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What Have You Done To Solange?
[Shriek Show]
1972; color
Directed by Massimo Dallamano
Starring: Fabio Testi, Karin Baal, Joachim Fuchsberger, Cristina Galbó & Camille Keaton
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Long before I knew what a Giallo was (which, in all honesty, wasn't that long ago) I wondered just what had been done to poor Solange. Meaning every time we would go to TLA Video and find ourselves in the horror section, I would see this box sitting on the shelf and say out loud "what have you done to Solange?" The Kommandant, always the sly fox, never has let on as to what, if anything, he'd done to Solange; fortunately for the viewing audience, the people in this movie aren't anywhere near as evasive. (Although, in all fairness, by the time we get to Solange we're like 2/3rds through the movie so things have to move along somewhat quickly.) To qualify my earlier aside, I had seen quite a few Giallo films before I had actually heard the term but when I watched these movies, I just kind of mentally filed them under the category of Eurotrash. It wasn't really until I started this site that I began to get a handle on all of the assorted genres that make up that larger, blanket genre. And now, back to our movie... review. What Have You Done To Solange? has many of the familiar trappings genre fans have come to know, love and expect but it manages to throw in a few well placed twists that make it stand out a bit from the crowd. Kind of like how a group of teenaged girls who actively participate in a secret society that regularly holds orgies with local college men (and when local college men and / or the young sleazy looking non-priest teacher is not available, or the girls are just in a super Sapphic mood, each other) would stand out from the crowd at a conservative Catholic girl's school. Not that I'd know anything about that. (I went to a Quaker School and was slutty on my own time.) Nor did I see that happen with my own eyes during the course of the film. Still, the Catholic school girls in this movie aren't all that different from the Church school chicks I knew in real life though; bored, short-skirted, and eager to rack up sins to confess down the road. Not surprisingly, all of the action kicks off when one not so randy young lass and the previously alluded to sleazy looking non-priest teacher guy - who, of course, is married to a tightly bunned German woman who also teaches at the school - are out on the lake for a little rowboat afternoon delight. In between fighting off his advances and making excuses (which confuses our amorous adulterer because, you know, why would a woman go out on a row boat in broad daylight with a man if she wasn't planning on sleeping with him) the young lass sees what she is sure is a flash of light bouncing off of a knife. Her now blue balled boyfriend isn't so sure she saw anything in the woods except an excuse to not to give it up, but as soon as another student is found in the woods "Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors" fashion - or, if that's too esoteric of a reference for ya, a River's Edge fashion - with a deadly knife wound "down there", he becomes a little more convinced she saw... something. And when he becomes the police's prime suspect he's got even more of a reason to team up with his unhappily wedded wife to find the real killer. Unlike OJ Simpson however, they are successful in their efforts. Saying much more would both spoil the ending and make this way too long so I will just add that this satisfying pre-cursor the slasher flick is highly recommended to fans of the genre and anyone else who just likes a good thriller and / or Catholic school girls.
—Bunny
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