Perversion Story (Original title: Una sull’altra / One on top of the other)
Italy, 1969
Director: Lucio Fulci
Screenplay: Roberto Gianviti, Lucio Fulci, José Luis Martínez Mollá, Massimo Castellani, Franco Ferrari, Massimo Franciosa
Cast: Jean Sorel (Dr. George Dumurrier), Marisa Mell (Susan/Monica), Elsa Martinelli (Jane), John Ireland (Inspector Wald), Riccardo Cucciola (Benjamin Wormser), Félix Dafauce (Insurance Officer), Jesús Puente (Sergeant Rodríguez), George Rigaud (Arthur Mitchell)
Music: Riz Ortolani
Plot
Young doctor George Dumurrier runs a clinic in San Francisco with his brother Henry, but it is threatened with bankruptcy. The brothers need money at any cost, and George does not hesitate to resort to the tabloid press and advertise supposed heart transplants to attract attention and raise funds.
As for his private life, George’s marriage is falling apart. His wife Susan is seriously ill with asthma, and he prefers to leave her in the company of the nurse to go off with his mistress Jane.
When Susan dies after a severe asthma attack, George discovers that she had life insurance. He is now the heir, the main beneficiary. That could save his clinic from ruin. But at the same time, it will attract the suspicion of investigators, who believe that the doctor caused his wife’s death to get the money. A new dilemma begins here for George…
Commentary
This classic giallo film predates the trend that would emerge after the release of Dario Argento’s animal trilogy a few years later. Nor does the film feature the bloody and brutal murder scenes that Fulci would film with the skill of a craftsman from the second half of the following decade onwards. “Una sull’altra” is a suspense film inspired by the Hitchcockian style. There is a certain influence from “Vertigo” (1958), especially due to the confusion of identities of one of the main female characters. This is precisely the meaning of the Italian title, as this character uses two identities, “one on top of the other.” The title is intentionally ambiguous, as it could also suggest a lesbian relationship between, for example, Susan and her nurse – as „UnA sull’altrA“ (the „one“ and the „other“ in this case), are both feminine. There is actually a great deal of erotic content throughout the film.
In addition to certain details of the story, this giallo shares with “Vertigo” the fact that it is set in San Francisco (although the interiors were filmed in Italy).
Here we have a convoluted psychological thriller that takes a while to get going (admittedly, it has not aged very well), but which gains consistency and interest as the plot progresses, improving considerably towards the second half.
The intrigue builds, with some very good plot twists. Fulci considered this film to be one of his best works in the field of screenwriting. The suspense continues even after we find out who “the bad guy” is.
Before this one, Fulci had only made comedies and musicals. This film marked the Roman director’s initiation into the genre he would excel at: suspense and psychological horror. Like Hitchcock, Fulci also enjoyed making cameos or even small appearances in his films: here we see him in the role of a police graphologist.
Throughout the film, we see some moments of high erotic tension. But the “perversion story” alluded to in the film’s international title refers more to the convoluted conspiracy meticulously planned against the protagonist than to the debauchery of many of its scenes. As we shall see, this almost perfect crime, prepared with such care and attention to detail, will be thwarted by another crime—this one, however, of a more spontaneous and passionate nature. I will say no more to avoid revealing details of the plot.
The protagonist George is played by Jean Sorel, whom we saw in “The Short Night of the Glass Dolls” (Aldo Lado, 1971) – an excellent film of suspense, international intrigue, and secret societies that was decades ahead of Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” (1999) – with which it shares much of its approach.
Felix Hahlbrock Ponce
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