L'assassino ha riservato nove poltrone

Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians serves as the basis for giallo The Killer Reserved Nine Seats, which sees a group of bickering friends, relatives and acquaintances, all of whom have complex relationships and serious character flaws, assemble at a deserted theatre where they find themselves locked in and killed off one-by-one by a masked assailant. Is the murderer flesh and blood or a malevolent spirit driven by a centuries old curse?

If the film had stuck to a simple murder-by-numbers plot, it could have been a very effective thriller— after all, the same basic set-up served Michele Soavi well for his excellent '80s slasher Stagefright (1987)—but the supernatural element makes The Killer Reserved Nine Seats way too bewildering for its own good, with a frustrating finale that fails to make matters clear. Thank heavens, then, for those mainstays of the giallo, violence and nudity…

With such a collection of disagreeable characters, there are plenty of well deserved deaths, although they are less graphic than I had expected: some reviews have remarked on the nastiness of the murders, but barring the nailing of one woman's arm to a wooden beam (an effect that uses a hilarious plastic-looking fake hand), the violence seemed rather tame to me (I definitely didn't see any crotch stabbing), leading me to wonder whether the version I watched was shorn of some gore.

Thankfully, all of the nudity seemed intact, with virtually all of the female characters getting nekkid at some point, either willingly, or by having their clothes torn off by the killer before being brutally dispatched. This certainly helps to make the film more entertaining, especially the scene in which one woman takes time out amidst all the murder to dance topless to some funky music.

Interesting, although not completely well-made, example of the Italian supernatural thriller, "L'assassino ha riservato nove poltrone" is a movie that suffers from a lot of shortcomings, but still it moves and after all convinces the spectator. It has to its credit the well-built atmosphere of discomfort and psychological perversion, the good art direction and the costumes. The script suffers from a lot of holes and clear improbabilities, but still it can hold the spectator's breath with a plot that is quite original, although the spooky theater under a curse is a fairly recurrent element in the tradition of Italian horror (I remember Renato Polselli's "Il mostro dell'Opera", Michele Soavi's "Deliria", as well as the well known "Opera" and "Il fantasma dell'Opera", directed by Dario Argento). Apart from this, there's a good dose of pleasant and sexy female nudes and the usual lesbian background to whom no Italian thriller can renounce. Taking everything into consideration, I can say this is a quite good movie, charmingly rough in the development of the plot, in the direction and in the acting (all the actors are habitué of the popular genres of Italian cinema), but it's also an interesting and amusing movie you can enjoy.

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.

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 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.