Delitto allo specchio

This movie has three different, genuinely descriptive titles: the direct Italian translation "Crime in the Mirror", the English title "Death on a Four Poster" (the centerpiece murder takes place on a four-poster bed with a mirrored canopy), and the somewhat blunt but still very accurate alternate English title "Sexy Party". The movie starts out as kind of a low-rent version of "La Dolce Vita" as six young, attractive couples are having a swinging party and playing all kinds of hedonistic games in an old castle. It takes kind of a Gothic horror turn, however, when one of the male protagonists (John Drew Barrymore)has a premonition of something terrible occurring, which proves eerily correct after he leaves the party. Here the movie kind of resembles contemporary Italian horror films like "Bloody Pit of Horror" or "The Vampire and the Ballerina" where jaded modern protagonist are menaced by supernatural forces. But this eventually turns out to be much more of a stylized murder mystery, putting it more in the category of a very early giallo thriller.

This movie is very 60's Italian-style sexy. There's no nudity really, but the actresses Antonella Lualdi and Luisa Rivelli are absolutely smoking-ass hot even with their clothes on, and there's a strong atmosphere of erotic decadence such as a scene where the Rivelli character's compulsive-gambler boyfriend "loses her" in a dice game to the malicious Lualdi character, and the latter sends her off to a room for ten minutes with another male guest (where whatever happens is left mostly to the viewer's imagination). This movie kind of reminded me of a contemporary early black-and-white giallo "Libido" in that it manages to be even more sexy than most 70's Italian films that were far, far more graphic.

The most famous actors here though are undoubtedly two male ones. The very eccentric and enigmatic John Drew Barrymore was the descendant of the famous Barrymore family as well as the father of Drew Barrymore. Whatever talent the latter has, she undoubtedly got from him rather than her groupie mother, but John Drew was such an errant talent that he spent much of career working in strange European movies like this, and often not working at all. Michael Lemoine, who plays one of the other male guests, is a very strange-looking guy, but a decent actor and kind of a Svengali character in real life who hooked up with various luscious Euro-beauties like Janine Reynaud and used them to carve out a career as both a performer and director in erotic European films (He and Reynaud collaborated with Jess Franco on some of the latter's more interesting work). This is a good movie. I'd recommend it.

A bunch of hipsters jump into cars and head off to a party, but these folks are so happening and groovy that they've  just gotta stop those cars twice during the credits sequence to have a dance!  This being a mid-sixties Italian film, the party is taking place at a huge creepy mansion.  For a change.  

There's about a dozen of these folks and as the film is dubbed everybody pretty much gibbers on at the same time. They all turn up at the mansion and then the guys and girls split up to discuss who they're gonna bone later that night. Except the creepy housekeeper, who had an affair with one of the guys but he's telling her to keep quiet about it as it'll ruin his chances with one of the more up market dames.    

Not much later this lady shows up and she's one of these beatnik hedonist types who starts playing parlour games, but that's after she puts a new record on – it's called Sexy Party and everyone gets to do a dance. It's hilarious but I'm not sure that was the original intention, and any slasher film that has a musical break gets extra points from me!  

Not that there's any slashing being done by that point. Nor indeed any time soon after that, as our beatnik lady messes with people's heads, including one guy having to bet 'his' girl in a game of dice (some other guy wins ten minutes with her – this film would go down a treat with feminists!) Then after that the  beatnik's companion (Drew Barrymore's dad?) does a psychic trick and tells them they better leave before they all get killed.  

By this point 99% of the population of Earth would have switched this film off, but I was enthralled by the insane dubbing, including lines like "He's got long hair but he's not an artist" and "It's freezing here – someone burn a tree", and the terrible over the top acting, and Kitty's jump suit get up. Also by this point one of the characters notices that Drew Barrymore's dad's prophecies are coming true, one of which seems to involve all the female characters changing clothes for what felt like about fifty minutes. 

Finally, someone gets murdered, and for a while it looks like the plot is beginning to drag on a bit (even the characters complain of being bored) but then things start zig-zagging all over the place. This one has a very high camp value (the character Edie is so ditzy she wouldn't be out of place in later Gialli like The Case of The Bloody Iris and Strip Nude for Your Killer) and there's plenty of twists to take it out of the standard giallo formula.

Low body count though, but that's to be expected at this stage I guess.

Heading out to a nearby castle, a group of friends attempting to initiate a weekend full of paranormal investigation find the warnings of a psychic friend coming true as they're murdered one-by-one and must try to get away alive.

For the most part this one here was a decent if not entirely impressive early giallo. Although a great deal of this is due to the adherence to the newfound genre, the vast majority of the fun in this one comes in the celebrated Gothic stereotypes here which shows the early elements still at play. The fact that the castle setting here, typified by the elaborately-designed ornate rooms, lush columnar hallways and creepy rooms, allows for the final half hour to be filled with the typically chilling scenes where the characters go skulking around the dimly-lit hallways and corridors, doors opening and creaking off in the distance and the knowledge that there's a killer loose amongst them gives this one some nice suspense scenes, all according to the Gothic tropes enforced upon it by the story. Even their attempts to clear themselves are quite fun, as the efforts to put suspicion on all of them lets this one indulge in some fine giallo trappings as each one tries to investigate the others with the parlor room explanations and the dinner table revelations. These do a fine job of crafting the mystery of the killer's identity and motives that there's quite an enjoyable central mystery at the heart of this one and the final revelation in the attic is somewhat more lively than expected. While these here do make this one somewhat enjoyable, there's still a few problems here. One of the biggest issues here is the fact that there's just not a whole lot of interesting things going on throughout the first half here as the scenes of the group going through their games inside that just aren't that exciting. The exploits of them dancing to a song that is completely out-of-sync to their gyrations and far too old-fashioned for a group this hip and chic to find appealing, a card-game that promises more sleaze than what it eventually showcases and the group basically loitering around the castle are just so dull and bland they drag the film out considerably so that the first murder doesn't occur until nearly the fifty-minute mark. Even less interesting is the fact that this holds off the horror aspects until it comes to the first murder, leaving this one also struggling to really build up the typical body-count associated with these films. Still, that isn't enough to really hold this one down too much.

Rated Unrated/PG: Violence.

A party of young adults goes to a castle for a party with games..... both the gambling and sexual sorts. But a psychic has predicted death for some of them. While the party proceeds, people start disappearing, even as the games go on.

I am expert in neither Italian giallo movies,nor those American horror films in which good-looking teenagers find themselves in an isolated location while some horror picks them off one by one, with none of them anxious to lead. Nonetheless, I can see the relation this movie bears with them, including classics of the genre like THE HAUNTING and THE SHINING. This shares the essential stupidity of the teen slasher flicks, because no one seems to consider leaving before whatever malign influence is killing them, whether through mysterious vanishments, or playing obsessively with a straight razor, with the creepy atmosphere maintained mostly through the music. With John Drew Barrymore, José Greci, and Gloria Milland.

Delitto allo specchio (literally, Crime in the Mirror, but known in English as Death on the Four Poster or Sexy Party) is one of those spiffy-cool Italian thrillers of the early 60's, with a great jazz score and luminous, tactile b&w photography. Not only does it offer some wonderful camp appeal, but it also has historical significance. It possesses enough horror-fantasy elements to ally it with the Italian Gothic revival of the early 60s, and more urgently, it anticipates many of the crucial elements of the giallo thriller which would dominate the early 70s. The requisite stock characters are all on hand -- neurotic playboys and dissolute gamblers, hourglass-figured temptresses with big hair, clinging designer gowns and gleaming jewels to match their smiles, a debonair psychic, an airheaded floozy, a resentful housekeeper and a creepy, voyeuristic half-wit caretaker.

The film establishes an erotically-charged, off-kilter atmosphere without resorting to explicit sex or violence (although the American TV print has clumsily been shorn of some possible nudity in one scene). Instead, it subtly arouses with innuendo, some highly-charged dancing, a "truth-or-dare"-style party game (leading to various betrayals and recouplings), and the doom-laden auguries of the psychic. Once the first murder occurs, the personal intrigues, forebodings-come-true, secret passages and disappearing evidence intensify the mysterious ambiance without being overly hokey or arbitrary. Clues to the satisfying resolution are craftily hidden early on.

The luscious Antonella Lualdi has never been so fetching or exotic as she masterminds the sexy games while holding a pivotal secret close to her ample bosom. And cult figures Michel Lemoine (as the highly neurotic heir who hosts the party in his lush château) and John Drew Barrymore perk up proceedings immensely. This one deserves to be much better known.