Reflections on ... Death Laid an Egg (1968)

Recently watched: Death Laid an Egg (1968). Original Italian title: La morte ha fatto l'uovo. Alternate titles: A Curious Way to Love. Death Trap. Plucked. Tagline: “See them tear each other apart. Then see what they do with the pieces!” I’m using this period of enforced social isolation to explore the weirder corners of YouTube for long forgotten and obscure movies. (My boyfriend Pal is accompanying me only semi-willingly). 

Adultery. Murder. Jealousy. Paranoia. Corporate intrigue. Industrial poultry farming! Berserk Italian film Death Laid an Egg crams-in all these aspects and more! But is it social satire? Horror movie? Thriller? Melodrama? Failed art movie (one of John Water’s favourite genres)? An example of the Italian genre giallo? Death may defy categorization, but it’s indisputably a trippy, idiosyncratic and visually ravishing oddity (director Giulio Questo knows a thing or two about jarring fragmentary editing and beautifully composing a shot).

/ Jean-Louis Trintignant as Marco /

/ Gina Lollobrigida as Anna /

The action unfolds amidst a moneyed Campari-drinking realm of chic Eurotrash alienation and jaded ennui where everyone is inscrutable and unsympathetic. (The stilted dialogue and English dubbing contribute to the artificiality and detachment, but the characters all behave as if zonked-out on tranquilizers throughout). Jean-Louis Trintignant (icon of mid-century European art cinema, who adds a sense of gravity) and Italian glamourpuss Gina Lollobrigida star as Marco and Anna, the rich proprietors of a cutting-edge intensive futuristic corporate chicken-processing factory. Their company has recently gone fully automated and laid-off all their blue-collar laborers, who continue to loiter menacingly outside in protest. Meanwhile, Marco is conducting an affair with his blonde nymphette secretary Gabri (Ewa Aulin, a pouting Bardot type, winner of Miss Teen Sweden 1965). Even more worryingly, Marco is a secret serial killer who’s been murdering prostitutes at a concrete brutalism-style motorway motel! (The unsuspecting prostitutes seem remarkably blasé when Marco dons little black leather “strangler’s gloves” and starts pulling knives out of his briefcase).

/ "Lingerie is important too. Your bra and panties are almost as important as what's under them." /

/ Jean Sobieski as the enigmatic Mondaini. Just what does he know about Marco’s activities? And what’s his connection to Gabri? All due regards to Paul Newman, but did anyone have more piercing blue eyes in cinema history than Sobieski? I previously only knew the strikingly handsome French actor from the 1963 film Strip-tease /

This premise barely hints at the wayward and disorienting charms of Death Laid an Egg. It’s also a great showcase for gloriously wooden leading lady Gina Lollobrigida. Bewigged, stately and expressionless, frequently stripped to lingerie, she resembles a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue illustration come to life. Modern actresses achieve that “blank-faced” look via Botox. Lollobrigida came to it naturally.

Watch Death Laid an Egg here:

Reflections on ... Fangs of the Living Dead (1969)

Fangs of the Living Dead (1969). Also known as: Malenka and Malenka, The Vampire’s Niece.  I’m using this period of enforced social isolation to explore the weirder corners of YouTube for long forgotten and obscure movies. (My boyfriend Pal is accompanying me only semi-willingly).

/ Anita Ekberg in the fifties /

In the fifties, statuesque Swedish sex goddess Anita Ekberg (1931 - 2015) reigned alongside peers Mamie Van Doren, Jayne Mansfield and Diana Dors as one of atomic-era Hollywood’s preeminent glamour queens. By the early sixties, Ekberg was triumphing in Europe, splashing in the Trevi fountain beside Marcello Mastroianni in Federico Fellini’s visionary masterpiece La Dolce Vita (1960). Something clearly went seriously awry with her career trajectory, though, because by the close of the decade Ekberg was reduced to starring in this entertainingly schlocky low-budget Spanish-Italian vampire film. (Still to come: Killer Nun in 1979!). 

Fangs opens in bustling cosmopolitan Rome, where voluptuous protagonist Silvia Morel (Ekberg) seemingly has it all. She’s a successful fashion model (“you’re the most beautiful model in Italy!”) and engaged to dashing surgeon Dr Piero Luciani. On top of that, Silvia’s just received some exciting news (“I want to tell you about something fantastic that’s happened to me! It’s incredible!”). Not only has she inherited a title (you may address her as “countess” now! Countess Walbrooke to be precise!) – she’s also inherited a crumbling ruined Gothic castle straight out of a Hammer horror movie, too! Wasting no time, Silvia flies to the remote unspecified mitteleuropean countryside to view the castle and meet her sinister and effete uncle, Count Walbrooke. Is the Count a 100-year old vampire? Consider the evidence stacked against him: his wardrobe of polo necks and foppish velvet suits! His heavy-handed penchant for eyebrow pencil – and that satanic goatee! Furthermore, a framed portrait of Silvia’s grandmother Malenka is displayed in the castle – and she looks exactly like her! (Albeit with dark hair). “You’re the image of her!” Count Walbrooke helpfully clarifies just in case we missed the point. “The same beauty, born of mystery!” We glimpse Malenka in flashbacks (Ekberg sporting a brunette wig). Apparently “Malenka was a brilliant biochemist!” who “studied ancient Arabic alchemists and philosophers and compiled anthologies of black magic and sorcery … searching for the secret of immortality!” (cut to Ekberg very unconvincingly reading manuscripts by candlelight next to a bubbling test tube). Alas, the superstitious torch-wielding villagers assume Malenka is a witch and burn her alive at the stake in the village square! As Count Walbrooke tells it, the family’s bloodline has been cursed ever since and Silvia comes from generations of vampires. “My dear uncle – I’m afraid you need a long rest!” the skeptical Silvia guffaws. “Find some peaceful place – the beach, the country! Anywhere! Somewhere far from this monstrous place!” But even when Silvia pleads to leave and protests “I’m allergic to castles!”, the Count refuses to let her go and vows to initiate her into a life of vampirism …

While there’s zero blood or nudity on view, to its credit Fangs is tinged with fun aspects like voyeurism, sadism, girl-on-girl catfights and lesbianism.  (The castle is haunted by a candelabra-carrying lesbian vampire priestess called Blinka who attempts to seduce Silvia and proclaims things like, “The coldness of the grave is in my blood!”). Director Amando de Ossorio makes effective use of the atmospheric candle-lit haunted mansion set, complete with a medieval dungeon in the basement and a crypt filled with the ancestral tombs. The performance by leading lady Ekberg is spectacularly, compellingly awful. Watch for “Miss Ekberg’s Clothes by Marbel Jr”, particularly the wild orange pantsuit accessorized with a matching swirling cape. (For some reason, Ekberg is also partial to wearing her hair styled in a mop of Shirley Temple-style little girl ringlets). Typical of European co-productions, everyone is obviously dubbed which adds to the sense of artificiality. As Silvia’s fiancé Piero, actor Gianni Medici made minimal impression on me until near the end when the Count has him chained-up shirtless in the dungeon and we get to see his impressive bronzed torso, embellished with what appears to be a sheen of baby oil. For comedic relief, Piero’s wacky girl-crazy best friend Max tags along (he is gratingly unfunny). Campiest moment: when Silvia stops for a drink at the local inn en route to the castle for the first time and casually mentions she is the new Contessa – and the beer-drinking peasants all freeze in horror! Best line of dialogue: when the Count tries to force Silvia to visit the scary family crypt, she wails, “Can’t we do this another day? I’m not the curious type!” And is it just my imagination, or when Ekberg pouts and pensively narrows her eyes in close-ups, doesn’t she alarmingly resemble surgically enhanced American First Lady Melania Trump?

Watch Fangs of the Living Dead - if you dare! - here:

Further reading:

In August 2018 I spoke my brains to To Do List magazine about the wild, wild world of Lobotomy Room, the monthly cinema club – and my lonely one-man mission to return a bit of raunch, sleaze and “adult situations” to London’s nightlife! Read it - if you must - here. 

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At Home with Zsa Zsa Gabor

At home with Zsa Zsa Gabor in 1967 in her palatial Bel Air mansion! For aficionados of kitsch, this represents a goldmine and a fascinating oddity - 28 minutes and 20 seconds of pure bliss!

The TV show Good Company was apparently some kind of atomic-era variation of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous or MTV Cribs with celebrities inviting you behind the security gates into their private inner sanctums. It begins with the Hungarian glamourpuss, famous-for-being famous movie diva, glorified courtesan and camp icon addressing the viewer directly (“Hello, darlings!”) from her bubble bath with soap suds up to her décolletage. Her décor is spectacular: check out the golden cherubs festooning the bathtub – a testament to her baroque / rococo taste. While waiting for Zsa Zsa to dress, host F. Lee Baily interrogates her queen-y gay male private secretary Karl. Is it a difficult job? Karl breaks into a sweat, attempting tactful diplomacy. “I can’t say it’s not difficult,” he stammers. “I guess it is. She’s very complex.” Read between the lines: she’s a temperamental nightmare! Karl backpedals, adding, “She really is this beautiful, this chic, this exciting, this witty, this unpredictable!” Phew!

/ Zsa Zsa Gabor’s ultra-glamorous passport, issued in 1966: I love that her passport photo is a beautifully lit and re-touched soft-focus Hollywood portrait and that she’s clearly doctored her birth date with a pen (which in theory should make the document invalid!). For the record, Gabor was apparently born in 1917! /

/ If this blue gown isn't the actual ensemble Zsa Zsa wears in this episode of Good Company, it's an awfully good facsimile! /

Post-bubble bath, fragrant chatelaine Zsa Zsa sweeps down the staircase and joins them. She’s donned a powder-blue, fur-trimmed floor-length muumuu and bouffant ringleted wiglet for the interview that Lady Bunny herself might covet. Zsa Zsa graciously takes Baily for a tour of her ostentatious nouveau riche home. Her closest neighbor, we learn, is Nancy Sinatra! We see the swimming pool, the Steinway gold grand piano (the one borrowed later for the 2013 Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra) covered with family photos, Zsa Zsa’s ultra-flattering idealized portrait above the fireplace, her collection of original Renoirs and various objets d’art and antiques.

/ This is the portrait of Zsa Zsa with her young daughter Francesca above the mantelpiece she contemplates with Baily /

Things turn seriously interesting and awkward when Zsa Zsa’s 18-year old aspiring actress daughter Francesca joins them. Dressed like a matronly socialite and looking like an escapee from Valley of the Dolls, the ultra-poised Francesca is one world-weary teenager.  Baily asks Francesca some outrageously intrusive, lecherous and tactless questions like if she’s “going steady” and what age of men she’s attracted to. “Between 25 and infinity,” she snarls. Zsa Zsa think Francesca says, “Between 25 and 70” and admits she doesn’t understand what “infinity” means. When Francesca leaves the room, Baily complements Zsa Zsa on how well-bred she is. “It’s not “groovy” to be polite nowadays,” Zsa Zsa laments. Postcript: the troubled Francesca’s acting career never took off and she never managed to carve a satisfying niche for herself. Later Francesca would repeatedly clash with Zsa Zsa’s ninth and final husband (the parasitic gold-digging ersatz “Prince” Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt) and she pre-deceased her mother, dying in 2015. (Wracked with ill health and dementia by then, Zsa Zsa herself died in 2016 without ever having been informed of her daughter’s death).

/ Zsa Zsa's bed - an exact replica of  Empress Joséphine’s. apparently /

/ Zsa Zsa and Francesca lounging on mama's bed. This is very how much how they both appear in this episode /

Zsa Zsa coquette-ishly invites Baily to see her boudoir, guiding him by the hand upstairs. “If I don’t come back after this next commercial, you know where I am,” Baily leers to the camera. Her bed, draped and canopied in lurid green, is an exact replica of Empress Joséphine’s, Zsa Zsa claims. Baily asks if the bed expresses her personality and Zsa Zsa nonsensically responds, “Well of course it does! It’s blue and green. Sometimes I’m blue and most of the time I’m green!” Huh? Lounging in bed, Zsa Zsa then lists the men she thinks are sexy: Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen, Frank Sinatra. Turning to Baily she flutters her false eyelashes: “I’m sure you are a very sexy and glamorous man!” Watch and squirm!

/ Little sister Eva Gabor (1919 - 1995) and Zsa Zsa (1917 - 2016) sharing a laugh - and a wig /

/ Now that's what I call art: trompe l'oeil portrait of Zsa Zsa by Margaret Keane / 

Pretty much all of the photos illustrating this post are swiped from the Heritage Auctions' website for The Estate of Zsa Zsa Gabor Signature Auction later this month. The video below is a handy guide to the deluxe glitzy trash on offer /