Too Beautiful to Die (1988).
The Stage.
A woman is raped at a party and then killed shortly after she leaves. Later, people who were at the party are being knocked off one-by-one. Is it the dead model, back from the grave and looking for revenge? Is it the mysterious new girl who took the dead model’s place? One thing is for sure…in Too Beautiful to Die, no one is too beautiful to die.
The Review.
This film was titled Sotto il Vestito Niente II in Italy, making it a sequel in name only to the 1985 film Nothing Underneath. Whereas that film tackled a murder mystery in the Milan fashion industry, this one takes place in the then-budding world of the music video. A sleazeball named Alex runs the talent agency supplying the girls for a Frankie Goes to Hollywood Mad-Max themed video shoot, and when the girls head back to his house for a party, a powerful old dude (who somehow has the other girls wrapped around his fingers) uses his brigade of models to hold one girl captive in a jacuzzi while he rapes her. This party is ridiculous, by the way, and looks like what someone would fantasize an all-female model get together might look like - naked models, lounging in a hot tub, laughing and playing with each other’s hair. Understandably, the victim leaves in a haste, which interrupts Alex’s computer game, simply titled “Porno Game”, and is a screen with NES-level graphics of pink cartoons fucking each other. Three hours later, the girl is found dead with a bullet in her head inside of an exploded car, and that’s where our giallo kicks off.
Didn’t even need cheat codes to get a high score.
The rest of the film features the other people who were at the party being killed in deadly but disappointingly tame ways. The murder weapon is a prop from the Mad Max set and it’s got like 4 big blades on it; for as cool as it looks and with the promise of being such a devastating instrument of death, it never actually does much damage to bodies on screen. We see some slashes, some pokes, and some swipes, but the amount of red stuff is pretty tame here. Like most giallos, the film takes all kinds of narrative twists and turns as you try to figure out who the black gloved killer is, but when the maestro is finally revealed, the explanation is pretty weak and poorly explained, par for the course for lower-tier films of the genre. Unfortunately, a lot of the film drags every time we cut back to the detective on the case - he’s an uninteresting character who seems to lack basic investigative skills and lucks into finding actual information more often than Shaggy and Scooby-Doo.
It’s not a film without its merits though. The director, Dario Piana, was a prolific television commercial director and his style and panache catering to short attention spans really shines through here with some really well constructed shots and a lot of interesting camera work. The film starts off in the space of a music video shoot but the entire movie kind of feels like one long music video. The music choices are also stellar - I’ve never seen a giallo movie with a Huey Lewis and the News song in it, and there’s a sex scene set to the Toto piano ballad “I Won’t Hold You Back” that was brilliant and left the song stuck in my head for the remainder of the day. What the film lacks in pacing and blood, it sure as hell makes up for with style. The late-80’s decor is another visual treat, with things like enormous novelty phones and plastic blowup chairs used as actual serious furniture rear their ugly but amusing heads. The set gaffes that made it into the final film only add to the charm for me, the best being a winch pulley or counterweight from the actors harness that we see enter the corner of the screen as they fall to their death.
The End.
While Too Beautiful to Die was a decent enough watch, it’s hard to feel good recommending it to anyone outside of hardcore giallo superfans. While most of the film is visually arresting, the kills are not, and the acting and story feel like they were written by aliens who had only seen music videos and attempted to recreate one that was an hour and a half long. This can be frustrating, but can also be amusing, like a short montage of two girls who just became roommates and interact with the gusto of two eight year olds who just became best friends. I honestly thought we’d see a pillow fight at some point.
The Vinegar Syndrome disc, which shares a box with its spiritual sister film Nothing Underneath, looks nice, both being restored in 4K from the 35mm original negatives. It doesn’t have many special features, but does have a commentary track that I’m hoping to dig into soon as well as an interview with the director and some storyboards of some deleted scenes and the alternate ending.
