This is a film which is often held up as a classic example of the genre, and is often described along the lines of 'being great fun' by commentators. I disagree.

The plot, or what passes for one, involves a series of murders in and around an apartment block in Rome. Most of the victims are fashion models. An architect, who designed the apartment block in question, falls for a model. He is suspected of being the killer. Several tenants of the building have secrets. The architect decides to go on the run after yet more circumstantial evidence accumulates around him. The real killer is then unmasked.

As you've probably guessed, I'm not going to pull any punches when it comes to this one. It's strange; the set up-models and an apartment block-is ideal, the talent in front of and behind the camera is beyond question, but the film just leaves me cold.

The chief culprit is the script, which is shocking (more so than anything in the film) when you consider that it was penned by Ernesto Gastaldi (sensibly hiding behind a pseudonym, 'Ernesto Gastaldy').  The plot is paper thin, with only the police showing any inclination towards attempting to solve the murders (and limited inclination at that, as  I'll show). George Hilton's architect, Andrea Barto, is bafflingly passive throughout.

He's the prime suspect from the word go, given that he knows the ins and outs of the building he designed, and was the last person to see the second victim alive (apart from the killer, and the witnesses who confirmed to the police that he'd left her on the night in question to get a taxi home). Then a stabbed girl literally falls into his arms in the street as she dies, making it seem as if he was the one who killed her. He flees the scene  of the crime wearing a beige jacket soaked through with blood, which he stubbornly refuses to shed as he races through crowds of Roman onlookers. He then disappears (but makes no attempt to investigate who the actual killer is), as the police are out to arrest him, even though it turns out that the policeman who was chasing him later confirms that he had noticed that the girl had been stabbed before she collapsed into Barto's arms. And this despite his being consumed with making a sandwich in his car at the time, and clearly not noticing what was happening until the girl had died. It's that kind of film.

Barto's not the prime suspect for us audience members, though-that honour falls to Edwige Fenech-playing the model for whom Hilton falls-'s ex-husband, who initiated her into a group sex cult, and who spends his time stalking her and indulging in heavy-handed symbolism involving the titular flowers. He's obviously not guilty, though-this is a giallo, and he's too obvious a suspect. When you remove him (as the killer does, fairly early on) and Barto (who we know from the street stabbing scene is not the killer) from the equation,  we're left with precious few suspects.

It's not just these two characters who act both suspiciously and stupidly, though; every single character could be described using those adjectives. Everyone, that is, apart from Edwige Fenech's menaced heroine, for whom passive is the only descriptive necessary, and her housemate, Marilyn, who is vacuous, stupid, annoying and empathy-free. That's not me being overly sexist and aggressive towards her; it's merely an accurate summation of how the film presents her character. It's a blessed relief when the bitch gets what's coming to her (that is me being sexist and aggressive towards her, channelling my inner Case of the Bloody Iris).

With female characters who are either victims-in-waiting, shameful lesbians or crazy old women, is it any wonder that the male characters don't exactly respect the finer sex? Consider the following choice lines of dialogue:

"Aw sure-we're all human, and every man wants a black girl"
Commissioner Enci bonding with Barto

"I must say you'd tempt any human being"
Predatory lesbian Sheila (who, though she isn't a man, buys wholeheartedly into the general air of sexism) sympathising with Fenech after she's attacked by the killer

"Don't trust your neighbours."
"Which neighbours?"
"The women."
Enci again, who gives no reason as to why the male neighbours are to be trusted

"It's a shame to see a beautiful girl like you wasting her talents. Try the opposite sex; that's what we're here for"
That man Enci, charming the local lesbian

It's a given that the films of the 60s and 70s display some 'alternative' (/regressive) views on female liberation, and women in general. There are other films which display far more hatred of the female of the species, yet which curiously don't alienate me as much as this one. It's possibly because at least misogyny calls for passion on the part of the hater, whereas here we just have lazy, casual disdain. The women here aren't even worth working oneself up into a frenzy of hatred.

The second victim, Mizar, is shown to be a supreme wrestler, defeating man after man in the shadowy nightclub where she works, but this is less a display of female strength than a questionable fetishising of her exotic qualities (she's black, and every man wants a black girl). I'm not sure whether the above dialogue was translated from Gastaldi's script or added by the English dubbers. Even if it's the latter, the film still leaves a lot to be desired in terms of female representation. The casting of Fenech, always a pretty-but-passive presence, is telling (although she was also shagging Luciano Martino, the producer, which might have had something to do with it).

The police, when they're not making sexist wisecracks, are also particularly stupid in this film. Barto has a blood phobia, which Fenech cites as proof of his innocence of the street murder (the detective's alleged sighting of the girl falling into Barto's arms having already been stabbed would probably trump that in the evidence stakes though). Enci replied that "it's perfectly natural for a person with a phobia like that (blood, remember) to be attracted to the sight of blood, in a way." Riiiiight.

A frenzied phone call from Fenech to the sandwich-loving detective to say that she's (erroneously) identified the killer as a burn victim who's the son of her next door neighbour is met by the following reaction: "I get the picture, you found the monster. Some of my best friends are monsters." To Enci's credit, he isn't so quick to dismiss the call, although when he searches for the alleged killer, he fails to open the doors to the massive closet in the apartment, where the burned son secretly resides.

The first (but not last) giallo which features murders at an Etruscan excavation, this film is more commonly known as The Dead Are Alive. I've chosen to ignore that name, however, because as a giallo title, it sucks. Both titles seek to sell an aspect of the film which is undersold within; namely the link between a series of murders and some newly-discovered Etruscan artwork. The artwork depicts a similar series of murders, and the characters toss around the possibility of the Etruscans being soothsayers, or even having returned from the dead, before a late 'breakthrough' of rationalism leads to the conclusion that the killer, a modern-day human, has been in fact merely copied what they've seen in the paintings.

The action takes place around an archaeological dig, led by Alex Cord's alcoholic professor. His ex from New York, who left him after he attempted to kill her in a drunken rage, also happens to live nearby, with her eccentric old lover, an orchestra conductor. The conductor's son happens to be the professor's main assistant. Amid all these coincidences and domestic wranglings, a killer is offing young couples, leaving the corpses posed in recreations of Etruscan art, and putting the same pair of red shoes on each slain woman. There are no shortage of suspects lining up for the local Inspector, but is the killer from modern times, or has an Etruscan returned to kill again?

The answer to that is, of course, no. As already stated, the film doesn't really engage with the Etruscan angle too much. It's a lengthy film-106 minutes-and there's a chance that some material which would have developed this subplot has been excised. There's evidence of snips elsewhere, with an occasional voiceover functioning as an extremely rudimentary commentary which would make Basil Exposition proud. The characters tend to be obliquely introduced too, with the audience having to connect the dots to work out who's who, and how they know each other, which may be further evidence of edits.

There are comparatively few murders, with a lengthy stretch between the second couple's murder (which is actually a single killing, as the male survives) and that of the third couple. The characters' histories are given a full airing in this section, which almost plays like one of Joe d'Amato's dramas, with less sex.We find out about doomed romances, secret wives and one of the guards who works at the burial site tries to work a blackmail scam. We get an almost too-neat selection of suspects from which to choose: the alcoholic archaeologist, his ex who survived his attempted murder, her jealous and crazy lover, the lover's secret-and scorned-wife, the gay choreographer who's secretly helping her, the son who witnessed his mother's infidelities, and the blackmailing guard. 

It's no wonder the Inspector can't get to the bottom of it; everyone has an agenda. Unlike other gialli, where characters act suspiciously for no other reason than to attract the audience's attention as a form of misdirection, here that suspect behaviour is at least justified, given the complex personal histories at the root of it all. What we don't have is a motive; until the climactic revelation, there appears to be nothing concrete tying the murders together. The inspector offers up the usual 'sex maniac' theory after the first killings, and that's gradually elbowed aside by the vague sense that the murders are tied in with the Etruscans-after all, all the victims are either working at the dig site, or are killed there, but that isn't developed much further either.

So, no narratively-satisfying justification for the murders is offered until extremely late in the day. This wouldn't be an issue if there were more of them; however, there are only two proper murder scenes in the film. (The second attack, from which we get our sole survivor, happens off-screen.) Armando Crispino does seek to make up for that by including a reasonably entertaining car chase through narrow village streets (which obviously necessitated great care on the part of the drivers, and much speeding up of footage later on), and several scenes of characters stalking about in the dark. These scenes are solidly executed, if never spectacular, but they do showcase the film's wonderful locations well.

The end revelation isn't a great surprise, particularly as the film tips its hand somewhat by working overtime to cast suspicion on the two main protagonists (which, of course, means they're innocent). It's also a shame that more wasn't made of the Etruscan angle; the close-ups of the demonic painting, which stand in for the eyes of the killer in the classic giallo eye-insert shots, are nice and creepy. The demon as a whole looks great, even if the other paintings which inspire the murderer are a bit iffy.

As just stated, the locations are pretty spectacular, making this one of the most visually-pleasing rural gialli. It's certainly one of the best to listen to; Riz Ortolani's score is superb, and the musical crescendo which accompanies the discovery of the victims is great. It's certainly not a perfect film, and probably leans too far towards character history and psychology over plot and style, but you can see why it kick-started the craze for Etruscan dig gialli (see The Scorpion with Two Tails from 1982 for more on this).

Pieces is not a good film. It is so bad that it's extremely watchable, however. It was produced by Dick Randall, who was also responsible for The French Sex Murders and The Girl in Room 2A, as well as many other exploitation offerings, and Joe D'Amato had a hand in the scripting. The real star here is the director, JP Simon, though, who turned in a work that's extraordinary and breathtaking. Not necessarily for the reasons he'd have hoped, though.*

After a prologue which shows a young boy butchering his mother after she finds him playing with a pornographic jigsaw, we skip ahead forty years, to a university in Boston. The grown-up boy's latent psychosis is triggered by witnessing a skateboarder crash through a large mirror, which mirrors, if you'll excuse the overuse of the word 'mirror', a memory from just before his mother's death, in which she smashed a mirror in anger. It turns out that the psychosis mightn't have all that latent, as the killer has already brought both the pornographic jigsaw and a box containing his mother's old shoes and bloody dress to Boston with him. As he gradually pieces the jigsaw together, he also tries to rebuild his broken mother, using the student body as a well from which he can draw the various parts.

As a giallo, the film is a bit of a disaster (more of that later), but the reason Pieces endures is because it's really, really weird. It's really, really bad too, of course, but there are plenty of boring bad films which have faded from memory. There are so many absurd moments that I won't be able to list them all here, but to note a few: the kung fu teacher who attacks a female undercover officer, faints, and then jumps up again, blaming his behaviour on bad chop suey; said undercover officer being a tennis champion who's moonlighting as a policewoman moonlighting as a tennis teacher; the bizarro dialogue ("The coffee is fine; I love the cream." "Yes. Well, this is New England, of course."; 'Bastard, BASTARD, BASTARD!") and over-the-top performances (everyone except Jack Taylor-whose stoicism is so prevalent that it crosses  into overacting of a kind-and Christopher George, who looks like he's having fun while simultaneously hoping that no-one ever sees the finished product). There are many, many odd and unusual details, though; eccentricity runs through the film's blood and splashes all over the screen. Also like the film's blood.

In terms of the investigation into the murders, we get no real detective work before a climactic breakthrough that's so pedestrian that, again, it's bizarre. After sending in the aforementioned undercover tennis player-cum-policewoman, who is so useless that she essentially takes on a male student as a protector/companion, Christopher George's detective seems content to wait in the shadows, emerging only to make sarky comments and cast aspersions after yet another body is found. He decides upon the innocence of one of the students, Kendall, based on no evidence at all (indeed, Kendall should be one of the leading suspects for the second murder), and practically anoints him as a second-in-command (indeed, Kendall is the student to who Lynda Day's policewoman turns for protection). George makes comments about how he's happy to use the entire police budget to catch the killer, yet the breakthrough comes thanks to Kendall (again), who is part of a crack team of two who are assigned to trawl through police records seeking any mention of the faculty staff (one of the most perfunctory and throwaway case-crackings ever). Maybe the rest of the police force, and budget, had their hands full keeping any knowledge of the murders of four students and one reporter reaching the outside world.

The mystery aspect is largely a dud, too, and if you haven't guessed the killer well before the finale you're a fucking idiot. A large part of the problem is the opening sequence-it's extremely blunt and to-the-point, with no ambiguity whatsoever. Compare it to the opening of Deep Red, which portrays similar events in a far more ambiguous, artful and interesting manner. Interesting might be the wrong word to use here, as the opening to Pieces is typically entertaining and watchable, but it immediately backs the mystery into a corner from which it can't escape. We know straight away that the killer is a male, in his mid-to-late forties, which leaves us with, at best, four suspects, and eliminates the entire student body as suspects (for the audience, if not the police within the film [although Christopher George is extremely quick to do just that]).

Of the four pieces which comprise the puzzle of the murderer's identity, one is George himself, which would probably have been a twist too imaginative for the four heads which came up with the screenplay; one is the gardener, played by Paul L Smith channelling Robin Williams' then-recent portrayal of Popeye, and acting so suspiciously that he couldn't possibly be guilty; one is Jack Taylor's repressed homosexual professor, who the Dean tells us early on lives with his mother, which would appear to rule him out (although it could be an adopted mother, to be fair). The final suspect is Edmund Purdom's Dean, who is keen to keep hoardes of policemen off the campus, but nonetheless wants to provide as much assistance to the investigation as he reasonably can. I'll leave it to you to work out which one is guilty. If you're struggling, the third victim talks to the killer in one of those POV one-sided conversations which only happen in films, recognising him and calling him 'Sir', which helpfully rules out half of the suspects in one fell swoop.