Director: Piccio Raffanini
Year: 1987
Country: Italy
Alternate Titles: Pathos - Segreta inquietudine; Pathos (Un sapore di paura)
Genre: Giallo
Plot:
Trying to meet new deadlines, a photographer tries to keep her assistant’s antics in check as she tries to deliver the challenging prompts for work, but when a series of deaths strike her coworkers tries to solve the identity of the killer and their reason for targeting her before it's too late.
Review:
This was a pretty middling if occasionally enjoyable genre effort. Among the more likable factors with this one comes from the rather likable sense of style imparted onto the magazine shoots, which brings about a fairly enjoyable futuristic vibe to the presentation. With the idea of everything going through a stylized, slick, and glossy, neon-drenched aesthetic that simply screams as being from that particular time period, it leaves the whole presentation with a wholly memorable and unique atmosphere that comes across quite well. That’s only further enhanced by the sense of futuristic sensibilities in the photoshoots, which take on a decidedly unique feeling where the sex and sadism attempted in the posed figures of the modeling shoots are a step away from what’s going on during the killer’s rampage. The rampant nudity featured not just here but also the constant sexual encounters featured here also manage to focus heavily on the bizarre status and futuristic vibes here, with everything getting a unique vibe and feeling.
Outside of this, there’s not much to the film overall. The main drawback here is that the central mystery angle is just not that interesting, with the whole thing being quite easy to guess from the outset. Since there’s so little time spent on the various investigative setpieces until the end, when far too many have been murdered for it not to make sense, it feels more like a series of vignettes on the sexually-charged photoshoots taking up the majority of the running time, with a few brief interjections to murder someone as a means of breaking up these scenes. While the idea of using their advanced equipment and the different shoots to try coming up with extra clues as a way to help solve the case is a slightly novel touch, this comes across way too late in the film to have much merit against the rest of the scenes featured here, as there’s not much about it featured throughout. That goes along with the generally lifeless music-video gloss that goes over the whole film, which, while it all adds a wholly unique atmosphere to the film, doesn’t have any kind of energy or enthusiasm as it takes any kind of setpiece and becomes a bizarre form of posing that keeps this into a generally dull and lifeless feature.
Overview: *.5/5
A mostly dull and underwhelming giallo, this one has more intriguing ideas than anything else, and comes across as rather problematic and troublesome than anything else. Those with an interest in the subject matter, are curious about this one, or who are massive fans of late-era gialli will want to give it a shot, while most others out there should heed caution.
This review is part of our ongoing series of reviews for Italian Horror Month, every November on the site:
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