Full Moon Features is known for bringing foreign oddities to American audiences, so it’s always exciting to see the next release. This time out, it’s an Italian (almost) giallo called Scorpion with Two Tails from filmmaker Sergio Martino. While the strides he made in the genre are appreciated by most cinephiles, he was no Dario Argento who set a precedent for the genre.
Martino is better known for his post-apocalyptic Mad Max rip-offs like Hands of Steel (1986) and After the Fall of New York (1983). He may have been trying to succeed in the shadow of Argento, but that doesn’t change the fact he was a highly prolific filmmaker with several titles to be considered classics, regardless of how good or bad they may have been.
Scorpion with Two Tails follows Joan (Elvire Audray), a woman suffering from terrible nightmares in which there are terrible sacrifices. While she is being haunted by her dreams, her husband Arthur (John Saxon) is murdered in the same type of ritualistic sacrifice she’s been dreaming about. There’s something out there with their sights on Joan, turning her nightmares into realities and showing no mercy. With her world turned upside, she dives in head first and hopes this evil can be stopped before it claims her own life.
Scorpion with Two Tails has quite a few things working in its favor, but the film as a whole is highly uneven. There’s a really interesting explanation for all this. The film was designed and shot to be eight 50-min episodes. Since it never went to television, the film was edited down into a 98-min feature film.
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Several years later, a different company edited the movie again, this time into two 180-minute parts to be run as a miniseries. This didn’t work out, either. There’s all this content that no one will ever see. It’s a shame knowing there’s more story to be told. The issues I had with it may actually be addressed in the missing footage.
The disc released by Full Moon was sourced from the best available materials; I doubt you will find anything better than this. There are a few deleted scenes, but they aren’t everything that is missing. However, it does give you an idea of what could have been. Scorpion with Two Tails is disappointing and interesting at the same time. Kudos to Full Moon for trying to give audiences a decent release. Considering all original materials are thought to be destroyed, this is the best release we will likely see.
View the trailer here.
