Nine Guests for a Crime

Nine Guests For a Crime

"If the killer is a lunatic, he's a very astute lunatic."

When a wealthy family takes a two-week vacation to their private island estate, it's anything but relaxing. The group includes family patriarch Ubaldo (Arthur Kennedy) his new young wife, Giulia (Caroline Laurente), Umbaldo's sister, Aunt Elizabeth (Dania Ghia), Umbaldo's sons, Michele (Massimo Foschi), Walter (Venantino Venantini), and Lorenzo (John Richardson), and their respective wives, Carla (Sofia Dionisio, credited as Flavia Fabiani), Patrizia (Loretta Persichetti), and Greta (Rita Silva). Family tensions run high as Michele carries on a secret affair with his stepmother and Walter has his own affair with his sister-in-law Greta. But things really take a turn when people start turning up dead and there is no way off the island. Could gold-digger Giulia be killing off the competition for Ubaldo's inheritance? And what about Aunt Elizabeth's theory that the ghost of her long-dead lover, Carlo (uncredited) has returned to avenge his death? Who will be left alive? It all leads to a bloody, explosive ending!

Like Mario Bava's Five Dolls For an August Moon, Nine Guests For a Crime is based on Agatha Christie's famous 1939 novel And Then There Were None.  But Nine Guests takes it a step further and also incorporates elements of Bava's Bay of Blood, including an astronomical body count and some unusual and highly dramatic murder scenes. 

• You may remember Arthur Kennedy as American journalist Jackson Bentley in Laurence of Arabia or as Pontius Pilate in the 1961 movie Barabbas.
• Director Fernando Baldi was one of those directors who did everything - biblical epics, comedies, Westerns, war movies, and documentaries. This is his only giallo.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

Who was the charred skeleton hanging in the closet? Was that Charlie? It's never made quite clear.

When Carla starts thrashing around in the water and shouting that she's drowning, everyone just stops and stares for a ridiculously long time. Sure, maybe she's pulled pranks in the past that looked similar to this, but wouldn't it be better to get out there and find out, rather than discuss it for five minutes?

One has to marvel at the audacity of the two couples having noisy affairs under their respective partners' noses on this tiny island in a cramped cottage. And sometimes – brazenly – in the same room as a sleeping spouse.

Fashion Moment

Psychic Carla wears this breezy multi-colored cover-up (which covers up nothing at all) in a scene where she foretells great suffering and despair.

Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye

Seven Deaths In the Cat's Eye

"James, I shall truly go mad if this keeps on."

After being expelled from her boarding school for naughty behavior, Corringa (Jane Birkin) visits her relatives at the family castle in Scotland. Among those living at the castle, she finds her mother (Dana Ghia), her aunt, Lady Mary MacGrieff (Françoise Christophe), her uncle, Dr. Franz (Anton Diffring), and their son, Lord James MacGrieff (Hiram Keller), who is as moody and troubled as he his young and handsome. When Corringa's mother is brutally murdered, she learns that the people in these parts take the family lore – stories of vampires and murder – very seriously. After the funeral, Corringa is shocked to discover that her mother's coffin has been busted open and that the body is missing.  When more and more people are found dead, Corringa is left to wonder if her mother has become a vampire and if James could be one too. It would certainly explain his odd behavior. The only witness to the gruesome attacks is the family cat.  But is it a witness... or the killer?

Seven Deaths In the Cat's Eye (not to be confused with The Cat With Jade Eyes) is Antonio Margheriti's fusion of giallo and Gothic horror. I'd say that the movie is about 50% of each and wavers between the two worlds but, in the end, it's clearly a giallo. In a way, the Gothic elements (dark castle, family curse, vampires, catacombs, bats, etc.) act as a cover for the killer and his very human motives, diverting attention away from what's really going on. To put it another way, superstition is an accomplice in the killings.

• The castle and most of the fashions may be from the 19th Century or earlier, but the movie is actually set in the 1920's. We can tell by the jazz records, the mention of Sigmund Freud, and Corringa's modern attire in the funeral scene (see below).
• A gorilla locked in a castle suspected of murder? This is a not-even-subtle appropriation from Poe's "Murders In the Rue Morgue." The supernatural angle and the family curse are clearly inspired by "The Fall of the House of Usher."
• If Antonio Margheriti's name sounds familiar, then you my be a Tarantino fan. In Inglourious Basterds, Sgt. Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth) goes undercover as Italian cameraman "Antonio Margheriti" when the commandos infiltrate the Nazi movie premiere. It's Tarantino's homage to the great pulp director.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

You read correctly. This is a movie that sheds suspicion of murder on a fluffy lap cat.  In fact, here's a drinking game for Seven Deaths In the Cat's Eye: drink every time the cat shoots a menacing look at the camera. Sip if it's just a drawing of the cat.

The cat's name is "Kitty," by the way.

Fashion Moment

Sad but fashion-forward. Corringa wears black feathers and a stylish bell hat. It's what all the flappers in mourning are wearing this season.