Even if you only occasionally and/or accidentally stumble upon my profile, you must have noticed already that I'm a huge fan of Italian cult cinema from the '60s, '70s and '80s, and more particularly the so-called "giallo" is my absolute favorite sub- genre. Gialli are violent and often perverted whodunit thrillers from Italy that were tremendously popular from the mid-sixties until approximately the mid-seventies. The sub-genre was more or less founded by Mario Bava with his classics "The Girl Who Knew Too Much" and "Blood and Black Lace", released in respectively 1962 and 1964, but the glorious heydays were between 1968 and 1972, with brilliant highlights from a range of multi-talented directors like Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Sergio Martino, Umberto Lenzi and Massimo Dallamano. But then, for some mysterious and incomprehensible reason, the giallo-reign abruptly ended in 1975 and, with the exception of one or two titles, no more decent gialli were made in the second half of the decade. There was a brief revival during the '80s, mainly thanks to Mario Bava's son Lamberto and his handful of good contributions ("A Blade in the Dark", "Midnight Killer", "Delirium: Photos of Gioia") but then the giallo passed away for good. It's most interesting to investigate why exactly the gialli of the late '70s stopped being good, and I think Enzo Milioni's "The Sister of Ursula" is the ideal study object
It seems as if newer and aspiring directors mistook the most important trademarks of the giallo and subsequently enlarged them in the most wrongful and distasteful ways! For instance, gialli have always contained sleazy sex footage and the lead actresses often provided gratuitous nudity, but watching "The Sister of Ursula" almost feels like watching hardcore pornography! There are many extended sex sequences; showing - in great detail - foreplay and both male as female genitalia, and that's really not necessary! Also, in older gialli the female victims were occasionally stabbed in the crotch with a sharp knife, which was ultimately perverse and shocking, whilst here in this film all the victims' intimate areas are sodomized with a big wooden dildo! That's right; it doesn't get any more tasteless than that! The plot and main characters of this late giallo are weak and uninteresting, with several minor stories that are interwoven with each other. There's the principal story of the lovely siblings Ursula and Dagmar arriving in sunny Amalfi to look for the mother that abandoned them when they were still children. They reside at a luxurious seaside hotel, where the lurid manager has an affair with the night club singer and his wife is a frustrated lesbian. Ursula becomes more and more asocial and forbids her sister to date the junkie who always hangs around the hotel bar. Oh yes, meanwhile there's also a mad maniac on the loose who loves to savagely destroy vaginas! Many long parts of the film - including the semi porn - are dull and badly acted. The best aspects and, in fact, the sole reasons to consider checking out "The Sister of Ursula" are the breath-taking Amalfi filming locations and the surprisingly exhilarating musical score.
It seems as if newer and aspiring directors mistook the most important trademarks of the giallo and subsequently enlarged them in the most wrongful and distasteful ways! For instance, gialli have always contained sleazy sex footage and the lead actresses often provided gratuitous nudity, but watching "The Sister of Ursula" almost feels like watching hardcore pornography! There are many extended sex sequences; showing - in great detail - foreplay and both male as female genitalia, and that's really not necessary! Also, in older gialli the female victims were occasionally stabbed in the crotch with a sharp knife, which was ultimately perverse and shocking, whilst here in this film all the victims' intimate areas are sodomized with a big wooden dildo! That's right; it doesn't get any more tasteless than that! The plot and main characters of this late giallo are weak and uninteresting, with several minor stories that are interwoven with each other. There's the principal story of the lovely siblings Ursula and Dagmar arriving in sunny Amalfi to look for the mother that abandoned them when they were still children. They reside at a luxurious seaside hotel, where the lurid manager has an affair with the night club singer and his wife is a frustrated lesbian. Ursula becomes more and more asocial and forbids her sister to date the junkie who always hangs around the hotel bar. Oh yes, meanwhile there's also a mad maniac on the loose who loves to savagely destroy vaginas! Many long parts of the film - including the semi porn - are dull and badly acted. The best aspects and, in fact, the sole reasons to consider checking out "The Sister of Ursula" are the breath-taking Amalfi filming locations and the surprisingly exhilarating musical score.