Seven Blood-Stained Orchids

It's your typical giallo from the beginning to the end. You can watch it and be somewhat amused, but you seen it a million times before. There are some positive things. Music is OK and the last girl isn't that stupid and helpless, which is a great change from screaming women who just stand in one place waiting to be killed. However, there are also bad things, like problem with pacing of the movie, which doesn't make us care for the characters. Oh, and the ending fight with the killer is underwhelming to say the least, even for a giallo. I give it 5.8/10. It isn't the worst thing you can watch and will give you some fun, but it isn't anything to write home about. I don't recommend it to anyone except giallo fans.

Undoubtedly Lenzi's best film. More of a giallo than anything else he's made, af usually seems to deal in standard Hitchcock- influenced thrillers and forego the giallo tropes. Here however, all of the giallo trademarks are at play, and come together beautifully with a very well written story line.

Despite some unfavorable reviews (notably Adrian Smith's), this is a classic giallo that really works. The puzzle of the half moon lockets is classic Edgar Wallace and is the tenuous thread that connects the set-piece murders and keeps the story moving. Sabato and Glass race around to solve the mystery and clear Sabato's name but, as per usual, the killer is one step ahead of them. It all ends in a hand to hand fight in a swimming pool that's a cut above the usual giallo climax, and everything is nicely resolved. In 1972 plot still mattered to the giallo genre (1973's Torso would change that) and the films were a lot better for it. This one goes high on the list of gialli and was a peak for Umberto Lenzi.

A serial-killer is attacking women in Italy, leaving a silver moon near their corpses. While traveling to Paris by train with her fiancé, the famous designer Mario Gerosa (Antonio Sabàto), Giulia Torresi (Uschi Glass) is assaulted by the serial-killer in her cabin. Police Inspector Vismara (Pier Paolo Capponi) decides to hide that Giulia has survived to protect her. Mario decides to investigate the victims and finds that six women had been in the hotel Giulia owned in the past. They travel expecting to save the women that have not been attacked before the killer finds them.

"Sette orchidee macchiate di rosso", a.k.a. "Seven Blood-Stained Orchids", is a thriller that could have been better. The plot is not engaging but there are violent murders. Indicated only for fans of giallo. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Sete Orquídeas Manchadas de Sangue" ("Seven Blood-Stained Orchids")

Umberto Lenzi delivers a giallo that has all the trademark elements fully in place, but somehow fails to achieve the right level of madness to produce a true classic. I'm not quite sure why, though. Let's blame Antonio Sabato!

No – let's get to the story instead. Someone wearing the standard issue giallo killer uniform (black gloves, floppy hat, raincoat) is murdering women in and around Rome, at rather a rapid rate, too! This guy knows how to create a giallo atmosphere – not only does he shake things up on the variety side, he also leaves a weird silver crescent next to the bodies.

His third victim (I think) is the bride of Antonio Sabato, and she gets cut up on a train while her husband out buying McEwan's Export from the train bar. He attends her funeral while the cops take everybody's pictures covertly, but it's all a ruse! She's still alive though I'm sure her relatives are going to be chuffed when they find that out.

Antonio then gets on the job of finding out who the killer is, with the aid of the police to a certain extent. He discovers that all the woman being offed all stayed at a certain hotel at a certain time, but why are they being killed? And who is this American people keep referring to? And did Bruno Corazarri just say he gave the American a chewie?

So we've got the stupid clues, the Euro-babes, the set piece kills, what have you, but I couldn't help but feel that Antonio Sabato wasn't pushing himself as the hero (and I felt the same way about him in The Man with Icy Eyes), so his lack of animation made the film at bit dull. Or maybe that was due to the film following the giallo formula a bit too strictly (although the 'death by drill' was an eye opener). It could because I've watched about a hundred of these films in about six months. YOU DECIDE!