Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.5

Death Walks at Midnight Blu-ray Movie Review

This is your giallo on drugs.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 16, 2016

Note: This film is available as part of Death Walks Twice: Two Films By Luciano Ercoli.

Mention giallo to even the most ardent film lover, and chances are you’ll only hear one of two names in response, Mario Bava or Dario Argento. In a way that’s perfectly understandable, since Bava’s 1963 opus The Girl Who Knew Too Much (available on Blu-ray as a part of Evil Eye) is regularly credited (rightly or wrongly) as having sparked (at least the 60s iteration of) giallo, while Argento’s 1970 The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (also available in this edition) is credited (probably more accurately) with having immensely popularized the genre in that decade. True fans of giallo know that there are certainly a number of interesting directors who helped to populate the idiom over the course of at least a couple of decades, including such names as Lucio Fulci ( The New York Ripper), Umberto Lenzi (Orgasmo) and the director featured in this new set from Arrow, Luciano Ercoli. Two of Ercoli’s best known gialli appeared in the considerable wake left by The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, though it’s notable (and even commendable) that Ercoli’s films are not carbon copies of his Italian contemporaries and in fact sometimes rely on tropes more commonly associated with such iconic directors as Alfred Hitchcock (and of course Hitchcock was an influence on many giallo enthusiasts, as evidenced by the very title of The Girl Who Knew Too Much). Neither of the films included in this set is a masterpiece by any stretch, but they’re often quite stylish, if just as often silly to an almost hyperbolic degree.

Note 2: A few salient plot points are going to be at least hinted at in the following discussion, so those averse to even potential spoilers are encouraged to skip down to the technical portions of the review, below.

If Death Walks on High Heels owes a tip o’ the dusty wig to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, at least one central element of Hitchcock’s Rear Window works its way into Death Walks at Midnight’s sometimes florid plot contrivances. What’s so patently weird about this story conceit is that it has been wedded to a quasi-hallucinatory element that recalls some late sixties American efforts like Psych-Out and/or The Trip. Just consider that for a moment while also attempting to deal with the fact that Death Walks at Midnight also traffics in several well worn giallo tropes, and it should be apparent that the film is often on the lunatic side of things.

There are a number of probably unintentionally funny things about various sidebars at play in Death Walks at Midnight, some of which are overtly mentioned by Tim Lucas in his entertaining commentary. One of these happens early on when glamorous model Valentina (Susan Scott, the stage name for Nieves Navarro, otherwise known as Mrs. Luciano Ercoli) allows herself to be injected with a “new” hallucinogen (obviously modeled on LSD) as part of a tabloid journalism article put together by her boyfriend Giò Baldi (Simon Andreu). Baldi is going to document Valentina’s trip courtesy of both a tape recorder and a camera, though Valentina wants to remain anonymous, something Baldi assures her will be accomplished with the help of a mask covering her eyes. As Lucas suggests in his commentary, the fact that the wall behind them in Valentina’s rather luxe apartment is emblazoned with a huge poster of her beautiful face might be something of a stumbling block. But even without that “clue” to her identity, Valentina quickly rips off the mask during her “high”, and Baldi breaks all rules of journalistic integrity (if he had any to begin with, that is) by publishing Valentina’s identity in the article, something that brings her unwanted notoriety.

That notoriety is not due only to the fact that a glamorous model has been playing around with drugs, but also because during her trip Valentina witnessed a vision of a man bludgeoning a woman with a huge iron glove covered in sharp spikes. Part of this sequence sees Valentina running to a window in her apartment overlooking a courtyard (shades of Rear Window), and soon it becomes a possibility that Valentina didn’t just imagine a murder, hallucination style, but actually saw one. Except—the murder that apparently did happen happened quite some time ago. What’s going on?

Death Walks at Midnight is even more hyperbolic than its predecessor, but it also tends to tip over into silliness at times, and it also has a couple of logical lapses that armchair detectives may find troubling. The film is probably the more stylish of the two Death Walks films, and it’s certainly the more graphic in terms of its giallo gore. A lot of the cast of Death Walks on High Heels is reunited here, albeit in (at times at least) totally different roles, and High Heels’s ubiquitous screenwriter, Ernesto Gastaldi, provides a suitably knotty story that builds to a completely carnival-esque climax.

Death Walks at Midnight Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Death Walks at Midnight is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. The insert of the keepcase advertises that this is a "brand new 2K restoration from original film elements". The exhaustive booklet included with the set includes the following additional information:

All work on this new restoration was carried out at L'Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna. The original 35mm 2-perf Techniscope negative has been lost, so an original 4-perf 35mm Internegative was scanned in 2K resolution on a pin-registered Arriscan and was graded on Digital Vision's Nucoda Film Master.

Thousands of instances of dirt, debris and light scratches were removed through a combination of digital restoration tools. Overall image stability and instances of density fluctuation were also improved.

While not offering quite the detail levels seen in Death Walks on High Heels, this transfer boasts generally commendable detail levels, especially in close-ups (see screenshots 2 and 3). The palette seems slightly yellow at times (appropriately so, perhaps), something that's especially noticeable in flesh tones. This film has a few more optical effects than Death Walks on High Heels, and those moments are understandably softer looking. Grain is a bit more unkempt in this presentation than in Death Walks on High Heels, but is generally very natural looking, and there are no compression issues of any note to address in this review.

Death Walks at Midnight Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Death Walks at Midnight features DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mixes in both the original Italian and a pretty lamentable English dub. Information on the soundtracks is presented in the booklet accompanying this set:

The film's original Italian and English mono soundtracks were transferred from the original 35mm optical sound negatives using the Sondor OMA/E with COSP Xi2K technology to minimise optical noise and produce the best quality results possible.

There are times in which the film's audio synch will appear slightly loose against the picture, due to the fact that the soundtrack was recorded entirely in post-production. This is correct and as per the original theatrical release of Death Walks on High Heels.

While some curmudgeons may want to quibble with just how "slight" the looseness of the post-looping is at times, otherwise both tracks offer very good fidelity which capably supports the film's dialogue, occasional effects, and the Cipriani-esque score by Gianni Ferrio. Things are slightly shallow and narrow sounding at times, but there's no outright damage to address in this review, and most audiophiles will have little to complain about here.

Death Walks at Midnight Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Introduction (1080p; 1:57) is by screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi.


• Audio Commentary is by Video Watchdog's Tim Lucas.


• Death Walks at Midnight: TV Version (1080p; 1:46:04 ) is notable for containing scenes not included in the theatrical version. This comes with a warning that it is sourced from video with intermittent tracking issues which could not be ameliorated. Though ostensibly in 1080p, this looks like it was probably upscaled from a video master. The credits are windowboxed and letterboxed before the main feature is presented in a "full frame" aspect ratio.


• Crime Does Pay (1080p; 31:03) is a great 2015 interview with Ernesto Gastaldi.


• Desperately Seeking Susan (1080p; 27:54) is an interesting "visual essay" by Michael Mackenzie documenting the collaboration between Ercoli and Nieves.

Death Walks at Midnight Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Death Walks at Midnight is patently goofy a lot of the time, but it seems to know it, playing things with a slightly arch attitude. The mash up of giallo, Rear Window and druggie films from the late sixties is certainly an odd stew (to say the least), but Gastaldi's fun screenplay and Ercoli's nicely stylized direction keep things from tipping over into outright camp. Technical merits are very good to excellent, and the supplementary package excellent. Recommended.