Italia's Next Chopped Model Week! Day 8: Fashion Crimes

Welcome, ladies and gents, to my "sweeps week" of the Italian Lemonade monthlong giallothon.

Much of the genre revolves around fashion and fashion models...and the death of said fashion models.  So much so that I have decided to devote an entire week of this thirty days to gialli with a fashion/model theme.

Interesting thing is, my collection isn't THAT extensive (maybe 50 or so), but I still found that I own more than enough gialli with this theme to give it its own week.

So I hereby deem this Italia's Next Chopped Model week.  Tyra, forgive me.

My first selection is Fashion Crimes, another 80's relic.  More big hair and pseudo new-wave music.  The opening ditty almost comes across as a spoof of 80's music, but I think it's a real song.

Fashion Crimes centers around Gloria, a fashion model (what else?).  On her way home from a photo shoot, her car stalls outside a villa...which for some reason looks like one I saw in Tenebrae.  We see her walk in, scream, and get the fuck outta dodge.  She almost gets hit by a truck, faints, and wakes up in a daze.

Okay.  The last sentence of that paragraph...put it on repeat a few times.  But replace "almost gets hit by a truck" with "discovers a body" for the rest of the film.

Anyhow, she tells police she witnessed a murder in the villa, but when they go there, not only does her car start, the villa is empty and full of cobwebs.  And the door she claims to have walked through at the end of the hall doesn't exist.  So everyone thinks she's crazy.  But anyone who's ever seen a giallo knows she isn't crazy...

The similar villa isn't the only thing that has a Tenebrae link.  Anthony Franciosa, star of that film, plays an inspector assigned to the case.  Boy, the seven years in between both films must've been hard for him.  He's almost unrecognizable.  It wasn't until a little while in when I noticed certain inflections of his voice that I realized it was him.  There were rumors he was a raging alcoholic, often showing up drunk on the set of Tenebrae, so that could explain it.

As for the fashion of Fashion Crimes...hmm...while not always the horrendous style we remember, there are a few doozies.  Mainly the collection that Gloria models for...same designer, same season, yet incredibly inconsistent collection.  There's no cohesion.

Dude, I think I just channelled Tim Gunn.  My seven-season love of Project Runway is taking over...

Anyhow, the story itself is merely average.  A series of flashbacks, after-the-fact dead bodies, no nudity, and an ending that I really should've seen coming...especially after seeing Your Vice is a Locked Door and Only I Have the Key and Dario Argento's Black Cat portion of Two Evil Eyes.

I think I jinxed myself after that little "I'm really picking them" remark I made on day 3 or 4.  Let's rectify that tomorrow.

Later.
-Justin