Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Bezenby If you have a daughter make sure she's not dumb enough to end up with a partner like this. Valentina is a fashion model (this is a giallo, after all) whose journalist boyfriend manages to talk her into taking an experimental LSD-like drug for the sake of a magazine article. He assures her she'll be wearing a mask and a doctor will administer the drug, but once she's high as a kite he takes the mask off and starts taking pictures of her. While she's ripped to the nines and well muntered, larging it the 'nth' degree and chewing her cheeks, she also has some sort of vision where she sees a man punching a woman in the face over and over again with a spiked glove. Thinking it was all part of the trip, the next day she gets sacked from her job and finds her face plastered all over her boyfriend's magazine. She also finds out the 'doctor' was a doorman, goes mental, and throws a brick through her boyfriend's window. Then she starts seeing that killer around the place, and it seems that not only did she not hallucinate a murder, but the drug might have triggered a repressed memory of murder she may have witnessed six months before – and it gets even more complicated than that!We know the killer right from the start, but we have no idea who he is, what he's up to, or why someone is in a loony bin for a murder he seemingly committed! Many other characters turn up to badger Valentino, and two very shifty gentlemen, including a knife throwing, giggling Luciano Rossi, roll into town for some reason too. The police are pretty much useless in this one, so can she turn to one of her two boyfriends for help? That's right, two, and one of them is a sculptor looking after two Japanese kids, for good measure.Just like Ercoli's previous film Death Walks on High Heels, this one is a bit too long, but the pay-off is well worth it! Just about every character that makes it to the end of the film ends up on the roof of an apartment block for a final fight/punch up/stabbing/gun fight, and this is where Ercoli finally unleashes the nastiness. One character even ends up splattered across the pavement with his brains lying next to his head and his cigarette holder poking through his face. Kinds of wakes you up a bit when that happens in a film.So then, another good, solid, beautiful looking giallo from Ercoli. I can't wait to watch the next one: Open the Door, Get on the Floor, Death Walks the Dinosaur!

Witchfinder General 666 Within only two years, director Luciano Ercoli directed two Gialli with a title beginning with "La Morte..."/"Death Walks..." and starring cult-cinema beauty Nieves Navarro - the near-brilliant "La Morte cammina con i tracci alti" (aka. "Death Walks On Highheels", 1971) and this one. (To be precise, he made three Gialli with Nieves Navarro, the first being "Forbidden Fotos of a Lady Above Suspicion" of 1970). I cannot deny that "La Morte accarezza a mezzanotte" aka. "Death Walks at Midnight" (1972) is a bit disappointing, especially if compared to the aforementioned film from a year earlier. "Death Walks At Midnight" also raises high hopes due to the two magnificent men who wrote the screenplay, Ernesto Gastraldi, who penned many great Gialli, including "Death Walks With Highheels" and Sergio Martino's masterpieces, and Spaghetti-Western deity Sergio Corbucci, director of "Django" and "The Great Silence". While the convoluted plot definitely has its highs, and even several downright ingenious moments, however, it is undeniable that it also has its lows, and that the film can't hold up to Ercoli's other Gialli.While testing a new drug in the presence of her journalist boyfriend Gio (Simon Andreu), sexy model Valentina (Nieves Navarro, credited here as "Susan Scott") witnesses an exceptionally brutal murder from the window of her apartment. When she reports the crime, the incident is dismissed as a hallucination in a drugged state. By becoming a witness, however, the beautiful young woman has put her own life at risk... The storyline is nicely convoluted, though it has its lengths and is sometimes a bit too confused. The film has many rewarding elements, such as the usual nice visual style and great score of early 70s Gialli, a likable protagonist played by the ravishing Miss Navarro, a highly original murder-weapon, and lots of red herrings and flashbacks. It is also a bit annoying in some parts, the film is full of, mostly painful, 'jokes', it gets a bit boring in the middle and the investigating police are a bit too stupid and stubborn to be believed. The plot also has some logical holes, but, overall, it is interesting enough for a Giallo-fan. Personally, I didn't much like the first half of the film, but it really catches up later. Nieves Navarro is beautiful and great as always, Simón Andreu is cool enough as her journalist boyfriend, and the other cast-members all fit in well. Regular 'ugly psycho' cult-actor Luciano Rossi is once again typecast in a demented role. Overall, this is a recommendable film for my fellow Giallo-fans, though I would recommend "Death Walks On High Heels" ten times over this one.

Scarecrow-88 On the surface, director Luciano Ercoli's Death Walks at Midnight appears to be a rather straight-forward Giallo. You get to see the killer's face right at the beginning, his brutal murder of a woman named Dolores visually captured within the drugged out vision of fashion model Valentina(..luscious red-head, Nieves Navarro, her fiery personality a major attraction to this here Giallo fan)who agreed to have an experimental hallucinogen called HDS injected into her bloodstream(..I'm guessing it was essentially a drug like LSD). The one responsible for talking her into taking HDS was journalist for a rag mag Novello 2000, Gia, Valentina's on-again / off-again lover. Gia got a great article out of her revelations regarding the sickening violent attack of a maniac, with big black shades and an overcoat, burying his iron glove with spikes into the skull of a brunette. Gia reckons she read about, sometime ago, a similar murder of a stripper named Hélène, and is pulling his chain about actually seeing the act take place in vivid detail as it was being carried out(..although, his suggestion that she possibly saw it happen, "self-censored" the act in her sub-conscious, with the drug re-awakening the memory, is probably a more accurate assessment). When the killer discovers her article in the magazine, Valentina's life is in danger, but the plot doesn't stop here..it's far more complex and stretches it's tentacles beyond what she could possibly have imagined.You get everything a Giallo fan is accustomed to here and then some. The fashions, the exotic Milan setting, luxurious apartments, restaurants and clubs, a positively gorgeous lead actress, insanely convoluted plot with a plethora of characters coming out of the woodwork, a really nasty murder weapon which does some serious damage to a victim's face, a series of questionable suspects and colorful villains(..including a drug-dealing psycho who giggles), well orchestrated finale where Gia comes to Valentina's rescue, engaging in fisticuffs on top of an apartment complex with those planning to set her up in a murder / suicide scenario, with some fabulous set-pieces including methods of how Ercoli captures facial reflections and action up close and personal as bodies(..and blood as the iron glove "stabs the screen") fly toward the screen when characters are fighting. The twist is a good one.The plot really places poor Valentina in a difficult predicament for everyone doubts her as she tries her best to get the truth across to Inspector Serino(Carlo Gentili;who believes she's staging a publicity stunt with Gia), sculptor boyfriend Stefano(Pietro Martellanza;who always dismisses her rantings as a whole bunch of hullabaloo), and Gia(Simón Andreu;who believes she's seeking revenge against him for the HDS incident, and for restitution). After the article is published, Valentina is inadvertently involved with a mysterious woman named Verushka(Claudie Lange;whose sister was Hélène), Verushka's odd asylum doctor husband, Otto(Ivano Staccioli;whose role in the grand scheme of things is of consequence), Pepito(Fabrizio Moresco;a pale skinned weirdo with a red scarf, often confronting Valentino about their lives being in grave danger), and two drug dealers who are tied to a secret mastermind whose operating within Milan. Henri Velaq(Claudio Pellegrini), the infamous killer of the film, is only a piece in a larger puzzle regarding rival drug dealing groups. The empty apartment across from Valentina's pad where Delores was brutally slain is of great importance to the overall story and figures highly into how Valentina become(..and remains)involved in the story.Navarro proves to be quite a find for me as I make my way through the Giallo genre, her elegance and beauty certainly enchanting, as is her strength and tenacity when confronting those that question her validity regarding what she knows(..as Velaq stalks her, no one will take her seriously when she informs them of his actions, not to mention the other people who start entering the picture).

ferbs54 Following such marvelous gialli as 1970's "Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion" and 1971's "Death Walks on High Heels," director Luciano Ercoli, screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi, and actors Susan Scott and Simon Andreu reunited one more time, and the result, 1972's "Death Walks at Midnight," although perhaps the least of the three films, is another winning entertainment, nevertheless. In this one, Scott plays a gorgeous redheaded model, Valentina, who becomes the willing test subject of a new hallucinogen, H.D.S. During her trip, she sees a spike-gloved killer mutilate a young girl across the way...a murder that, as it turns out, actually transpired six months earlier! Holy flashback! And from this bizarre setup, things get progressively stranger, as said killer starts to stalk Valentina all over the streets of Milan. Anyway, perhaps I'm a little slow on the ol' rebop, but I had to watch this picture almost three full times before it began to make a bit of sense to me. The plot is a bit convoluted, to say the least, and whereas in most gialli I make an attempt (usually a fruitless one) to spot the killer, here, I was hard pressed just to barely keep up. Still, brain twisting as the film is, it did, ultimately, kinda sorta make sense to me (just don't ask me to explain it out loud!). And the picture does have a lot going for it: stylish direction, beautiful photography of the city of Milan and its countryside, yet another supersexy performance from Susan Scott, a catchy score by Gianni Ferrio, several (not overly) gory homicides, and a furious rooftop dukeout to cap off the film. Drug dealers, a mental institution, a pot party, groovy discos, a couple of cute little Japanese kids, a murder attempt in a cemetery, and a bloody cat all, ultimately, get thrown into the mix. Yes, this IS one heady giallo. And the great-looking DVD from No Shame that I just watched does it justice indeed.