I haven't seen a movie this downright horrible in a long time. Even movies that most people consider to be bottom of the barrel often have some, perhaps unintended, viewing value. The Scorpion with Two Tails is not such a film.

Apparently, this film may have been intended as a giallo, and if handled properly, it could have been one. But instead, all we get is a totally wasted extended cameo of John Saxon, and an over abundance of the lead "actress" Elvire Audray. She gives new meaning to the term Casting Couch. Each scene where she encounters a dead body involves her seeing the corpse, screaming, then we immediately cut to another scene where she's no longer anywhere around the crime scene and she's totally fine.

The hokey plot involves Audray's husband, Saxon, looking over some Etruscan tombs. Audray's father wants the crates of artifacts sent to him, but there are drugs in one of the crates, so you have a drug deal gone bad and characters wandering around without much to do except look at each other and some bad sculptures. Oh, and let's not forget the large quantities of maggots. Apparently, the director thinks that repeated close-ups of maggots constitutes a horror film. Anyway, Audray moves from man to man in this movie, trying to find the answer to the Etruscan riddles that may or may not include her as a re-incarnation of some whatever or something. There is no gore, only a few gunshot wounds poorly staged and way too many broken necks, as if breaking someone's neck is an easy thing to do for some average jerk who's into archaeology.

There is nothing redeeming about this film, and I advise you to avoid it all the peril of your life because you will be bored to death.

Minor Spoilers

In New York, Joan Barnard (Elvire Audrey) is informed that her husband, the archeologist Arthur Barnard (John Saxon),was mysteriously murdered in Italy while searching an Etruscan tomb. Joan decides to travel to Italy, in the company of her colleague, who offers his support. Once in Italy, she starts having visions relative to an ancient people and maggots, many maggots. After shootings and weird events, Joan realizes that her father is an international drug dealer, there are drugs hidden in the tomb and her colleague is a detective of the narcotic department. The story ends back in New York, when Joan and her colleague decide to get married with each other, in a very romantic end. Yesterday I had the displeasure of wasting my time watching this crap. The story is so absurd, mixing thriller, crime, supernatural and horror (and even a romantic end) in a non-sense way. The acting is the worst possible, highlighting the horrible performance of the beautiful Elvire Audrey. John Saxon just gives his name to the credits and works less than five minutes, when his character is killed. The special effects are limited to maggots everywhere. The direction is ridiculous. I lost a couple of hours of my life watching 'Assassinio al Cimitero Etrusco'. If you have the desire or curiosity of seeing this trash, choose another movie, go to a pizzeria, watch TV, go sleep, navigate in Internet, go to the gym, but do not waste your time like I did. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): 'O Mistério Etrusco' ('The Etruscan Mystery')

Damn you Sergio Martino and your constant re-using of titles! Here I was under the impression that I finally tracked down a copy of "Case of the Scorpion's Tail" and then it turns out this is an entirely different movie, actually one that is even more rare but also a whole lot worse. Then I wanted to take comfort in the fact this production stars the almighty B-movie legend John Saxon, but he's only in it during the first EIGHT minutes and then he has his neck wrenched around 180 degrees! "The Scorpion with two Tails" is undeniably a disappointment, mixing too many story ideas and cult sub genres into one overly confusing film. The plot covers typical giallo-elements as well as supernatural forces of evil and even crime syndicates! However, none of the story lines are properly elaborated and the whole thing is just intolerably incoherent. Mr. Saxon briefly appears as an American archaeologist who phones his wife to announce he discovered a genuine Etruscan tomb during his research expedition in Italy. He then gets killed and the wife Joan instantly travels to Italy to investigate the circumstances of his death. She learns that her own beloved father runs an international hard drugs network, hallucinates about eerie maggots crawling around everywhere and eventually hooks up with another archaeologist that fancies Etruscan tombs. Every once and a while, a redundant character is killed off by a pair of unidentifiable hands that clearly adore twisting people's necks around! Sergio Martino is a great director, and Ernesto Gastaldi is an even greater scriptwriter, but "The Scorpion with two Tails" totally lacks all their usual trademarks. It's uninvolving, boring, slow-paced, poorly presented and the murder sequences are tame and entirely gore-free! The neck-twisting modus operandi is interesting to show once, but not seven times in one film! The search for the killer's identity – if he/she is even human – isn't nearly as compelling as in any of Martino's previous gialli and features no ingenious red herrings. Heck, even the music is lame since it's identical to the score in "Hell of the Living Dead" and that film already stole it from Goblin's soundtrack for "Dawn of the Dead". Nothing to recommend here, not even to die-hard fans of Italian cinema.