Oasis of Fear (1971)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The first must-see film of the year.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

With having watched Umberto Lenzis fantastic paranoia film,the sadly under-rated Giallo Spasmo,I was extremely keen on seeing more films from this very intriguing genre.After picking up a good batch of Giallo DVDs,I started to anticipate all the (hopefully) great films that I would soon get the chance to view. A few days ago I was making breakfast in the morning,and I realised that I needed to get some Jam from one of our shelves.To my surprise when I went for the jam,I noticed some DVDs that had started to gather dust,which my dad had been passed a few months ago from a friend.Not being able to stop my curiosity,I looked at the now dusty titles and to my complete amazement,I discovered that one of the DVDs was a Giallo by Umberto Lenzi!The plot:A young,free-spirited Hippie couple (Ingrid and Richard) are trying to go on holiday to southern Italy,the only problem for the couple?-is that they hardly have any money at all.To try dealing with there cash problem,the couple pick up a bunch of cheap "adult" magazines,which they sell at an inflated price,so that they will be able to get over the boarder.When they at last get over the boarder,the couple now realise that they need cash to buy oil for their car!.With desperation starting to sink in,Dick and Ingrid decide to be more "adventaus" with there funding ideas by,selling naked pictures of Ingrid!.Whilst the plan seems to be working,things start to go off track for the couple,when a police officer gets hold of Ingrids pictures.Due to not being that impressed with what they have been selling,the officer tells Dick and Ingrid that if they do not leave southern Italy in 24 hours,he will arrest them for indecent exposure.After hearing this,the couple make the daring decision that they should rebel against the police orders,and instead keep travailing around the city.After having driven to the out skirts of the city,the couple again face the trouble of getting fuel for the car.With the area being filled with huge villas,Dick and Ingrid are thrilled when they find (what looks like) an empty villa,that has a car filled with fuel.But just as Dick is about to finish stealing the fuel from the car,a woman (Barbara) suddenly walks in on them stealing fuel from her car!.Due to all the pleads that the couple make to her,Barbara decides to accept there full apologies.Just as Dick and Ingrid are about to leave,Barbara suddenly says that instead of them sleeping in there car,they can stay with her,and spend as long as they want in her villa.View on the film: For the screenplay,writers Lucia Drudi Demby and Antonio Altoviti (with the story by director Umbero Lenzi) have written a surprisingly "bloodless" Giallo,which is able to give a great feeling of increased threat,as the relationship between the couple and Barbara starts to disintegrate into a battle of dominance,with the writers excellently showing the couple slowly change from being fun loving to becoming very sadistic. Although Umbero Lenzis directing is not as weird and wonderful as it was with his underrated film Spasmo,he is still able to do some amazing things with this pretty original (no sign of any black gloves at all!) Giallo.During the section of the film, where Dick and Ingrid are trying to sell there amateur pictures at sight seeing spots,Lenzi shows with stunning fast-cuts the sightseers disgust of the naked photos,whilst they are standing around looking at accent stature's of naked men.Umbero also smartly changes the lighting of the whole film,with the first half being mostly very brightly lit,to match Dick and Ingrids care-free life,and the second half (especially the bird sanctuary scene) being very dark and grim,with Umbero revealing what the couple have gotten themselves into. Final view on the film:A very different Giallo,with a terrific tension-building screenplay and excellent dream-decaying directing from Lenzi.

Un Posto Ideale Per Uccidere is an exploitation thriller which mixes the laid-back hippie attitudes of the 60s with the permissive approach to cinematic sex and violence of the 70s. It comes from Italian director Umberto Lenzi, at the junction where his career was steering away from adventure and thriller movies and sailing into gorier, more controversial waters. Ultimately Lenzi would offend the world with films like Mangiati Vivi! (a.k.a Eaten Alive), and the notoriously sickening Cannibal Ferox. At least Un Posto Ideale Per Uccidere isn't particularly offensive or nasty – it's just a routine thriller with a splash of sex and nudity, obvious plot developments, a fashionably downbeat ending, and a toe-tapping soundtrack that is blissfully unrelated to the events on screen!Dick (Ray Lovelock) and Ingrid (Ornella Muti) are a young Scandinavian couple travelling around Europe. They pay their way by selling pornographic photos of themselves. Unfortunately for them, their scheme is uncovered by the somewhat unforgiving Italian police and they are instructed to leave Italy at once. On their way to the border, their car runs out of petrol and they are forced to seek help at a large, secluded villa. Here they meet Barbara Slater (Irene Papas), wife of the NATO colonel who owns the villa. Barbara seems edgy and nervous, especially when she finds them attempting to steal her husband's petrol, but nevertheless invites the couple to stay. It becomes increasingly apparent that Barbara is not to be trusted. Her behaviour seems erratic and at one point she seduces Dick. The young couple slowly come to learn that Barbara has an ulterior motive for having them in her home. Seems she recently murdered her husband and has his body stashed in the trunk of his car…. now she plans to frame Dick and Ingrid for her ruthless crime.The film has a few interesting elements and is comparatively subtle by Lenzi's later standards. There is some attempt to set aside time for proper character development, so that the eventual misadventures which befall the protagonists carry a little more weight. The problem is that the characters are rather dull, and the actors aren't really charismatic enough to overcome this. Eugenio Alabiso edits the film quite well, using a variety of flashy techniques to create a sense of atmosphere in several scenes. But again, the central story is too weak and uninvolving – in the end, no amount of flashy editing can overcome the film's pervasive air of dreariness. Once Un Posto Ideale Per Uccidere reaches its glumly depressing climax, one realises that very little has really happened. It is a slow-burning film which doesn't build to anything of note. Collectors of these old Italian exploitation-era movies might find something to hold their interest, as will fans of the stars, but for wider audiences there's not a great deal in the film worth getting excited about.

Another from the Shameless stable of exploitation films. They go on about how they've tracked down missing scenes, remastered it all and redone the soundtrack... it's like a kid telling you how they've done an amazing drawing and you then look at it... Oasis of Fear is a bit, well, rubbish.It's about a young couple who travel around Europe in a zippy yellow open top sports car flogging porn mags to locals (that dates it). But once the movie settles down it hits you that it's just not very good, a bit amateurish. The trailer is the best thing about it.It starts off okay with a George Beatle type track, but soon becomes irritating. The bloke, all 29in waist and big hair, is from the Cliff Richard school of acting. Actually Cliff was a bit more charming than this. The girl is alright in a Kate Middleton kind of way. It belongs to an age where you had to make your own entertainment, when you only had Dixon of Dock Green on the black and white telly, while going to the movies to see a big colour film - and a woman get her kit off - was a real treat, real decadence.You rent these films for a bit of sauce and unPC fun - you don't really expect to be so bored by it all. It picks up for the last half hour, but really drags until then.

Posto ideale per uccidere, Un (1971) aka Oasis of fear aka Dirty pictures 7/10 A young free loving hippy couple Dick (Ray Lovelock) and Ingrid (Ornella Muti) buy a car load of porn in Copenhagen to help fund their holiday in Italy. Once in Italy they find plenty of takers for their product and soon find themselves very flush with cash which they spend like there's no tomorrow, soon they find they are broke again and Dick has the idea to take porno photos of themselves and flog them, but they approach the wrong person and are soon in the custody of the local police who confiscate the pics and give them 24 hours to leave the country. On their way home, their car runs out of petrol and so they knock into a nearby large house, where having received no reply decide to siphon off petrol from a car in the garage. They are confronted by Barbara, the apparently flustered lady of the house who threatens them with the police, but then on hearing their story changes her mind and invites them in for some food and to stay the night. It turns out she is the lonely wife of a NATO colonel and soon all three are involved in some flirtatious sex games, but who is taking advantage of who? Next morning we find out…… Another fine early Giallo from the diverse Lenzi, a rather bloodless and character driven film that doesn't really follow the Giallo tradition or for that matter let on where its going until the end, Lovelock and Muti are very good as the young sexually charged couple, who never hesitate to get naked, although Muti's nude scenes do seem to have been taken by a body double, Irene Papas as the very hospitable host takes most of the acting plaudits and portrays her characters vulnerability to perfection in a role that also requires her to show a sense of sexual frustration in a multi layered character and despite the fact not a lot happens in the first half of the film, there is a nice tension built up between the three leads. Lenzi also captures a fun frivolous swinging sixties full of flower power hippies, gypsies, sitars, swinging clubs which is defined by a very funky score with some horribly catchy songs by Bruno Lauzi. Although there is more than a slight overuse of the zoom lens throughout the film, Lenzi again proves to me he was a fine film maker. There's also a sting in the tale, in what is a rather muted and downbeat ending as Lenzi finally reveals his hand. Recommended