Director: Mario Landi
Year: 1979
Country: Italy
Alternate Titles: Giallo a Venezia; Gore in Venice; Mystery in Venice
Genre: Giallo; Exploitation
Plot:
Finding a dead couple near a canal, a Venetian detective investigating the crimes ties the couple's background into a perverse ring of sordid sex and drugs that connects the couple to a ravenous killer prowling the city streets and must find a way of stopping the maniac from carrying on.
Review:
This is one of the better sleazy Giallo in the genre. What tends to make this one such a prominent aspect of that storyline is the fact that this one so willingly and knowingly engages in such affairs for a vast majority of it's running time. Employing the storyline that the couple were frequently engaging in numerous perverted acts, such as having sex in public while others watched, coercing her into sleeping with several men while he secretly pleasures himself or even working himself into a sexual frenzy by whipping her before lovemaking all combine together with self-pleasure sequences and near-constant nudity all sell this one as a sleazy genre effort incredibly well. As it ranges into the pornographic with several of their encounters becoming actual rapes with the randomness of which he jumps her and forces it to actually happen, it's another aspect of that full-on sleaze displayed here.
However, none of that comes close to fully reveling in sleaze that the film's kills show which are some of the most brutal in the genre and are done in such loving close-up that the spurting wounds are rendered in crude if still-full detail as scenes like the gutting of a victim with a pair of scissors or getting shot before being doused with gasoline and set on fire with the eyeball swiveling in its socket surrounded by charred flesh, while two others are even more exploitative. The first is a stabbing in a woman's private area in such a frenzy that it bleeds copiously down the thigh, yet as gruesome and vicious as that it's hard to compare to the sequence where the killer ties a victim down and cuts into their leg with a carving knife who passes out from the experience, then the killer rouses them in order to carry on, an act of depravity that couples together with the grindhouse-style porn to make for a truly over-the-top and gratuitous sleaze-fest. When it moves away and becomes a more straightforward giallo, there's less of interest but it still works with some nice points in the investigation angle here. The way it winds out is rather rudimentary but still carries a few twists and turns that move it along while it's main mystery is handled with a nice touch.
Although these make the film fun, it still features a few minor flaws. The main issue is that the film's main reason for existing might deter those from the film. This one goes so far into extreme violence and sex that it really might be offensive with as much emphasis on their sex lives as well as the utterly brutal kills that the frequency makes it quite troubling to focus on other areas that there's the potential for the film to become bland. Even without that problem, the fact that the film's central investigation doesn't seem to make much sense, in the long run, is a big factor, for most Giallo are based on that factor to operate as this one not only gives away the killer from the onset but also features a ridiculous final ten minutes that piles on some loopy scenes of ludicrous actions and nonsensical conclusions which lowers this overall. These end up giving this one it's main problematic areas.
Overview: ****/5
Certainly an unrepentant and deliriously trashy effort that contains just about all the hallmarks one could want in such efforts, there's still the issue of whether this is something for an individual to go through which dictates it's purpose. Only go into this one if you're a hardcore apologist of the genre, curious about the film due to its' background or those wanting to dwell on the seedier aspects of the style, while those with no desire to do so should avoid outright.
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