Death Walks at Midnight

The second and sunnier of Luciano Ercoli's Death Walks pictures, both built around his wife Nieves Navarro (billed as Susan Scott). Here she is a fashion model who swallows an experimental hallucinogen for a magazine stunt and watches a woman battered to death with a spiked iron glove, except the killing she describes does not line up with any that happened. Ercoli plays it brighter and pulpier than the giallo norm, closer to a fumetti comic than to Argento, with gaudy fashion and a brisk sense of humour. Navarro is a real star and carries the paranoia without ever tipping into hysteria. Ernesto Gastaldi's script keeps the trapdoors coming. A giallo that actually wants you to have fun.