Das Geheimnis der blutigen Lilie

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.

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")

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.

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.