The Case of Bloody Iris (1972) Directed by Giuliano Carnimeo
As much as it is invariably pleasurable to see the otherworldly beauty of Edwige Fenech and the virile effulgence of George Hilton fleshly interacting within the baroque canvas of the gialli, their sizzling physical presences are not enough of an erotic distraction to obliviate the fact that what we are watching is mostly just a basic psychosexual whodunit that happens to have gorgeous people engaging in photogenic violence. They are a titillating camouflage. But the lurid affair written by one of the most skillful screenwriters of Italian genre fare demands more than titillating superficial glitz to flesh out this perverse study of reactionary intolerance in 1970s Italy. And director Giuliano Carnimeo doesn’t seem very interested in devoting his energies to progressive rationalization, let alone social critique as such; he prefers to wantonly exploit the absurdities of the genre – vertiginous camera angles and willful nonsense – so as to function pragmatically as a giallo in the truest sense of the word. And yeah, it is an archetypal giallo, after all its storytelling essentials are about beautiful prostitutes and models being killed by a shadowy killer. The conceptual and technical approach is the right one, but the manner in which it is implemented is dogmatic and rigid. The visual orchestration of the eroticized violence – exquisitely staged as an art piece – is the only bit of functional style I could distinguish from the dysfunctional, -Paola Quattrini is annoying as comic relief and along with the cop procedural rigmarole they hijack the screen leaving very little room for the kinky giallo frenzy that I love so much. It felt more like an incongruous dynamic between an Italian shocker and a Commedia sexy all’italiana, and well, also a lousy simulacrum of the poliziotteschi.