Year: 1971
Duration: 01:36:28
Directed by: Pete Walker
Actors: Susan George, Barry Evans, Christopher Sandford, Judy Huxtable and Leo Genn
Language: English
Country: UK
Also known as: Die, Beautiful Marianne, Marianna, fuga dalla morte, Schrei nach Leben, Skrik Marianne skrik
Description: This is not Walker’s best work and, notwithstanding its inclusion in Shriek Show’s British Horror Quadruple Feature, really isn’t horror. But it is a decent, if slow starting, thriller staring Susan George. Without giving too much away, George is a go-go dancer on the run from her wealthy father. She stands to come into a sizable chunk of cash and some pictures of daddy fucking a goat or something on her 21st birthday, and her family wants to ensure that doesn’t happen.
The plot meanders a bit, but, internet criticisms notwithstanding, I thought it was pretty easy to follow. Definitely decent and watchable and recommended for fans of Walker, George, Judy Huxtable and/or ugly British dudes. Woefully deficient in naked George. Or naked anybody for that matter. But I don’t want to undersell it; mediocre Walker is still good stuff.
Here’s what you get:
[X] Go-Go Dancing
[X] Sluttiness
[X] INCEST!!!
[X] Marriage Mishaps
[X] GEORGE!!!
[X] Sibling Rivalry
[X] Some Rat-Faced Dude
Filmed by director of Flesh and Blood Show movies.
Review: Two sisters, Marianne and Hildegard were separated after his parents divorced. Marianne continued to live in England with his mother, Hildegard and moved with his father to Portugal. Suddenly the girls mother dies and Marianne gets legacy: a huge amount of money and compromising information about the activities of his father. The father wants to get these documents, and Hildegard need money. And both of them will stop at nothing …
One for Susan George fans, this. An early Pete Walker potboiler (made straight after ‘Cool it, Carol!’ and before his ‘terror’ films a few years later) with miss George playing a free-spirited (i.e. promiscuous) go-go dancer pursued by henchmen of “the judge”, who is looking to get his hands on incriminating documents that he believes she has in her possession.
Friends, I’m not gonna shit ya. This flick is no masterpiece. Not by a lonnnng shot. But it is a picturesque (London and Portugal), passable time-waster with the sumptuous Susan at her most beautiful, one or two moments of inventive direction from a still-learning Pete Walker, and best of all in my estimation – a really rather lovely title song . Don’t panic if you can’t follow the plot, because, as he reveals in the entertaining director’s commentary track, Walker threw away several pages of script halfway through filming. Just keep your eyes on Sue.
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Sort of an incompetent British version of giallo. Dull and nonsensical, but still watchable thanks to George’s beauty and the appealing countryside vistas.