Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Bezenby This seems to have a kind of cult following due to Marisa Mell being in it, but to me the whole thing was kind of a drag that we've all seen before. I did read on the IMDB that it's missing a lot of nudity and such like, so that would have held my attention a bit better if that was included. You have Richard Conte as the old millionaire who shares a huge manor with his crazy son, who has turned mute ever since finding his mother's body following her suicide. This kid had a rather unhealthy fixation on his mother, which riled Conte, as he can only see people as objects to be bought and owned. The son, Mark, is a bit of a handful for his carers and after the last one quits, mysterious strange Marisa Mell volunteers to help, while giving Conte the glad eye. Of course, all is not what it seems as Marisa is a gold digging thief with designs on all that groovy jewellery that Conte has collected over the years (including one that he's nicked from a local nunnery that looks like the holy grail and comes with a Raiders of The Lost Ark-type crescendo on the soundtrack - what's happening?). Marisa also has a husband (Anthony Steffen) who is even more twisted and crooked than her. Can Marisa play everyone off each other and get the goodies? Once she finds Conte's dead wife's diary, she starts to formulate a plan...Maybe it would have worked better with the sleaze added in, although it's bad enough watching sixty-five year old Conte snog Mell, so I'm not speculating on what I'm missing. I don't know, I just didn't engage with it all, at least until the last fifteen minutes where a few twists finally enter the plot. I'll give it one thing - the ending was appropriately sick.

qmtv The Story is severely sub par. Decent atmosphere, locations, acting, cinematography, and music Best part of the movie is its atmosphere. It has great locations, and decent cinematography. The music is good. The acting is good. But the story is lacking severely. It's just very slow and people just show up, and things just happen. The story needed a lot of work.Rating is a C/B-, or a 5. Worth a watch for the atmosphere. There are a few twists and turns.

morrison-dylan-fan Reciving a tremendous small bundle of movies from a very kind IMDber,my first reaction when seeing the name of this title,was that the film was probably some kind of Emanuelle spin-off!.Deciding to dig a bit deeper for info,I was shocked to discovering that the film was actually a rather strange Crime Drama starring Marisa Mell.Having heard a lot about Mell's work with director Mario Bava,I decided that I would use this film to see the "Diabolik" beauty of Marisa Mell.The plot:Struggling to cope with the restless,violent behaviour of his now mute son,and also sharing the pain with his son (Richard),of his wife/Richard's mum sudden death,Alexander decides to go on the hunt for a new maid,who along with helping to keep his castle-like mansion in order,will also hopefully bring a much needed "woman's touch" to the place.Checking through all of the job ads,Alexander cant believe his eyes,when he sees an ad for a woman (Gina) who wants to be a maid and offers all the services that Alexander could ever imagine!.Arriving to the mansion with ravishing clothes and her head held high,Alexander instantly starts attempting to do some "moves" on Gina,due to her looking like a very liberated woman.Despite his best attempts,Gina firmly puts her hand down on Alexander,and tells him that she is here to work and nothing more.Feeling uneasy about having Alexander and Richard desiring to get a "piece of her",Gina soon begins to plan on "taking the mask off",when she learns the shocking secret that the mansion contains The Holy Grail…View on the film:Initially starting out with strong hints of going in the "reincarnation" route that Brian De Palma would go a year later with his brilliant Obsession,the four screenwriters, (deep breath!:Emilio Martinez Lazaro,Rafael Moreno Alba,Mario Siciliano and Manuel Mur Oti) smartly use The Holy Grail as a tantalising Maguffin,to smoothly change genres from a possible reincarnation,haunted house movie,to becoming a psychological Crime film,filled with terrificly dark backstabbing (not literally) murders.For what would be one of his last three performances,Richard Conte gives a great stubborn performance as "elder of the mansion" Alexander,who originally appearing much more sane than his son Richard, (played by a wonderfully nerving Anthony Steffen) actually turns out to be on almost the same page as him,from trying to force himself onto Gina,to deciding that the only way to "cure" his increasingly insane son,is to treat him like a dog and lock him up in a self-made cell.Backed by Conte,Steffen and co-writer/director Manuel Mur Oti obsessive focus on her beauty,Marisa Mell shines from the moment she walks up the mansion stairs,to the agonised,freeze-frame ending.Despite 8 minutes worth of racy footage being sadly cut due to the Spanish censorship of the Franco era,Mell still gives an extremely charismatic performance as the conniving and cunning Gina,who whist being seen as kind and caring on the outside,is very well shown by Mell to be someone who is always hiding a dark ulterior motive behind her beautiful,delicately chiselled face.

Prof-Hieronymos-Grost La Encadenada aka Diary of an Erotic Murderess(1975) Manuel Mur Oti Alexander (Richard Conte)a very wealthy widower wants to hire a young woman to take care of his troubled son Mark, who is prone to fits of violence ever since the death of his mother left him mute. Gina (Marisa Mell, Seven blood stained orchids,One on top of the other) introduces herself as a writer looking for a job that will allow her time to write her book about the local Galician Witches, she is also a psychologist and with such qualifications she is hired. Gina however is a charlatan and a confidence trickster with a lengthy criminal record out to gain what she can from a man with too much money. She learns very quickly the troubles that torment Mark and immediately she is calling him "Mon petit cherie" the term of endearment used by his mother towards him, this has the effect of getting her into his confidence, Mark however is soon just as infatuated with her as he was his mother and forcefully tries to cement their relationship. Alexander also falls for the charms of the new employee and Gina sees her chance to play one against the other. Gina finds a diary from the deceased mother that is full of tales of her husbands abuse and her virtual position of being a sex slave to her master,also there in is her plans to kill him off in gruesome ways so that her and her son could enjoy the tyrants wealth at their leisure. Gina's plans are interrupted though when her own abusive husband Richard (Antonio De Teffè,Crimes of the Black Cat, The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave) turns up,he knows what she's up to and threatens to reveal all to her new employer and to the authorities unless she can provide him with just a little of the wealth he knows is inside the Manor, she agrees, Richard however tries to sell the jewels he is given to the same vendor that sold them originally to Alexander, he confronts her and tells her to leave,but his true feelings towards her can not let her leave. Alexander is soon dispatched in his bathtub, but before Gina and Mark can enjoy their new found wealth after the demise of Alex, a stranger turns up called Charles who introduces himself as the bastard son of Alex and as such the beneficiary of half his father's estate, he then astounds her by saying he has been investigating her on his father behalf and recounts to her all the details of her seedy past, his demands are clear she has to become his sexual slave, she agrees, but its not long however before old Charles is dispatched in the the same way as his father, Gina suspects Mark, but then the final shocking twist of the diary becomes very evident. Diary of an Erotic Murderess reminded me a little of the Conte/Fenech film Secrets of a Call Girl in that both have an underused Conte, a female icon of Italian cinema and very misleading titles, of course the film did originally have plenty of sex scenes but they were all sadly removed, the sight of the exotic Mell in a state of undress would truly have been a highpoint of the film.The film is a hybrid of many Italian genres and is hard to define, the stately manor which also boasts a former Templar monastery on its grounds adds sufficiently to the mood and would suggest a Gothic origin, but it is also firmly in the bloodless giallo realm too. Mell with her catlike features is a delight and her performance is excellent, Conte, one of my favorite actors is good too although the voice which I'm pretty sure wasn't his is a little off putting.Carlo Savina's very romantic score is very sumptuous and reminiscent of many a Morricone opus. It's a good little thriller though and recommended to all fans of Italian Giallo/Mystery thriller films.