| Title | Follia omicida |
| Origin | Italy, 1981 |
| Genre | Giallo: Horror |
| Director | Riccardo Freda |
| Starring | Stefano Patrizi, Silvia Dionisio, Anita Strindberg, Laura Gemser |
| Music | Franco Mannino |
| Blurb | - |
Riccardo Freda was over seventy when he directed this his final completed work. Always adapting to the times, the Italian maestro moved through the genres of costume drama, peplum, gothic horror, and finally the giallo. Murder Obsession could be regarded as his summing up of his career.
This one even begins on a film set, the fictional director Hans (Henri Garcin) always carrying a camera with him which he calls his "third eye". He also has "Director" written on his chair in childish letters with a marker pen, and allows his assistant's dog to run free between takes. Welcome to the world of Freda, and his often slapdash approach to his art.
The star of the film-within-a-film is also the star of our real one. Stefano Patrizi plays Michael Stanford, thirtyish, a successful lead actor so we are told. His role-within-a-role is as a leather-gloved strangler, jumping out on starlet Beryl (Laura Gemser), ripping off her top, and getting so murderously into the part that it goes well beyond the bounds of method acting. Everyone is shocked by Beryl's near-death experience, but it was the last scene anyway so the director just calls "print it". But Michael is mortified - where did all that rage come from? Could he be destined to suffer it again and again, until he finally kills someone for real?
The shoot wrapped up, Michael relaxes alone at home, strumming his guitar and singing (in English) a ballad, or judging by his interpretation, possibly a dirge. Proving he can manipulate items of furniture just as ineptly as guitar strings, Michael destroys a drawer and some photos fall out. Photos of Mother! It's a surprise and almost a relief to find a character in a psychological thriller so indifferent to his mother that he hasn't bothered seeing her for nigh on twenty years, and whose memories of her hold nothing but fondness. So this is going to be a very short film is it? About ten minutes?
But what the hell, Michael decides he'll go to see his mother (Anita Strindberg) anyway, and he'll take his girlfriend Deborah (Silvia Dionisio) with him too. It's while driving there that we get a hint of the truth: Michael has some serious Father problems. In a strange flashback reverie, Michael and his mother sit watching a formal concert (the dark atmosphere and high-backed chairs are very reminiscent of the "family torture" sequence in Fulci's Lizard) conducted by his father, the "Maestro". Bizarrely, grown Michael is the very image of his father down to the last facial hair, yet Michael aged ten looks nothing like him with his curly blonde locks. And he's staring at his father with absolute daggers! Father then collapses with a badly feigned heart attack. It's all beginning to look very Oedipal.
Michael swerves the Landrover off the road at this point. Events are conspiring to make Michael look like a cack-handed moron, though I'm sure that wasn't the intention. Things like this have to happen in bad films just to keep the story moving along. But it has to be said that Stefano Patrizi is rather poor in the role. Presumably he was the best they could come up with after all the money was spent on assembling such a solid crew of totty.
Eventually Michael and Debs make it to his mother Glenda's isolated mansion. She lives in this decaying pile alone, tended to only by eccentric and rather sinister servant Oliver (John Richardson). Soon the rest of the folks from the film-crew turn up too - Hans, Shirley (Martine Brochard) and Beryl (looking very un-glam in a yellow rain-jacket). Glenda, though more than delighted to see Michael, is unimpressed by the rest of this bunch. Especially poor Debs!
So let the murders commence. I'll spare you any more plot exposition. We've got our haunted house, filled it with our cast of fair maidens and homicidal head-cases, so who needs a credible plot anyway? Certainly not Riccardo Freda! For him it's all about the pictures.
Nighttime in his world is for lightning storms and candelabras. Disembodied footprints pace the stairs. There are zombies, bats and giant Satanic spiders. All clichés, bad ones too, but orchestrated by the Maestro into an almost musical symphony of delirium.
 Forest of thorns. |
 Magical ceremony. |
 Arachnid sexual harrassment. |
A dream sequence goes on for so long it has time to be interrupted by another dream sequence. This short scene, an austerely beautiful magical ritual in a deep crypt of flickering shadows, is perhaps the highlight of the film, and I was disappointed that there was not more in this sublime gothic style. I was eagerly anticipating a very special visual concoction saved up for the ending, and Freda certainly did not let me down!
Freda freely borrows imagery from other horror films, and even directly quotes himself. Such as the small yappy dog zipping up and down the staircase from Double Face, or my favourite, the black leather-gloved hand cutting the circuit-breaker from Tragic Ceremony. Are these deliberate homages, or has he simply run out of ideas? Who can tell, and when the final mix is so effective, who really cares?
Veteran scream-queen Silvia Dionisio is pretty and charming as principal babe. Though Debs being often somewhat put-upon, she's sometimes required to act a little tetchy, and her mouth goes all crooked. Laura Gemser, clearly cast for her name only, is functional, though wisely she is given little to do besides take off her clothes. Anita Strindberg, perhaps perturbed at being cast as practically a grandmother, seems unsure about how to play her role until her character becomes more clearly defined as the story progresses. All three ladies undress frequently enough to maintain interest, though not so often as to move into brown-paper wrapper territory. The rest of the cast make little impact.
There are a few gore effects but they are amusingly bad (an interview with rather sheepish effects man Sergio Stivaletti is included on the disc). At one point a character was bumped off without my even realising it. I thought it was a sort of subliminal flashback and it looked cool. Truth is the effect was so poor it didn't bear holding on screen for longer than three frames.
The music is a little odd, being a mixture of electronic riffs, classics from Bach, and some ponderously clanking contemporary piano pieces. Overall it's effective enough in producing an uncanny atmosphere.
I warmly recommend Murder Obsession to the more forgiving gothic horror fan who doesn't mind his films a touch ropey, and almost completely insane.
Unfortunately this edition from Raro Video is sub-standard. It's an English dub, with some restored scenes with subtitles only. Obviously mastered from VHS it often shows analogue artefacts such as ragged outlines and flickering horizontal lines. The sound is poor with lots of noise and crackle. The image is cropped top and bottom in pretend "widescreen", sometimes cutting off heads - it happens to Laura Gemser in the very first frame.
Clips for download
Laura Gemser nude (minor spoiler, click for stills):
http://rapidshare.com/files/237589801/Laura-Gemser-in-Murder-Obsession-1.avi
(2:12 minutes, 768x576, 17.1MB)
Anita Strindberg topless (minor spoiler, click for stills):
http://rapidshare.com/files/237457156/Anita-Strindberg-in-Murder-Obsession-1.avi
(1:23 minutes, 768x576, 13.1MB)
On Youtube, Silvia Dionisio is tied to a cross (stills):
Ratings
Quality: 4/10 Fun: 9/10
Review copy
| Publisher | Raro Video |
| Format | DVD Region 0, PAL 4:3 (1.85:1 letterbox) |
| Certificate | 18 (UK) |
| Image | Weak VHS transfer, overly cropped top & bottom |
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