Director – Carlo Vanzina, Screenplay – Franco Ferrini, Carlo Vanzina & Enrico Vanzina, Loosely Based on the Novel by Marco Parma, Producer – Achille Manzotti, Photography – Beppe Maccari, Music – Pino Donaggio, Special Effects – Brothers Corridori, Production Design – Stefano Paltrinieri. Production Company – Faso Film S.r.l. Roma.
Cast
Tom Schanley (Bob Crane), Donald Pleasence (Commissioner Danesi), Renee Simonsen (Barbara), Nicola Perring (Jessica Crane), Catherine Noyes (Carrie Blynn), Mimmo Sepe (Hotel Clerk), Paolo Tomei (Giorgio Zanoni), Maria McDonald (Margaux Wilson), Bruce McGuire (Interpol Agent), Anna Galiena (Model Agency Boss)
Plot
Bob Crane is a ranger at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. He has a psychic connection with his twin sister Jessica, a model working in Milan. Bob suddenly feels that Jessica is in danger and calls the Hotel Scala where she is staying. He flies to Milan to find that she has gone missing. As Bob tries to get local police detective Commissioner Danesi to do something, a figure wearing black leather gloves begins to kill other models staying at the hotel.
The Italian Giallo film emerged in the 1960s and its films have gained a cult following. The essence of the giallo genre was formulated, although not created, by Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace (1964), which built on the Psycho-Thriller that has been brought into prominence by the success of Psycho (1960). Bava originated most of the style that would be associated with the genre – the extravagantly colourful lighting and set dressing schemes; murders with a sado-sexual focus; and ornate directorial set-ups.
Nothing Underneath gets your attention from the opening set in Yellowstone National Park, where scenes with park ranger Tom Schanley are interspersed with psychic flashes he has of someone wearing black leather gloves stalking his sister Nicola Perring in her motel room in Milan. This creates strong vibes of Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), which was a giallo film in all but name. The disappointment is that the psychic link angle largely drops off after that point apart from are a couple of other minor scenes.
(l to r)Missing sister Nicola Perring with Renee Simonsen
Not that the rest of Nothing Underneath is by any means uninteresting. It is in fact a superior example of the giallo film. The plot of the killer stalking the models at a fashion house has similarities to Bava’s Blood and Black Lace and the more crude likes of Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975) and Delirium (1987), while the killer wearing black leather gloves became a veritable cliché of the genre. The film also has the benefit of a lush Ennio Morricone score.
Carlo Vanzina directs a number of stylish set-pieces. They are not always sequences that come with the extraordinary psycho-sexual focus of a Mario Bava or a Dario Argento, nevertheless Vanzina does fairly well on the stylishness front. There is a great scene where Catherine Noyes walks through the streets, where we see her journey foregrounded by classic statues, while her matching cobalt blue dress and shoes make a vivid contrast against the street and paving stones. She returns to her room amid gloriously decadent images such as her running a bath that has gold-plated taps, or a print that fills an entire wall of a cigarette with ash plume hanging from pair of lips painted with bright red lipstick, or where she opens the fridge to bring out an ice tray containing a cache of diamonds. There is also a fine climactic showdown between Tom Schanley and the killer wielding a power drill that may well have been inspired by Brian De Palma’s Body Double (1984) the year before.
Nothing Underneath was the only genre work directed by Carlo Vanzina, who elsewhere directed some sixty films between 1976 and his death in 2018, most of which are comedies centred around people on vacation.
