Someone might find amusement in the low-grade temperature reached by the shot-on-video Giallo City Wide Fever, written and directed by Josh Heaps. Sam (Diletta Gugliemi, Nancy Kimball) is a film student in New York. She discovers there was a forgotten Italian film director, Saturnino Barresi, who was instrumental in the development of the stylized murder mysteries in the Giallo genre. His last movie, a slasher to be released at the end of the 70s, was never finished due to mysterious circumstances.
Sam discovers that the cameraman for Barresi, Hong (Stan Oh), still lives in the city, working at an old-timey porn shop. Hong barely speaks English, so Sam gets her close Asian friend, Carolyn (Carolyn Farina), to help track him down. Sam is slipped a hard drive with lots of rare Barresi material on it. With the help of her film professor’s assistant, Raina (Hugo Alexander Rose), Sam digs deeper into the film mystery. She even tracks down one of the rare surviving actresses who worked with Barresi, Rutanya (Rutanya Alda). However, a killer in a pink ski mask is running around killing people around Sam, just like in a Giallo.
Guy Madden lent his name to this production as an executive producer, thus creating the greatest mystery surrounding City Wide Fever as to why. Maybe the reason is the passion Madden has for obsolete film formats, like silent movies. This is admirable, but it seems misplaced here. The shot-on-video format was never embraced by the public at large as an acceptable method for filmmaking outside of porn. Lots of indie work from the 90s remains overlooked because they were shot on camcorders, with no one willing to watch them again. The fact that Heaps uses the shot-on-video method, complete with outdated equipment and a square ratio, to shoot a Giallo is extra grating.
“…a killer in a pink ski mask is running around killing people around Sam, just like in a Giallo.”
The Italian Giallo is one of the most artistically bent of the exploitation sub-genres, rich in elegance and visual beauty. That goes right out the window when the camcorder comes out; it’s like trying to clean a diamond with shoe polish. Worse still, cameraman Ethan Johnson frames everything like a newscast, with the subjects dead center screen. Nearly every frame is another center screen head and shoulder shot, with someone just talking away about murder, weather, and daily events. For a picture trying to ape high Italian, this results in something looking like a Growing Pains Saturday Night Murder Special.
There is also the unexplainable choice to have two actresses cast as the same lead. Maybe I missed the brilliant explanation in the story, but all it looks like is that one actress had to replace another, but Heaps left in the first actress’s footage. This is confusing when it happens, especially since Gugliemi and Kimball speak English with different accents. There is also a non-ending pasted on at the finish that screams “ruined orgasm.” Jess Franco didn’t get away with a non-ending in Faceless, so Heaps won’t either. Especially since he keeps adding more things to be pissed off about on top of the format concerns. Keep in mind that I am also the target audience for this kind of retro outing. I was looking forward to this concept, which makes it extra disappointing.
The only reason to sit through City Wide Fever is the big horror movie cameos. It was fun seeing Larry Fessenden, the director of Wendigo, playing an indie filmmaker working a day job as an adult book store clerk (been there). I was even more excited to see Alda, as she is horror movie royalty. Alda played the mother in the Italian-made Amityville II: The Possession, which was a high watermark for abusive family horror, along with The Shining. I will sit through anything because of Alda’s participation, which I have definitely proven by watching all of City Wide Fever. I will give Heap credit for successfully summoning back the bygone era where the poster is better than the movie, like The Awakening. Watch the poster for City Wide Fever, then skip the film and take two Aspirin instead.
"…results in something looking like a Growing Pains Saturday Night Murder Special."
