Spasmo

Umberto Lenzi is still playing the old school giallo hand here, which means less stabbing and more psychological games, but that doesn't mean he hasn't found new ways of presenting it. He spends the first hour of the film plunging you into a confusing plot, the explains what you've witnessed, then turns everything on its head again. Nice!

Christian (Robert Hoffman) is out at the beach with lady friend when he spots a corpse lying on the sand. The corpse turns out to be very much alive Barbara (Kendall) whom Christian becomes infatuated with. She runs off, leaving a thermos (!) with a strange name on it. This leads Christian to a boat where he meets Barbara again, and the two of them head off to a motel for some filthy squeazy, as long as Christian shaves off his beard. Of course, some strange man turns up in the bathroom and tries to kill him, resulting in one dead stranger. This happens in 75% of all one night stands.

Things go from bad to worse for Christian as he ends up in a never ending nightmare of people who may or may not who they say they are, dead strangers who come back to life, empty houses and their occupants, and the constant shots of mannequins dressed in sexy lingerie that have been stabbed with blades. Lenzi piles on the paranoia and the mysteries but doesn't lose focus, bringing it all together nicely (even if the twists are a bit cliché by this point).

Still, despite saying "Oh! It's that kind of plot twist!" Lenzi still has a couple of curveballs, one particularly grim and shocking. Lenzi keeps things nice and trippy for the most part too, as certain characters turn up as different people, and even what we've watched up to a point may not be the whole truth. The disturbing sight of sexualised dummies, which seems to have been switched with the real thing on purpose, just adds to the disorientation. The only downside is that some of the acting is a bit iffy. I'm looking at you, Kendall! Ivan Rassimov was fine though.

What people might have a bit of trouble with is home film that Rassimov watches in his office. It has all the zooms, focus shifts and edits of a professional film. When I think about it, I wonder if that was deliberate too...possibly.

Spasmo(1974)Umberto Lenzi Christian Bauman (Robert Hoffmann,Death Carries a Cane, Naked Girl Killed in the Park) and his girlfriend while strolling along a beach see what they think is s dead body of a woman lying face down in the sand, as it turns out the girl named Barbara (Suzy Kendall,The Bird with the Crystal Plumage,Circus of Fear) is alive and claims to have passed out with the heat, but when Christian turns his back for a moment Barbara speeds away in her car leaving only a clue of a jar marked Tucania, which turns out to the name of a large yacht moored in the local harbour, Christian gatecrashes a party on board in order to see more of this alluring young woman, the host and Barbara's lover Alex is none to pleased at his intrusion but allows him to stay anyway. Meanwhile a mysterious hit-man with a gun and the habit of rolling marbles round his hand watches the yacht from afar, but who is his intended prey?

Barbara tired of the party on board offers Christian, the major shareholder in his family's plastics business a night he cant forget all he has to do is lose his beard, he doesn't need to be asked twice and before long he is in Barbara's bathroom removing the unwanted hair, but he is suddenly interrupted by the hit-man who comes through the window brandishing his gun, in the skirmish that follows Christian shoots and kills the intruder, Barbara horrified says they should run away together instead of notifying the police, they do this but return soon after only to find the body gone.

Barbara suggests staying in the house of a Brazilian painter friend for a while, as she is away, it's a house that is filled with stuffed birds of prey and caged exotic animals, reluctantly Christian agrees, but the house has been let out to an ex reporter and his young female friend, a bizarre couple who persistently act strange, in fact Christian thinks everyone seems to be acting strange, he constantly thinks he is being watched or followed and nobody except him seems to be acting rationally at all, not even his new love.

Nonetheless they accept an invitation to stay the night, where he has a quick liason with Clorinda the young woman of the house after which he flees the house speeding off to try and clear his head as to what is happening, he hears a dull thud from the trunk of the car, when he investigates he finds the hit-man there apparently dead, but he jumps up and orders Christian to drive to a local quarry where he aims to kill him for sure this time, again Christian gets the better of him kills him in a gloriously gruesome way, before setting him alight and pushing the car of the edge, below in the quarry he sees a man that he believes has been following him in a car with Barbara, he is even more confused now and follows them, they lead him to his own family business where he overhears them discussing with his brother Fritz Bauman (Ivan Rassimov,Jungle Holocaust,All the Colors of the Dark) their plan to have him locked up,the strange man mistakingly tells Fritz his brother has been killed in the quarry, Fritz is happy with this news, but this is the final straw for Christian and he sets out to take revenge on his sibling.

A really bizarre film, with really off the wall dialogue,Christian after a mere few hours of knowing Barbara calls her his "sweet little whore" and the film is full of things that just don't add up and characters that don't seem to have any relevance or relation to each other. Interspersed between all the action are various scenes of latex dummies being hung, stabbed and found mutilated, these add to the films quirkiness and leave the viewer baffled as to their meaning., the films linear storyline you would think would make it easier to follow but its not the case, its not until the films finale that Lenzi finally reveals the brutal and shocking revelations. Susan George clone Kendall puts in a fine performance as does Hoffman, Rassimov fits nicely into his usual bad guy role only this time with a twist. This is not your typical Giallo and here Lenzi who took over from Lucio Fulci as director of the project after he quit, dispenses with genre cornerstones (blood, gore,masked killer,black gloves etc..a fact that might be off putting for Giallo traditionalists) in favour of colourful characterisations and an exploration of madness and the psyche, in fact he also dispenses with the usual dark urban landscapes in favour of burning bright sunshine by the sea, a brave move that just about succeeds. Ennio Morricone's score is more percussive than usual and is at times generic but not without its charm. Another surprise contributor to the US release was one Giorgio Romero?, who added scenes of gore at the American distributors request much to the chargrin of Umberto, these were later removed for the Shriek Show DVD, the picture quality of which is decent but the sound suffers from the occasional hiss, also included is a brief but very interesting interview with Lenzi who is never one to mince his words

Quite possibly the weirdest 'Giallo' movie I've ever seen is this Umberto Lenzi Spasmo. I'll try to give you a glimpse of the plot. It's about love dolls, wait, no. It's about two brothers. Hmmm.. let me start over. It's about a killing that wasn't a killing. Oh, I give up Spasmo is Spasmo. There that should tell you enough. It's not something one would care to sit through more then once as the surprising lack of blood and sex, makes one focus on the plot more closer. And that's the problem right there. what IS the plot of Spasmo?? It's driving me mad I tell you MAD.. spasmo..SPASMO!!! It does have a vaguely hypnotizing effect to it though.

My Grade: C-

DVD Extras: An Umberto Lenzi interview (which helped me try to decipher it); Stills gallery; Theatrical trailer; Trailers for "Eaten Alive", "Seven Bloodstained Orchids", and "What have you done to Solange?"

To fully enjoy many of the gialli I've seen recently, the viewer must, as I call it, take a "leap of logic". What I mean is that if the viewer were to stop and think about how illogical things in the movie were, they probably wouldn't enjoy the movie as much. Well, with Spasmo the viewer is asked to take a Grand Canyon size leap of logic. The problem is, I only made it half way across. The illogical actions and reactions the character make throughout the movie ruined much of my enjoyment. When faced with a situation, in almost every instance the characters act and react in the most illogical manner possible in order to advance the storyline. A logical decision by any character at any time would have brought the movie to a screeching halt.

That's not to say that there weren't things I liked about the movie. The latex dummies hanging from trees were a nice touch. The way the murders are shown in flashback at the end of the movie was a fairly innovative idea. But, there weren't enough of these moments.

The acting is what you would expect. The score by Morricone, while good, is not one of his best. The revelation of the murderer is by far the best part of the movie. The DVD from Shriek Show is a mixed bag - good picture, but lots of hiss in spots on the soundtrack.

Overall, this is not one of the better gialli I've seen. If you want to see a far superior giallo by Lenzi, see Seven Blood-Stained Orchids. For what it's worth, I'll give Spasmo 5/10.

Full of fetish images of inflatable love dolls hanged on trees or covered in blood, this madness of a movie is about the incoming insanity over a young industrial captain, who probably provoked the death of his father several years before. Not really bloody (most of the killings are strangling, and worst of all viewed all together at the end of the movie), not very sexy, not particularly stylish, without any unforgettable scenes and even with a very bland soundtrack, this movie is not a worthy successor of Argento giallos