User Reviews

A Spanish giallo dating back to 1975, THE DEATH OF THE SCORPION focuses on the complex love life of a woman married to a rich film producer but carrying on with various other associates in the business; she's got at least three different boyfriends on the go at one point! Into this heady mix comes a blackmailer and things all get very tense, especially when her husband decides to stage elaborate murder sequences in his latest film and chooses to cast his wife in a role mirroring her own real-life role. It's complex stuff and the complexity is enough to keep you watching, but it's not a particularly entertaining production. The cast is better than the budget but the horror and suspense elements are in short supply and there are long stretches where little of interest happens. 5/10 at best for me on this one.

The producer (Antonio Casas) of a series of thrillers is having marital issues with his younger wife (Teresa Gimpera), a former actress who quit to be a contented housewife. She is having several affairs, one with the scriptwriter (Eusebio Poncela) of her husband's current film, and the other a lawyer (Miquel Narros) who was once a former boyfriend before she married her husband. Into this lurid quadrangle comes a blackmailer who knows all about her sordid love life and wants to extort her for large sums of money. At the same time, her husband is working on a new film with his wife's scriptwriter lover which eerily mirrors what is taking place in the producer's current life. He even wants to use his wife for the role of the philandering spouse. This eventually plays out in a double murder, twists and turns of the plot and finally a suicide. This was the debut film of Gonzalo Herralde and it's a shame he never entered genre territory again. It would fit right into Alfred Hitchcock's filmography with ease. The mirroring of the film's plot with the film within a film story line is executed brilliantly. Teresa Gimpera was a veteran of Spanish genre films by this time and at age 40, she was still quite attractive and even consented to several brief flashes of nudity. She is the catalyst to all that happens here and she performs her role in spectacular fashion. Antonio Casas as the older husband plays the part well and when the need for him to be violent arises, he does so convincingly. He was well known for his many roles in Spaghetti Westerns such as THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY along with THE BIG GUNDOWN. Eusebio Poncela may not be a name you know but he had a small but pivotal role in Eloy De La Iglesias' THE CANNIBAL MAN. The score by Juan Pineada is nothing special and his filmography reveals nothing else that might warrant further attention. The film offers glimpses of being behind the scenes of a murder sequence (that of course plays out eventually in the real film) with all the secrets of the work of a sound effects foley artist revealed. A very enjoyable Spanish film that does not deserve its seemingly obscure status.