Every cinephile goes through a Giallo phase at some point. How could they not? The Italian sub-genre has everything you could want from cinema: sex, violence, funky music, eye-popping '70s costumes and production design, and lashings of style. That said, if you demand logic, Giallo probably isn't for you.
First time writer/director Josh Heaps is clearly a Giallo buff, and like his idols, he doesn't let logic get in the way of his filmmaking. City Wide Fever is a love letter to Giallo, but ironically it's shot on grubby video, with none of the beautiful cinematography of the movies it's indebted to. But Heaps makes this economic necessity an asset. His film is set in New York, and merely by shooting on standard def video he takes us back to the scuzziness of the Big Apple of the past, a time when Gialli would play in Times Square grindhouse theatres, and a knife-wielding maniac seemed to lurk on every corner.
Logic is cast out the window early on when film student and Giallo lover Sam (Diletta Guglielmi) finds a USB stick on the street. The drive just happens to be filled with promotional materials for a forgotten Italian filmmaker named Saturnino Rezi, with claims that he invented Giallo long before Bava, Fulci, Argento et al. Baffled by how she has never heard of Rezi before, Sam consults her creepy professor Keith (Onur Tukel), who points her in the direction of Hong (Stan Oh), a former cinematographer who claims to have worked with Rezi. Meeting Hong sets Sam on a trail of bloodshed, as everyone she consults about Rezi ends up being butchered by a mysterious killer in a pink ski mask.
City Wide Fever may lack the style of classic Gialli, but it certainly has the energy. Unlike bigger budgeted American attempts to recreate Italian magic, it understands that a large part of the appeal of Gialli is their goofiness. At times City Wide Fever resembles a Scooby Doo cartoon, and we're practically waiting for whoever is under that ski mask to eventually exclaim "I would have gotten away with it were it not for you pesky kids" whenever they're unmasked.
There are some hilarious vignettes, like the wildly inappropriate cabbie who regales Sam with x-rated tales of his youth. As Sam's smitten roommate, Angelica Kim assumes the classic Giallo role of the horny love interest who is constantly trying to distract the protagonist from their obsessed quest. City Wide Fever is also sufficiently odd, with the role of Sam sometimes being played by an entirely different actress (Nancy Kimball) for no obvious reason other than perhaps as a nod to Bunuel's That Obscure Object of Desire. Cult actress Rutanya Alda appears as herself, claiming to have worked with Rezi, just to add an extra layer of meta head melting.
Executive produced by Guy Maddin, critically endorsed by Paul Schrader and featuring cameos by cult filmmakers Tukel and Larry Fessenden, Heaps' debut has caught the attention of older generations of filmmakers who appear to recognise his potential. Ultimately, it's the potential that stands out most here. For all of its cinephile enthusiasm, there isn't quite enough here to make City Wide Fever appealing to an audience beyond the most devoted cult cinema buffs, and its lack of inventive bloodshed may test the patience of less curious horror fans. But given his budget probably cost less than a monthly rent on a New York apartment, maybe that's all the audience City Wide Fever needs.
City Wide Fever plays in Alamo Drafthouse venues across the US from April 15th, followed by a US VOD release on May 1st. A UK/ROI release has yet to be announced.
Directed by: Josh Heaps Starring: Diletta Guglielmi, Angelika Kim, Nancy Kimball, Hugo Alexander-Rose, Rutanya Alda, Onur Tukel
Eric Hillis is a film critic living in Sligo, Ireland who runs the website TheMovieWaffler.com
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