEING RED
10/10
DIRECTOR: Luciano Ercoli
STARRING: Nieves Navarro, Simón Andreu, Peter Martell
RELEASED: 1972
RUNTIME: 1 hr, 42 minutes
WATCH ON: Tubi, Amazon, Apple TV
SCARE LEVEL: Medium
TAKING EXPERIMENTAL DRUGS FOR A MAGAZINE: Questionable career move
A fashion model agrees to take an experimental hallucinogen for a magazine story. Mid-trip, she looks out the window and sees a woman across the way being beaten to death by a man wearing a spiked metal glove. Then the drug wears off, and nobody believes her.
Valentina is a successful model in Milan. As a favor, she takes a new drug so a journalist friend can write a story about the experience. While she’s high, she sees the the muder in the building across the alley.
The police assume she was hallucinating. The journalist runs her name and face in a sleazy tabloid. And then the man with the metal glove starts showing up in her life, convinced she can identify him. Valentina has to solve the murder herself before she becomes the next victim.
MY HUMBLE OPINION
Obsessed with this one. It’s a great story, very entertaining, and it moves fast.
I love the way they showed and styled the gore. It’s bright, glossy, and over the top, with the same visual sense as Blood and Black Lace. Also, a woman watching a murder through a window that no one believes she saw? Grace from Sisters would understand.
This movie made me want to be a glamorous Italian model in the 1970s. There are wide-collared blouses, sunglasses, big hair, and a Milan apartment full of mod furniture. Valentina looks incredible even while running for her life.
And the metal claw. I don’t know who designed it, but it’s terrifying.
No notes.
FUN FACT FOR YOUR NEXT DINNER PARTY
While Gio is photographing Valentina, he clicks off 39 photos. 35mm film rolls only held a max of 36 exposures.