Love Angels (1974) Poster

(1974)

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4/10
A.K.A. "Love Angels"
m0rphy4 February 2004
Mario Racocevic from Europe is the only user who has posted a comment so far and covers the major points to the film.Yet again another difficult film to purchase in the UK.I had to go through "Midnight Video" who have a Swedish branch.I went to the post office and bought by mail order this and a similar title at only SKR30 a title.

This film goes under many "a.k.a's" depending on when and where it is marketed.I had previously purchased "The Bloodsucker leads the Dance" (which you will find if you search on Imdb under "people" and input "Krista Nell").The actor who plays the Count on his private island in the latter film had his words dubbed from Italian into English by an actor with an unmistakably mournful and rather tired sounding voice.I smiled when I heard this same voice dubbing on the English soundtrack as the police inspector who is investigating the murder of the prostitute killed in the copse in the subject film.My choice of course was to see another outing by the delicious Krista Nell.

There are quite a few rather inconsequential sub plots in the movie involving blackmail/extortion, sleazy affairs with girlfriends' mothers, a motor cycle chase resulting in a gangland hit, a gangrape by a "client's" motorcycle friends, sleazy photography, cross dressing by transvestites etc. which give a flavour to this film summarised in a word - SLEAZE, (but artistic sleaze).The aforementioned contributor liked this film but the lowly rating suggests other Imdb fans did not albeit without explaining their "wheres and whyfores".Personally I thought there were too many subplots and not enough put into the main story and the relationship of these subordinate characters to the central plot and the development of their screen characters.Also a professional film editor was sorely needed as some of the scenes appeared to last far too long, having made their point, so that the film appeared to drag in places; e.g. the scene of the dancing transvestite.Krista Nell appears in one fruity scene with a client but this too is but a vignette and I was left wanting more from her, the director and the screenplay.

I love the political incorrectness shown in older films (this is 30 years from its making) e.g. smoking in offices and the way some characters react to each other in the office!I would suggest 4/10 as a more realistic rating and I have awarded it as such.
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5/10
Little sleaze, a dull plot and some misplaced music
The_Void28 October 2007
Prior to seeing this film, the only other Rino Di Silvestro flick I've seen was the 1976 trash-fest Werewolf Woman, and while that film has it's fans: I'm not one of them. I actually thought that Red Light Girls was a mild improvement over the later film, though that isn't really saying much and this is still a bad film. This is supposedly a Giallo but whether or not anyone involved actually had any clue what they were making is anyone's guess, as this film is completely all over the place and several things about it make no sense whatsoever. The plot itself is quite confusing, probably even more so for me since I saw a seventy minute and obviously cut version, but basically we get shown a prostitute being killed at the start and from there we get an investigation. The investigation encompasses a number of people that knew the girl who was killed, including her boyfriend as well as his mysterious employer and a number of the girl's fellow prostitutes.

One of the trademarks of the Giallo genre is intriguing plot lines; and this film doesn't feature one of those! The story basically just plods along and we get fed one little shred of the plot at a time. The plot itself really isn't worth mentioning too much (as I knew it wouldn't be) and only serves as an excuse for the film to exist. What most people going into a film like this will really be looking for is sleaze and plenty of it. This film disappoints on that front also; we get some nice looking girls wearing very little, but it never really feels all that sleazy; which is surprising because any film about prostitutes out on the street should be sleazy and dirty by default. The tone of the film is extremely misguided and for some reason, director Rino Di Silvestro has almost made the film a comedy; which I really have no problem with, but the comedic music is used at the most inappropriate times and mostly just left me wondering what the hell the director was thinking. The resolution to the story is what you'd expect it to be: a non-event, but despite all these shortcomings...Red Light Girls offers seventy minutes of relaxed film viewing, and nothing about it really made me hate it too much.
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4/10
Good sleaze
BandSAboutMovies10 January 2024
Warning: Spoilers
Rino Di Silvestro said, "Sex is a natural thing, but it's also something that gives you an uncontrollable desire, like murder for the serial killer who begs to be caught. We have an irresistible desire to make sex."

He lived up to this because his movies were pretty much as scummy as it gets. I say this with no small amount of admiration. I mean, the guy made Women In Cell Block 7, Werewolf Woman, Deported Women of the SS Special Section, Baby Love, Bello di mamma, Hanna D. - La ragazza del Vondel Park and The Erotic Dreams of Cleopatra.

He directed and wrote this, which was also released as The Red Light Girls, Love Angels, Sex Slayer and Street Angels. It begins with Giselle (Gabriella Lepori, Five Women for the Killer) conducting her business - the world's oldest - as another man watches. She soon stabbed and we see her dead body on the slab of a morgue. Her fiancee Michele (Elio Zamuto) had no idea she was a roadside prostitute.

Inspector Macaluso (Aldo Giuffre) leads the cops in the investigation, but mostly the movie introduces us to slices of life in the dark streets of Italy, like when Benedetta (Orchidea de Santis, The Killer Wore Gloves) is raped by a biker gang, which causes another gang to hunt them and murder their lead with, well, a beer bottle inserted in exactly where you think its going to be shoved in. There's also a Satanic john, which I found funny, but it's like almost as if the movie forgot that it was a giallo.

Did you know that Italian sex workers all hung out at a campfire and had parties when they weren't working? Well, Di Silvestro did and according to Hysteria Lives, he got fan mail from the ladies he was depicting because of how realistic this movie was.

Also appearing: Krista Nell (So Sweet, So Dead - another giallo that has a secondary version called Penetration that has inserts...just like this film), Magda Konopfka (Satanik), Felicita Fanny (also in the director's Werewolf Woman and Deported Women of the SS Special Section) and Lucrezia Love (Enter the Devil).

I have no idea why this starts almost like a documentary - a girl interviews on the street says she only fears "syphilis and solitude" - then becomes a dark giallo then is nearly a comedy mixed with soap opera before remembering that there's a prostitute killer. It's a mess and exactly what I expected, which is not a criticism. Di Silvestro seems to be trying to shock, upset and entertain you, often all in the same scene.
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More soap opera than giallo
lazarillo27 June 2007
This movie is supposedly a giallo, and it starts promisingly enough with the murder of a young prostitute while a middle-age voyeur watches. Unfortunately it then becomes a particularly plodding police procedural as two especially dense cops are unable to uncover the glaringly obvious identity of the killer. But then there's also all kinds of barely related subplots. An older streetwalker is upset that a young john has fallen for her daughter (although it's not clear whether she's concerned or jealous). Another prostitute (Orchidea De Santis) tells a john that she gets pregnant easily (begging the question of why she chose this particular line of work). He accommodates her with some forcible anal sex, then his motorcycle-riding buddies show up and do the same. This naturally leads to a gratuitous motorcycle chasing scene where another group of bikers (friends of the prostitute)take revenge on the first one. You get the picture, it's more like a bizarre soap opera set in the red-light district than a giallo.

Probably the best reason to see this movie is for the impressive collection of second-tier Euro-babes that appear in it including Krista Nell, Magda Konopfka, Orchidea DeSantis, and Lucrezia Love. If you are at all familiar with the, uh, work of these actresses you know that they will all have their usual gratuitous nude scenes. Unfortunately, however, everything about their characters and their performances ends up being pretty gratuitous as well.

I read somewhere that sleaze-vet director Rino Di Silvestre actually received letters from real-life prostitutes praising the realism of this movie. Personally, I didn't find it too realistic (take the bizarre sex scene shot on negative film for no apparent reason). But then I guess I've never been a 70's era Italian prostitute.
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very good!
mariorakocevic7 June 2002
My friend Rino Di Silvestro delivers here another very convincing slice cinema that cannot be missed by any connoiseur of filth. What can you expect from a director who made the wonderfull "Werewolf woman" and has other films in his filmography as "Deported women of the ss" ? the answer is : much. Here Rino gives an INsight of the life of the prostitutes: the film starts pseudo-docu like, a man interviews a girl when she did start as a slut-she gives him an answer-goes away and the man says "i´ll make perhaps a visit.."--then the credits start- a film by rino di silvestro.. yes this is (very)gooooooooood... A man drives through the prostitute "district" asking the sluts he´s interested how much they want (among them also a prostitute performed by Orchidea de santis, but she´s too expensive..). He finds a suiting Prostitute who´s also a "fair" price, it comes to the intended "transaction" but in the next scene the Prostitute is dead-this leads to Police investigation and the Who/Whydunnit question. Naturally the police find to find out who the Murderer is and interviews all the sluts what they know about her."Surprisingly" they get very little information, everybody doesnt want anything to do with it, they find out that the victim was not really a "profesional" slut just a student. Her fiancee has an alibi but is a suspect. A sleazy photographer (performed by the incredible luciano rossi) who besides sells some prostitutes to other people ,blackmails an older man with his pictures that he has made with him and the murdered victim, the older man knows who the murder is, coz he was a voyeur who enjoyed to watch while the girl did it with other people and he was also there when the murder happended. Technically the film is quite decent made, the insight of the life of the prostitutes what di silvestro gives here is simply terrific! (the giallo plot is rather of secondary interest)this contains naturally some sleaze, and some incredible dialogues Alone the scene with the male-slut who dresses as a woman is priceless! Orchidea de santis in the role of the prostitute is also terrific! in a scene there´s a big discussion that she insists her customer has to use a condom, coz she gets so easily pregnant. Her customer has a "terrific" ideja for this and takes her from behind... after this his buddies come with their motorycles... Ok to write ALL the good films about this film would be to much to write here (why not deepen the subject and write a book about the sinema of rino di silvestro?) A terrific film from a terrific director.
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