Above is an amazing German promo poster for Der Schwanz des Skorpions, aka La coda dello scorpione, aka The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail. You may have noticed we’re on a bit of a giallo kick of late. This one was directed by Sergio Martino, who also gave us the unforgettably titled thrillers Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key and The Bodies Bear Traces of Carnal Violence. When a woman inherits a million dollars from a husband who died in a plane crash, people start crawling out of the woodwork and all of them want a share of the loot. Overall the movie is pretty good.
In terms of cast, the interesting Swedish actress Anita Strindberg—whose fantastically-shaped mouth probably fueled about fifty million erotic fantasies during the seventies—co-stars with hunky George Hilton. The title of the film refers to a scorpion cufflink that’s a clue to the killer’s identity, but you might not pay too much attention to plot details because you’ll be too busy contemplating the anti-gravitational properties of Strindberg’s two, uh, body modifications. They must be among the first to appear on a movie screen, so Der Schwanz des Skorpions isn’t just a fun giallo, it’s also historically significant. Sort of. It opened in West Berlin, West Germany, today in 1973.