The Case of Bloody Iris (1972)

Directed by Giuliano Carnimeo

Written by Ernesto Gastaldi

Starring:

  • Edwige Fenech as Jennifer Lansbury
  • George Hilton as Andrea Antinori
  • Paola Quattrini as Marilyn Ricci
  • Giampiero Albertini as Commissioner Enci
  • Franco Agostini as Assistant Commissioner Renzi
  • Oreste Lionello as Arthur – Photographer
  • Ben Carra as Adam – Jennifer’s Ex-Husband (credited as Ben Carrá)
  • Carla Brait as Mizar Harrington

Rating: 

Few sights in Italian exploitation cinema are as reliably intoxicating as the icy beauty of Edwige Fenech colliding with the square-jawed machismo of George Hilton inside the gaudy murder playground of a giallo. Problem is, their smoldering presence mostly acts as camouflage for a fairly routine psychosexual whodunit where stunning people get artistically butchered under stylized lighting. The script—courtesy of genre craftsman Ernesto Gastaldi—suggests there might be something nastier simmering underneath, a crooked little portrait of repression and moral hypocrisy in 1970s Italy. But director Giuliano Carnimeo doesn’t seem terribly interested in unpacking any of that. Instead he leans into the genre’s flashiest tricks: skewed angles, baroque murder tableaux, and the usual parade of models and call girls waiting their turn at the killer’s knife. In theory, it’s the perfect giallo formula. In practice, the movie keeps tripping over comic relief from Paola Quattrini and a clunky cop-procedural subplot that drains the kinky delirium out of the room. The result plays like a strange hybrid—part giallo shocker, part sex comedy, part half-hearted Poliziotteschi theatrics—when all it really needed was more beautiful corpses and less goofy chatter.

 

Author

  • Matteo Bedon

    Editor and Official Film Critic at CelluloidDimension.com

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