Scanialara
You won't be disappointed!
Inclubabu
Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.
Matrixiole
Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.
christopher-underwood
This starts very well, indeed, startlingly so with surreal quality about it as we proceed from outlandish and vivid killing to child finding body in trunk of car and something strange going on with eyes. Various persons emerge from secret doors and there is emphasis upon dark glasses and limited sight with some weird sound going off to suggest something untoward is about to happen. Things calm down and killing become a bit mundane, very bloody but not very involving until the end when things spark back into life. Along the way, Anton Differing is effective, if a little one note and Dagmar Lassander lovely as ever. Veteran actress, Valentina Cortese puts in a great little performance and Italian movie stalwart Luigi Pistilli is most effective. Great shots of Dublin and Switzerland along the way and if this is not the finest giallo, it is certainly entertaining enough.
BA_Harrison
Pay no heed to the somewhat disparaging reviews here on IMDb: although The Iguana With The Tongue of Fire fails to live up to its wonderfully evocative title thanks to a rather mediocre storyline and a lacklustre finale, there is still much to entertain fans of the genre. Director Riccardo Freda's film features a decent cast, atmospheric location work in Ireland and Switzerland, some gnarly violence, silly red herrings aplenty, a little action, and a touch of sleaze, making this one fun despite the drawbacks of the plot.The film stars Luigi Pistilli as Detective John Norton, whose investigation into the murder of a young woman (who has her face ruined by sulphuric acid and her neck sliced with a cut-throat razor in the gory opener) sees him becoming personally involved in the case after he develops a relationship with Helen (Dagmar Lassander), sexy daughter of the prime suspect, Swiss diplomat Ambassador Sobiesky (Anton Diffring). As the bodies continue to pile up, Norton's own mother and teenage daughter find themselves at risk...From its gruesome opening, to the spectacular demise of the film's killer, The Iguana With The Tongue of Fire is trashy fun and should appeal to those who love their giallos bloody and sleazy; if the likes of The New York Ripper and Strip Nude for The Killer float your boat, you'll most likely get a kick out of this one too. In addition to the juicy razor attacks, we also get a 'decapitated cat in a fridge' gag, and Norton's mother having her head bashed in, while the nudity includes Lassender getting her top off for a brief sex scene, and Norton's daughter being attacked while just in her knickers (her childish dubbed voice making this scene a tad uncomfortable to watch).The film also offers some great unintentional laughs: the woeful 'Oirish' dubbing will no doubt illicit some chuckles, as will the numerous red-herrings (everyone seems to own a pair of sunglasses, a cut-throat razor, or leather gloves) which, as if they're not blatant enough, are accompanied by a crashingly loud sound effect that really drives the point home—this is a possible clue and the owner of the item in question could be the killer!!!! The final reveal of the murderer's identity and his convoluted motive for killing are suitably daft—the icing on the whole silly giallo cake.
Darkling_Zeist
With the rather cumbersome title of 'The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire' the film itself actually proves to be a supremely limber and entertaining giallo-esque thriller from Riccardo Freda. Thus far the general consensus on this lurid early 70's slasher is a trifle underwhelming, but, on the contrary, I really enjoyed this brisk, Ireland-set thriller; with all its pungent red herrings; gonzoid throat slashings, and plethora of charred, vitriol burned flesh. The venerable Anton Diffring does his regular aristocratic aloof spiel with great elan, and the sublime Pistilli makes a zesty show of the violent, maverick copper; all in all 'Iguana with the tongue of fire' is a blast; and yet again, il maestro Stelvio Cipriani percolates another magnificently potent score.
MARIO GAUCI
After having been instrumental in introducing the Fantasy genre (which would thrive for close to 40 years) in Italy, with four classics to his name – I VAMPIRI (1956), CALTIKI, THE IMMORTAL MONSTER (1959), THE HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK (1962) and THE GHOST (1963) – much like James Whale in 1930s Hollywood, Freda's enthusiasm for the genre seems to have run out. Even so, towards the end of the 1960s, he dabbled in a new and flourishing branch of the horror/thriller genre, albeit with diminishing results: the pretty good (if derivative) DOUBLE FACE (1969); the film under review which, while not bad, is essentially uninspired; and the hilariously inept TRAGIC CEREMONY (1972); a measure of the director's own increasing disenchantment with his work is the fact that, in the case of the latter two, he chose to be credited not under his usual (thus recognizable) Anglicized alias of Robert Hampton but rather as the obscure Willy Pareto! For the record, after almost a decade of silence, he would return for one last fling with yet another Giallo i.e. the as-yet-unwatched MURDER OBSESSION (1981) featuring Softcore starlet Laura Gemser! To get back to the matter at hand, I have always found myself in two minds when it comes to this type of international production: while I generally lean towards the Italian dialogue because in all probability the script would have been written in that language, I know that, in most cases, the actors deliver their lines in English!; here, then, since the narrative is set in the Irish city of Dublin anyway, it would be natural to take this route. The thing is that I first laid my hands on an English-dubbed version (though, at least, both Anton Diffring and Valentina Cortese lend their voices to its audio track) but then also came across one in Italian which, however, I did not feel inclined to acquire (the irony is that, on the English-language print, the credits are still presented in their native language!); in fact, quite a number of Gialli I got hold of in English have been turning up in Italian (online or on TV) but I rarely, if ever, bother to 'upgrade' anymore! Anyway, here we get the usual flurry of vicious murders (of the throat-slitting or acid-splashing variety right from the very opening sequence – unfortunately, while the gore is plentiful, it looks ultra-fake!) countered by a Police investigation, set against stylish backdrops and accompanied by a delightful score (courtesy of Stelvio Cipriani). The other notable cast members, both genre stalwarts, are leads Luigi Pistilli and Dagmar Lassander (as the fast-living daughter of globe-trotting ambassador Diffring and drug-addled Cortese). Typically, the complex plot yields suspects galore, since most of the characters generally have something to hide (Diffring is a lecher, thus prone to blackmail, while ex-cop Pistilli's violent streak during interrogations has driven a suspect to suicide, etc.) but, as often happens, once the villain's identity is revealed, we get a motive that is all but flimsy (here, this figure had actually been so peripheral to the narrative that one's reaction to the finale is extremely muted and downright indifferent)! The surprising carelessness on the film-makers' part is evidenced in an early banal dialogue exchange relating to the use of acid as a murder weapon, which suggests that the killer may be either a woman or a colored person(!) and the fact that the music is allowed to go preposterously over-the-top when it wants to direct our attention – fruitlessly, as it turns out – to would-be vital clues like sun-glasses or razor-blades! Besides, there is additional gratuitous gore (an effectively graphic shot of a suture being applied to a gash on Pistilli's head) and nudity (apart from the obligatory love scene between Lassander and Pistilli, there is also a somewhat disturbing shot of Pistilli's underage daughter in the nude{!} being pursued by the killer inside their home – but, truly, why on earth should Pistilli's relatives be targeted?), some bizarre comic touches (provided by Pistilli's elderly amateur sleuth of a mother, who is repeatedly told that she cannot hear properly unless the woman has her glasses on – WTF, right?! – except that a colleague of mine, who I am sure is unfamiliar with the film, actually makes of that assertion a running gag!) and an unusual prevalence for foul language (especially on Diffring's part)! Although this is somewhat better than the reviews I have read of it would have you believe, the end result satisfied neither the director (who also edited the film under the afore-mentioned alias) nor prolific German co-producer Artur Brauner who decided it was not worthy of a theatrical release in his native country! Having said that, it was rather ingenious of the screenplay to have Cortese's supposed assassination attempt turn out to be a bungled suicide and that the seemingly scot-free Diffring is revealed at the film's very end as having actually murdered the first victim and that Justice will be catching up with him shortly upon making his return to Switzerland!
