Massacre

 

"Please, Jenny. Film making isn't hard. It's like a machine that marches on."

The cast and crew of the supernatural horror film Dirty Blood are using a local hotel as production headquarters. Love triangles, rivalries and backstage scheming plague the production, but star Jennifer (Patrizia Falcone) escapes the madness by spending time with police detective Walter (Gino Concori), who is investigating a recent series of murders. Director Frank (Maurice Poli) decides to host a real séance in order to give his film a sense of realism, but things take a dangerous and spooky turn and soon, members of the cast and crew are picked off by the killer in gruesome fashion. Could the killer be the scheming Assistant director, Robert (Pier Maria Cecchini)? Or jealous actress Liza (Silvia Conit)? Maybe a demon really was released at the séance and is responsible for the murders. It's up to Walter to find out!

Massacre (not to be confused with Crimes) is equal parts sexy and gory, as any good giallo should be. There's plenty of nudity and blood and even a few severed limbs to get the horror fans excited. After a gruesome opening scene, the first half of the film focuses on the soap opera relationships of the cast and crew of the film-within-a-film. Robert and Liza are scheming to seduce Jennifer in order to cause a scandal while Liza is having an affair with lead actor Jean (Robert Egon), who has a contentious relationship with cast mate Adrian (Danny Degli Espositi). But in the second half (after the séance scene), all that information goes out the window and it's full speed ahead - the killings ramp up and the film devolves into a series of stabbings in quick succession. By the time you know it, most of the cast is history and the whole thing ends on a giant question mark.

• This movie is clearly on-brand for director Andrea Bianchi, who made Strip Nude for Your Killer and What the Peeper Saw. It was also produced by the legendary Lucio Fulci, which explains the gore effects.

• You may remember Maurice Poli, who plays the Director, from Five Dolls for the August Moon.

• The "scene in a cemetery" in the checklist above turned out to be a movie set in the film-within-a-film, but it still counts. 

• In one scene, a policeman reports that they entered all the evidence of the murders into a computer, which concluded that they're actually dealing with two killers. The police laugh at the absurdity of this, but the computer turns out to be correct.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

 In the opening scene, the killer effortlessly dismembers a prostitute with a small hatchet like she was made of Play-Doh.

Midway through the film, Adrian puts on a show for the camera, impersonating Joel Gray, Liza Minelli, Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich. I am dying to know how any of this fits into a movie about demon rituals.

The craziest moment in this movie is obviously the séance scene, wherein Madame Yurich's face contorts and inflates as she howls and gets blown back by a gale-force wind.

Fashion Moment:

Here's a moment where a movie about making movies pays homage to a classic movie:

 Also, I love the glam silver lamé gown Jennifer gets to wear in the demon ceremony scene. Very Dana Barrett.