The Case of the Bloody Iris

Out of all the gialli I own, the Case of the Bloody Iris is the most fun to watch. It has a healthy dose of humour, great atmosphere, beautiful euro-babes, and a tight plot. It's also extremely funky and stylish. A winner all the way.

Edwige Fenech, one of the most jaw-droppingly gorgeous women ever to grace the screen, plays Jennifer, a model who moves into an apartment with her crazy model buddy. The problem is, someone in the building has a habit of killing models, and Jennifer and her pal are next up for a stabbing.

You've got the classic giallo list of suspects, most of which spend their time drooling over Edwige's body: the lesbian neighbour and her father, the old lady and her dark secret, the landlord and his fear of blood, Edwige's ex-husband the cult leader. Plenty of inappropriate sexual advances follow, sometimes under the craziest of circumstances.

Throw in a couple of bumbling cops, some topless wrestling involving the also-gorgeous Carla Berle (Torso, Bronx Warriors), and the dizziest sidekick ever to appear in a giallo, and you've got a great movie right there. Edwige, Carla and some other girls ain't too shy about showing off their assets either, if you know what I'm saying.

Top marks go to Edwige's roommate, who has the best dialogue throughout the entire movie. She's possible my favourite Giallo character ever, what with her non-chalant attitude to everything. At one point she recreates on of the murders with ditsy glee - jumping out of a bath in the scud and shouting "I'm a ghost!", which earns her a seventies slap in the gub.

Get it now - Academic, over serious, chin-strokers with no sense of irony need not apply.

Usual gialli with intrigue , thrills , chills , tension, slashing , nudism , amount of sleaze and anything else . Having fleed from the claws a sex cult , our starring called Jennifer Lansbury : Scream queen Edwige Fenech, is being stalked and pursued by a series killer . There are various suspicious people : a mysterious owner : Luciano Pigozzi of a rare spectacle , an old woman and her deformed son , a veteran neighbour and her friend's father : George Rigaud , furthermore a good-looking architect : George Hilton who falls for Jennifer . One by one her known people and best friends have been killing, and most victims belong to occupants of the new apartment she's moved . Along the way an obstinate police commissioner : Giampiero Albertini and his underling cop investigate the grisly killings . Who's the killer ? The killer slices without mercy ! Shocklingly True ?..

Giuliano Carmineo's Gialli compellingly filmed , including well-staged crimes with plenty of startling visual content and winning a certain success with box office enough . Customary Giallo in which thrilling events , intriguing happenings , twists , turns and stabbing show up lurking and threatening across corridors , flats , parking, basements and grim interiors . The picture blends atmospheric sets , apartments , beautiful naked girls and a suspenseful final in which we figure out the unexpected murderer . Stars the Gialli queen , the always gorgeous Edwige Fenech playing in his habitual style and showing off her ravishing attributes . Co-stars the Uruguay-born and recently deceased George Hilton , he was a real Spaghetti Western star , though he also played some Giallos . Along with a nice secondary cast , including some familiar faces , such as : Giampiero Albertini , George Rigaud , Annabella Incontrera , Daniela Giordano and the prolific secondary Luciano Pigozzi , who often used pseudonym Allan Collins , nicknamed the Italian Peter Lorre .

It packs an atmospheric musical score in the Seventies style by Bruno Nicolai who was usual colllaborator to Ennio Morricone. As well as evocative cinematography by Stelvio Massi , shot on location in Genoa, Liguria and Elios studios , Rome, Lazio, Italy. The motion picture was professionally directed by Giuliano Carmineo or Anthony Ascott . Giuliano was a craftsman who directed a lot of B films and stories of all kinds of regular Italian genres . Being his especiality Spaghetti Western genre, such as : The moment to Kill , Find a place to die , Two sons of Ringo , They call him Cemetery , They call me Hallaluya , Have a good funeral my friend Sartana will pay , Sartana the gravedigger , Light the fuse Sartana is coming . Although Carmineo also made other genres as Giallo : The case of the Bloody Iris , Ana particular Pleasure , Fantasy/Scifi : Computron , The Exterminators of the Year 3000 , Sex comedy : The teacher dances with the entire class, Pepito the doctor and Terror : The Rat Man , among others . Rating : 6/10 , acceptable and passable .

When I'm blue, the movies I look for aren't comedies. Film comedies work too hard, follow too many script formulas and when I am blue it is because I have worked too hard following similar internal scripts.

What I need and what you might like are films that are so abstract they have almost nothing to do with reality. They abstract from other movies in a kind of Xerox of Xerox way so that what you get has nothing to do with reality and all to do with film-making.

And no one is better at empty films, films with no emotional content or soul than Italians. Elsewhere I've noted that the Hollywood Italians attach to characters and violence as cinematic icons. Leone abstracted from the western and character fantasy.

Giallo is similar but does something a bit more clever to my mind. It has (for the time) extreme violence and sex (usually a few nipples) but not having much to do with each other. It takes these two abstractions and places it in a highly refined mystery-thriller context.

The way these things work is you have sexy women — or thought so for the era, and since these are Italians, we are talking compliant bigbreasted teases. These are in some sex- related trades and get killed by some serial murderer. Many candidates are described, as if this were a real detective story that we could figure out. We can't of course; when the thing was abstracted all the elements of logic went, things like causality and clues.

In fact, it works in reverse. The things that seem logical turn out not to be. Illogic is always the way.

I like this giallo best of them all. It is the most stylish, the most cinematic (except for the murders which are mundane). By cinematic, I mean the way things are staged, the edges of walls are used. Mirrors.

And it has two characters that are extremely evocative. One is a carbon copy of Woody Allen, appearance, mannerisms and all. He is a photographer here in much the same stance that Allen himself appears as a filmmaker in many of his own movies. Logic says he is the killer.

Then we see a woman in the building where the main action takes place. You will swear that this is the same actor: Woody in disguise. All logic points to this Psycho-based notion.

There's a further structural/character fold. Another character — about whom we learn has a bloody past — is an architect. Now architects in movies are always special people, especially when they have the "plans" to what is important. Logic also says this is the guy and the story duly frames him.

Another movie reference: one potential killer is a member of a group sex, free love new age society. The bloody iris is not a sliced eyeball as you would expect. The iris is the symbol of this sexual commune and one appears bloody. _____

There's a scene in here that I value. You know how it is, that each genre has one scene that is so perfect it acts as a strange attractor for the whole genre? Here we have an inept European policeman who is investigating the crimes: young women in sexy jobs being killed. He and his boss are in an ornate office that one could only imagine of Italians.

The policeman is handed a letter, a piece of evidence and is asked his opinion. The cop goes on and on about how ordinary the stamp is, as if the entire value of the thing had nothing to do with the meaning of the letter, nor the document on which that meaning is recorded, nor even the container for that document, instead the designation on the container — the stamp — that indicates its genre only.

Watch this if you are blue.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

After the murder of a call girl in a building, the dweller Mizar Harrington (Carla Brait), who is a fighter and stripper in a nightclub, is drowned in her bathtub by the killer. The administrator and architect Andrea Antinori (George Hilton) offers the apartment to the models Jennifer Lansbury (Edwige Fenech) and Marilyn Ricci (Paola Quattrini) for a reasonable price and they move to the flat. Jennifer is the ex-wife of the hippie Adam (Ben Carrá), who forced her to practice group sex and now harasses her all the time. Soon Andrea hits on Jennifer and she becomes his girlfriend. When Adam is found dead in Jennifer's apartment, Andrea becomes the prime suspect of Commissioner Enci (Giampiero Albertini), who assigns his Assistant Commissioner Renzi (Franco Agostini) to follow him everywhere. However, Jennifer believes Andrea is innocent and suspects that one of her neighbors might be the killer.

"Perché quelle strane gocce di sangue sul corpo di Jennifer?", a.k.a. "The Case of the Bloody Iris", is a Italian thriller silly and predictable. The goofy Marilyn Ricci is an annoying and unfunny character; Commissioner Enci is ridiculous and dull; the dialogs are very poor; and the music score is irritating and dated. It is not difficult to know who the killer is. But may be entertaining for fans of "giallo" genre. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "As Lágrimas de Jennifer" ("The Tears of Jennifer")

The Case of the Bloody Iris is one of the most entertaining giallo's of them all.

I do realize that it's far from perfect. It's got wooden performances, childish dialogue, illogical moments (more than a few), plot holes etc..., but it's entertaining as hell. These pure giallo's are guilty pleasures to be sure, featuring a number of knockout damsels in distress, gory murders, black gloved killers, a murder mystery with endless red herrings, law officials without an IQ and almost universally badly dubbed actors.

Here we have it all in abundance and it all works. The women here are quite simply stunning, the murder scenes inventive and well done, the appropriate amount of sleaze, impressive visuals and nice location scenery, a terrific musical score (catchy as hell), decent acting and a fair amount of shocks and suspense. It's also quite funny at times, I've never before or after seen a detective obsessing with stamps.

Highly recommended if you're a fan of giallo films.