Death Laid an Egg

Giulio Questi's early giallo is very different from the genre, but it can be called giallo since it has a mystery audience has no idea about until the very end. But the mystery doesn't involve the identity of the possible murderer but the various and altering relations between the characters. Marco, Anna and Gabrielle live together and work together, in a huge chicken farm / factory owned by Anna. Soon it is clear all three, plus their friends, have another things in their minds; they act what they don't say and vice versa. This gives the director Questi a great opportunity to handle topics of greed and money that easily blind.

The way how Questi handles his theme is very satiric, thus making the film close with Mario Bava's Reazione a catena / Bay of Blood 3 years later. Both films have serious theme about man's ability to turn violent in his search for monetary benefit and freedom and both films discuss this satirically, with maximal effect since comedy is often at its best when the subject stays serious and universally important. As a pure giallo mystery, the film is also quite rich since the audience has no idea what is going on until the very end when it is revealed. Questi uses very interesting editing technique that makes many of the scenes "broken", using flashbacks, dreamy/nightmarish moods and so on. This forces us to dive deeper inside the characters and their varying points of views.

The film has also an interesting topic about man's subconscious and instincts. Main character Marco is considered "morally corrupt" due to his unusual sexual preferences. But at the same time Questi shows how much there is inside human brain, needs, wills, desires, we don't necessarily want to talk about in fear of unacceptance or being classed as "sick." We are not as civilized, as perfect, as the moral codes of society try to suggest when they go after "the morally sick" Marco. There's also a very harrowing and unforgettably absurd scene at the experiment lab of the factory. The doctors have created a manipulated type of chicken that would be commercially extremely profitable to the factory while at the same time the manipulated monsters are a plentiful spitting at nature's face. Marco is against this, against the others around him while he has been named "morally wrong" and bad. Questi had important things and questions in mind and also the ability to turn them into a film.

Real themes in a giallo thriller are quite rare and Questi has done it very well. This is among the earliest but also among the very best of the giallo.

I like how experimental some of these early gialli are. This is another movie about kind of spoiled rich people playing games with each other and getting into sordid trouble. Murder is involved, but not in the way you'd think after seeing the first half of the film, and I think that's one of the clever things about it. The story is more engaging than some, and, for once, actually more involving than set pieces, of which they are few (no prolonged stalking/murder sequences or anything like that).

Also, the movie is really funny at times, and I think it's absolutely intentional. The scene with the PR guy and all his "chicken poses" is priceless and like something you might find in a Monty Python sketch. I think there's some nice satire here of the rich industrial class, and a political subtext about automation and workers' rights. You see this sort of thing in vintage Italian genre films sometimes, and it's nice to see that sometimes, a thriller isn't just a thriller, if you know what I mean.

Finally, this is a slightly experimental film, with lots of fast edits and artistic scene transitions that often tell you things that aren't explicit in dialogue or scene itself. Also, the music -- I think it's great, in all its clanging and banging around and discordance, but it definitely won't be to everyon'e staste. A tip from my partner: "if you imagine a chicken playing the music, it becomes a thousand times better".

An avant-garde kind of giallo (more like a meta-reflection on the genre, really) that it's all over the place. Like a strange mix of Buñuel and Antonioni cinema with a documentary on acid of the poor conditions of a poultry factory, the plot was a little too convoluted to really keep my attention and I think the film tries too hard to be something different, without really achieving much. It's still an important title in this subgenre, but not for everyone.

I wouldn't label this as a "giallo", there is no particular suspense or scary moments, so don't expect anything like that... it mainly is a criticism on capitalism, mass production and industrial society, within a good story which involves obviously a murder. It may sound a bit Marxist as a statement, and maybe that was Giulio Questi's political view, but seen today it results in a naive but quite original and experimental movie from the seventies. Some moments (the best ones) are truly grotesque and surreal... some very nice actresses and lots of beautiful advertising posters from the time in the background, the actors are very good and generally speaking it is a good and entertaining movie. The only major problem I had was with the music, which is over-used and not pleasant at all... it could work conceptually, but the truth is, after a while you cannot stand it anymore. An interesting movie, surely not to everybody's taste. 7/10

Terms like "bizarre", "eccentric" and "convoluted" are often used too lightly in reviews for Italian gialli, but in case of "Death Laid an Egg" they are severe understatements! I'm not even sure this one qualifies as a giallo, because although the film got released before the genre properly started booming (in 1968), it's already experimenting with different plots and thinking out-of-the-box in terms of style and plot twists. Generally speaking, a giallo either handles about a masked psycho-killer with black gloves savagely butchering people - preferably pretty young models - with sharp objects, or it handles about a convoluted murder conspiracy complete with sexual intrigues, betrayal and triangular relationships. "Death Laid an Egg" primarily fits into the second category, but also somewhat in the first one, and then still even a lot more! The most intriguing aspect about the triangular relationship (between a man, his wife and her secretary) is that it takes place at the woman's family business; - a chicken far where insanely unethical experiments take place (headless/boneless poultry monstrosities will haunt your nightmares!). Furthermore, the man has a fetish for slicing up prostitutes, and the mistress may or may not have a secret agenda with a hunky marketing agent. One thing's for sure, though, all the loose ends form a compelling wholesome that keeps you gazing at the screen and - unlike many other similar films - everything nicely comes together in the end, and "Death Laid an Egg" does deliver in every department (mystery, suspense, flamboyance, ...)

Writer/director Giulio Questi was a very strange individual, to say the least. He seemingly doesn't care about traditional cinematic patterns or logical narrative structure, and many sequences/plot twists appear to be improvised on the spot. The opening credits, the soundtrack, and many camera perspectives are utterly weird! Questi also made the western-outcast "Se sei vivo spara", which is possibly the strangest Spaghetti Western ever, and the reputedly bonkers psychological horror/thriller "Arcana" (which I haven't seen yet).