I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Taking a look on Ebay UK for auctions that were about to end,I was surprised to find an edition of Mondo Macabro's Death Walks At Midnight about to end with no bids.With having been after the Giallo for a good few years,I decided to take a walk at midnight.The plot:Working as a fashion model, Valentina accepts a job to try out a new drug.Meeting the scientist/inventor of the drug,Valentina is surprised by her journalist boyfriend Giò Baldi joining them.Taking the drug,Valentina starts to experience horrifying visions of a women being killed by a stranger with a weird object.As Valentina becomes entranced by the visions,Baldi begins to take pics of her tripping.Telling the scientist and her boyfriend about the visions,Valentina soon discovers that along with secretly taking photos,Baldi alters the images so that Valentina's "visions" can be turned into a story.Getting told by Baldi that her visions are just from tripping,Valentina stars to fear that her subconscious has witnessed a murder.View on the film:Shot in 1972,director Luciano Ercoli & cinematographer Fernando Arribas sway their Giallo back to the 60's,as hyper-active spinning camera moves and dashes of brash reds and yellows swings this gialli to the stylish swinging 60's.Whilst Ercoli and Arribas give the title a light atmosphere,they do give the film some sharp Giallo spikes,as Valentina's deadly dream images wash across the screen in an eye-catching clipped manner,as a spiked gauntlet (!) smashes the yellow gialli pulp open.Following Ercoli's direction,the screenplay by Mahnahén Velasco/Guido Leoni/Ernesto Gastaldi and fellow director Sergio Corbucci soak the Giallo in a peculiar comedic tint,with Vlentina finding a mental hospital with slobbering patients,and a mysterious cackling henchmen following Valentina's every step giving this Gialli a wonderful lightness on its feet.Looking stunning in the rather tight clothing, Nieves Navarro (who was married to Ercoli) gives a terrific performance as Valentina,thanks to Navarro displaying a real joy in diving straight into the strange situations that Valentina gets stuck in,and also cutting Valentina with a strong determination to unravel her "trip",as Valentina discovers that death walks at midnight.

DEATH WALKS AT MIDNIGHT (Luciano Ercoli - Italy/Spain 1972).Before the DVD-age the only English title for this film I know of, is CRY OUT IN TERROR, after the soundtrack released on LP and later on expanded edition CD. This is not mentioned on the IMDb as the film never got a proper release in English-speaking regions, not even on video, to my knowledge. Adding to the confusion, this title was already hardly distinguishable from Ercoli's earlier DEATH WALKS ON HIGH HEELS (1970) (largely the same theme, cast and music) and I've noticed that in reviews on some sites, this is treated as a follow-up to Ercoli's first Giallo FORBIDDEN PHOTOS OF A LADY ABOVE SUSPICION (1970), clearly confusing this film with DEATH WALKS ON HIGH HEELS, which is Ercoli's second Giallo.Written by six writers(!), among them Sergio Corbucci and Ernesto Gastaldi, the film is set in Milan. Valentina (Susan Scott or Nieves Navarro), a successful model, agrees to try a hallucinogenic drug as part of a scientific experiment. While under the influence she experiences some flashbacks of a man in sunglasses graphically murdering a woman with a spiked metal glove, quite an original murder weapon. Strangely enough, a woman was butchered in exactly the same manner in a vacant apartment. The killer lures Valentina into this apartment after which she narrowly escapes with her life. What follows are more attempts on her life and even more questions about the killer's identity. Mind-bending drugs and outrageous fashions with plenty of tacky '70s dance floor scenes abound in this in this convoluted murder mystery. I might have been a bit harsh in my judgement on Ercoli's DEATH WALKS ON HIGH HEELS but no matter how many reservations I have regarding his output, I've grown a bit fond of his work. This one is the weakest entry in his Giallo-cycle, but I cannot dismiss it either. It's rather disappointing because of its confusing plot and ridiculous finale, complete with a gang of giggling thugs. Gianno Ferrio's score is no patch on Morricone's scores in earlier Ercoli films, but its sheer luridness makes for some reasonably tacky entertainment.Camera Obscura --- 6/10

Valentina(Nieves Navarro or Susan Scott as she is billed) is a fashion model who agrees to take an hallucinogenic drug for a medical experiment. The experiment is being recorded by Valentina's journalist friend for an article he is going to write,but under the influence of the drug Valentina somehow gets some extra sensory vision of a savage murder of a girl by a middle-aged man who kills her with a spiked metal glove. Valentina only participated on condition that her identity is kept secret but the journalist publishes the whole story and now Valentina's life is in danger from the killer.Valentina is then plagued by the killer every where she goes but unfortunately for her nobody else sees the killer.This trend continues as the body count rises the corpses that she sees disappear before the police get there and so nobody believes her fantastic story. One reason the police don't believe Valentina is that there was such a killing but the killer was caught and has been in a mental institution for six months and fob her off as a nut.Valentina goes to check out the killer but when she gets there the killer is not the man in her vision.Is she going mad ?Is she still feeling the effects of the drugs? is she being set up? Beautifully shot with a nice but sparsely used score this Giallo is a huge disappointment, from the offset we are lead to believe this might just be a classic of the genre with the opening kill, but this film dies a death after its opening gambit.The beautiful Navarro and Simón Andreu have a little chemistry but its not enough to save the film from being quite dull and unimaginative, there are no spectacular kills or set pieces to excite us and the distinct lack of suspense puts the final nail in this baby's coffin, added to that a propensity for silly comic characters in silly situations is just plain annoying.The sound on the Mondo Macabro DVD is also patchy and quite tinny and with a lot of hiss at times which is infuriating.I do hope the No Shame release next year is better.For Giallo completists only.

A fashion model agrees to do a shoot in her swank apartment building while high on a powerful new psychedelic drug called "HDS" (why this would make for an interesting fashion shoot is never really adequately explained). While under the influence of the drug she witnesses a brutal murder in an adjoining building. Obviously, the beginning of this film is very similar to "Rear Window" (if you replace a crippled Jimmy Stewart with a sexy Spanish model hopped up on mind-bending drugs that is), but then the film goes off in its own totally unique direction. Even more than your usual giallo this film is pretty much a series of hysterical chase scenes and gory murders with little coherent plot to get in the way.It's not really that good, but it has several things going for it. The first is Nieves Navarro (aka Susan Scott). Navarro was generally considered to be a second-rate Edwige Fenech (and she actually appeared as Fenech's sister in "All the Colors of Darkness"). She actually makes for a spunky, appealing heroine here, spending most of her time fighting off various loutish males including two sexist boyfriends, a guy who picks her up hitch-hiking and demands sex five minutes later, and FOUR different murderous male villains. Strangely though, she keeps her clothes on throughout the film (this is the same actress who in her late 30's was making borderline-hardcore sex films for the notorious Joe D'Amato). The movie also features a very unique murder weapon--a giant spiked metal glove (or "armored fist" as Navarro keeps calling it)which makes mince-meat of the faces of the various female victims (like many gialli this film is a strange mixture of feminism and misogyny). Finally, there is the upbeat score which probably should be in a better movie, but does serve to keep things rolling along. I wouldn't go through the expense and trouble of buying the imported British DVD (like I did), but I guess this is worth watching if you get a chance.