Above, a Japanese poster for America Our Home, a movie that was made in Italy and originally called America così nuda così violenta, or "America so naked so violent." Hmm… how to describe this one. It’s a shockumentary about the U.S. by Sergio Martino of Scorpion’s Tail fame, some of which is spot-on, and very sad, and some of which is way wide of the mark, and very weird. It premiered in Italy in mid-1970 and reached Japan today the same year. Proceed with caution.

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. We won’t go into more detail, except to say that it’s pretty good, and 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 refers to a scorpion cufflink that’s a clue to the killer’s identity, but we didn’t really pay too much attention to the plot details because we were 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.