Arrow Video explores the paranoid world of a woman in peril, giallo-style, when someone snaps FORBIDDEN PHOTOS OF A LADY ABOVE SUSPICION.

Minou (Dagmar Lassander, BLACK EMANUELLE 2) is a typical middle-class housewife, wiling away her boredom and subconscious dissatisfaction with her marriage to high-powered executive Peter (Pier Paolo Capponi, NAKED VIOLENCE) with pills and alcohol. One night on the way to eat out, Minou is accosted by a biker (Simon Andreu, THE BLOOD-SPATTERED BRIDE) who nearly sexually assaults her before telling her that her husband is a murderer and then leaving. Peter does not appear to believe her – but he may have a reason for downplaying the attack – while single best friend Dominique (Susan Scott, EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS) laughs it off ("I'd have adored being violated"). When Minou discovers her attacker's image in one of a series of pornographic photographs Dominique bought in Copenhagen, Peter's friend the police commissioner (Osvaldo Genazzani, THE CASTLE OF FU MANCHU) promises to discretely look into the case, even if Peter more than ever does not believe an attack happened. After learning of the mysterious death of one of Peter's most aggressive creditors, she receives a phone call from her attacker who plays a tape which seems to incriminate her husband. She tries to pay him off, but he insists that he wants the submission of her mind and body. After she reluctantly gives herself to him, he then tells her that the tape was fake and her suspicions of her husband misplaced. When none of her accounts can be substantiated by physical evidence, and her husband and even Dominique suggest that she may have hallucinated the events under the influence of her tranquillizers, Minou tries to hang onto her sanity as her attacker continues to his destructive mind games.

Predating Dario Argento's THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, and the more violent, body-count-focused turn of the giallo genre, FORBIDDEN PHOTOS OF A LADY ABOVE SUSPICION has more in common with the brand of female paranoia gialli of Umberto Lenzi (PARANOIA, ORGASMO) and Sergio Martino (ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK); indeed, the film plays a bit like a mélange of THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH and THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH. While there is little graphic violence and less nudity, the film's sadomasochistic central (non-consensual) relationship feels more potently-charged than that of the Martino film where the heroine's masochism and blood fetish felt like novelties to diversify the formula. Perhaps it feels more so that way because – despite shots of females in submissive poses being menaced by knives or cowering in the background of a shot framed in the foreground by the silhouetted lower body of her male assailant – its script is not so much female-friendly as female-concerned in interrogating the seventies notion of the "rape fantasy" as a joke or the assumed subconscious desire of the housewife, as well as in contrasting the "promiscuity" of Dominique's liberated female with the unhealthy underpinnings of Minou's marriage in which she is figuratively a child bride who regards Peter as being both husband and father (even he has to assure her that he would not stop loving her if she was the unwilling victim of a sex maniac). Scott (aka Nieves Navarro) would move up to female lead in Ercoli's next two gialli DEATH WALKS AT MIDNIGHT and DEATH WALKS IN HIGH HEELS with Andreu.
Screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi (THE CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL) – sharing screen credit with the quota pick May Velasco who served as assistant director on a number of Spanish genre films including THE HOUSE THAT SCREAMED – keeps the twists believable, prizing logic above effect, even if the final twist seems more than a bit routine not only in the context of Gastaldi's other similar gialli but just about any mystery in which a heroine questions her sanity. The film's greatest assets are the visual – Ercoli not only directed but also edited, suggesting that he may have had a heavy influence on the visuals as photographed here by pro Alejandro Ulloa (THE DIABOLICAL DR. Z) sharing with his subsequent giallo films the construction of plot around visual setpieces of menaced heroines in striking location and pop art set backdrops – and the scoring of Ennio Morricone (THE STENDHAL SYNDROME) as orchestrated and conducted by Bruno Nicolai (A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD) which includes Hammond organ-driven discotheque numbers, Edda dell'Orso scat-singing, dissonant suspense cues, and a few alternately jazzy and romantic orchestral pieces. Cinematographer Ulloa was assisted her by Fernando Arribas who would move up to cinematographer on Ercoli's later gialli along with a number of seventies genre films by Vicente Aranda (THE EXQUISITE CADAVER), Jorge Grau (VIOLENT BLOODBATH), and Peter Collinson's Spanish co-production duo OPEN SEASON and TEN LITTLE INDIANS.

Unreleased in English-speaking countries theatrically or on home video, FORBIDDEN PHOTOS OF LADY ABOVE SUSPICION became widely available in 2006 when Blue Underground put it out on DVD in an anamorphic widescreen transfer featuring a short interview with Gastaldi. A Camera Obscura special edition followed in 2012 from Germany that dropped the English track for licensing reasons but included English subtitles for the feature and new interviews with Gastaldi, Ercoli, and Scott. Arrow's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray is derived from a new 2K scan of the original camera negative, and it is gorgeous. While not produced on a large budget, the textures, color choices, and lighting as captured in 2-perf Techniscope are lovingly rendered here along with the bottomless blacks that play into so many of the film's suspense sequences. While I had once dismissed the film on DVD as blandly pretty, it is striking here, with more of a noir feel to the low-key lighting and expressionistic touches in composition and framing décor. English and Italian LPCM 1.0 mono tracks cleanly convey the dialogue and Morricone's scoring while English subtitles for the Italian track and SDH subtitles for the English track are included. The film can be viewed with English or Italian opening credits – along with THE END or FINE end cards – via seamless branching and a menu option. The Italian credits at first appeared to have been digitally recreated, although that seems to be an impression made by the use of a plainer font for the title card compared to the more striking English one.

Extras start off with a new audio commentary by film historian Kat Ellinger who distinguishes the female-centered pre-Argento jet set, cosmopolitan gialli with the post-Argento, male-centered, usually Italian-set gialli, as well as how the earlier subset tend to be dismissed with definitions that adhere to closely to the model of a black-gloved killer and a body count. She also notes that the female-centered gialli drawing from the gothic and melodrama with an emphasis on the psyche and blackmail plots (although this trend would take a back seat to the other giallo model through the seventies, the female-focused elements would find their way back into Italian genre filmmaking during the eighties with softcore films that veered away from comedy and BLACK EMANUELLE-esque travelogue towards drama and would adapt better to the influences of NINE ½ WEEKS and FATAL ATTRACTION than the latter day gialli had to Brian De Palma's eighties thrillers). "Private Pictures" (44:15) is described as a "a newly-edited documentary featuring archival interviews with actress Nieves Navarro and director Luciano Ercoli, and new interview material with writer Ernesto Gastaldi" which suggests that it may be re-edited from the Gastaldi and Navarro/Ercoli featurettes on the German DVD. Ercoli recalls his beginnings in film, and his partnership with Alberto Pugliese (IVORY COAST ADVENTURE) which lead to a series of Italian/Spanish co-productions based in Barcelona and mostly shot at the Balcazar Studios, starting with TOTO D'ARABIA which also began their association with Navarro which extended to a quartet of westerns starring Giuliano Gemma (A PISTOL FOR RINGO) and the three gialli. Gastaldi recalls that the film started life as the script "Venere Piu" meant to be directed by himself and starring his wife Mara Meryl (LIBIDO) after they did LONELY VIOLENT BEACH, but Pugliese and Ercoli needed a script quick so he gave it to them. He recalls that Ercoli added the more violent elements while his script focused more on the psychological relationship between villain and victim (once again pointing out the difference between plot and Argento-esque suspense).