Shadows in an Empty Room (Blazing Magnum, Una Magnum Special per Tony Saitta, 1976)

US Kino Lorber Blu-ray edition

Region A blu-ray on the sleeve but it played on my region B player as well

Turnable Sleeve, and that's OK as Shadows in an Empty
Room is the UK title and has a giallo look to it, and Blazing Magnum cover looks more like a crime action film,
and really, this great B film is both. It's sort of an italian police action -
poliziottesco and a canadian giallo, and
maybe i should've it in my Giallo & Eurocrime section ?



A surprisingly enjoyable B movie nicely photographed by the Maestro Aristide Massaccesi under the alias Antony Ford.
A Canadian Eurocrime with gialli elements filmed mostly in Montreal but also in Ottawa. Stuart Whitman plays the grumpy
policeman with a big weapon revenging his daughter's death, and his daughter who dies off shockingly early in the film but
still plays a pivotal role for the solution of the murder mystery element in this film, is played by the .... by the .... the lovely

Carol Laure in the 1970's

the Canadian artmovie actress (born 1948) .... aaah, i do have a special memory of this actress. When i was a youngster, 15
maybe, i saw this really wild movie when it was shown at the Swedish Film Institute, at their film club for cineasts (Cinema-
teket Filmklubben) and the film was the highly controversial Sweet Movie by Dusan Makavejev, a film that was banned i think
in many countries. Carol Laure played Miss Canada and her beauty burned her into my brain forever, and now some 40 years
later i got to see her again. Canada, not just a cult director in Cronenberg, great comedians and ice-hockey but Carol Laure too.

The film starts off in Ottawa with Grim Reaper policeman Tony Saitta (Stuart Whitman) slaughtering some bankrobbers, and at
the same time his younger .... much, much younger sister .... Louise (Carol Laure) is in trouble in Montreal. She's bickering with
her college professor Dr. Tracer (Martin Landau .... i love Landau, always the same facial expression but as a child i never missed
an episode of Mission Impossible on TV .... and, yes, i'm that old) and she faints at a college gathering, and .... she DIES.
That was shocking for her fanboy, Me, but she returns in flashbacks later and plays a big role in the solution of the murder mystery.
Murder mystery? Yes, she's been killed with poison and her father .... sorry, brother it is, Captain Sitta arrives to Montreal and
starts lurking after clues and he won't let no one to stop him, if it takes chases on foot or by car or using his big Magnum gun.

To his help he's got the stiff as wood acting John Saxon as a police buddy. Who's the killer, is it the rich mans wife Margie (Gayle
Hunnicutt), Louises's former boyfriend Fred (Jean Leclerc), the Doctor (Landau), blind piano teacher Julie (Tisa Farrow, the less
known of the Farrow sisters and a Lucio Fulci actress), is it the doctor's son, the transvestite or someone else ?
This film has got some really GREAT action scenes in a loooong and beautiful car chase on the streets of Montreal, a giallo tinted
murder when we hear the heartbeats of the murderer on the ST, and a very nice fight scene between Captain Saitta and 3 really
pissed off transvestite hookers. Some nice boobs too from Laure and Hunnicutt and i love the bleak atmosphere of the Montreal
streets, a northern greyish feeling i feel also here in Stockholm, Sweden were i live and who can be seen in the Cronenberg films.

Widescreen 1.85:1, DTS-HD MA 1.0 english audio (no subtitles) and only a trailer as extra, a turnable sleeve and some trailers
for a couple of forgotten AIP movies of the B-ish kind. According to the sleeve this US Blu-ray edition is locked to region A but
it played also on my region B blu-ray player, so it must be region A+B or region free

 

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