The Case Of The Scorpion's Tail

The Case of the Scorpion's Tale (La Coda Della Scorpione) (1971)

Runtime: 95 minutes

Directed by: Sergio Martino

Starring: George Hilton, Anita Strindberg, Alberto de Mendoza, Luigi Pistilli, Evelyn Stewart

From: A few different European countries

A stylish giallo mainly filmed in Greece? Sign me up.

Last night I returned to Arrow's streaming video site to see another giallo, one that had a catchy title. As Sergio Martino is famed for his genre efforts yet the only one I had seen before was Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key. An added bonus was that the opening section was filmed in London and the rest in Greece, a lovely country I have never seen much of on film before. I suppose some could say it was more a mystery than a horror picture... then again, this does have a killer dressed in black (including gloves) that uses a knife and there is a gruesome death so it fits for October.

This follows an insurance investigator who follows a lady into Greece to cash in on a policy after her husband dies in a plane crash. Of course the actual circumstances are much more complicated & there are many surprises along the way. Overall, this was a stylish movie from Martino which had some lovely scenes to look at (and not just the foreign scenery; one key moment was bathed in green light), the expected gratuitous moments-such as random nudity-some familiar faces in George Hilton and Luigi Pistilli, nice foreign settings & an interesting message of “everyone is cheating on everyone else.” It is trashy fun, in other words. Of course, it's not the most probable scenario, but...