The Killer Reserved Nine Seats

In THE KILLER RESERVED NINE SEATS, zillionaire, Patrick Davenant (Chris Avram) invites a group of eight acquaintances to his castle-sized theater for the evening. As the night progresses, sensuality fills the air, as well as a sense of impending doom. Patrick is suspicious of everyone, and for good reason. His guests all seem to be treacherous people, full of guile.

A mystery man arrives, dressed in blue. He appears to possess knowledge that defies explanation. When one of the guests is murdered, the man disappears. The rest are locked in the theater. The phones are dead.

TKR9S is an interesting giallo / horror film. It's loaded with female nudity, especially since the killer likes his victims sans attire. In addition, there's ample opportunity for non-homicidal frivolity of the naked sort. One scene, involving a dance in front of a mirror, is quite memorable indeed!

The one drawback to this film is its length. It could have easily been trimmed by about 20-30 minutes of padding. There are some chatty parts that feel eternal! Still, there's enough general weirdness going on to make it all work. The fitting, comeuppance ending is worth the wait..

A whole bunch of reprehensible people turn up at a disused theatre on the night of rich aristocrat Patrick Devenant. These people are your usual Euro-film bunch of double crosser and promiscuous deviants: there's a few lesbians, a married couple, a couple who want to get married. That kind of thing, plus all the usual infidelities. The theatre is run by a creepy guy who turns up to spout something dodgy about the people or the theatre, then disappears again.

It comes as no surprise that a black-gloved killer or killers is/are on the prowl and the first guy to nearly get it is Patrick, who narrowly dodges a huge wooden block that's dropped on his head. Naturally this prompts a lot of discussion from everyone about how much money Patrick has and who would want it. When the first victim is stabbed in the back while performing Romeo and Juliet on stage, the rest of the folks discover the phone lines cut and the door locked. They now have to spend the whole night together and one of them may be the killer...

I've got to admit to being a bit underwhelmed with this one. Too much jibber jabber and not enough...err...dibber stabber. Overlong to considering the premise, with many scenes content to have the actors endlessly discussing what's going on, blaming each other, putting the moves on each other, or wandering off alone to get murdered by a killer who wears a mask that makes him/her look like Alan Sugar. There's plenty of nudity however, but that just serves to slow down things even more.

It's not a total loss, however. There's a nice supernatural angle to the film where the curator of the theatre might be a ghost, disembodied voices call to the actors, and there's a confusing bit where a dummy looks alive...for a second or two. We also get a strange painting that depicts the fate of the character and the whole theatre setting gives the film a nice gothic horror feel.

What it needed more of was random daftness and poor taste - we do get one character throwing caution to the wind, necking a bunch of pills, and dancing around naked in the middle of this murder fest, and there's a bit of nastiness when someone has their hand nailed to a post, but there's too much talk for me. An okay giallo, but not a great one.

This is a surprisingly entertaining Italian giallo that resembles a lot of later American slasher movies more than it does the earlier or contemporary Italian thrillers. As in slasher films like "Stage Fright" (both versions), "Popcorn", and "Clown at Midnight" this film is basically about nine people who attend a showing at a mysteriously deserted theater and find themselves trapped inside and picked off one-by-one by a mysterious masked killer, who may be motivated by revenge. Really though the plot here is pretty inconsequential. This movie is much closer to the stylish gialli than amateurish slasher movies in quality, and instead of having a cast of adolescent American nitwits, the cast is made up of sumptuous European beauties who spend much of the movie in various states of undress--oh yeah, and the male lead from "South Pacific".

The most recognizable actress might be the Swedish Janet Agren who later appeared in Fulci's "City of the Living Dead", but she (and her obvious body double) are only in the movie briefly. The lead actresses are Paola Senatore (who later appeared in Italian porn movies) and Lucretia Love (who might as well have). Neither are great actresses but they easily fulfill the requirements of their roles here. (Senatore and Agren would appear together again later in Umberto Lenzi's cannibalism opus "Eaten Alive" where hilariously the blonde Aryan Swede and the swarthy Italian were supposed to be sisters). You may wonder what Rosanno "South Pacific" Brazzi is doing in a movie like this, but this is actually a step up from his previous appearance in "Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks" (and personally I'd rather watch either of these again than "South Pacific").

You might wait for this to be legitimately released on DVD, but unlike a lot of obscure gialli there are good-looking copies of it floating around out there.

The Killer Reserved Nine Seats apparently takes influence from Agatha Christie's classic novel 'Ten Little Indians'. Unfortunately I've not got round to reading Christie's story yet, although I'm guessing that in her writing, all the women weren't so keen on taking their clothes off, the murders weren't so grisly and there wasn't such an emphasis on sleaze! While The Killer Reserved Nine Seats can't be described as the nastiest Giallo to come out of Italy, it certainly has its moments and one scene in particular is likely to please any fan of this sort of film! The plot focuses on an old theatre where an entire family were killed for reasons unknown. The rich aristocratic owner invites nine people there, but it's not long before they start being picked off by an incognito assailant in a sinister mask. Naturally, every one of the guests has a motive; and since the doors are locked, it's obvious that the murderer is one of the guests. And not only that, but just when you thought things couldn't get any more complicated, it turns out the theatre is under the power of some ancient family curse!

I would like to state clearly that this film is heavily flawed...but I'm such a big fan of this stuff that things such as the poor narrative, questionable character actions and the needless and silly supernatural sub-plot really didn't bother me too much. The film certainly has a lot of plus points, and the claustrophobic setting is one of them, as director Giuseppe Bennati does well at ensuring the atmosphere is always sinister and unsettling. There's plenty of action between the central characters, and a particularly pleasing element is the fact that the women aren't too shy when it comes to getting undressed, and getting off with the other female characters! As you might expect since the title promises a possible nine murders, the film isn't short of people being killed. Many of the murder scenes are underdone and not memorable, but one will stand out as an unlucky lady is slashed, stabbed in the nether regions and eventually has her hands nailed to the wall! It all boils down to a daft conclusion, but it sort of works as the sickness increases and the motive for murder is a lot better worked than the motives in some similar films. Overall, this is hardly the greatest Giallo you're ever likely to see; but if Gothic atmosphere, lesbians and grisly murders are what you like; there's lots of fun to be had here!

This rather rare giallo traps nine adults who are connected with each other in a particular way (e.g. by blood, intrigue or rivalry) in an abandoned theatre. Needless to say that one by one falls victim to a masked killer who seems to have staged their unplanned meeting in the old building, where 100 years before terrible murders had happened. The real problem is that supernatural forces are also involved in the events that haunt the nine victims-to-be. Is the killer human or something beyond?

The setting of a spooky old theatre is ideal to unfold an intense, haunting atmosphere. Therefore it's no surprise that there are some genuinely creepy scenes here. Unfortunately, the movie is overall too talky to keep the suspense, and the well staged murder scenes just don't really fulfill their immense potentials (they are still nasty, though).

All in all, the interesting, claustrophobic story sadly becomes mediocre through the slow direction, but this film is still recommended for all those who admire gialli - there are many thrillers that are by far inferior.