Luigi Cozzi made his commercial feature debut with The Killer Must Kill Again after completing an initial experimental film - Il Tunnel Sotto Il Mondo (1969) aka The Tunnel Under the World - that received only limited distribution in Italy. Cozzi is more famous - or should we say infamous - for his gloriously tacky sci-fi entries, Starcrash (1979) and the even more over-the-top Alien Contamination (1980). Yet, Cozzi's beginnings were in the giallo; he not only worked closely with Dario Argento on several films but also contributed the screenplay to Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971). It would have been interesting if Cozzi had continued in the genre because The Killer Must Kill Again shows great promise and is full of inventive touches. The stalking of the first victim in her home generates a real frisson and the sequence where Laura is forced to watch a sadistic knife murder while she's bound and helpless is genuinely disturbing. In many ways, the movie's voyeuristic nature links the viewer with the killer, making us all passive accomplices to the crimes. Cozzi, a genuine film buff, also sprinkles movie references throughout the narrative as little homages to his favorite films - the disposal of a victim's car mirrors a similar scene in Psycho (1960), a woman walking along a dark street and sensing she's being stalked is a quote for Val Lewton's Cat People (1942), etc.
The most memorable aspect of The Killer Must Kill Again though is Michel Antoine as the murderer. Here's a face guaranteed to give you the heebie-jeebies. Looking like an unholy hybrid of Klaus Kinski and Willem Dafoe, Antoine is a walking nightmare with skeletal features and piercing eyes that radiate pure perversion. Yet the actor, who works under several aliases including Antoine Saint-John, has been sadly underused in the cinema, appearing in only a handful of movies; among them are Sergio Leone's Duck, You Sucker! (1971), My Name is Nobody (1973) and Federico Fellini's Ginger and Fred (1986). Why Antoine wasn't cast in more giallos is a mystery since his skull-like face is perfect for the genre.
Fans of spaghetti Westerns and other Eurotrash delights will probably recognize some of the other players in The Killer Must Kill Again, particularly George Hilton who divided his time between Italian oaters such as A Bullet for Sandoval (1969) and giallos like All the Colors of the Dark (1972). In the role of Laura, Cristina Galbo makes a convincingly terrified heroine and has been down this path before in What Have They Done to Solange? (1972), the zombie thriller Breakfast at Manchester Morgue (1974) and The House That Screamed (1969) aka Finishing School.
Mondo Macabro's DVD presentation of The Killer Must Kill Again is a deluxe presentation of this long unavailable title with English and Italian language/subtitle options and a generous package of extras. Along with Blue Underground, MM is doing a fantastic job of restoring and preserving some truly unique exploitation films and you gotta love that! Their previous presentations of such gems as Mill of the Stone Women (1960) and Crazy Love (1979) are real labors of love and The Killer Must Kill Again is no less impressive, boasting an almost flawless transfer, enhanced for widescreen.
In addition to the expected photo/poster gallery and theatrical trailer for The Killer Must Kill Again are three featurettes, an alternate title sequence, and a commentary track by the director (who keeps busy answering questions from Mondo Macabro's Pete Tombs). All of the featurettes are worthwhile, particularly "The Road to the Killer" which is an amiable portrait of Luigi Cozzi that covers his development as a writer and filmmaker. Did you know, for instance, that in his youth he was a correspondent for Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and befriended such science fiction writers as Ray Bradbury and Frederik Pol, editor of Galaxy magazine? Pol, in fact, gave Cozzi permission to adapt his story "The Tunnel Under the World" to the screen for free.
Cozzi's friendship with the undisputed master of the giallo film is covered in detail in the short, "Initials D.A. - Working with Argento," which describes how the two filmmakers met and ended up working together on Four Flies on Gray Velvet and Deep Red (1975). Cozzi would often crib ideas - especially murder scenes - from the pulp fiction novels of Cornell Woolrich and others to present to Argento for possible use in his film plots. The lesser of the three featurettes is "Death Walks at Midnight and the Giallo Scene" which is a fair introduction to the genre if you're a novice but restricted to the use of one film - Death Walks at Midnight (1972, also available from Mondo Macabro) - for clip representation. Still, Adrian Smith, author of the giallo study Blood and Black Lace, makes some good points, noting how giallo served as a bridge between the mystery thriller and the horror film with its graphic gore (a spike-gloved killer pounding a victim's face into mincemeat), heightened sense of sound and disregard for logic that borders on the surreal. Also of interest is the original credit sequence for The Killer Must Kill Again featuring a spider spinning its web. Why wasn't this one used instead of the present one, rendered as a static graphic?
For more information about The Killer Must Kill Again, visit Mondo Macabro. To order The Killer Must Kill Again, go to TCM Shopping.
by Jeff Stafford
