Perversion Story

Pervertigo!

Perversion Story
aka One On Top Of The Other
aka Una sull'altra
Italy/France/Spain 1969
Directed by Lucio Fulci
Mondo Macabro Blu Ray Zone A/B/C

Warning: Spoilers right from the outset...

Una sull'altra was Lucio Fulci’s first crack at a giallo and it was released in various versions internationally under that title and, also, its English translation, One On Top Of The Other. The name doesn’t do much for me but it’s a ‘typically giallo’ title and I like it much more than his intended title, which is what it has now become better known as and which Mondo Macabro have released it as, in its longest cut... Perversion Story. This one makes even less sense as a title, especially if you are taking the first word to talk about some kind of sexual aberration because that’s really not depicted here at all either. But whatever it’s known as, in whatever territory, it’s still the first of Fulci’s gialli and also, as it happens, a first time watch for me.

My personal response to the films of Lucio Fulci is pretty hit and miss. Zombi (aka Zombi 2 aka Zombie Flesh Eaters, reviewed here) grew on me since my initial viewing but, generally, I am less appreciative of his horror movies than some of the other genres he’s worked in... although I do quite like City Of The Living Dead (reviewed here) and The Beyond (reviewed here). I much prefer his gialli with Lizard In A Woman’s Skin, made a couple of years after this movie, being one of the greats of the genre as far as I’m concerned and... probably my favourite movie from this director (there is a very old review on this site but it's from when I was first starting out and I think I need to write a new one at some point).

This film is very much the kind of giallo which eschews the black leather gloves and multiple murders of some of the post-Bava and soon to be post-Argento explosion of gialli onto the screen... it’s much more in keeping with the style of the mystery meaning of the genre, so comparable to such films as the ones made by the likes of Carrol Baker, Jean-Louis Trintignant and, of course, Jean Sorel who stars in this one opposite two iconic Italian actresses.

The film starts off well with various shots showing off its San Francisco setting and a burst of Riz Ortolani’s jazzy and enthusiastic score. We then find that the sensationalist Dr. George Dumurrier, played by Sorel, is trapped in a loveless marriage. Blimey, how many gialli is this guy going to find himself in where his home life is just falling apart like this? His wife, played by the late, great Marisa Mell, looks completely different to the kind of look I would normally equate her with. And I was supposed to think that... Fulci is very much playing games with the audience as much as Sorel’s main protagonist. Mell is his wife Susan, suffering from very bad asthma and not happy with hubby’s various, secret exploits away from home. One such exploit is the film’s other leading lady, whom Sorel is having an affair with, erotic photographer Jane, played by the great Elsa Martinelli.

Sorel has to leave his most recent business/pleasure trip when he finds his wife has been killed. Not only that, she’s taken out a two million dollar insurance policy and he now gets the pay off. So it all looks pretty good for him and Jane... until, that is, an anonymous tip off leads them to a sensational performer/escort working at a strip club. She’s the dead spit of his recently deceased wife... or is she. At this point, I found I was right in believing the movie to be a sideways remake of Hitchcock’s masterpiece Vertigo... not just in the main plot device but also, of course, right down to the San Francisco setting. I say sideways because it turns out the ‘recently deceased’ wife really is the sex worker, planning the demise of George and working in cahoots with his hateful brother and her housekeeper (played by Faith Domergue, of such wonderful fifties science fiction films such as This Island Earth and It Came From Outer Space, reviews of both coming to this blog at some point soonish), to inherit the clinic and be free to go off with the brother. Things get convoluted, George ends up on death row and the movie has a couple of trick endings in terms of the right people being brought to justice... which I suspect wasn’t always the case but, yeah, I’ll talk about parts of the ending in a minute.

There’s a lot of good stuff going on here and although the cinematography is maybe not as creative as a lot of the gialli being made around this period (including Fulci’s later ones), it’s more than competent and it has a nice bright colour palette, enhanced by Ortolani’s wonderful score. There are some nice little flourishes which make for some good eye candy though... well, apart from the natural eye candy of Marisa Mell in her birthday suit, that is. When George and Jane have sex, Fulci cuts in a lot of shots of the couple from underneath where the mattress should be... shot through a red filter or red creased cloth (or both) to simulate the top sheet... presumably the two performers were filmed from under a glass sheet too. Later, when Jane tries to seduce Marisa Mell’s stripper personae to gain information, the floor becomes the thing Fulci is shooting up from... or rather, under it. Which is a nice stylistic choice for certain scenes here.

There are also some nice looking sets and costumes in this. Not least of which is the milieu of The Roaring Twenties strip joint, in which some of the girls wear revealing bras of two black leather gloves holding each breast, the nipples peeking out from the centre. Actually, thinking about it, those bras are pretty much a metaphor, almost, for what the giallo genre was about to become in its most popular form so, yeah, interesting costume choices to say the least.

Just a word now about the ending. The last 20 minutes are a protracted build up to Jean Sorel’s wrongful demise on death row and Fulci milks the suspense in a prolonged series of scenes, as George’s lawyer is still trying to prove his innocence, for all his worth. Then, two things happen which make me think the film has a different ending to the one originally intended. Firstly, the brother and George’s wife are both shot dead in a bar by an ex-client of Marissa Mel’s escort persona. Secondly, the ID of the victims leads to a stay of execution and George is released... but we don’t see that part. The last five minutes is perhaps reminiscent of Psycho, where Simon Oakland famously filled the audience in on what was really happening. A news reporter tells the story of the last moments up to and including the stay of execution and subsequent release of the main character over the space of a few minutes. Then the film ends... we never see Sorel’s character after the point where he is expecting to die. I can only conclude, from this strangely impersonal ending, that the innocent George was originally destined to die in the gas chamber and, perhaps, somewhere closer to release, the producers changed their mind about letting an innocent character go to his death. I don’t know whether the death of the brother and wife were always in there or just inserted to strengthen the ‘crime doesn’t pay’ message at this point but I strongly expect the stay of execution was an addition... and maybe Sorel wasn’t around to do any pick up shots by this point. I guess I’m not going to know the answer to that (or maybe I will when I finally get around to reading Fulci expert Stephen Thrower’s book on the subject but, for now, that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it).

All in all, I’d say I had a good time with Perversion Story (aka One On Top Of The Other) and it’s been given a nice transfer from Mondo Macabro here. It’s not near the top in my ranking of Fulci gialli but it’s certainly better than some of the horror films I’ve seen him make and, yeah, I’ll definitely be watching this Vertigo wannabe again at some point. Nice little movie, great score.... glad I picked up the CD which has been spun many times.