Delirio di sangue

Possibly the rarest Italian horror film out there and most definitely also one of the absolute weirdest productions ever to be released, "Blood Delirium" is NOT a giallo-mystery, NOT a zombie-flick and surely NOT a brainless slasher rip-off! This is something new and entirely different from Italy; a brutal horror story that successfully blends together harrowing drama elements with artsy themes and repulsively perverted footage. John Philip Law, the former action stud from "Barbarella" and "Danger: Diabolik", stars as a slightly deranged painter who lives in an isolated ramshackle castle and he firmly believes he's the reincarnation of Vincent Van Gogh. When his beloved wife Christine dies, he suddenly loses all his artistic inspiration but remains in the castle with the necrophiliac butler Herman. The painter eventually falls back in love with Sybille, who's the mirror image of his departed wife, but his inspiration doesn't really return until he discovers the blood of young murdered girls as the ideal shade of red paint. "Blood Delirium" is quite a disturbing film, especially since the sequences involving necrophilia & misogyny are illustrated like it's the most common thing in the world. For example, when the painter is still mourning for his deceased wife, the crazy butler (perfect role for exploitation-veteran Gordon Mitchell) crawls on top of her corpse and starts caressing it. Later in the film, the two men also dig up severely decomposed corpses, assault defenseless girls and carelessly dismember their limbs to make painting. Their actions are a lot more unsettling to behold, because they don't look or behave like your average homicidal maniac or demented serial rapists. "Blood Delirium" literally oozes with dark and bitter atmospheres, as it deals with complex characters and their even sicker world perspectives. It's not just another silly and gory 80's flick, but a devastating depiction of man's darkest mind-corners. The are loads of resemblances between Sergio Bergonzelli's script and Vincent Van Gogh's actual tragic life, which is a truly brilliant and original concept for a horror film. Bergonzelli clearly didn't have a large budget to work with, but the film nevertheless looks stylish and competent. The photography is rather monotonous, but this suits the overall tone of the film and especially the melancholic music tunes are terrific. "Blood Delirium" is an extremely difficult film to find, and I don't understand why. I'm sure this would be an authentic Italian cult treasure, if only it could reach a slightly wider audience on DVD. Catch it if you can!

Blood Delirium is a very creepy and atmospheric Gothic horror shot on the cheap in Italy. A deranged painter and his butler dig up his wife's grave a year later to use her blood as secret ingredient in his highly acclaimed paintings. The butler is also nuttier than squirrel turd and a huge pervert, necrophile and rapist. The tone of the film is very dark and sleazy. The quality of the production is above average for a film this cheap. The acting is convincing and oozing with creepiness and depravity. The film has lots of gore, nudity and awkward creepiness and mental illness. It also has a dark ambiance. Recommended to those that want something bizarre and twisted.

This is a pretty wild one alright... Towards the end of the great Italian Giallo movement.

One thing that can be said about it is that it didn't just completely mindlessly go for brutal graphic gore as many did by that time. Although there are some pretty dicey scenes in it, and although quite sleazy at times, still, it is done with a fair amount of true Gothic atmosphere and at times an engaging Surreal mood.

Don't get me wrong, there are some rather extreme scenes here, but for me personally there is a difference to a degree as to the intent and the tone of something with that kind of content. In other words, you can have a coldly sadistic, very mean-spirited tone by someone like Eli Roth for example, a man who wouldn't know how to make a genuinely 'Fun' Horror movie to save his life.

Or... like in this case, you can have almost the same degree of extremity, but the tone and mood are all quite different. More of a Surreal, Gothic, almost Retro dreamy atmosphere where you still kind of turn away in Horror, but with more of a 'Fun' vibe that doesn't come across as mean-spirited in its intention. So, to me, there is a distinct difference.

John Phillip Law is of course very well known by this point for much better and more famous films years before like 'Danger Diabolik', and at this point he is clearly just glad to have the work. But, as Troy Howarth says in the commentary, and I do agree, is that even though his performance is Way the hell over the top, still, he'd rather see an actor fully commit even to a rather Out There role than just go through the motions. And, boy does he give it all he's got!

The guy who plays his assistant was also very well known at the time and had made many films. Their interaction during the movie I thought had a special something that made it almost more sympathetic, which is Really stretching the meaning of that word when you see him do some of the things he does. I will say that, without giving away any true spoilers, the one scene where he is continuing to rape the girl after she is clearly dead I found rather disturbing. But, thankfully it is very brief. Extremely Creepy, but brief... : )

So, not one I would ever highly recommend as one of the better Giallo films, not even close. But, just for pure wild effort and commitment on the parts of the director and actors, I will give it a '5'...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My Particular Way of Rating:

5 - Flawed, but perhaps with some entertainment value.

6. A decently passable story maybe worth a watch.

7. A solid film, well made, effective, and entertaining.

And, obviously, you can probably figure out what above and below these would mean... : )

Misogynistic Trash. Really awful film. I read that Sergio Bergonzelli directed mostly porn during his career. I believe it. He managed to get a bad performance out of John Phillip Law. He managed to get a bad performance out of everybody.

The story takes the mad scientist trope and adds a twist. John Phillip Law plays a mad artist who can see small parts of the future. Gordon Mitchell plays his rapey necrophilic Igor-like sidekick. There are many sexual crimes.

Brigitte Christensen is the protagonist. She spends most of the film waiting around and needing to be rescued. Marco Di Stefano plays her boyfriend who eventually goes looking for her.

On a positive note, the castle location is fantastic!

And there was a brief, but interesting time-traveling ghost idea. But it seems like the director couldn't decide if the ghost was time-traveling from the future or from the past. It didn't matter. The ghost was just a deus ex machina and was not a central part to the movie which was mostly about madness and misogyny.

This extremely rare Italian film (the only ever video release I know is the Greek one - it probably was never released even in its country of origin) is a thoroughly interesting movie, even though the production values are very low and it is, without a doubt, an oddball of a movie.

John Phillip Law is a troubled painter on the edge of madness; his slightly psychotic state of mind becomes worse as his wife, who always gave him inspiration and faith, dies. Soon after her death he discovers his butler (played nicely sickening by Gordon Mitchell) trying to rape her corpse, which fills him with fury, but he needs the butler as an assistant because he would be helpless without him. After his wife is buried, the painter doesn't feel any inspiration anymore and is unable to get a painting done. So he decides to get his wife back and steals her corpse from the cemetery (with a help of the butler, of course). At the opening of his latest exhibition, he meets Sybille, a woman that resembles his wife almost like a twin sister. He invites her to his lonely castle, and at first, she likes it there. But the painter's state of mind gets worse, even though she gives him new confidence. Problem is that his inspiration stays missing, until his butler kills a girl and he realizes how beautiful blood is. He starts to use blood as "the color of life", while the butler has to dispose from the bodies. When the woman discovers this, she has to be kept hostage in the lonely castle...

The story sounds a little bit like a retelling of Herschell Gordon Lewis's "Color Me Blood Red" from 1965, but this isn't the case. This one is rather a horror drama that somehow falls between the two genres: For a drama, it is too much exploitation, and for a horror film, it is too dramatic and not exploitation enough for not to write not gory enough.

Law and Mitchell are strikingly convincing in their roles of rather perverse characters, and the sound track adds to the atmosphere, although it doesn't seem to be always appropriate to the melancholy mood of the picture. The film also contains supernatural elements that are hardly convincing but somehow still fit into this weird work.

Director Bergonzelli is probably best known for his psychedelic giallo "Nelle Pieghe Della Carne" (aka In the Folds of the Flesh) from 1970. in one scene, he even repeats an element of his earlier film: The butler disposes of the bodies by putting them into sulfuric acid - the same way the protagonists do it in "Nelle Pieghe". And the atmosphere in "Delirio di Sangue" contains also some rather psychedelic attitudes, if not that obvious.

It seems clear that Bergonzelli, who also wrote the screenplay, was inspired by the life and madness of Vincent van Gogh, a portrait of whom hangs on the wall of the painter's working room. Needless to say that the notion of van Gogh makes a scene with an ear that gets cut off necessary - and the viewer won't get disappointed.

All in all, "Delirio di Sangue" is a wonderfully strange piece of celluloid. I assume that most viewers would consider it as a piece of crap, because it's made on a very low budget, neither delivers any action packed moments nor even scenes of excessive gore or sympathetic dramatic protagonists you could identify with. It's a quite nihilistic film, with an oddly repulsive plot, which makes it unique in a certain way.

A very interesting film that is far too little known, but which won't be appreciated by a broad audience, I guess. My rating: 7 out of 10.