Vortice mortale

In first few minutes of "The Washing Machine," Vida (busty Katarzyna Figura) has make up sex with her gangster boyfriend/pimp Yuri (Yorgo Voyagis) in front of an open refrigerator. Watching from the stairs is one of Vida's two sisters she shares the apartment with, Ludmilla (Barbara Ricci). Ludmilla hikes up her nightgown and spreads her legs to give us a perfect view of her white panties. Then she starts playing a triangle (no, that isn't a euphemism), Vida and Yuri seemingly oblivious to her musical accompaniment, until Vida looks over her shoulder to give her sister a knowing smile.

Things get weirder later that night when Ludmilla discovers Yuri's body hacked to pieces and stuffed inside the washing machine (hence the awful English title). Or did she? By the time the police arrive the next morning there is no body, because what's a giallo without a mysteriously disappearing corpse? But Ludmilla and her sisters Vida and Sissy report a murder anyway. Inspector Stacev (Philippe Caroit) dismisses the women as cranks, only to be drawn into conducting an investigation when the sisters contact him separately, alternately trying to seduce him (or flat out forcing themselves on him like Vida does) and tease him with information that might prove Yuri was murdered.

The plot of "The Washing Machine" doesn't withstand close scrutiny and often revelations are made as if screenwriter Luigi Spagnol just thought of them the day of filming (e.g., Ludmilla having a drinking problem, Stacev being into S/M). But with such crazy set pieces as Sissy (Ilaria Borrelli) having sex with Stacev in the middle of a museum while blind students wander around them, who cares?

"The Washing Machine" promises a sleazy good time and almost delivers. Where it disappoints is how it handles its numerous trashy elements. It's not that it goes too far; it often doesn't go far enough. Given that the movie is directed by Ruggero Deodato, the man who gave us "Cannibal Holocaust," it's downright tame. Breasts are exposed every 10 minutes or so, but the numerous sex scenes aren't terribly creative or explicit. The women seldom get totally naked (only Borrelli does full frontal) and the men all have sex completely clothed. There are Shannon Tweed vehicles that push the envelope further than this movie does. Deodato is less restrained with the gory moments, but there are few of those. For me, "The Washing Machine" is summed up in its opening scene: kinky and weird but refusing to take off its underwear.

In this latter day Giallo, Police Inspector Alexander Stracev is called to the home of three sisters to investigate a crime. One of the sisters claims to have found the mutilated body of a pimp named Yuri in her washing machine. When Inspector Stracev arrives, he finds no body and no sign of there having ever been a body. But the more he investigates, the more enthralled he becomes by each of the three sisters as they take turns trying to seduce him, tempting him with information about what happened to Yuri and accusing each other of responsibility for Yuri's disappearance. Inspector Stracev is not sure what he's on to, but he can't get away from it. The sisters keep drawing him in deeper and deeper.

With a name like The Washing Machine, I had no idea what to expect. What I found was an entertaining Euro-thriller that exceeded my somewhat guarded expectations. Director Ruggero Deodato (better known for his cannibal films) has created a very stylish (as stylish as Budapest, circa 1993, can be), quick moving and entertaining film that kept my interest from the opening scenes. The pacing is nice and I enjoyed the way Deodato allowed the plot to unfold in bits and pieces during several erotically charged moments. The mystery elements kept me guessing until the very end. There were questions I couldn't wait to be answered - Was there really a body in the washing machine? Are the three sisters as completely mad as they seem? Or, are these women using the Inspector as part of some sort of elaborate game? It's all very nicely done.

I recently watched Umberto Lenzi's TV movie House of Lost Souls, in which a boy is decapitated by a a possessed washing machine. Knowing nothing about Ruggero Deodato's The Washing Machine, I half expected a film full of such appliance-based craziness, but was surprised by a distinct lack of killer kitchen equipment. The washing machine in this late giallo from the director of Cannibal Holocaust remains lifeless and doesn't kill anyone; it is merely the receptacle for the dismembered body of a murdered man. Or is it?

Inspector Alexander Stacev (Philippe Caroit) is called to investigate the suspected murder of pimp Yuri Petkov (Yorgo Voyagis), as reported by luscious lush Ludmilla Kolba (Barbara Ricci), who claims that she saw the man's gory remains stashed in the washing machine in the apartment that she shares with her two sisters, buxom call-girl Vida (Katarzyna Figura) and seductive cutie Maria (Ilaria Borrelli). Of course, by the time Stacev arrives at the girls' home, the body has disappeared, leaving the cop to believe that Ludmilla imagined everything, the hallucinations of an alcoholic. Ludmilla continues to press the cop to investigate, and not one to say no to a beautiful woman (or three), he does so, his police procedure involving having sex with all three Kolba sisters (not at the same time - he's not THAT lucky!).

Often, when a giallo goes down the sleazy route, there's some indication of the sordid content in the title: Strip Nude For Your Killer, Naked You Die, Perversion Story, French Sex Murders... you get the idea. Not so here... hidden behind a misleadingly innocuous title lies an endless procession of semi-clothed or naked babes, Deodato filling the screen with as much tempting female flesh as possible: barely a minute goes by without some kind of gratuitous nudity, whether it be from the three sisters, or one of the random strippers that plug the gaps. The film's twisty-turny plot is fairly routine for the genre, and there are no elaborately staged death scenes, so it's a real bonus that there's so much top-notch Italian totty on display, the raunchiness really helping to hold one's interest.

Towards the end of the film, Deodato throws in a wonderfully messy scene in which Vida hacks away at a mutilated corpse, shoving her hand inside to pull out its organs, which will go some way to satisfying gore-hounds, but this film is all about the sexiness, and in that it definitely succeeds.

7/10. Take it for a spin!

Utterly demented thriller (giallo?) about three twisted sisters that fall for the same type of men and use their washing machine as a killer device. Police inspector Alexander Stacev is bound to go nuts as all three sisters turn out professional liars and dedicated to get him in bed. It's hard to believe that this light-headed, almost comical horror cheapie was directed by Ruggero Deodato, creator of notorious Italian gut-munchers like "Cannibal Holocaust" and "Last Cannibal World". Judging by the ludicrous premise and absurd story-twists, Deodato must have been suffering from an identity crisis, or something! There's more gratuitous sex and nudity in "The Washing Machine" than in the average Shannon Tweed TV-thriller, but the actresses are bustier (especially the Polish Kashia Figura) AND there's splatter, too! What more could you possibly wish for? A terrific musical score, perhaps? There's that too!

Despite an incredibly stupid English language title ("The Washing Machine"), this is a real return to form both for the Italian giallo genre and for infamous Italian director Ruggiero Deodato. Ironically, Deodato never really directed too many giallo back in their 70's heyday. (He was either making nihilistic Third World cannibal films or being put on trial in Italy or other places for making nihilistic Third World cannibal films). In the late 1980's and 1990's, however, he made two fairly decent ones in a row(after "Stagefright" and "Opera" probably the best two of that period), "Off Balance" in the late 80's and this one a few years later.

This movie is about a cop who is trying to find out which of three sexy prostitute-sisters (a very aggressive one, a deceptively shy one, and a mysterious one in between) was responsible for killing their thuggish pimp. This naturally involves him having sex with all three. The end is not entirely unexpected, but enjoyable nevertheless.

Like Fulci's movie "Aenigma" made a few years earlier this was filmed in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain, obviously in an attempt by the declining Italian film industry to open up new markets, and more importantly, to save money. Unlike with the Fulci film though, the unknown Eastern European actresses here are not only very sexy, but also pretty good (especially the one playing the middle sister). Mostly though it's Deodato's effective directorial style that really does the job. The movie has enough sex in it that it could be mistaken for one of the multitude of "erotic thrillers" that were big at the time (after the success of the Hollywood thriller "Basic Instinct"), but this movie is actually GOOD,and deserves to be included more as a late entry in the vastly superior giallo genre. Anyway, if you like decent gialli, or are willing to see an "erotic thriller" that DOESN'T mightily suck, be sure to see this one.