One of the more out-there 80s Italian films (which is saying something), this is one of a number of gialli set in suburban villi (villas) which formed something of a subgenre at the time (think Tenebrae and A Blade in the Dark). 

Former model Gloria has inherited her dead husband's wealth, and spends her time helpfully expositing the circumstances of his death and running a nudie magazine. When models begin turning up dead, their corpses being photographed in a mysterious location in front of a giant snapshot of Gloria from her modelling days, it seems clear an obsession with her is the root cause. Is the killer trying to plant suspicion on Gloria, or are they trying to drive up sales of the magazine through publicity? Or are they doing the murders because of the most garbled, nonsensical bit of reasoning you've ever heard? (Yes.) Will Gloria escape alive, will the genre stalwarts George Eastman and Daria Nicolodi be given anything at all to do with their characters, and will Gloria's pervy peeping tom neighbour get his comeuppance for being a smarmy little sex pervert?

Well, no, he won't actually-he'll turn out to be the hero. But first things first. This film is in many ways a long, long way from the early examples of the genre (which was, of course, pretty much invented by Delirium director Lamberto Bava's father, Mario), but it could also be seen as a very 1980s updating of Blood and Black Lace. Consider the fashion house(ish) setting, the almost total absence of a logical A-B-C mystery (unlike The Girl Who Knew Too Much-excellent reference to the killer in that film's motive there), and the preponderance of pulsing colourful lights. However, Lamberto and Mario are very different directors. To be specific, Mario was an extremely skilled craftsman, capable of creating sumptuous and ingenious visuals on the skimpiest of budgets. Lamberto was not a skilled craftsman, but he could create some damn entertaining films. And this is one of the most entertaining of the lot.

One of the main 'innovations' of this film, and something which has been discussed at length before now, is the 'point-of-view' element to the early couple of murder scenes. Apart from a couple of brief instances this doesn't actually involve a POV camera, rather the general mise-en-scene morphs into a reflection of the killer's warped state of mind. The upshot is that we see the victims as a walking eyeball and bee respectively, lit by an expressionistic pulsing colour-changing light. The bee victim (played by Sabrina of 'Boys, Boys, Boys' fame) is clearly depicted as such because the killer is about to kill her with a load of bees, and the first victim-the walking eyeball-is presumably a hint at the scopophilic* subtext for anyone who's missed it.

The third murder scene (incorporating the third and fourth murders) dispenses with the subjective shenanigans, with both murders occurring offscreen. This, of course, should be an indicator to any serious giallohound that all may not be what it seems. Indeed, (SPOILERS!) the 'mystery' depends on us buying Gloria failing to notice that her brother isn't actually dead, merely made up to appear so. This is something which can work(ish) in literature (as Agatha Christie showed in one of her most famous works), but on film it's problematic. We, the audience, buy the apparent murder-after all, the makeup has been applied by the same makeup artist who's created all the other death effects in the film!-but in the world of the film it stretches credulity to breaking point to suggest that Gloria wouldn't notice that something's amiss. Saying that, there would be an undeniable shock to seeing a loved one apparently dead, so critical faculties might not necessarily be firing on all cylinders. Either way, we as the audience have no real way of telling, which makes it almost impossible to crack the case using deductive reasoning (something which this film also shared with B&BL).  (END SPOILERS)

The film does use some classic misdirection/red herring-planting techniques. George Eastman, playing a scoundrel former lover of Gloria, is shown to repeatedly lie about his whereabouts, capped by a wonderful moment where we see him telling Gloria over the phone that he'll be back in Rome next Monday, with the Colosseum in full view behind him. There are also frequent cuts to Flora, Gloria's former mentor and current business rival, acting suspiciously right after evidence of the latest murder has surfaced. This is something I actually played with in a slightly different manner in my own giallo, cutting to a certain character after almost all of the murder scenes, making sure each time that she was behaving in a normal, unsuspicious manner. The idea was that the audience might  notice and think that I was trying to sneak a link between the character and the murders past them, when in fact the character turns out to be innocent.

Lambava goes so far as to (SPOILERS) try to sneak a couple of cheeky references to the killer's guilt past the audience, with no double-bluffing involved. The killer-someone very close to Gloria who is instrumental in the day-to-day operations of her publishing empire-tells her after the latest model's death that "sales are booming," to which Gloria replies "They should-thanks to all the work you've done."  Minutes later, after viewing the corpse of Beegirl (who he'd shagged right before she died), he muses aloud that he was "probably the last one to see her alive." The police detective, understandably not picking up on the fact that the killer is planting information for the film's audience to notice on a second viewing of the film,  merely replies by saying "The last one? No. You're forgetting her killer." (END SPOILERS)

There are a few moments which suggest that the film is aware of the mild absurdity of its setting, with the struggle of a rich businesswoman to hang on to her publishing empire not exactly something to which we can all relate. A throwaway reference is made to Gloria's 'Ask Gloria' column in her mag being written by someone else, and the predatory competitor who keeps trying to buy Gloria out barks for an alcoholic loosener, to which her assistant replies: "Isn't is a little early to be drinking? It's not quite 9:30 yet." (This is 9:30am I hasten to add.) Another moment which is either knowingly filmic or showing an unthinking adherence to cliché comes when George Eastman mentions a proposition to Gloria in a bar, only for us to cut to the couple walking into her house, seamlessly picking up the conversation where they left off in the bar. This simply doesn't happen in real life, any is merely a tool used by films to expediently move characters from one location to another without disrupting the flow too much (although The Limey does experiment with this technique, to extremely interesting effect. However, that's one of the greatest films ever made; Delirium is not). 

I've gotten this far without mentioning sex or nudity too much, for which I probably deserve a round, juicy medal. Delirium seems to have been conceived by producer Luciano Martino to showcase lead actress Serena's Grandis, although her acting ability is fairly minisculo. She even manages to persuade George Eastman to dispense with his trademark sex jeans (think Joe D'Amato's Caribbean films) for a bathtub romp, although he does seem to focus most of his attentions on the outside of her thigh. Being very much a product of a pre-MeToo era, in an un-MeToo country, the film's attitude towards women is predictably iffy. The first victim responds to a warning about going home alone from a party at Gloria's house ("You never know who you might run into") with a glib reply that could (one would hope) only have been written by a middle-aged man ("Just as long as he's cute"). The film is drenched with the sexual allure of the female body, with the killer's motive (although mostly garbled nonsense) stemming from his inability to deal with same. It's not unironic that a film which ostensibly judges a killer for his sexual perversions is simultaneously salivating over voluptuous female bodies (literally simultaneously when it comes to the film's climax [which features the killer being shot in the dick and splooshing blood all over Gloria's exposed body]).

The nosey neighbour, played by Colombian cyclist Rigoberto Uran (there's a niche reference for you) is clearly a take-off of Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo. His character is also someone to whom the progress of time and societal standards have not been kind. His pervy phone shtick is tolerated to a ridiculous degree by Gloria, and the fact that he's lonely and disabled hardly excuses his behaviour. In some ways it's refreshing to see a disabled character who's not the focus of the film's sympathy (nor is his disability used as a dubious justification for his being  the murderer). However, (SPOILERS) his ultimate status as the 'hero' of the film leaves something of a sour taste, and I defy anyone to witness his shit-eating grin after vanquishing the murderer and not feel an intense urge to break his spine so the fucker really can't walk. (END SPOILERS.)  Still, even when it's making you angry, the film is hard to hate. It's not a great giallo, or even a good one. It's not a good film by most metrics. But it sure as shit is mental (delirious) and guaranteed to entertain. Classic Lambava.

*For those of you who aren't wankers who studied English Literature or Film Studies at university, scopophilia is pleasure derived from observing/looking, usually of an erotic bent. Slasher films tend to be a rich ground for discourse on the subject, due to the frequent use of POV shots and nudie ladies, and her we also have the nosey neighbour and the general theme of photographing women for good measure.

Of all the films about which I say 'this isn't really a giallo, but...' this is among the most not-really-a-giallo of them all. To be honest, I'm only including it because I remembered it as having slightly more of a mystery at the centre, and thus took notes as I watched it, and I don't want those wrist exertions to go to waste. 

Lucio Fulci, playing himself (or a very similar character who has the same job, face and body as him, but with a different voice-he was dubbed by someone else in every version-and a made up title [Doctor]) is gradually unravelling. He's knee-deep in production on his latest gore epic, and having increasing trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy. As he seeks solace in the metaphorical arms and literal mind of a psychoanalyst, local prostitutes begin to turn up dead. Does the trail of destruction lead, as he himself believes, to Fulci's own door? 

No, it doesn't-the psychoanalyst is the killer. That's not overly a spoiler, as he lays bare his fiendish plan to frame Lucio for his killings at the half hour mark of the film, which I would deem to be early enough to not constitute a spoiler. If you disagree, I can only apologise. However, to approach this film as a mystery film is to miss the point (and I can speak from experience; see opening para). It's really more an exercise in self-satire/parody, with Fulci simultaneously embracing and disparaging his reputation as a gorehound director. Saying that, much of the film-certainly the bulk of the middle third-consists of gore clips recycled from other films he'd produced or directed, so the self-examination conceit is likely the result of expediency as much as a genuine wish to interrogate his career and reputation.

He's certainly not afraid to dive wholeheartedly into the role and 'character', one early sequence constructed around orgy clips from his own Ghosts of Sodom making him come across as a demented old pervert. The set-up was possibly conceived as an excuse to take another pop at one of Fulci's favourite targets (along with the church): psychoanalysis (apart from being an excuse to recycle a lot of old footage). The psychoanalyst  (/psycho analyst) is shown to be exploiting his patient for personal gain, and he salaciously gets off on watching Fulci's goriest work. Fulci himself makes reference to the cliché of horror films inspiring real-life violence, and that's exactly what does happen with the good doctor here.* 

However, the fact that the on-screen violence is shown to be inspiring the 'real' life murders of the doc suggests an ambivalence on Fucli's part towards his work and cinematic violence in general. Far from repudiating the (ridiculous) theory linking on- and off-screen violence, he himself is influenced by the power of his filmic work to such an extent that he seems unable to distinguish between the two. So, we can interpret the inclusion of the psychoanalyst as a dig at what he sees as an exploitation of patients, and possibly an over-reliance on the power of images within that profession, but there's also an unquestionable ambivalence towards the power of the images which he himself created. 

Another way of looking at it would be to simply say that his own career, and thus self, was consumed by the power of the violent image to such an extent that it left precious little else. Certainly on a professional level, by the time he made this film he was only able to secure budgets to make horror films, and barrel-scraping budgets at that. 

So, let's deal with the film itself a little bit. It does bear some structural similarities with gialli, with a killer targeting prostitutes around Roma, and a bewildered central figure struggling to prove their innocence. However, the film takes almost every possible opportunity to subvert standard giallo practice, and could thus almost be seen as an anti-giallo. To give but a few examples: the killer outs themselves before any murders have been committed, the central character has no part in proving his innocence, and the final confrontation between killer and police occurs entirely off-screen. The police, in fact, play absolutely no part, with the Chief Inspector being on holiday for the duration of the film (and presumably not viewing the newly-active serial killer as worth abandoning the holiday for).

The murder scenes, which are mainly culled from existing films, show the difference between a stalk-and-slash set piece and a gore scene. These aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, as a tense stalk-and-slash can easily be followed by a gore-heavy murder, but gialli tended to contain examples of the former. We get a couple of tense scenes here, courtesy of giallo/slasher hybrid Massacre, but the rest of the inserts are exercises in special effects, which, shorn of any context, quickly lose any inherent power to shock. As a general rule, the camera stays still for gore scenes, its placement designed to showcase the special effects, whereas for tense stalk-and-slash sequences, the camera glides around the characters, functioning as an invisible net closing in on its victims. Even the stalk-and-slash scenes from Massacre don't really work when viewed here, as there's no real tension generated by placing characters we've never met before in peril. A talented director could, of course, potentially make an amazing standalone stalk scene, but that label doesn't really apply to Andrea Bianchi, who made Massacre. However, what little he does accomplish with his forest canoodling scenes merely highlights the lack of punch and affect afflicting the rest of the insert scenes. 

The fact that the audience knows the identity of the killer leaves Fulci as the only real presence in the film who's operating in the dark. He functions as a kind of audience cipher for much of the film-particularly the  insert-heavy middle third-standing around and watching the horrific goings-on, but powerless to intervene. (This is, of course, has much to do with the impossibility of editing him into already-existing footage.) He's impotent in the face of the horrific goings on, and clueless as to the identity of the murderer, almost as if Fulci is trying to create a cut-price copy of Dario Argento's audience-culpability treatise contained in his then-recent giallo Opera. 

The film's not unwatchable-Fulci actually commits gamely to proceedings, and the interweaving of the old footage is occasionally neatly done, not least when he recruits Robert Egon to reprise his role from Ghosts of Sodom (although the remainder of the Sodom footage is terribly shoehorned in, so he giveth and taketh at the same time). If there's any serious attempt to get to grips with his legacy, we can only conclude that he's reached a kind of uneasy truce with his work, as the final scene breaks the fourth wall with the wrapping of the filming of A Cat in the Brain, and he contentedly sails off into the sunset (on a yacht called 'Perversion') accompanied by a busty brunette. The truth is likely that he was less-than-satisfied, both with his career at this point and this film in particular, but given the paucity of budget he's done OK. Even if he clearly doesn't know how to turn on a microwave.

*The doc articulates the issue quite succinctly in an early session with Fulci, telling him that he's struggling due to a "breaking down [of] the boundary between what you film and what's real." This is accompanied by a portentious zoom into his face, denoting this as an Important Moment in the film. The session begins (onscreen, at least) in slightly more prosaic fashion, the doc mentioning that the recent manifestations of Fulci's mania have involved a (very specific) fear of "hamburgers and gardeners." This leads to Fulci describing his interactions with both (which we've already seen), despite the fact that he must have already just told the doc about them, hence the doc's comment which opened the scene. This is a classic example of filmic dialogue which bears no relation to how people actually talk in real life (something not uncommon in Italian genre films).