L'assassino ha riservato nove poltrone

In THE KILLER RESERVED NINE SEATS, zillionaire, Patrick Davenant (Chris Avram) invites a group of eight acquaintances to his castle-sized theater for the evening. As the night progresses, sensuality fills the air, as well as a sense of impending doom. Patrick is suspicious of everyone, and for good reason. His guests all seem to be treacherous people, full of guile.

A mystery man arrives, dressed in blue. He appears to possess knowledge that defies explanation. When one of the guests is murdered, the man disappears. The rest are locked in the theater. The phones are dead.

TKR9S is an interesting giallo / horror film. It's loaded with female nudity, especially since the killer likes his victims sans attire. In addition, there's ample opportunity for non-homicidal frivolity of the naked sort. One scene, involving a dance in front of a mirror, is quite memorable indeed!

The one drawback to this film is its length. It could have easily been trimmed by about 20-30 minutes of padding. There are some chatty parts that feel eternal! Still, there's enough general weirdness going on to make it all work. The fitting, comeuppance ending is worth the wait..

Interesting, although not completely well-made, example of the Italian supernatural thriller, "L'assassino ha riservato nove poltrone" is a movie that suffers from a lot of shortcomings, but still it moves and after all convinces the spectator. It has to its credit the well-built atmosphere of discomfort and psychological perversion, the good art direction and the costumes. The script suffers from a lot of holes and clear improbabilities, but still it can hold the spectator's breath with a plot that is quite original, although the spooky theater under a curse is a fairly recurrent element in the tradition of Italian horror (I remember Renato Polselli's "Il mostro dell'Opera", Michele Soavi's "Deliria", as well as the well known "Opera" and "Il fantasma dell'Opera", directed by Dario Argento). Apart from this, there's a good dose of pleasant and sexy female nudes and the usual lesbian background to whom no Italian thriller can renounce. Taking everything into consideration, I can say this is a quite good movie, charmingly rough in the development of the plot, in the direction and in the acting (all the actors are habitué of the popular genres of Italian cinema), but it's also an interesting and amusing movie you can enjoy.

This rather rare giallo traps nine adults who are connected with each other in a particular way (e.g. by blood, intrigue or rivalry) in an abandoned theatre. Needless to say that one by one falls victim to a masked killer who seems to have staged their unplanned meeting in the old building, where 100 years before terrible murders had happened. The real problem is that supernatural forces are also involved in the events that haunt the nine victims-to-be. Is the killer human or something beyond?

The setting of a spooky old theatre is ideal to unfold an intense, haunting atmosphere. Therefore it's no surprise that there are some genuinely creepy scenes here. Unfortunately, the movie is overall too talky to keep the suspense, and the well staged murder scenes just don't really fulfill their immense potentials (they are still nasty, though).

All in all, the interesting, claustrophobic story sadly becomes mediocre through the slow direction, but this film is still recommended for all those who admire gialli - there are many thrillers that are by far inferior.

Despite suffering from many flaws and shortcomings, "The Killer Reserved Nine Seats" is still warmly recommended to fans of the Italian giallo (and we know their number increases every day!). The absolute greatest and most inventive titles of this wonderful Italian horror sub genre pretty much all received fancy DVD-editions by now, so there must be some very good reasons why this film is still obscure and hard to find. And yes, it doesn't take the slightly experienced giallo-fanatic very long to figure out that Giuseppe Bennati's effort is far inferior to – let's say – the work of Sergio Martino or Dario Argento. Gialli are almost fundamentally blessed with a fantastic musical score, yet the opening tune in "The Killer Reserved Nine Seats" is ugly as sin and suggests an entirely wrong ambiance. The music isn't the biggest shortcoming, but it's definitely what bothered me the most as I expect a giallo-score to haunt my dreams for several more nights. On the night of his birthday, millionaire Patrick Davenant invites eight of his acquaintances to an abandoned theater that he owns but never visits. The atmosphere in the group is hostile, yet they stay close to Patrick as they all depend on his fortune. After a bit of wandering around the old theater, the first girl is brutally murdered with a dagger and the rest of the group discovers that the place carries an ancient curse. Is there really some kind of evil supernatural force luring from within the walls? Or is one of these nine people an old-fashioned flesh & blood killer? Let's just say the answer to this question is not hard to predict, but it'll still take many corpses before the characters know for sure...

Let's start with discussing the BEST elements about this film! "The Killer Reserved Nine Seats" is a decent and straightforward murder-mystery with a reasonably fair amount of plot-twists and intrigue. Not nearly as convoluted as most gialli, but compelling enough to keep you alert and hoping for a surprising denouement. Undoubtedly the greatest aspect about this film is the claustrophobic theater setting, which provides the story with an uncanny almost Gothic atmosphere. This same original setting offers the opportunity to make the murders ingenious and somewhat special. The deaths of the lesbian lovers, whose mutilated bodies are exhibited like some kind of stage tableau, are the finest examples to state this. There are several insurmountable problems with the script, however. There's way too much talking about irrelevant stuff and the characters do incredibly stupid things, like leaving the group to investigate the dark and secret corridors of the theater all on their own. Not smart. The supernatural sub plot is overall stupid and definitely not very efficient as a red herring, but I suppose it was a worthwhile attempt. The acting performances are surprisingly adequate and – very important – there's a fine share of genuine Euro-sleaze. Every actress takes her clothes off at least once and they all have ravishing bodies. That HAS to count for something, right?

"L'Assassino ha riservato nove poltrone"(The killer reserved nine seats) is one of those films that stayed with me.

I've seen a copy with Greek subtitles. According to IMDb, the film has a running time of 99 minutes and this copy I've ordered runs around 92 minutes. So 7 minutes were cut out from the original film and now maybe the cut footage is lost forever. The DVD was visibly taken from a VHS tape and even if the colors are a bit drab and the images sometimes a bit jittery, the film is still quite watchable. Anyway it would be wonderful to see the film in a restored and remastered edition (uncut if possible).

The film drew inspiration from Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians" – Ten people are invited to an abandoned theater in an out-of-the-way place. The theater looms gigantic in the night when they arrive. A sense of foreboding underlined by the soundtrack creeps in. These people know each other and are linked by love/hate relationships – greed, love, sex, bitterness are their companions. The camera shows the chandeliers, the pictures on the wall show faces were luxury and greed meet, the decors.... Everything takes us back to a glorious past – lust, grandeur, suffering, intrigues ... – all gone now....

The killings begin. Where is the killer hiding? Long corridors, dressing rooms, the backstage, the imposing stairs that lead to upper floors.... Is He or She one of them? Later on we get to know that there's a family curse hanging over the theater. Are supernatural forces at work? This is a very atmospheric thriller in which the camera and the soundtrack work well together. The story somehow doesn't make much sense. The behavior of the characters (like other reviewers already pointed out) is far from logical. They wander alone in badly lit corridors, enter dark rooms, almost like they were inviting the killer to take care of them. And the killer is very, very sadistic.

The action of the "The killer reserved nine seats" takes place during the night. It's a "long night's journey into day", but it's a day that maybe no one will reach alive (as one of the characters dejectedly says). The film is tense and claustrophobic, but also lighthearted and ironical, like all good gialli. There are also the moments of sleaze, something very good to release the tension – the women undress themselves whenever they can, and there's also a lesbian couple among the lot: Rosanna Schiaffino, Paola Senatore, Lucretia Love, Eva Czemerys, Janet Agren – take your pick. There's a moment of surrealistic sleaze that would have made even Buñuel take his hat off – many people had already been knocked off and what Paola Senatore does? She puts on some music, takes off her clothes, and dances semi-naked in front of a mirror. What?! Well, anyway I enjoyed the scene a lot. Thanks, Paola!

Something that I want to stress again is the atmosphere conveyed by the film – the characters and decors, underlined by the imaginative soundtrack, seem to join their hands to paint a picture of lust, desire, decadence and tired joie-de-vivre. One can go back to the time when some Italian renaissance masters were able to portray luxury and ambiguity living together with virtue (whatever that means:).

"The killer reserved nine seats" is an interesting film that deserves more recognition and to be presented to the public in a restored and remastered edition. It's creative, bizarre and intriguing. It's certainly not a run-of-the-mill giallo. It's a worthy film to check out.