Elio Scardamaglia's
THE MURDER CLINIC marks a first for the still growing filone. It's a
period piece, set in the late 1800s. While watching the film, the
time period seems apropos. It is every inch a Victorian Gothic
melodrama, steeped in madness, repression and guilt, tied loosely
together with a nice yellow ribbon. Pretty women skulk around dark
corridors lit only by candlelight in search of answers to dangerous
mysteries. Scenes like that exist in the more modern gialli of the
1960s, but THE MURDER CLINIC seems to be purposefully trying to
recreate the Victorian Gothic rather than merely calling back to it,
if not outright parodying it.
A good example of
that sort of thing would be the opening scene of Mario Bava's THE
GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, widely considered to be the first proper
giallo film. We see Nora sitting on board a plane heading to Italy
while a voice over informs us that Nora has an addiction to reading
murder mysteries, a peculiar addiction that later calls into question
whether or not Nora really did witness a murder and is now targeted
for death. It might just be her murder mystery fueled imagination at
work. Jane Austen's popular parody of Victorian Gothic melodrama, Northanger
Abbey, likewise features a heroine with a particular obsession with a
certain type of literature (in Catherine's case, Gothic novels). But
in Austen's novel, Catherine's Gothic literature fueled imagination
turns out to be fantasy. In Bava's film, Nora really is being hunted
by a killer. Regardless of the difference, both Austen's novel and
Bava's film use Gothic tropes to flesh out the backbone of their narratives, only to turn distinctly more modern as their stories unfold.
THE MURDER CLINIC
however stays comfortably within the realm of the Victorian Gothic
throughout, even as a straight razor wielding killer wreaks havoc on the narrative.
The film concerns a small clinic somewhere in the English
countryside. The man in charge is named Robert Vance. He has a wife
named Lizabeth who has a frail heart and little patience for her
husband's flirtations with some of his patients. Staying at the
clinic are a bevy of interesting faces. There's Fred, a man prone to
psychotic breaks, an elderly woman whose only friend is a stuffed
cat, and Janey, a recently arrived mute. One night, Janey is chased
from her room and slashed to ribbons by a killer. Vance discovers her
body and buries it somewhere off the property. Unfortunately, someone
knows about Vance's clandestine body disposal.
As all of this is
going on, Gisele, a bitter, cheating wife, is being escorted back
east by her husband. When their carriage breaks down, Gisele attempts
an escape, clubbing her husband over the head. This spooks the horses
and off they go into the distance, but not before trampling her
husband to death. It is Gisele that sees Vance burying poor Janey's
corpse. Gisele fakes an illness, taking advantage of Vance's lustful
eye, and is brought back to the clinic where she proceeds to
blackmail Vance into giving her an awful lot of money.
Vance has no choice
but to pay up. You see, many years back, Vance was charged with
attempted murder. Lizabeth's younger, prettier sister, Laura, had
been visiting the couple at their soon to be constructed clinic when
she suffered a horrible accident, falling into a pit filled with
lime. The accident left her horribly scarred and Vance was brought to
trial. Witnesses at the scene swore that they saw Vance push Laura
into the lime, but a lack of physical evidence set him free. His
reputation as a doctor ruined, Vance abandoned his dream of owning
his own clinic and took the lead job at the nuthouse in the English
countryside. If Gisele goes to the police, what little life Vance has
will be over.
And amid all of this
melodrama is Mary, the good-hearted nurse, madly in love with Vance.
What about those strange noises that we hear coming from the attic? The
noises that sound like footsteps? That would be Laura, the mad woman
in the attic (the films very own Bertha Mason), kept there in
seclusion as Vance works on curing her of her deformity through
radical skin grafting experiments. Oh, and we can't forget about the
killer, can we?
Except that the film
does, because it doesn't quite feel like THE MURDER CLINIC was
designed to ever be a straight forward murder mystery. The film was
co-written by Ernesto Gastaldi, one of the great giallo
screenwriters. THE MURDER CLINIC, in many, many ways, feels a dry run
for Gastaldi's later giallo masterwork, YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM
AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY. Both films are built on the backs of
Victorian Gothic literature tropes and both films are loaded with
poisonous relationships, characters stuck in seemingly inescapable
personal hells, and are rife with potential violence. Both films
feature typical giallo killers slashing women to shreds, but neither
film ever really commits to being a proper giallo film.
YOUR VICE IS
A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY is (more of less) an adaptation
of Poe's The Black Cat, with the black gloved killer angle of the
first half treated as a massive red herring, something that appears
to have been included just to throw us off the films true motive. The
killing scenes in THE MURDER CLINIC are more directly tied into the
narrative, but they come off as afterthoughts, like they were given
more and more emphasis as the script went through revisions.
That might be
because the murder mystery angle of the film feels far less thought
out than the more melodramatic angles. For example, it's a bit
difficult to believe that Gisele would so brazenly attempt to
blackmail Vance, especially when she believes him to be a cold
blooded killer. The idea that Vance is keeping Laura in the attic
isn't well thought out either. The film could have taken the more
interesting EYES WITHOUT A FACE tactic of having Vance killing young
women for their skin, all so he could carry out his guilt ridden
experiments in skin grafting. I suppose we're meant to think that
Laura is responsible for the killings, but the film never bothers to
give her a proper motive. Fred is the only likely suspect the film
offers up. There's a short scene of Fred attacking Gisele in her
bedroom, a scene that only exists so the film can conjure up a
believable guilty party.
THE MURDER CLINIC
spends an awful lot of time (nearly 40 of its relatively
short 87 minutes) just getting all of these characters under the same roof.
It then spends another 15 or so minutes getting down to business
working out the love triangles, the blackmail angle, telling us of
Vance's troubled past and Laura's accident… It is one hell of a
busy hour and through much of that hour, I was really engaged with
the film. I was enjoying trying to figure out just who was playing
who, why no one seemed all that bothered by Janey's first act murder,
or where the film was going to take the characters as all these
personalities began to clash and crumble.
Unfortunately, the
film never really hits that high note of drama. It descends into
slasher territory with characters dying left and right before
petering out with a tired, easy resolution. However, I would say that
the first hour or so more than makes up for the deficiencies of the
final act. The murder mystery may not be the strongest, but the range
of characters and the dramatic interplay between them is surprisingly
delicious. I would have preferred the film to be longer. I would have
preferred to have had the drama between the characters reach a
boiling point and THEN have the killer step in to bring that drama to
a bloody end. I think the film would have been better served that
way. If THE MURDER CLINIC had more effectively tied the bloody
business into its very well done melodramatic material, I would not
hesitate in calling this film one of the best 1960s gialli out there.
As it stands, I still recommend giving the film a watch, but I can't
deny that it is, at the end of the day, kind of disappointing.
THE
MURDER CLINIC
(La
lama nel corpo)
Director:
Elio Scardamaglia
Writer:
Ernesto Gastaldi, Luciano Martino
Starring:
William Berger, Francoise Prevost, Mary Young, Barbara Wilson,
Philippe Hersent
Villa
Parisi, Frascati, Rome, Lazio, Italy; Ci. Ti. Cinematografica, Leone
Film, Orphee Productions
1966,
87 minutes
Narrative
Variety: Poisoned Past
Murderer(s):
1 female
Murderer(s)
Role: Wife
Murderer(s)
Motive: Jealousy
Victims:
1 woman (slashed to death with a razor), 1 man (run over by
carriage), 1 woman (slashed to death with a razor), 1 man (dies off
screen, presumed suicide), 1 woman (throat slashed)
Murderer(s)
Death: Falls to her death (suicide)
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