Le Tueur à l'orchidée

It's your typical giallo from the beginning to the end. You can watch it and be somewhat amused, but you seen it a million times before. There are some positive things. Music is OK and the last girl isn't that stupid and helpless, which is a great change from screaming women who just stand in one place waiting to be killed. However, there are also bad things, like problem with pacing of the movie, which doesn't make us care for the characters. Oh, and the ending fight with the killer is underwhelming to say the least, even for a giallo. I give it 5.8/10. It isn't the worst thing you can watch and will give you some fun, but it isn't anything to write home about. I don't recommend it to anyone except giallo fans.

"Seven Blood-Stained Orchids" (1971) is a middling, fairly goreless giallo from director Umberto Lenzi that should just manage to please fans of this genre. In it, a hunky-dude designer, played by Antonio Sabato in a one-note performance, investigates when his pretty fiancée becomes the latest target of yet another Italian serial killer. With the help of this fiancée, appealingly played by German actress Uschi Glass, the couple realizes that all previous murder victims had stayed at the same countryside hotel several years before. But will this bit of knowledge enable them to save future targets of the killer? And why does this homicidal whack job insist on leaving crescent-moon medallions (NOT half-moon, as widely reported elsewhere!) at the site of his slayings? The film, as you may have discerned, tells an interesting story, with a twisty, slightly confusing plot that does ultimately manage to hang together. Lenzi has directed his film in a competent, no-nonsense manner, while the picture's score, from Riz Ortolani, is alternately somber, cool, menacing and lovely. The film's killer utilizes many expedients to off his victims, including beating, drowning, strangulation and--in a scene that should please most gorehounds--a power drill, and this many years before similar nut cases picked up their Black & Deckers in films such as "The Tool Box Murders," "The Driller Killer" and "The Slumber Party Massacre." Several scenes are indeed quite suspenseful, such as the ones with the poisoned kitties and the female mental patient. Shriek Show is to be thanked for this fine-looking DVD (sadly, with no subtitles) of a film never before released in the U.S. Oh...one other thing. Do NOT watch the film's trailer before viewing this picture. Amazingly, it reveals the killer's identity not once but several times! Talk about spoilers!

Umberto Lenzi delivers a giallo that has all the trademark elements fully in place, but somehow fails to achieve the right level of madness to produce a true classic. I'm not quite sure why, though. Let's blame Antonio Sabato!

No – let's get to the story instead. Someone wearing the standard issue giallo killer uniform (black gloves, floppy hat, raincoat) is murdering women in and around Rome, at rather a rapid rate, too! This guy knows how to create a giallo atmosphere – not only does he shake things up on the variety side, he also leaves a weird silver crescent next to the bodies.

His third victim (I think) is the bride of Antonio Sabato, and she gets cut up on a train while her husband out buying McEwan's Export from the train bar. He attends her funeral while the cops take everybody's pictures covertly, but it's all a ruse! She's still alive though I'm sure her relatives are going to be chuffed when they find that out.

Antonio then gets on the job of finding out who the killer is, with the aid of the police to a certain extent. He discovers that all the woman being offed all stayed at a certain hotel at a certain time, but why are they being killed? And who is this American people keep referring to? And did Bruno Corazarri just say he gave the American a chewie?

So we've got the stupid clues, the Euro-babes, the set piece kills, what have you, but I couldn't help but feel that Antonio Sabato wasn't pushing himself as the hero (and I felt the same way about him in The Man with Icy Eyes), so his lack of animation made the film at bit dull. Or maybe that was due to the film following the giallo formula a bit too strictly (although the 'death by drill' was an eye opener). It could because I've watched about a hundred of these films in about six months. YOU DECIDE!

Undoubtedly Lenzi's best film. More of a giallo than anything else he's made, af usually seems to deal in standard Hitchcock- influenced thrillers and forego the giallo tropes. Here however, all of the giallo trademarks are at play, and come together beautifully with a very well written story line.

In this film, women keep getting murdered after receiving a phone call to ascertain their whereabouts, and each time, a crescent moon medallion is left in their hands. At first there seems to be no connection, until it's realized that all of the women happened to stay at the same hotel one night several years earlier. One victim escapes, fakes her own death, and sets off to find the killer... but will he find her first?

The main strength of "Seven Blood-Stained Orchids" was its tightly-woven "whodunnit" mystery plot, which contained tons of red herrings but felt much more coherent than many other movies in this genre. It played out in such a way that there was no real way the viewer could beat the camera to the big reveal in terms of deduction, but it still felt engaging throughout. I also thought the main characters were all quite likeable, and I especially appreciated the surprisingly good survival instincts of the main hero and heroine -- not a trait this type of character often has. The kills were suitably thrilling, the acting was good, and the music was solid without being a standout. The opening title track, "Ozarks", might be an exception to that statement, as its groovy base line strikes a great balance between sinister menace and smooth funk.

The only real negative I have to say about it is that the movie felt a bit lacking in artistry on the visual front. Most of my prior experience with gialli is that they're visually incredible, but the plot is a bit of a mess. This movie takes the polar opposite route, with almost no memorable or striking visual moments but a plot that feels tightly-scripted. Also, because so much of the film relies on the "whodunnit" element, I can't imagine that this movie would be particularly engaging as a rewatch in the same way that something like "Blood Red" or "All The Colors of the Dark" are.

All told, maybe not one to buy sight-unseen, but if you can rent or stream it somewhere, it's absolutely worth a watch at least once.