NUDE… SI MUORE (1968)
aka Naked You Die, The Young, the Evil & the Savage
Article 2617 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-4-2008
Posting Date: 10-12-2008
Directed by Antonio Margheriti
Featuring Mark Damon, Eleonora Brown, Michael Rennie
Country: Italy

A murderer is killing people at a girl’s boarding school.

You know, when I see a foreign movie that doesn’t impress me, I wonder how much my reaction is affected by poor dubbing and/or poor letterboxing. This one has neither excuse to fall back on. Despite the title, there’s not a whole lot of nudity, and, despite the fact that it’s a giallo, it’s surprisingly light on the gore. These things don’t really bother me that much. What does is the fact that the dialogue is lame and obvious (if the subtitles are accurate, that is), and the schoolgirls are truly annoying (especially the cute-as-a-button detective novelist wannabe with the walkie-talkie). I didn’t care much for the score, either; it sounded to me like the work of a first-year film score student with an addiction to the theme music of the Adam West “Batman” series. Still, the score was one of the big clues to me that the movie is at least partially a comedy, but the fact that it is singularly short of laughs (or real scares, for that matter) is another problem. For me, however, the biggest problem was the mystery itself; I spotted the killer the minute he (or she) opened his (or her) mouth, and you probably will, too. Amazingly enough, I think dubbing into English would have fixed this problem, if done with a little thought. It’s actually quite disappointing; in general, I like Antonio Margheriti’s forays into horror a lot more than his science fiction epics, but this one is an exception. Maybe he should have stayed away from comedies as well.