The giallo goes Greek as Sergio Martino and company try to replicate the success of THE STRANGE VICE OF SIGNORA WARDH by investigating THE CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL, on Blu-ray from Arrow Video.

When an airline carrying businessman Kurt Baumer (Fulvio Mingozzi, SUSPIRIA) explodes mid-air, estranged wife Lisa Baumer (Evelyne Stewart, MURDER MANSION) is apparently surprised to discover that he had a million dollar life insurance policy and that she has to go to Athens where his head office was for the payout. An ex-lover turned addict tries to blackmail her with a letter that could be construed as a murder plot but he is murdered and the letter stolen before Lisa can pay him off. Planning to run off with her current airline steward lover George (Tomás Picó, THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE DARK) to Tokyo, Lisa travels to Athens to cash the insurance check. She already has guessed that handsome stranger Peter Lynch (George Hilton, THE KILLER MUST KILL AGAIN) is actually an insurance investigator for the company that suspects that she may have had something to do with her husband's death, but he turns up just in time to rescue her from a murder attempt by Kurt's lover Lara (Janine Reynaud, SUCCUBUS) and her "lawyer" Sharif (Luis Barboo, FEMALE VAMPIRE) who want a cut of the insurance payout. Despite attempts on his own life, Lynch also becomes a suspect for local detective Stavros (Luigi Pistilli, DEATH RIDES A HORSE) and Interpol agent John Stanley (Alberto de Mendoza, HORROR EXPRESS) as other suspects fall victim to a switchblade-wielding killer who may be after the cash or just a sex maniac run amuck. The only ally Lynch has in his corner is news report Cleo (Anita Strindberg, THE ANTICHRIST), but she too starts to suspect him when her life is put in jeopardy.

THE CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL is one of the handful of Italian-Spanish co-production mounted by producers Luciano Martino (MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD) and Mino Loy (CANNIBAL FEROX) – following their attempt to continue the series of Carroll Baker late 1960s gialli with SO SWEET, SO PERVERSE and THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH – in the wake of the success of the Dario Argento's more aggressively violent giallo THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE with Martino's brother Sergio in the director's chair. Martino's duo THE STRANGE VICE OF SIGNORA WARDH and ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK netted a successful pairing of Luciano Martino's cousin Hilton, his mistress Edwige Fenech (PHANTOM OF DEATH), and steely-eyed Ivan Rassimov (SPASMO) – along with De Mendoza in a supporting bit – however, Fenech had to drop out of THE CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL because she was pregnant, and she was replaced by Strindberg who had appeared with Fenech in Martino's YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY, a giallo-tinged adaptation of Poe's "The Black Cat" that dropped Hilton and bumped up Pistilli to one of the leads. In some ways, THE CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL is actually a remake or a reworking of STRANGE VICE, improving on the latter's plotting while adding some intentional humor in the professional playfulness between suspect Lynch and the authorities and some twists that are actually logical (even if they still disrupt the tension for characters to explain them). Hilton gets more to do as Lynch than play Latin (or Aussie) lover while the division of women-in-peril duties are split between the more suspect Stewart and Strindberg who gets a more lighthearted characterization than her turn in YOUR VICE. Stewart's MURDER MANSION co-star Annalisa Nardi appears briefly as a stewardess. Although Reynaud mainly appeared in French erotica around this period, she had also appeared in the Luciano Martino-produced lower-tier giallo HUMAN COBRAS around the same time. As with STRANGE VICE, the film was photographed in Cromoscope – a name given to film shot in Technicscope that were not processed by Technicolor – by Martino's DP of choice Giancarlo Ferrando (TORSO) who is credited for co-production quota purposes as cameraman under Emilio Foriscot (FRANKENSTEIN'S BLOODY TERROR), and the film gets a lot of production value out of the London and Athens location shoots, with Italian soundstage interiors and Spanish locations subbing for Athens past the travelogue vistas (only the miniature of the exploding plane really suffers). The score by Bruno Nicolai (COUNT DRACULA) is a mix of Greek melodies, pop-fused romantic orchestration, and psychedelic instrumentation with a main title theme that popped up in Bruno Forzani's and Hélène Cattet's AMER.

Long unavailable stateside apart from dupes of a panned-and-scanned Greek-subtitled VHS, THE CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL first became accessible on DVD from the German company X-Rated Kult Video with a serviceable anamorphic transfer with Italian and German audio and optional English subtitles. NoShame remedied the situation with a better-looking anamorphic DVD featuring English and Italian audio and subtitles along with extras, however the HD master had been downconverted to PAL before being converted to NTSC. While the Blu-rays of ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK and THE STRANGE VICE OF SIGNORA WARDH have been serviceable, the 2K-mastered 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray of THE CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL is more in line with Arrow's earlier Blu-ray of YOUR VICE. The image is free of scanner noise and boasts more natural skintones and vivid colors starting with Stewart's red velvet hat that was a macroblocking nightmare on DVD, while the locations also yield newfound texture, particularly the rocky beach where the climax takes place. The film can be viewed in either English or Italian LPCM 1.0 mono audio with optional English SDH transcription for English subtitle translation. The film can be viewed with either English or Italian opening credits via seamless branching.

While some of the previous Blu-ray upgrades of NoShame titles from Arrow and Shameless have ported over NoShame's excellent interviews and documentaries, Arrow has ported over the audio commentary by writer Gastaldi moderated by Federico Caddeo from the 2006 French DVD but have otherwise included newly-produced extras. The commentary track (in Italian with English subtitles) starts with Gastaldi categorically stating that he wrote the screen alone and that credited Spanish scripter Eduardo M. Broschero (NIGHT OF THE DEVILS) was credited for co-production purposes but that Sauro Scavolini – brother of NIGHTMARES IN A DAMAGED BRAIN's Romano Scavolini – may have given the initial story idea to the Martinos. He then discusses his long friendship and working relationship with the Martinos going back to film school and early productions – with both Gastaldi and Luciano Martino writing scripts under Ugo Guerra, including Mario Bava's THE WHIP AND THE BODY – and revealing that the original title was TWO TAILS OF THE SCORPION which Gastaldi and the Martinos would rehash for the supernatural giallo THE SCORPION WITH TWO TAILS which was a two-part TV miniseries whose running time was cut in half for its feature version. He then discusses his preference for logic in his plotting and motivations of the criminal versus the irrationality of psychopathy in Dario Argento's gialli as well as distinguishing his touches from those of Martino, which leads to a discussion of how much and how little influence he had over the visuals of the film. While he speaks highly of the Martinos, he is not that effusive in his assessments of the cast apart from noting that the combination of actors proved profitable to carry over to subsequent productions.

"Under the Sign of the Scorpion" (20:56) is a new interview with actor Hilton in which he recalls the need to reinvent himself as an actor as the spaghetti western trend waned, and that he had actually married the Martinos' cousin without knowing who they were and only came to know them when they approached him and asked him to work with them for a "family discount." In discussing his relationships with the actors, he not so gallantly recalls his love scenes with Strindberg and her disastrous breast enlargement job ("like blocks of marble") as well as his side partnership with cinematographer Giancarlo Ferrando in smalltime film distribution before the competition with Titanus force them to sell (as well as his anger that Titanus' Goffredo Lombardo shortened his final scene). "Scorpion Tales" (47:10) is another new interview with director Martino in which he cites the inspiration for several of his story ideas in the 1961 murder for life insurance money of Maria Martirano Fenaroli, the benefits of Spanish co-productions in offering exotic settings – in addition to the London and Athens ones here – while also confirming that Ferrando shot the film and that Foriscot was credited for quota purposes, and that Martino himself doubled for Barboo for the London scenes. In discussing the film itself, he now feels that he overused the zoom lens in a manner comparable to his observation of the overuse of drone shots in modern films.