Le sexe en délire

This is a somewhat crazed and depraved giallo. The Anchor Bay DVD contains both the international and the American versions of the film. Both are very different. The U.S. version has a Vietnam War framing device similar to that used in Jacob's Ladder almost 20 years later. It also contains two more murders and is slightly more coherent than the international version, despite being about 20 minutes shorter. But both versions of Delirium are, well, delirious.

The film concerns a homicidal doctor who is a serial murderer of young women. Just when he starts to be questioned by police for his involvement in the killings another maniac starts a murdering spree that confuses the issue.

The whodunit aspect of this movie is a little obvious. So the mystery element is less important. Instead, the film works best as a demented series of shock scenes, all strung together by a loose plot. The editing is not very good but it adds a bit to the haphazard nature of the film as we are jerked around from scene to scene. The music score by Gianfranco Reverberi is very effective in sustaining the delirious atmosphere.

This is a very sexually explicit giallo. There is a multitude of female full-frontal nudity on display. The murder scenes are often pretty misogynistic, not something uncommon to the genre, but a little more extreme here than normal. There are also some well shot S&M dream sequences that feature writhing naked women! The plot is a little over-convoluted. Once again, this is a common giallo feature but, again, more-so here than normal. It can be quite difficult to follow the narrative as the story is all over the place. This fact is made even more apparent when watching both versions of the movie, you will see that scenes are ordered quite differently.

Overall, this giallo movie is weak on narrative but compensates for that with, well, excess. The effect is a film that is true to it's title. It really is delirious.

I thought that the impious happenings in the Reincarnation of Isabelle couldn't be surpassed. Well I proved myself wrong after I witnessed this little picture. Although i enjoyed the film, I felt a little disappointed at times. I thought that the character of Rita Calderoni was a little over the top and i just expected more with the sexual content. The dialogue became a little risible at times and the plot to predictable. I didn't care for the ending either but overall it worked. Don't forget to check out the domestic release that is featured on the anchor bay dvd and witness for yourself how the Americans can destroy a film.

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).

Our good friends over at the Wikipedia website define the term "Delirium" as follows: an acute and relatively sudden decline in attention-focus, perception, and cognition. It is commonly associated with a disturbance of consciousness. Fair enough! That appropriately describes both the main characters' behavior in this film and the spontaneous reactions of us, the viewers! The least you can say about "Delirium" is that it is one strange movie. Not just the plot lines and character drawings are demented and - oh yeah - delirious), but even the cut, edit and release treatment it received back in the early 70's was highly unusual and peculiar. There exist two principal version of this film, which both feature on the fancy Anchor Bay release, namely the original Italian "Director's Cut" and the heavily altered American version. Most of the reviews and user-comments I encountered avidly discourage people to watch the American version, but I on the other hand, feel that BOTH versions are essential viewing. If possible, you should even watch one straight after the other, filter different aspects & sub plots of both versions together and mentally edit them back together in order to make up your very own final cut! Granted, the American version opens and finishes with a completely goofy and irrelevant Vietnam-trauma sub plot (illustrated through ancient recovered footage with Dutch subtitles!), but it also contains at least one supplementary and highly engrossing killing sequence and – in my humble opinion – the grand finale twists make much more sense here than in the original version. The director's cut is far gloomier and digs deeper into the main characters mental background, but it only just becomes a true Giallo highlight when mixed with elements of the American cut.

Now, don't immediately fear that "Delirium" is an overly complex and inaccessible Giallo because of all this driveling about versions, because it's not! It's your basic and wondrously demented early 70's Giallo, rich on perverted themes, nudity & sleaze, sadistic killings and far-fetched red herrings. The story opens promising with a hunky middle-aged guy (real-life body building champ Mickey Hargitay) picking up a teenage girl in a bar and savagely murdering her in the middle of a mudflat river. Usually the purpose of a Giallo is to keep the killer's identity secret until the climax, but Renato Polselli clearly doesn't bother to do this. The first and highly ingenious twist promptly comes after the intro, however, as the same guy who we just witnessed committing a murder turns out to be a criminology psychologist. He, Herbert Lyutak, cooperates with the police regarding the series of disturbing murders, which naturally puts him above all suspicion. We also meet his wife Marcia, who loves him to death, and his horny housemaid who not so secretly craves for his body. We also learn a bit about Herbert's sexual-related issues that clarify his murderous tendencies. More gruesome murders of sexy young coeds follow; only now Herbert always has indisputable alibis. Is there suddenly a copycat killer? Does Herbert have an evil twin brother? The outcome of this riddle is fairly logic and easy to predict, but Polselli nevertheless maintains an admirably high level of tension and involvement. He inserts inventive sub plots (like vivid hallucinations of lesbian-laughter orgies and the innocent prime suspect's private investigation) and you undeniably look forward to each next gory murder that waits just around the corner. The soundtrack in this particular Giallo is slightly below average, but the photography is beautiful and surprisingly artsy considering the low budget, with an imaginative use of colors and POV shots. Even after starring in numerous low-keyed Italian smut movies (including the decadent "Bloody Pit of Horror"), Hargitay remains a horrible actor, but at least "Delirium" stars a series of indescribably hot wenches, and they all willingly takes their clothes of in front of the camera. This is a fabulously sensational piece of Italian cult cinema and comes highly recommended to fans with a healthy sense for adventure.

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.