Un bianco vestito per Marialé

I've rarely been as disappointed as I was after watching this "A White Dress for Marialé". I spent years looking for a decent copy of this film, and all this time remained under the assumption that it was one of the last great gialli that I hadn't seen yet. Alas, after the derivative but nevertheless atmospheric and promising opening sequences, the film turns into a bizarre smorgasbord of trash, sleaze and murder, but ... not the good kind! Six people are invited into the remote gothic castle of a married couple, much against the will of the husband and the eerie house servant. The oppressed wife - Marialé - takes them to the cellars where she has an odd collection of mannequin dolls with medieval costumes, and shortly after, the whole group indulges into an extended and dreadfully boring orgy without sex but with crazy role-plays instead. These masquerade sequences are overlong, implausible and utterly senseless. Only in the last half hour, the guests are being murdered one by one and shortly after another, but the outcome (as in: the identity of the culprit) is so incredibly obvious that you wonder what the point of the whole masquerade was. The murders are unimaginative and as good as bloodless, with the notable exception of one person being bludgeoned to death in a pool. To finish off with at least a few positive words, the soundtrack is sublime, the women are beautiful, and there are some good performances by respectable Italian genre veterans (Ivan Rassimov, Luigi Pastili, ...)

On the one hand, we're treated to several giallo regulars - Ivan Rassimov, Evelyn Stewart, and Luigi Pistilli. Ivan Rassimov comes across the best here because he is given the most to do. Truth be told, everyone tries to do the best they can - the thing is the script doesn't give them much to do.

There's also a slow pace. The first murder doesn't occur until an hour into the film. The violence and special effects are done quite well.

I think this film really falls flat because of the direction. The performances are uneven. It doesn't look like anyone was in charge of the project. There are multiple continuity errors. Sometimes the camera is intentionally out of focus for effect, but there were a few times it was unintentionally out of focus for no good reason. Some of his style is interesting, but it does not always serve the story.

The ending has been done 100 times before, and you can see it coming well in advance.

Filmed at the Palazzo Borghese in Villa Borghese, Rome, which also contains the Largo Borghese, where we had a picnic with a Turkish family. Borghese!

They say that the first thing you taste food with is with your eyes, so it's good that this film has a lot of food in it. Wait, that's not right.

In a question of form over function, if I see another slow motion lesbian sex scene in another giallo my arm will cease to function wait that's not what I'm getting at.

Let's try again. A White Dress for Mariale begins with Mariale as a child watching her cuckolded father gun down his cheating wife and her nude lover in a park before turning the gun on himself. Years later, Mariale has turned into Ida Galli, who lives in a big mansion (of course) with angry husband Luigi Pistilli, who constantly feeds her tranquilisers. Ida, it turns out, has sent out invitations to a bunch of freaks and intends to hold a party.

These freaks include Ivan Rassimov, an old flame of Mariale. I can't remember the names of any other guy. There's an impotent guy and his frisky wife Mercedes, or was his wife the black girl Semy (who tries it on with a suit of armour – that's a new one). Who knows. I don't even know why they were there in the first place.

Mariale takes them all down to the basement which is full of very strange mannequins wearing dresses. She then invites everyone to dress up (one guy picks a ballerina outfit, Ivan dresses up like a pageboy etc. Mariale herself dresses up in the white dress her mother wore when she was killed – complete with the bullet holes. I think at this point Luigi gave up and wandered upstairs to watch football while everyone else got completely wasted.

This whole sequence is all rather trippy and reminded me of some of Peter Greenaway's work – what with all the food and colour schemes. I was rather taken aback at Semy's choice of dress being an orange robe and a double strap-on dildo, but then she hits it off with Mercedes later so maybe she needed it. I did begin to wonder, around the fifty minute mark, whether anything was actually going to happen in this film. Luckily, someone starts knocking off the gets in a bloody fashion. Semy in particular meets a nasty end by being smashed to a pulp in a swimming pool.

I suppose no one signs up for a giallo and expects anything profound, so the barrage of crazy visuals and silky camera work make up for the endless soap opera bickering and the fact that there's virtually no story to speak of. It does have a few stand out moments (like one guy being killed by a pack of dogs) but I was scratching my head at the end. Who was the killer?

If food was your eyes, then your stomach would feed on oh bugger off.

"Un Bianco Vestito Per Marialé," directed by Romano Scavolini, is a haunting, erotic, and violent thriller that leaves a lasting impression, albeit with some noticeable flaws.

The film follows the beautiful Marialé, who is kept sequestered in a gloomy castle by her controlling husband, Paolo. Marialé, traumatized by witnessing her father kill her mother as a child, is forced to take powerful psychoactive drugs by her husband and his servant, Osvaldo. The story takes a turn when Marialé invites friends over for a hedonistic party, only for them to be murdered one by one.

Scavolini crafts a stylish and atmospheric film, with a standout performance by Ida Galli as Marialé. The film excels in its ability to create a sense of unease and tension, particularly through its use of music and lighting. The castle setting, with its partial ruins and surrounding park, adds to the sense of isolation and impending doom.

However, the film stumbles in its execution of the thriller formula. With a runtime of just 84 minutes, the character development is lacking, and the dialogue feels stilted and pretentious at times. The killer's identity is also predictable, taking away from the suspense. While the orgiastic party scene is memorable, it also feels out of place, as if included purely for shock value.

Overall, "Un Bianco Vestito Per Marialé" is a flawed yet intriguing entry in the giallo genre. It delivers on style and tension but falls short in its character and narrative development. While it may not be the best of its kind, it is worth a watch for fans of erotic thrillers and those seeking a glimpse into 1970s Italian horror.

Romano Scavolini would go on to make the disappointing Video Nasty 'Nightmares in a Damaged Brain', but before that he made this film. Spirits of the Dead is a psychological drama come Giallo and focuses in the bizarre happenings inside a large mansion during a party. The film has shades of Mario Bava, though despite the grandeur of the setting and the strange costumes worn during the partygoers in the main part of the movie; Romano Scavolini is no Mario Bava and the film remains only an imitation of the Italian master. The plot has two sides to it and we begin at a setting in the past as a young girl named Mariale witnesses her father murder two lovers before shooting himself in the head. We then fast forward some years and a grown up Mariale is living in a mansion with her husband Paolo. She has mental problems and is often given drugs to quell the problem. She invites a group of friends to stay at the house with her and her husband, but the party soon degenerates into an orgy and it's not long before the guests are being picked off one by one.

The first ten minutes made me believe that this one was going to be an interesting little Giallo. The characters are all introduced rather quickly and we are soon made to believe that not everything is as it should be. However, the film then builds into the orgy; which makes up the bulk of it, and it's not long before intrigue turns to tedium. The film tries to put the focus on the characters and this is a problem because, as is the case with many Giallo's, the characters aren't interesting enough in their own right to build a film around. The cast is not bad, however; Giallo regular Evelyn Stewart takes up the lead role well, and gets good back up from the likes of Luigi Pistilli and Ivan Rassimov. The film doesn't really get going until the final twenty minutes; and by then it is unfortunately a case of too little too late. This type of film is famous for over the top and stylish death scenes; but Spirits of Death doesn't really deliver in that respect, with only a single death scene in a swimming pool of any real note. Overall, this is not one of the better known Giallo's and I'm not really surprised. I wouldn't call it one of the worst of the genre; but it's not one of the best either and I'd only recommend this to hardcore Giallo fans.