Explosive
Summary
A globe trotting giallo from director Sergio Martino, who was a real pro at these types of films, The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail holds water as a thriller and as a horror slasher, with some real doozy kills, particularly the first one and a little later with an eye-gouging scene that had me wincing.
Plot: The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail begins with the mysterious death of a millionaire and spirals into the murder of his suddenly rich wife, which draws the attention of a dogged investigator, who follows a trail of blood to the bitter end.
Review: An attractive adulterer named Lisa Baumer (Evelyn Stewart) is informed that her husband was killed in a commercial airliner plane crash, and that her husband’s life insurance will pay her a million dollars. It doesn’t take long for seedy characters to dog her at every turn: First comes a blackmailer who extorts her for cash over a letter she wrote claiming that she wanted her husband dead. Next comes her husband’s mistress, who wants half of the money, insisting that her husband was going to switch her to the beneficiary. Lisa is also hounded by the police and the insurance investigator Peter Lynch (George Hilton), who believes she’s hiding something. When Lisa is (spoiler!) brutally murdered and robbed of her million bucks in her hotel room in Greece, the police have plenty of suspects, but the murders pile up, all somehow connected to Lisa and her dead husband. Peter teams up with a sultry news reporter named Cleo (Anita Strindberg) to get to the bottom of the murders and perhaps find the stash of cash, but with the killer on their tails, the mystery is going to get intense!
A globe trotting giallo from director Sergio Martino, who was a real pro at these types of films, The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail holds water as a thriller and as a horror slasher, with some real doozy kills, particularly the first one and a little later with an eye-gouging scene that had me wincing. The film amps up the sexuality and the exotic locations, which both give the movie some seasoning, and the movie actually made some sense to me. Quite often these giallos confuse me with overly complicated plots, but this one was an easy one to follow.
Arrow Video’s new Blu-ray of this title is presented in a new 2K restoration, with new interviews, a commentary, featurettes, trailers, and an insert booklet with essays, plus newly commissioned artwork for the sleeve, which is reversible.