In short: The Skin Under the Claws (1975)

Original title: La pelle sotto gli artigli

A murderer not just wearing black gloves but also a black stocking over his head stalks the streets of an Italian city. He seems predominantly interested in murdering prostitutes, but there’s something really strange going on with the killings. The state of the corpses, and the time of death never seem quite to match, and the forensics experts “help” Comissario Rinaldi (Ettore Ribotta), the man tasked with getting to the bottom of the case, with results like “the victim must have hugged a corpse shortly before her death”. Which is only of little help to an ongoing investigation, one has to admit.

Does this have anything to do with the nice discussions between physicians Professor Helmut (Gordon Mitchell), Dr Gianni Dani (Tino Boriani) and Dr Silvia Pieri (Geneviève Audry) about all kinds of mad science philosophy we pop into from time to time? Is it a good idea for Pieri to fall for Dani? And can you hypnotize a corpse?

Nobody will ever confuse Alessandro Santini’s The Skin Under the Claws with one of the great giallos. Santini’s direction is just too bland and the script too unfocussed even for a genre not known for its focus or internal logic. The film meanders between scenes for often only the vaguest of reasons, and even once you’ve learned what’s going on (which makes little sense, obviously, but no matter), it is often unclear why Santini decided to show us certain scenes at all. Usually in a giallo, scenes of dubious narrative worth are in because they look cool, or moody, to the director’s eye, or because they are an excuse to get some more nudity into the movie. Here, there’s really not enough style on screen to make this proposition believable, apart from the nudity bit.

Having said this, I also have to admit that I had a perfectly good time with the film. While there’s really very little of actual quality in it, it does try its damndest to deliver all the giallo and all the mad science tropes it can squeeze into its allotted ninety minutes. For the longstanding fan of the genre like me, this sort of thing has a certain draw. So much so, I’d call the somewhat bonkers last twenty minutes or so actually worth watching despite their complete lack of artistic merit, simply for their perfectly misguided attempts at bringing the traditional mad scientist into the giallo.