Review of The Scorpion with Two Tails

There is a little game that some 007 fans play as they watch "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," the first James Bond film to not star Sean Connery: They imagine how much better the film would have been had it featured Connery instead of (the sorely underrated) George Lazenby. Well, this viewer could not refrain from playing a similar game while watching (director) Sergio and (producer) Luciano Martinos' 1982 offering, "Scorpion With Two Tails." Here, though, I couldn't stop thinking how much better this picture would have been had it starred the Martino Bros.' erstwhile muse, Eurobabe sexbomb Edwige Fenech, rather than the blond vacuity that is Elvire Audray. Audray, a gorgeous actress in the Nicole Kidman mold, simply does not have the spark and thespian chops that Edwige might have brought to the role, but even if Edwige had been substituted here, I'm not sure that the resultant film would have been any more lucid. In "Scorpion," Elvire goes to Italy to seek clues after her archaeologist husband (John Saxon, wasted in a small role) is killed, despite the objections of her father (Van Johnson, of all people). Screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi (who seems to have written half the gialli I've ever seen) must have had some kind of psychoactive substance slipped into his Chianti before penning the story for this one, as this overly plotted picture conflates giallo-type murders, drug smuggling, Etruscan history, the supernatural, reincarnation, and discussions of antimatter and antiuniverses into one mind-boggling stew. Such grossouts as maggots (and lots of 'em), neck twistings, rats and bats are thrown in to keep the viewer stunned and amused. To be honest, I must say that I could never tell just where this darn thing was headed next, especially after the entire cast seems to buy the farm roughly around the film's midpoint. The picture looks handsome enough and also features an effective score by Fabio Frizzi. Still, I have watched this thing twice now and am still confused regarding several plot points. For example, can anyone tell me just what happened to all that darn heroin? In all, an entertaining if muddled pot of stufato....