Delirio caldo

In Renato Polselli's bonkers giallo Delrium, Mickey Hargitay plays Dr. Herbert Lyutak, an impotent deranged lunatic who cannot stop himself from murdering pretty young women. When his devoted wife, still a virgin due to her husband's 'problem', discovers his secret, she decides to help rather than inform the police.

Delirium certainly showed promise at the beginning, with a vicious murder scene that delivered both the requisite nudity and violence one expects from a 70s giallo. Unfortunately, what begins as a sleazy little thriller quickly descends into a mess of histrionics and incomprehensible craziness that ultimately leads to disappointment.

Polselli packs his film with tasty young totty, with nearly every woman either wearing a mini skirt or a pair of hot pants, and all willing to get their kit off at the drop of a hat, but even these pleasing visual distractions couldn't make me overlook the dreadful acting, poor plot and just plain silly ending. The usual red-herrings abound, and there's even more than one killer just to make things more confusing, but as giallos go this one is definitely second rate.

4.5 out of 10 (very generously rounded up to 5 for IMDb).

Sensationally sleazy giallo with loads of fab 70's gear worn by the men as well as the women and stacks of lurid action. When it's not sex or death on the screen, then it's shades of S&M in the cellar with chains, whips and other implements. Great looking, well OTT, eyes wide open shocker. Vivid killing in waterfall at the start sets the tone and we never look back, even the dead must have their clothing arranged in the sexiest possible way. Delirious ending but then this movie is true to it's title all the way. Perhaps the directing is not as stylish as some giallo and the music is rather muted. Some of the performances, especially towards the end are a bit uncontrolled but this is undeniably a very wild ride from start to finish.

Not exactly a movie for the kiddies, I would consider 1972's Delirium to be some what of a grade B Giallo. The production is okay, the acting not bad, the dialogue average, but the violence is over the top with several grisley murder scenes. There is also way more nudity than your average Giallo.

There are two versions, the American (85 minutes) and the European (102 minutes). The American version starts out with the main character, Herbert Lyutak, getting wounded in Vietnam. The movie mixes stock footage from the war with newly filmed scenes in a pretty ungraceful job of editing. But we

do learn that Herbert was born in Hungary and immigrated to the US in 1961 and joined the army in 1962. He has done three tours of duty in Vietnam and is a decorated, model soldier. He has been wounded and is being taken away in a helicopter. He is looking at a nurse and she changes into another woman who we soon find out is his wife, Marcia, played by the lovely Rita Calderoni (The Reincarnation of Isabel, Nude for Satan). Right after the credits we get to see Herbert pick up a girl in a bar and drive her out to a remote spot, chase her into a stream and then strip her and beat her to death. It's a pretty violent scene and not for the squeamish. Of course that could apply to almost every murder in this movie.

The European version really is quite different than the American release and I thought it had a more coherent story. Both versions are a bit confusing but the European version is more consistant. It also skips the whole Vietnam segment which wasn't very well done anyway. The endings are both quite different as well and a couple murders are filmed differently also.

I don't want to give away too much but we do know that Herbert murders a girl at the beginning of both versions and after that it is a bit of a cat and mouse with the cops who are trying to solve the murders along with Herbert who is a criminal psychologists and suposed to be helping them in the investigation. His wife starts having weird S&M dreams invloving her husband as the sadist and their maid and another woman who we later find out is her niece. Ther three women fondle and kiss each other while Herebert watches. The editing from the dreams to reality is a bit confusing and at one point early in the film Herbert does beat and cut Marcia as a substitution for sex which he can't perform with his wife. He does seem troubled about his violent tendencies and does not want to unleash his murderous ways on his wife. But he does like looking at her throat which is a very enticing part of female anatomy for him.

The picture on the European version looks fine and is presented in 1.85:1 widescreen. The American version however is missing a couple sections of the original so Anchor Bay had to take some Dutch footage from a VHS copy and splice it in. So you are watching and all of a sudden the picture gets worse and there are Dutch subtitles! But we are talking only a couple minutes worth so it is pretty minor actually. There is also a recently filmed 14 minute interview with director and writer Renato Polselli and Actor Mickey Hargitay which is pretty good really. I watched the US version, then the interview, and then the European version of the film. I did have more of an appreciation for the film after the watching the interview and as I said earlier, the European version is overall a better and more coherent storyline. The US version is dubbed in English and the European version is in Italian with English subtitles. Overall not too bad if you like extreme Giallo. Not nearly as good as say, What Have You Done With Solange, or most Bava's or Argento's, but certainly worthy of $15 or so.

Thanks to a certain gray market outfit in south Florida that searches for obscure videos, I got stuck with the shorn American print of this movie, but it does have some very ridiculous added "Vietnam" footage which might make it the first movie ever to deal with the fallout from that war. A deranged Vietnam vet and forensic psychologist is driven by his traumatic war experiences (and implied impotence) to murder mini-skirted Italian co-eds (just like he did in 'Nam I'm sure). His loyal wife tries to cover up for him the only way she knows how. Mickey Hargitay is the name star. After seeing "Bloody Pit of Horror" I had no trouble buying him as a deranged killer, but a police psychologist?--c'mon. Mickey had apparently been making bad movies in Italy for so long by this point that he'd started speaking with an Italian accent. (Seriously, why did they cast third-rate American actors in these movies and then dub them when they're speaking English?). Rita Calderoni plays the wife. She wasn't a bad actress, but the enjoyment of her performance varies inversely with the amount of clothes she is wearing, and she's a little overdressed here (if you want to see a lot more of her check out the appropriately named "Nude for Satan"). There are also a lot of anonymous Italian girls in impossibly short minis (unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of sleazy movie that looks up their skirts while they're being strangled or shows them topless after they're dead). There's also a strange, recurring dream sequence where a shirtless Mickey strangles himself with a chain while his naked wife, maid(!),and college-age niece(!!) all writhe around on the floor at his feet.

Anchor Bay apparently has included both this version and the longer European version on their legitimate DVD and it costs half as much used as what the more unscrupulous bootleggers are charging. Avoid just getting the American version, but I would recommend this to moral degenerates who enjoy this kind of sleazy, Italian-made filth (you know who you are).

The English-language print of this movie is incoherent. It adds stupid Vietnam footage throughout and cuts out all references to the fact that it takes place in England, as well as all the sexual violence, the lesbian relationship between the killer's wife and her maid, and the killer's "masturbation" scene. In the European version there are three killers but here there are only two, and the ending is completely different. The American version adds two murders that were left on the cutting room floor of the European version, but they're unimportant to the story. The final third of this movie has sequences that are basically incomprehensible and the film ends with a tacked-on series of stills from different sex scenes from the film! This may have satisfied the grind house audience of the Seventies but nearly thirty years later it just seems tame and silly. Anchor Bay needs to find the full version of this one and get it out on dvd. As it stands now it's a disappointment.