Thanks for the memories!

Strictly average movie

Absolutely amazing

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

I've seen the following work from Sergio Martino: All the Colors of the Dark The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, The Case of the Scorpion's Tail, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key and I've enjoyed them all. All twisted charming pieces of Italian cinema.But Scorpion with Two Tails, is a mess in most regards: Story, dialogue, acting, cinematography, editing, music, you name it is sucks. Fulci also produced 80s garbage like this, but at least they were bearable, they had some atmosphere, something to hold onto. Two Tails has nothing. My vote is to eliminate it from existence. I realized early on that this was garbage, but it had a certain atmosphere, very minimal, then it continued on this track and even got worse. I do not recommend you watch this at all. There is nothing here. There are certain films that are so bad that you can laugh at the crew and cast for the decisions made. This had maybe one or two such scenes. Not enough. I'll recommend that you watch "Laser Mission" by Brandon Lee for the best So Bad It's Great Film. That's a garbage film. However, if you manage to watch it to the end, and are aware of the mess in front of you, you will be rewarded. Two Tails, has nothing going for it. Not even reading the reviews will reward you with any insight. I consider "Suspiria" one of the worst films ever made. however, even in that film, there are moments that are decent, and moments of ridiculous nonsense that you can read about later. And that so many people love Suspiria, it is a study of societies to praise such nonsense. The idea that collectively people can love something that is utter crap, like a cult. When someone says "Believe Me" I think it's time to reconsider. Believe Me? No, I'd want to substantiate your comment. So, I think "Suspira" is a success because people have been told that it is great, so, "Believe Me" it's great. It's not. Dario Argento is a genius in fact because he didn't just make a film, he promoted it, "brainwashed" people thinking his films are "ART", they're not. His Crystal Plumage film, and "Four Flies" are pure trash. And most of what Bava has produced. Bava's best work was "Black Sabbath". Sergio Martino work was miles ahead of what Argento or Bava produced in the early days. Miles! Unfortunately, with Two Tails, he has a film that is below what Argento or Bava has produced. It's not worth watching, reading reviews, thinking about, nothing. It should be erased. Then, I can go back to hating Argento and Bava again. I will now pretend that Twin Tails does not exist!

Sergio Martino is one of the notable directors in the Euro-horror genre along with Mario Bava, Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, and others. My personal favorite of his movies is "The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh". His "Assassinio al cimitero etrusco" ("The Scorpion with Two Tails" in English) is an OK, not great movie. It's a convoluted story about a woman whose archaeologist husband gets murdered while looking through an ancient cemetery in Italy. Elvire Audray, who plays the lead role, looks as if she could have been one of Alfred Hitchcock's icy blondes. I haven't seen all of Martino's movies, but of the ones that I've seen I'd say that his best ones star Edwige Fenech*. This one is more mediocre. Other cast members include John Saxon (Roper in "Enter the Dragon" and the father in "A Nightmare on Elm Street") and Van Johnson (one of the stars from Hollywood's Golden Age).*Quentin Tarantino referenced her in "Inglourious Basterds": Mike Myers's character is named Ed Fenech.

The Scorpion with Two Tails has all the makings of a great Giallo. Aside from the intriguing title, it's also directed by Sergio Martino; the same man who made some of the best Giallo's of the seventies with films such as The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, it's written by Ernesto Gastaldi; whose name will mean a lot to every Giallo fan worth their salt as he has written many of the best films that the genre has to offer, and on top of that - we've even got a performance from cult actor John Saxon. However, Martino clearly didn't have his penchant for directing by 1982, Gastaldi was having an off day and John Saxon's character lasts all of about two minutes! Like the earlier Giallo, The Dead Are Alive, this film focuses on the ancient 'Etruscan' civilisation. Joan Barnard, the wife of Arthur Barnard; a famous archaeologist is having problems. She's suffering from nightmares that focus around ancient tombs. Her woes increase when her husband calls from Italy and ends up getting his neck snapped mid-phone call! She then travels to Italy to investigate.This film was apparently cut down from a television series, and I can only assume that they left the worst parts in! There's barely any excitement to speak of whatsoever, and this ensures that the film is very hard to care about. Add in some extremely unenthusiastic performances (unenthusiastic even by Italian horror standards!) and some silly fantasy crap and what we've ended up with here is one of the worst Giallo's ever made! It's a real shame too as this film blends in a few different styles and if Martino could have just pulled it all together better, this could definitely have sat alongside his more esteemed film credits. One of the few saving graces in this film is the music; but once you recognise it from The Beyond, the credibility soon dries up! At least the film manages to limp through with a decent finale; though once you've sat through the first eighty five minutes of the film, it could be the best ending of all time and most people would be unlikely to care. Overall, this is absolutely nothing to recommend this film for and I recommend that everyone skips it!

Damn you Sergio Martino and your constant re-using of titles! Here I was under the impression that I finally tracked down a copy of "Case of the Scorpion's Tail" and then it turns out this is an entirely different movie, actually one that is even more rare but also a whole lot worse. Then I wanted to take comfort in the fact this production stars the almighty B-movie legend John Saxon, but he's only in it during the first EIGHT minutes and then he has his neck wrenched around 180 degrees! "The Scorpion with two Tails" is undeniably a disappointment, mixing too many story ideas and cult sub genres into one overly confusing film. The plot covers typical giallo-elements as well as supernatural forces of evil and even crime syndicates! However, none of the story lines are properly elaborated and the whole thing is just intolerably incoherent. Mr. Saxon briefly appears as an American archaeologist who phones his wife to announce he discovered a genuine Etruscan tomb during his research expedition in Italy. He then gets killed and the wife Joan instantly travels to Italy to investigate the circumstances of his death. She learns that her own beloved father runs an international hard drugs network, hallucinates about eerie maggots crawling around everywhere and eventually hooks up with another archaeologist that fancies Etruscan tombs. Every once and a while, a redundant character is killed off by a pair of unidentifiable hands that clearly adore twisting people's necks around! Sergio Martino is a great director, and Ernesto Gastaldi is an even greater scriptwriter, but "The Scorpion with two Tails" totally lacks all their usual trademarks. It's uninvolving, boring, slow-paced, poorly presented and the murder sequences are tame and entirely gore-free! The neck-twisting modus operandi is interesting to show once, but not seven times in one film! The search for the killer's identity – if he/she is even human – isn't nearly as compelling as in any of Martino's previous gialli and features no ingenious red herrings. Heck, even the music is lame since it's identical to the score in "Hell of the Living Dead" and that film already stole it from Goblin's soundtrack for "Dawn of the Dead". Nothing to recommend here, not even to die-hard fans of Italian cinema.