The Case of the Bloody Iris

There is a mysterious gloved and masked killer stalking and murdering beautiful young Italian women. Sound familiar? But of course, this is a Giallo from the early 70's!

The Case of the Bloody Iris is part of Anchor Bay's four dvd set The Giallo Collection. Three of the movies can be purchased separately, but The Case of the Bloody Iris can only be purchased as part of the set.

The Case of the Bloody Iris starts out with a pretty young blonde woman being murdered in an elevator in an urban apartment building . The killer is wearing rubber gloves and stabs her with a knife that looks like a scalpel. A day later in the same apartment building, another woman is drowned in her bathtub by a killer wearing the same rubber gloves. This murder is pretty brutal to watch as far as movie murders go.

There is an architect by the name of Andrea (George Hilton), who dated the second murdered woman and starts seeing another woman, Jennifer (ably portrayed by the beautiful Edwige Fenech) who recently left a small religious group lead by a crazed guy who keeps harassing her and trying to get her back to the group. Through a flashback scene we discover that they were into group sex and and he seems to be, and is, seriously deranged. There is also a woman living with her father in an apartment in the building and she hits on every woman she encounters, which in this film are beautiful models and dancers.

A couple more murders into the film and Andrea is suspected by the police of performing the murders, especially after a woman is murdered on the street and witnesses see only him covered in blood and running away from the scene. The police have been following him using a detective who serves as a minor bit of comic relief (fortunately he doesn't try to be too funny). Jennifer also starts suspecting Andrea of committing the murders and after they arrange a secret meeting trying to elude the police, he seems more guilty then ever.

This is a well made movie with a decent script and is well acted by the entire cast. I recommend it for anyone who like a well made Giallo and also as a decent who dunnit.

This movie is released in a beautiful 2.35:1 widescreen display. The sound quality, while dated, sounded great out of my speakers. Extra features on the disk include an alternate stabbing scene and theatrical trailer. The alternate stabbing scene is just an abbreviated version of one of the stabbings late in the movie. Personally I liked the longer version in the film better. The Giallo Collection goes for around $40-50 which means each movie is around $10-13 each. This is a great price for movies that may have never seen the light of day in U.S. except for the Anchor Bay's decision to bring well made Italian Giallo's to the American market.

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.

Light on the gore and heavy on the nudity, The Case of the Bloody Iris is a passable giallo from director Giuliano Carnimeo (under the pseudonym Anthony Ascott). Made in 1972, this shocker has nearly all of the elements one would expect from the genre: a gloved killer, POV shots, bloody murders, and a convoluted plot in which everyone is both a suspect and a possible victim.

The story revolves around a spate of vicious killings which happen in a posh high-rise block of apartments; gorgeous Edwige Fenech plays Jennifer, a model who has moved into the building and soon becomes a target for the deranged, rubber-glove wearing maniac.

Logic takes a backseat during the storytelling and there are moments which had me laughing in disbelief. In one scene, our hapless heroine wanders through a junkyard at night; for cheap 'shocks', car doors swing open, boots slam shut and a whole vehicle even topples off a stack — no explanation for these spooky happenings is given.

Another moment has Jennifer attempting to enter a suspect's apartment. Finding it locked, she tries the keys on her own keyring, and — hey, presto — the last key opens the door!! What great security they have in this building.

As always, the killer's identity is only revealed in the final minutes, and the reason given for his violence stretches well beyond the realms of credibility.

Despite the flaws in the plot, the film moves along at a reasonable pace and when there is any danger of the momentum flagging, Carnimeo throws in some gratuitous T&A (and a lesbian) to keep us amused — how very thoughtful of him! Nearly every actress gives us an eyeful before her untimely demise.

As giallos go, this is a consistently entertaining example and should definitely be seen by fans of the genre.

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.

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.