(Review originally written at 31 July 2007)

This is a great typical Italian Giallo genre example, that has all of the usual and required elements in it, such as lots of fake blood, bad dubbing, weird sound effects, some surreal dream-like sequences, a lunatic murderer, an eerie atmosphere and lots of sex and naked women (for some reason they even start to wrestle naked in the movie).

These Italian thriller/horror productions from the '70's and '80's are often fantastic to watch and are totally overlooked by the big audience. It's a great and original genre on its own and it uses different 'rules' than the Hollywood productions from the same era and beyond. It for instance has different kind of editing, different kind of cinematography (often also hand-held to increase the movie its atmosphere and tension), a different style of build-up (real European-style). It's always something special and unusual to watch. It has an unpleasant and creepy kind of atmosphere, in which unexpected things happen all the time.

There's never really much to the story of these sort of movie, even though they always try hard. It's simple but it always works well. This movie is not really an exception to this, even though it surely has its original moments and like always a great twist at the end and some twists in between.

The acing is above average and is by genre standards. The women are cast because of their beautiful looks and the men because of their charismatic appearances, both pretty and villainously ugly. Especially Ivan Rassimov works out great, while Edwige Fenech is also a pretty good leading lady, who perhaps faints and scream one or two too many times. She now also plays a small part in "Hostel: Part II", an obvious reference and homage to her Giallo past, by director Eli Roth.

The movie has a great typical Italian genre movie musical score by Nora Orlandi. The kind of stuff Ennio Morricone also used to compose in his most early days. Very unusual sounding but wonderful at the same time. The musical score was even reused later again by Quentin Tarantino, for his movie "Kill Bill: Vol. 2".

Not the best but still a great example of the genre.

7/10

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