The Case of the Bloody Iris

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 .

Giuliano Carnimeo's "Perché quelle strane gocce di sangue sul corpo di Jennifer?" aka. "The Case Of The Bloody Iris" of 1972 is a great, tantalizing and stylish Giallo that no lover of Italian Horror can afford to miss. A Giallo with Edwige Fenech and George Hilton in the lead should be recommendation enough for a fan of Italian Horror, and this particular film has so much more to offer. I would go even further and say that "The Case Of The Bloody Iris" is a great textbook example for a Giallo: Sleaze and nudity, stylishly violent murders, atmosphere, a jazzy soundtrack and a great cast - this stylish flick has everything that my fellow Giallo-lovers should desire in a film. Nevertheless, I do not agree that this is a giallo-highlight (as some people say). It is a great film, no doubt, but as avid Italian Horror fan (Giallo is one of my favorite genres), I would not name it as one of the highlights of this great sub-genre. That being said, "The Case Of The Bloody Iris" is definitely a great and immensely stylish Giallo that every Horror fan should see.

Seductive beauty queens are being slaughtered one by one in the same house by a masked killer, and the police do not have the slightest clue who the killer could be. When the sexy model Jennifer (Edwige Fenech) moves into a victim's former apartment - and the killer starts stalking her as well...

As mandatory for a good Giallo, the suspense is maintained throughout the movie and the killer's identity and motivations are not revealed until the very end. In a good Giallo almost anybody could be the killer, and "The Case Of The Bloody Iris" sure is no exception here, as almost everybody is suspicious. The characters are very interesting and so is the cast. Sexy Edwige Fenech is always reason enough to see a film, and this is one of the movies that made her a Giallo-queen. George Hilton is also great in the lead, as an architect. Apart from Fenech and Hilton, the cast contains many other familiar faces for fans of Italian genre cinema, such as Giampiero Albertini, who plays the stamp-collecting police commissioner who is investigating the murders. The sexy Carla Brait, who should also be known to genre-fans for her role in Sergio Martino's Giallo-masterpiece "Torso" (1973), is seductive as always as a black stripper. The film is highly atmospheric and excellently photographed in intense colors, and the jazzy soundtrack contributes a lot to the film's style and typical early 70s feeling. All things considered "The Case Of The Bloody Iris" is a great Giallo, that any Horror buff should see. Especially my fellow fans of Italian Horror can not allow themselves to miss this! Highly Recommended!

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.

Stylish, alluring, and agreeable, "The Case of the Bloody Iris" is a straightforward giallo less notable for its dexterous offings and more for leading lady Edwige Fenech, the inarguable queen of the genre. While never reaching the orgasmic heights of other masterpieces of the era (most helmed by Dario Argento and Mario Bava, of course), "The Case of the Bloody Iris" is still a splendidly fun (albeit gory) murder mystery that embraces its ridiculousness and makes up for convoluted time with sophisticated design and worthy blood-soaked set pieces. It's an admirable time waster, a slasher dressed to the nines in pre-De Palma swank.

As in all gialli, a gloved killer wrapped in sharp black is mercilessly butchering physically beautiful young women for kicks, this time in a luxurious high rise apartment. Days after two women are murdered in a twenty-four hour period, models Jennifer (Edwige Fenech) and Marilyn (Paola Quattrini) move into one of the victims' apartment, hardly worried about the room's sordid past. "Life goes on," Marilyn scoffs, as if wishing to jinx herself into murder mystery oblivion. But it doesn't take long for the pair to realize that such things can hardly be laughed off, especially when considering the building itself seems to contain a number of shady characters easily able to commit such heinous acts. Suspects include a stereotyped lesbian neighbor, a misogynistic old woman that lives with her disturbingly deformed son, and even Jennifer's love interest (George Hilton), an architect with a crippling phobia of blood. And it doesn't help that Jennifer's maniacal ex-husband (Ben Carra) enjoys spending his days stalking his former wife instead of making a living.

In order to fully enjoy "The Case of the Bloody Iris", one must disregard the horrendous dubbing, the severely stiff performances, and the regularly asinine script — because this is a film about style and Edwige Fenech, not much else. (Those expecting the normal amount of generous giallo gore will be sorely disappointed.) The first murder is exquisitely shot — with hardly a word of dialogue to spare, it follows a comely blonde from a telephone booth to her apartment building's elevator, where she winds up slashed to death after the passengers depart one by one. Clearly inspiration for Angie Dickinson's gruesome offing in "Dressed to Kill" (which is miles better), the scene sets the tone of the film: absurd but competently suspenseful. Because much of the film is absurd — Jennifer's religious cult back-story is unneeded and contains a gratuitous orgy scene (hardly graphic) more laughable than tantalizing, and her bad habit of wandering away from safety in a time of danger is maddening — but, for the most part, "The Case of the Bloody Iris" classes it up while later '70s peers of the "Black Christmas" mindset didn't. It cares more about how it appears than how it builds intellectually, so thank God it looks like the chic second cousin of "Blowup" or some other mod infused character study.

Best of all is Edwige Fenech: never have I seen her in one of her famous gialli (those were directed by Sergio Martino, and I'm still in the process of trying to find a copy to view), and this film gives an idea as to why she is an underground legend. With her cat eyes, voluptuous figure, and jet black hair, it's impossible not to stare at her, mouth agape and all. One can hardly call her a fine actress, but Fenech has presence, a characteristic hardly found in other giallo women like Barbara Bouchet or Ida Galli. The camera clings to her composure almost passively; she can turn a poorly executed scene into a work of art by merely acting as its center. Maybe her films with Martino are better, but "The Case of the Bloody Iris" is a giallo minor but palatable.

The quintessential giallo. A perfect example of the golden age of early 70s giallo, replete with gorgeous outfits, a wonderfully modern and terrifying apartment building, a blasé and postmodern approach to violence, hilariously inappropriate music, and zooms galore. Everything about this is everything that giallo "essentially" is at its core, and although there are a few times I wish the excess could have been amped up and the sensuality more lurid and less hinted at, perhaps that's what makes this a good example of the original score of gialli; after all, it was the tendency of filmmakers to move further towards sex and violence at the expense of atmosphere and mis-en-scene that led to the collapse of the genre.

Again, this is just about the perfect giallo film. There is, unfortunately, not much to set it apart, but I also don't think that's necessary when it comes to the well made core gialli. This one is perfect, as an introduction or to rewatch for the 20th time.