Amazing title aside, this giallo is one weirdo bit from a subgenre already stuffed to the brim with eccentric pieces. A journalist (who I briefly thought was Damien Thomas… probably just wishful thinking) ends up in the villa of an odd wheelchair-bound photographer (who more than resembles an 80’s prop comedian) as he looks for a missing female friend. She managed to call him when her car broke down on her way home from the photographer’s place but was too damn lazy to come get her right away and had her stay in the small village for the night. Of course, when he finally arrived to scoop her beautiful ass up, she was nowhere to be found. The innkeepers claim she must have left during the night and Giorgio almost leaves it be but when he sees her stalled car still there, he realizes she should still be around somewhere. It’s not a great time to be a young woman in the area because a deviant psychopath is targeting them for murder. We see this as soon as the opening credits close when the gloved fiend attacks an attractive stranded motorist with a nasty pair of scissors. Of course, her top is ripped open as she flees and stumbles before inevitably getting stabbed to death. The villa is housing more than a few weirdos making serious faces at the camera, the world’s most attractive maid and a porter who looks like what would have happened if David Cronenberg and Donald Sutherland had a baby and that baby grew up to be in The Bee Gees and is obviously up to something. A steady stream of incredibly attractive women grace the screen while interesting characters huddle around in the background in between murders. There’s also topless ham sandwich eating (the most comfortable way to consume ham), a large mentally challenged young man, a village fair dance number, locals unable to not stare directly at the camera, a head of hair that may have once been a garbage-eating varmint, the kind of fashion I would be embarrassed to leave the house in but would definitely give a go, awkward footsie, a distracting toupee and a strange science fiction angle that just kind of shows up about an hour in. The photographer (portrayed by Alberto Gasparri) may be the greatest weirdo in cinema history and I just want to spend every minute of this already off film watching him act like a frustrated alien pretending to be a tortured artist… it’s wonderful and makes up for the lack of murder plaguing the film. So, minorly boring and missing a solid set piece works against it but the slayings we do get are memorable in their brutality and everything else is soaked in a level of otherworldliness that’s more memorable than most of these forgotten giallo flicks.
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