Last Caress

A group of friends visit the home of one of their ancestors where a deranged killer with a spiked metal glove is desperately searching for an old oil painting (Why? Who the hell knows? Not me, that's for sure); as if that wasn't enough to contend with, the group unwisely hold a seance, releasing the spirit of ancient witch Gabrielle Vajda…

Clearly crafted with the avid giallo fan in mind, Last Caress features many of the attributes common to the genre as a whole (a leather glove-wearing killer with a unique weapon, brutal slayings, strong coloured lighting, an often hard-to-follow plot etc.), but in terms of execution it prefers to emulate the genre's less acclaimed, more sleazy titles, eschewing aesthetics and style in favour of an excess of female nudity and crude gore.

All of the ladies in the film dress like sluts (tight-as-you-like hooker-style dresses, suspenders and stockings) and get naked to some degree, with an obligatory shower scene delivering full frontal from a hot blonde, a prolonged flashback showing a topless Gabrielle being whipped with roses by nuns, and a juicy scene in which a man is garroted during sex, his blood splashing all over the woman's chest; there are also bloody breasts as another unlucky babe is hung on a rather convenient meat-hook, and more bare boobs during a cat fight at the end of the film, both women's clothes being torn to shreds during the ruckus. Other gore scenes include a machete in the face for the film's most annoying character (a floppy haired fop) and a cool burning at the stake for Gabrielle.

While not exactly sophisticated stuff, it's pretty good fun while it lasts and at a mere 72 minutes, never outstays its welcome.