Frissons d'horreur

'Autopsy' is a very strange and confusing giallo that has to be seen to be believed! Newcomers to the genre best steer clear, but buffs will find this one totally fascinating. Mimsy Farmer (Fulci's 'The Black Cat') stars as an uptight doctor who between wrestling with freaky hallucinations of horny corpses(!) investigates a series of suicides supposedly caused by sunspots(!). A mysterious car racer turned priest (!) (Barry Primus of Scorsese's 'Boxcar Bertha') gets involved in the mystery, though she is unsure whether he is an ally or a suspect. Also in the cast is Ray Lovelock ('The Living Dead In Manchester Morgue') as Farmer's moody and cynical boyfriend. The brief plot synopsis doesn't give you any idea of just how convoluted and nutty this one is. Many will probably find it too flamboyant to stick with until the end, but personally I found it impossible to resist. Easily the most bizarre giallo I've ever seen!

It gets really, really warm in Rome during the month of August, and a lot of Romans head for the hillside towns like Tivoli to cool down a bit, so it's no surprise that those who elect to stay suffer the consequences. A spate of suicides is plaguing the city, as we see a few Romans graphically taking themselves out at the start of the film, including one old guy who puts a plastic bag over his head and jumps in the Tiber. That's no cry for help!

All this business is taking its toll on coroner Mimsy Farmer, who, while doing an autopsy on the old fella, has to also put up with the advances of a weirdo assistant: "Brains leave me cold, but I've got something warm for ya!" To make matters worse Mimsy starts hallucinating that the corpses around her are getting up and bumping uglies with each other. Mimsy needs a break, but of course Ray Lovelock comes along, does an impression of a corpse, and scares the crap out of her. This leads to a romance for some reason.

The plot for this one is rather tangled, but let's try and simplify it. Mimsy lives below an apartment owned by her good-looking, rich father and meets his new fiancé, a nice red-headed girl who is found dead on Ostia beach the next day of a gunshot wound. It's apparently suicide, but then Mimsy is doing a research paper on staged suicide and thinks foul play was involved. So does the dead girl's brother, a race car driver who has since become a priest (yep), so if the girl didn't kill herself, who did, and why?

There are many suspects to choose from, including the dog-owning landlord who is always looking up Mimsy's skirt, the weirdo assistant who, in one of those bad-taste moments of Italian cinema is also a necrophile, Ray Lovelock and his bizarre porn-slideshow seduction techniques (that work!) and Mimsy's father, who is up to something or other. It all comes together in the end but like Armando Crispino's earlier giallo The Etruscan Kills Again your head will be buzzing trying to keep up with all that's going on.

Although the Roman locations, Morricone soundtrack and cinematography lend this one a lot of style, there's still plenty of sleaze to bring the tone down a bit. Both Mimsy and Ray get nude at various stages, as do many other actors (in corpse form, mainly), and one character seems to be holding some sort of art exhibition about dead bodies. It's also a very strange film as well, with a sub plot about the suicides being blamed on sun spots and a bizarrely detailed scene involving one of the characters being horribly crippled after falling off a roof.

Better than I expected and not as gruesome as the rather ungainly title might suggest, "Autopsy" is a rugged Giallo showcasing lots and lots of Mimsy Farmer sans wardrobe, plus some typical genre plot twists and red herrings.

Whilst the initial scenes imply something almost supernatural (corpse copulation?), this well paced little shocker quickly finds its familiar Giallo groove as morgue physician Farmer begins to emotionally unravel under the pressures of documenting a burgeoning spate of apparent suicides. Anglo-Italian Lovelock is Farmer's care-free (and somewhat perverted) BF, whilst fellow Americano Barry Primus plays a priest with a tumultuous past. Special mention too for Ernesto Colli as a creepy morgue attendant and Angela Goodwin and her wicked sense of dark humour.

Like most of its ilk, the real story doesn't emerge for some time and the characters flirt with danger as they get closer to the culprit; there's also enough nudity to make a peeping Tom blush, and some occasional gore (which you'd expect in a movie entitled "Autopsy" though as aforesaid, it's not a butcher's shop nor meat market for gore).

The title is likely to offend most punters, which is a shame because it's not a bad movie, probably attracting an unwarranted notoriety it doesn't deserve. But that's their loss - if you enjoy Giallo, you should be quite satisfied with this offering (which despite various published release dates, appears to have been made in 1973 according to the opening titles).

During a heat wave in Rome apparently caused by sun spots, there is a seemingly unheard of rise in suicides. Pathologist Simona Sana (Mimsy Farmer) is struggling to deal with the extra workload and begins to have hallucinations that the dead are coming back to life. She takes some time off and spends it with her erstwhile boyfriend Edgar(Ray Lovelock), but their relationship is plagued by Simona's visions which leave her frigid. When yet one more victim is diagnosed as suicide, a priest Fr Paul Lenox (Barry Primus) turns up to identify the body and claims that his sister would never have killed herself and so Simona investigates further and finds a small puncture wound which indicates that the girl had been drugged and indeed been murdered, the two team up to solve the mystery. Another bizarre entry in the world of Giallo, the film begins with a startling collection of suicides interspersed with some psychedelic shots of sun flares, the killings are deliciously inventive and set the tone immediately. Simona's hallucinations are also startling and might give the impression the film is a zombie film in the making, but we are soon caught up in a fine mystery. It's a surreal film that will keep you guessing the identity of the murderer, for a while at least, its full of the usual red herrings as each character seems to have something to hide and there's an almost perfect finale too.

"Autopsy", as it's known here in North America, is pretty good of its type, with a solid, intriguing story, one that doesn't get bogged down with twists. It's got some gore going for it, but in truth is never as violent as that American title would indicate. The story is of course fairly sordid, but the level of sleaze is never too high, with doses of female flesh here and there.

Lovely Mimsy Farmer is a pathology student in Rome puzzling over a succession of suicides, partly because she's doing a thesis on natural vs. faked suicides. Could these people really be killing themselves, or is a murderer at work? Simona (Farmer) works with a young race car driver turned priest, Paul Lenox (the under-rated veteran character actor Barry Primus) to determine the truth. One of these deaths was that of Lenox's sister, and he's convinced she had to have been killed by someone else.

This is never too hard to follow, and it's got at least one appreciably unique gimmick going for it: sunspots, it's theorized, could be inducing some sort of mass psychosis in the minds of the victims. The story is populated with entertaining characters, including Simona's father (Carlo Cattaneo), his romantic partner (Angela Goodwin), and Simona's friend Edgar, played by the handsome Ray Lovelock whom fans of foreign horror will recognize from "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie" and "Last House on the Beach".

Enriched by an Ennio Morricone music score that's equal parts beautiful and spooky, "Autopsy" is more straightforward than some Giallo fans may expect, although it still finds the time to feature some truly hideous, hallucinatory imagery. Use of locations is a plus, as are the performances. Mimsy is appealing and believably vulnerable, Primus is appropriately intense, and Lovelock is amusing to watch every time he's on screen. Credit is due to co-writer and director Armando Crispino, who reels us in immediately with a grabber of an opening.

All in all, this is good stuff; it might not be trashy enough for some lovers of the Giallo genre, but it entertains solidly and stays on track up to its grim finish.

Seven out of 10.