Director/Story – Andrea Bianchi, Screenplay – Massimo Felisatti, Photography – Franco Delli Colli, Music – Berto Pisano, Production Design – Sergio Palmieri. Production Company – Fral SpA.
Nino Castelnuovo (Carlo Gunther), Edwige Fenech (Magda Cortis), Femi Benussi (Lucia Cerezer), Solvi Stubing (Patrizia), Amanda (Gisele Mayer), Franco Diogene (Maurizio Pozzani), Erna Schurer (Doris)
A killer wearing black leather and a motorcycle helmet is slaughtering the models and staff at the Albatross modelling agency in Milan.
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 created most of the style that would be associated with the genre – of extravagantly colourful lighting schemes; murders with a psycho-sexual focus; and ornate directorial set-ups. (For a more detailed listing see Giallo Films).
Andrea Bianchi (1925-2013) was a director who made assorted Italian sex films between the 1970s and 1990s. He did dabble in genre material several times including the adult possession film Malabimba (1979), the zombie film Burial Ground (1981), Maniac Killer (1987), the giallo Massacre (1989) and Seduction Game (1990), an adult film that takes place in a haunted castle. It is also claimed that Bianchi directed additional scenes for Night Hair Child/What the Peeper Saw (1972), although I do question that.
Strip Nude for Your Killer comes with a fairly sensational title. That said, it is far more sensationalistic than anything that actually happens in the film. The title gives the implication of it being a film about a voyeuristic killer who makes victims strip before they are killed. However, what we actually have in the film is far less interesting than that. There are plentiful nude bodies but mostly these are mundane love sequences or dressing room scenes and have nothing to do with the killer.
The rest of Strip Nude for Your Killer is fairly routine as giallo films go. The killer stalking the staff of a modelling house is a recurrent plot and locale lifted directly from Blood and Black Lace. So too is the killer in black – here they are outfitted in a full black leather body suit, black leather gloves and a motorcycle helmet. However, the film never engages in the crucial Psycho-Thriller element of most giallo films – there are assorted murders but the script never concerns itself with pointing the finger at any suspects. Expectedly, as is the case with most giallo, the revelation of the killer’s identity is one that could have been chosen by getting the cast to draw straws at random.
At least you watch giallo films for their directorial extravagance. However, Andrew Bianch never gets much worked up in this department. There is a provocative opening scene where photographer Nino Castelnuovo pursues bikini-clad model Femi Benussi through a swimming pool to a bar, snapping photos, while she remains aloof. In what must be one of the most bald-faced pickup lines ever used, he takes her into the sauna where he persuades her to strip off for some photos, before she realises that his camera is not working whereupon he strips off to join her for a far more ‘in-depth’ interview.
The other scene is the more grotesque one where Franco Diogene picks up model Erna Schurer in his car, insisting that she get in because he has something to show her, and drives off through the streets at a breakneck pace. At his place, this turns out to merely be him wanting sex with her. She shrugs and decides to go through with it where we then get the image of the obese, hairy-backed Diogene on top of her, only for him to reveal he is sexually dysfunctional and cannot do anything. She leaves, whereupon we see him blowing up an inflatable rubber doll to get some relief, only for the killer to enter the room and attack him.
Trailer here