Terror Transmission

The Iguana With the Tongue of Fire (L’iguana dalla lingua di fuoco) – 1971 – Italy/France/Germany – Sinister Cinema

You have to love Riccardo Freda for giving us Mario Bava as a film director and continuing the career of Barbara Steele after “Black Sunday” (1960), if not for this drab exercise in by-the-numbers filmic yawns. Freda famously yanked himself off of the picture “Caltiki, the Immortal Monster” as director and suggested his cinematographer, Mario Bava, as a replacement because he saw the potential of Bava, and filmdom is eternally grateful for the gesture. In 1921 the Italians made one of the first adaptations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with “Il Mostro Di Frankenstein” but abandoned the horror genre in favor of several “peplum” or “sword and sandal” films revolving around the character of Maciste (Hercules). It was not until 1956 with Freda’s film “I Vampiri” (photographed by Bava) that Italy made a return to the horror market, and the door to horror glory was thrust open. Bava literally ripped the door off its proverbial hinges with his film, “La Maschera Del Demonio” (a.k.a.: “Black Sunday”) in 1960, and the rest is history. Freda returned to the horror genre several times throughout his prolific career including the films “Maciste in Hell” (1962), “The Horrible Dr. Hichcock” (1962), “The Ghost” (1963), this picture in 1971, “Tragic Ceremony (1972), and “The Wailing” (1981), but never equaled the genius of his one-time understudy, Bava. But who did?

A woman is burned with acid and stuffed into the boot of a car at the sprawling estate of Ambassador Sobiesky (Anton Diffring) in Dublin, Ireland. The police are trying to skirt around the touchy immunity of the Ambassador and his family and are frankly clueless, so they call in the (retired?) detective John Norton (Luigi Pistilli) to unofficially investigate the goings-on. Mrs. Sobiesky’s no-goodnik son Mark (Werner Pochath) from a previous marriage is being paid off by the Ambassador to either cover up his own extra-maritals or just to keep the mongoloid sonuvabitch as far away as he can afford. Detective Norton begins a sordid relationship with the rebellious daughter Helen Sobiesky (the wonderful Dagmar Lassander) for the purpose of investigatorial proximity and (who could blame him) to get some mileage out of her hot ass on the side. Throw in a blackmail subplot with the chauffeur and the Miss Marple-like deaf/blind mother of Detective Norton and you have some serious inanity.

The music is forgettable, the identity of the killer is obvious from the get-go, and the entirely un-charismatic Luigi Pistilli (innumerable spaghetti westerns, “Twitch of the Death Nerve”, “Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key”, “Tragic Ceremony” etc…) will lull you to sleep with the spottiest Irish brogue ever recorded. The marvelous Anton Diffring (“The Man Who Could Cheat Death”, “Circus of Horrors”) is criminally underused (probably due to his embarrassment with the script), the special effects are amongst the worst I have ever seen with painfully obvious mannequins being used for the throat slashings, head bashings and face meltings (which are numerous), and the filmmakers even manage to make the least out of the gorgeous Swiss-Alp locales. Dagmar Lassander is bewitching as usual with some wonderful wardrobe pieces and at least the tiresome grandmother who keeps misplacing her spectacles gets smacked around, but even her survival is unresolved at the finish. I would rather catch a terminal case of amoebic dysentery than sit through this tedious offal again. Should be re-titled “The Guano I Would Like to Set on Fire.”

Jason’s Grade: D-