Micitype Pretty Good

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

cynema This movie is completely over the top! Why and how it escaped getting played around the world, on the midnight circuit, is beyond me. It's like someone made a soup out of a Spanish Soap Opera, a Giallo, Gothic Thriller, and a Film Noir... It's loaded with ridiculous double crosses, kinky incest (is it incest?), countless decapitations, pet vultures, plot twists that make little to no sense, random Freudian Psychology, and extraneous WWII Concentration Camp flashbacks! The score is over-dramatic, as is the acting, and just about everything else. It certainly can't be taken seriously, but that's what's so appealing. Don't be fooled though, if it's the Classic Bava, Martino or Argento-esque formula you're looking for, that's not what you'll get. Despite that it is often listed and cited as a Giallo. This movie came out in 1970, when the genre was just beginning to take root, so while it's certainly got all of the necessary elements to be classified as 'Gialli', the elements are scattered, appearing in different places in the plot than is common to the traditional Giallo formula. That said, it could be of interest to hardcore fans in that respect. That's how I came upon it, and I'm not upset. Think something along the lines of Luciano Ercoli's "Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion" or even Lucio Fulci's "Perversion Story," only much more ridiculous! Wonderfully ridiculous, psychedelic and melodramatic. Wow.

Scarecrow-88 Absurdly convoluted thriller with an insane amount of twists(..the rug gets pulled out from under you so many times you'll suffer a skull fracture)regarding a family of misfits, a troubled mother and her equally warped son and daughter. Lucille(Eleonora Rossi Drago)is burying the body of her husband supposedly while an escaped convict, Pascal(Fernando Sancho)is being sought after by the authorities. Pascal catches her in the act and is caught, but will return with an idea of blackmail. Falesse(Pier Angeli)is a deeply psychologically damaged young woman who believes she decapitated her father, after he had raped her. We watch a series of men stop off at the villa where these three live, attempting to seduce and ravage Falesse as her brother achingly watches from afar, trying to stop the act before it escalates. Those men all fall victim to Falesse who always hearkens back to that decapitation of her "father" before stabbing a back with a dagger or lopping off the head of another with a sword. Once Pascal arrives, the film spends the center section devoted to his terrorizing the trio, ordering them around with a gun waving at them, demanding for blackmail money, forcing the son to dig up the surrounding area for the remains of the decapitated father. We watch as Lucille concocts a scheme to end Pascal's interference in their lives(..in a bizarre turn of events, Falesse actually is drawn to Pascal, a foul, blubbery brute who rapes both her and Lucille). When Pascal is dealt with(..his departure is inspired by a startling episode that occurred to Lucille in a Nazi concentration camp as she watched her family suffocate in the gas chamber), yet another man, claiming to be Andre, the actual father of Lucille's children, returns, throwing their lives in turmoil. This is when we learn of a third child named Esther, and a beautiful blonde patient in an asylum whose relationship to this family is of great importance to the truth regarding the opening scene's decapitation and burial.I firmly realize that this film will have many viewers rolling their eyes in disbelief at the events that unravel, a bevy of lies weaved by Lucille, and her constituted effort to deceive over the years is hard to process fully. After a while, I almost threw my hands up at the non-stop revelations which just kept coming..it's incredible that a screenplay could feature so many twists and turns. You read others describing the movie as sleazy, but, in actuality, there's more suggestion than actual action on screen. Such as Pascal's molestation of Lucille and Falesse or the obvious, brother-sister, incest in the family over the years. Kudos to director/co-writer Sergio Bergonzelli's editor,Donatella Baglivo, who had the overwhelming task of establishing the complicated developing story as it unfolds. I mean one wonders how in the world an editor could piece together a film that throws everything at the viewer but the kitchen sink before the screen fades to black. Sergio Bergonzelli parades a number of fake decapitated heads for the viewers over the course of the film. Quite a demented little movie that will cause a lot of head-scratching and aggravation, but I enjoyed it's audacity to throw out all the stops in order to bewilder and surprise. As expected such a film with a lot of material, and so little actual violence or depravity on screen, IN THE FOLDS OF THE FLESH will bore and alienate many who watch it. I didn't think this was a traditional giallo, and wouldn't really consider it one, for the exception of the convoluted story and general bizarre behavior of the characters. The film, before it starts, actually quotes Freud..he'd have quite a challenge with the trio of oddballs in this film.

andrabem "Nelle pieghe della carne" (In the folds of the flesh) looks like a Mexican soap opera – the story is dramatic and twists are followed by more twists, and the puzzle becomes an enigma, till the conclusion, when everything is "explained". But somehow the answers look more senseless than the story itself. Can the film be called senseless? I don't think so because "In the folds of the flesh" is coherent when regarded inside its fantasy world. Fantasy is a reflection of reality, it portrays our subconscious fears and desires. Seen from this angle "In the folds of the flesh" has a coherent emotional reality, and I think that the best way to see the film is to turn off your brain and use your heart - the brain and logical thinking should function only as secondary tools on seeing "In the folds of the flesh".Now to the film: The film begins quoting Freud. If I remember well it was something like that – the scars we suffered in our early childhood will be the driving force that will lead us through life...In a tower/mansion by the beach something terrible happens. A bloody severed head, a woman and children - statuelike - looking darkly, a train goes by very fast... a shrill whistle. A killer on the run. The police close on his heels. Hiding behind bushes he sees a woman burying somebody. A very dramatic score underlines the scenes. The killer is finally arrested and the policemen go away. The tower is left alone with its dark secrets. Years go by but memories don't die. Mother, Daughter and Son. The father disappeared years ago. Terrible memories haunt them.Brother and sister like to indulge in sexual games. In the gardens by the sea, the birds, in their big cages, shriek. Murders happen. Decapitations, strangling. Flashbacks of rape, naked women being led to a Nazi gas chamber!. The tower, the unexpected visitors... the bodies must be disposed off....By now you'll be thinking that the film is completely insane and you'll be right, but (as I said before) there's an emotional logic that links everything.Like all good gialli, "In the folds of the flesh" has a beautiful visual style - fast and creative editing, bizarre zooms, weird camera angles ... but the orchestral soundtrack is unusual for a giallo - sometimes sad and melancholic and sometimes threatening and full of gloomy forebodings. It's a soundtrack more appropriate for a melodrama, for a soap opera, than for a giallo, but it has hit the nail on the head because "In the folds of the flesh" is in fact a melodrama, or rather, a melodramatic giallo. It has many layers and contradictions. It is superficial, but this superficiality has unknown depths. Freud, rape, incest, murder, Nazi gas chambers, love, betrayal, loneliness, everything mixed together in this crazy giallo. The world is seen through the subconscious (fear, illusions, desires...) in a film that looks like a fantasy soap opera."In the folds of the flesh" features an interesting cast that makes it a must for cinephiles: Eleanora Rossi Drago, one of the great ladies of the Italian cinema, was the main actress of such films as "Le Amiche" by Antonioni and "Estate Violenta" by Zurlini. Anna Maria Pierangeli, another amazing actress, best known for her Hollywood films. Fernando Sancho - the laughing Mexican bandit in many spaghetti westerns (!) and many others.... See them all together in a giallo, well, that's something! Those that expect a sleaze fest will be disappointed. This film was made in 1970, in a time when the giallo was about to start off. "The seducers" that was made one year earlier, namely in 1969, had already broken many boundaries, but I guess that, in that time, it was not widely released. So, most of the sex in "In the folds of the flesh" is more implied than directly shown, but anyway the film is filled all over with a highly-charged sexuality – visual sexual innuendos, kisses, games... Innocence, lurking lust, violence.... The story has twists after twists, and then other twists and still more twists, and it looks like the labyrinth of Crete. The images that follow each other and that disclose more and more the horrifying truths (!) are so over-the-top as to be really funny. But there's seriousness and emotion in the storytelling.In short, "In the folds of the flesh" could be labeled as a melodramatic giallo, but it is much more than that. The film has many, many layers, but it's not as complicated as it might seem by my description. Forget about logic and let the heart be your guide and you'll see that the film is quite simple. Don't try to understand the film (anyway there's no need to worry, everything is "explained" in the end), just feel it.

Infofreak On a dark and stormy night an escaped convict on the run witnesses a beautiful woman burying a body while a young boy looks on. He is captured by the authorities and returned to jail. Flash forward to several years later where the boy, now a young man, lives in a villa with his Mother and a girl who is either his lover or his sister, it's hard to say. His Mother was the mistress of a criminal who disappeared years before. Or is that "disappeared"? Is everything as simple and straightforward as it first appears? A guest arrives claiming to be a long lost relative. Are they telling the truth or do they suspect something about a hidden secret? So begins 'In The Folds Of The Flesh' an almost forgotten Spanish exploitation thriller that continually twists and turns. Full of surprises, trippy imagery, and an unexpected Nazi flashback, this is recommended to fans of Jess Franco's classic 'Succubus' and similar 60s/70s European sexploitation. It may not reach Franco's over the top absurdity and sheer strangeness, but it has a lot of fun trying, and I enjoyed it a great deal.