The Scorpion With Two Tails — The Scorpion With Two Tails( Blu Ray)

From the early 1980’s The Scorpion With Two Tails was an attempt to blend together giallo and horror tropes. When it comes to the gorier ‘n’ chilling side of things, it’s decidedly tame- though on the campily entertaining & vaguely curious mystery, it largely succeeds.  Here from Full Moon Features, is a region-free blu ray release of the film- featuring a new scan & around twenty minutes of cut scenes.
 

The Scorpion With Two Tails (aka Assassinio al cimitero etrusco, Murder in an Etruscan Cemetery) is an Italian French production from the year 1982. It was directed by Rome-born Sergio Martino- who has forty-one feature-length credits to his name- taking in the likes of classic giallo like The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (1977), All the Colors of the Dark (1972) and rewarding giallo/ slasher blend Torso (1973). As well as a good selection of other cult genre fare like gut-munching adventure Slave of the Cannibal God (1978), post-nuke action fare 2019: After the Fall of New York (1983), crime thriller The Violent Professionals (1973).  The Scorpion With Two Tails was originally planned as an eight-part Italian TV show, but this idea was later dropped with it being cut down to standard film length.
 
After a rather confusing flashback to ye old ages credits. The film opens in the Italian countryside, where archaeologist Arthur Barnard (John Saxon) is looking for a lost Etruscan tomb/ city. Fairly soon he lands up murdered with his head twisted backwards. His blonde & pinched-faced wife Joan (Elvire Audray) is at home in NYC having nightmares, about the tombs & god-like folk from the past, and you guess they are twisting folks' head backwards.
 
So, she jumps on a plane with her friend Mike- Paolo Malco, who will be most known to euro cult fans for playing the Dr in Fulci’s The House By The Cemetery. To find out what happened to her husband…and guess what, more folk are killed with their necks twisted backwards. This is mixed with Joan getting flashbacks to the past, seeing maggots on pictures & statues, and generally hamming it up in the catacombs when they are found.
 
As you’d expect with a shot for TV project- both the gore, threat, and creepy factors are very PG. But what we do get is a fairly darting pace/ structure, which for the most part remains entertaining in a campy and cheesy 80s manner. Mixed in we have a heroin smuggling subplot, Joan’s shady croft haired father, and a balding-big-speck wearing cop who's trying not very hard to figure out who the killer is.
 
Acting wise aside from Saxon (who's only in the film eleven minutes) and Malco- it’s of a fairly bad TV soap level. The film's score is written by none other Fabio Frizzi, who will need no introduction to euro cult fans- and it certainly the proverbial mixed bag. The first half or so of the film features a rather nice cue that utilises light pulse bass ‘n’ beats with a haunting flute melody. In the second half, when we’re in the catacombs, he most reuses one Frizzi cues for Fulci's City Of The Living Dead- it fits/works, I guess though you keep thinking about where you first heard it. All in all, The Scorpion With Two Tails is entertaining enough- if you are after 80’s cheese 'n' camp, with a vaguely intriguing mystery running through it. But if you're looking for an impactful/ good blend of horror & giallo- you'd best look elsewhere.

 
 
The new scan on the region free Blu ray is somewhat mixed in its quality.  Clearly the stock has been taken from several different sources, though there aren’t any glaring damaged/ aged elements- you just sometimes notice the jumps between each. The film features an English dub. On the extras side, we get nineteen minutes and fourteen seconds of deleted scenes with Italian language and English sub. It’s made up of three cut scenes, and alternative opening credits. The first five- or so-minute scene sees Saxon finding the tomb, and I wonder why it was cut?, as it certainly fills in story points in the film. Next, we get a rather creepy nighttime shot scene, when one of the tomb raiders breaks into the underground temple. Next, we have two key characters walking around in a nighttime building- with them find a drowned body towards the end of the clip. Lastly the alternative credits. All in all, a most interesting selection of cut scenes. We also get trailers for six other euro cult films on Full Moon

Following on from Full Moon’s reissue of another one of Sergio Martino less known/ respected film The Island of the Fishmen last year. It’s nice to see the company giving this film a release- sure as a formal /good giallo and horror blend The Scorpion With Two Tails is not great, but as 80’s cheese fest with some mystery & creepy campiness it’s an enjoyable enough ride.