Strip Nude For Your Killer (1975)

Reviewed By: Billy

Now that I’ve watched both Strip Nude for Your Killer and Delirium: Photo of Gioia, I think I’m pretty much an expert on the Italian fashion industry. Here's what I’ve learned:

1) To be a supermodel, one’s chest must be so expansive that it requires custom-made undergarments.
2) To be a supermodel, it’s imperative that one sleep with one’s photographer, or at least have a lesbian fling with one’s agent.
3) There isn’t actually any fashion involved in the fashion industry, as all photo shoots are done in the nude.

Additionally, in Italy, this apparently constitutes a fashion shot:

This is quite different from the American fashion industry. I’m an expert on that, as well, thanks to endless day-long marathons of “America’s Next Top Model” on Oxygen. In America, being a model includes:

1) Learning to “smile with your eyes”…
2) Learning to “tooch your booty”…
3) Repeatedly saying the word “fierce” while wagging your finger in front of your face.

And in America, this apparently constitutes a fashion shot:

Now, I ask you: which country’s fashion show would you rather sit through?

Anyway, Strip Nude for Your Killer is not a great movie, but it is proof-positive that 1970s Italy is just way cooler than present-day America.  The Italian just always got it right.  For example, in a splendid example of classy movie-making – the movie opens with a bizarre scene in which a doctor who appears to be wearing a Halloween wig digs in between a woman’s legs with a metal shoehorn. Yikes. The back of the box says something about a botched abortion; I’ll just assume this is it, though I have no other evidence to back that up. 

Suddenly we get an awesome credits sequence, set to a funky jazz score, in which we’re given the movie’s Italian title: Nude X l’Assassino. Wow…once again, score one for the Italians.

Anyway, from what I could tell while watching this movie on fast-forward, the bulk of it centers on a sleazy photographer who manages to sleep with pretty much every woman he comes into contact with. Seriously…within the first five minutes of the movie, the photographer – clad in a humiliatingly sleazy Speedo – chases after a woman, snaps some pictures of her butt, then convinces her to have sex with him in a public sauna. This is apparently commonplace in 1970s Italy, as we get further examples of young models hooking up with crusty, swarthy men…like this:

Between the sex/random nudity scenes – one of which includes our photographer doing a naked headstand for no apparent reason – people get killed by someone in a motorcycle outfit. It’s actually more like Halle Berry’s Catwoman suit with a helmet, but I think we’re to assume a motorcycle is involved. Speaking of Halle Berry, take a look at this sexpot:

Anyway, let’s just skip ahead to the unmasking of the killer. So…it turns out to be some blonde woman, who looks an awful lot like the other blonde women in the movie, so I’m not quite sure who she is. It might even be the woman in the picture above...I couldn't tell.  From what I can surmise from the shoddy 30-second explanation given at the end (which, by the way, happens as a woman undresses for the camera, readying to have sex with the photographer), the model who died while having an abortion was having a lesbian affair with the blonde killer, who was so upset that the model was pregnant that she went on a killing spree while dressed in motorcycle gear.

Ladies and gentlemen…we have a winner for Most Eurotrashy Premise For A Slasher Ever.

Oh, by the way…remember how every 1980s sitcom ended with that final punchline which was supposed to have the audience laughing one last time, and always culminated in an awkward freeze frame over which the credits rolled? My recollections are that "Growing Pains" was a master of this. Anyway…it turns out that Strip Nude for Your Killer was pulling this trick back in 1975…except here the joke revolves around the photographer trying to have anal sex with his girlfriend and it doesn’t result in a laugh so much as an uncomfortable silence. Love the freeze frame, though:

So…well…I’m not sure how to rate this movie. I’m not really a fan of Giallo movies, but I am a huge fan of these crazy fashion industry slashers. So, in the words of Tyra, I’ll just say that while overall the movie is a nice beauty shot, there just wasn’t quite enough intensity in the eyes.

THREE FIERCE WAGGING FINGERS!!!!!!