Behind the Couch

1971 Dir. Sergio Martino The arrival in Vienna of international diplomat Neil Wardh and his wife Julie, coincides with a spate of vicious murders. In her husband’s increasing absence, Julie finds herself the (mainly) unwilling recipient of attention from her sadomasochistic ex, Jean and her latest suitor, George. As the killer continues to wreck havoc, and Julie's affair with George becomes more torrid, it becomes apparent that the victims are all connected to her and she begins to suspect each of the three men in her life of being the sadistic maniac… Can she work out who it is before it’s too late? During the early seventies, just after Dario Argento’s dazzling  The Bird with the Crystal Plumage sparked a trailblazing trend, director Sergio Martino made several giallo films back to back which would come to represent several of the genre’s most evocative and archetypal entries. Giallo (plural: gialli) is Italian for ‘yellow’ and the name originates from the trademark yell...

The prolific and versatile career of Sergio Martino spans many movie genres; sci-fi, horror, action, documentary, comedy, war and westerns. With titles such as The Mountain of the Cannibal God, The River of the Great Alligator, The Bodies Bear Traces of Carnal Violence, Naked and Violent, A Man Called Blade and Vendetta from the Future , it’s obvious Martino had a penchant for exploitative fare laden with copious amounts of sex and violence. It therefore comes as no surprise, given that Martino was most prolific in the Seventies and Eighties and not afraid to experiment or dabble with different genres, that he is perhaps most famed for his work in the horror/thriller arena; specifically his violent and stylish gialli. Produced throughout the Seventies – arguably the Golden Era of the exclusively Italian genre - several of these films featured memorable collaborations with prolific actress, Edwige Fenech. Perhaps because of Martino’s willingness to experiment and work in different g...