This is the 'A Quiet Place to Kill' Paranoia, rather than the 'Orgasmo' Paranoia. Confused (a la the designer of the above poster)? Don't be-if that means nothing to you then don't worry your pretty little/big/average-sized head about it; just read on...

Maurice has a problem-his wives keep trying to kill him. Three years after her unsuccessful attempt, his ex-wife Helen, now a racing driver, is involved in a big smash during a qualifying event. Maurice's new wife, Constance, invites her to recuperate with them. After mulling over the offer, Helen ditches her middle-aged boyf and drives to Majorca (presumably aided by a boat at some point), where she's welcomed with suspiciously open arms by her ex and his newbie. It's not long before Maurice is attempting to make up for lost time by worming his way into Helen's pants, assassination attempts apparently forgiven. Constance reveals her unhappiness to Helen; she knows Maurice is only interested in her for her money, and the two of them acknowledge that Maurice is their 'vice'. So, another assassination attempt is in order! This one, staged on a yacht, goes pretty drastically wrong, however, ending up with Constance dying. Seconds later, friends of hers pull up alongside in their yacht, necessitating a staged capsizing to dispose of the body. Just when Helen and Maurice think they're in the clear, Constance's daughter Susan turns up, armed with an armful of potentially 'armful suspicions. What's more, Maurice's scopophilic friend Harry turns out to have been filming the yachts at the time of the capsizing, presumably capturing details of the murder. In such circumstances, it's unsurprising that Helen and Maurice fall into the soft, enveloping grip of a big dose of paranoia...

This was one of the last of the main wave of beautiful-rich-people-lazing-in-the-sunshine gialli, a subgenre which was Lenzi's speciality for a couple of years. Argento-y black gloved killers are very much not in evidence; there are two deaths, only one of which is truly pre-meditated. What is in evidence are the usual tropes: sunshine, sea, sex and Sorel.  The decor is fabulously/horrendously 60s, the music is that mix of jaunty numbers, ballads and do-bee-do chanting which is unmistakeably giallo, and some of the characters are not, believe it or not, all that they seem. In short, this is comfortable territory for those of you who are familiar with the genre (which would be those of you who understood what I said above re: orgasms and quiet places).

There's nothing especially outstanding about this film; enjoyment is likely to be derived from the cosy comforts detailed above. The paranoia which grips the murderous couple isn't necessarily going to translate to the audience, as they've dispatched arguably the most sympathetic character.​ Neither Carroll Baker nor Jean Sorel were necessarily titans in the acting department either, although both turn in tolerable performances, Baker especially. It's just hard to really connect with the characters in these films, who inhabit a world vastly different to that in which the majority of us reside. Sorel's Maurice, for example, seems to think that the only way to generate income is to find a woman to bankroll him. Get a job you sexy layabout!

There are some nice directorial flourishes, although Lenzi certainly isn't firing on all cylinders here. The locations are all attractively photographed, and he knows when to linger on a facial close-up and when to cut around things. (Or, at least his editor does.) The red veil which blows in frame-left to obscure Helen's face when she first kisses Maurice is a neat/heavy-handed (depending on your tolerance for symbolism in films) touch, and the frequent zooms don't grate. All in all, it's a competent craftsman crafting a competent product.

 There are some tell-tale signs of Future Lenzi, mostly in the scene at the pigeon shooting venue. Those of us who've been clay pigeon shooting and wondered why the clay discs are referred to as 'pigeons' will find out why here, amid much actual avian carnage. Two of Maurice's friends advise Susan to take up shooting, claiming that killing animals sublimates an apparently innate human desire to murder. If that is indeed the case, Lenzi's filmmaking career must have saved countless lives, especially in the early eighties.

The film ends with evil apparently winning out, as we watch the final pieces of a complex plan fall into place, before a last minute twist confounds the plotters. This was possibly an imposed ending, as a concession to a 'evil-must-pay' strain of morality, but possibly not; it's a neat twist which gives the film an extra punch. SPOILERS FROM HERE The discovery of the corpse of Constance, legs bound by a thick rope, right at the site of Helen's crash* might be a bit too convenient, but fuck it, it makes for a mighty neat resolution. Personally I'd have liked Albert Dalbes' camera-obsessed doctor** to have popped up again, having been filming the scene of the accident. It would've been more incongruous than the body being discovered in that same location, sure, but the idea that he happened to film the yacht shenanigans without actually seeing what happened is pretty ludicrous.*** Even as is, the ending foregrounds the fact that this is a film we're watching, intended as entertainment, and entertainment is what we've gotten. 

*(STILL SPOILERS) Bearing in mind her eventual role in the plot, you have to admire the cojones of Susan to insist that the police renew the search for her mother's body.  She clearly puts such stock in verisimilitude of performance that she's willing to jeopardise the entire plan.

The late 1960s were certainly a time of plenty for anyone who was partial to zany gialli starring Jean Louis Trintignant and Ewa Aulin. Hot on the heels of the previous year's Deadly Sweet, this effort is similarly stylish, has similarly experimental editing, and has about the same amount of focus on the mystery aspect (which is to say, very, very little). 

Marco and Anna are on the down-slope of a marriage, with he apparently having a proclivity for secretly murdering prostitutes in a swanky hotel, with the cooperation of the staff. She's rich, and together they run a chicken farm on the edge of town, where they've recently sacked all their workers, replacing them with Technology. They live with Gabri, Anna's cousin, who is secretly having an affair with Marco. She's also pretending to spy on him for Anna, and also seems to be rather close to Mondaini, a hip young marketing guru who's been brought in by Big Chicken Inc. to design a new advertising campaign with Marco. Will Marco's predilection for murdering whores come back to haunt him? Will Anna find happiness by going undercover as one of his whores? Will Gabri's true intentions be revealed? And will those shots of chickens being killed and defeathered ever end?

Although this film has much in common stylistically with Deadly Sweet, there are marked differences on a thematic level. Deadly Sweet is a film about films, existing on a superficial-but extremely seductive and fun-level, whereas here Questi ladels on the political subtext. You could probably view this as nothing more than an eccentric arty film which anticipates the 'rich people sleeping around' trope which predominated in late 60s Lenzi-lensed gialli, but sets the action in a chicken farm as opposed to a scenic coastal location. However, that would involve ignoring a lot of the subtle, and not-so-subtle, political elements which Questi liberally sprinkles throughout the film. I should say at this point that arty films with a heavy political subtext aren't exactly my cup of tea generally, but I did find  Death Laid... extremely watchable, and the 104 minutes flew by much faster than I'd been anticipating (not because I watched it on fast forward; they actually went by in 104 minutes. I'm merely referring to my subjective experience of time, don't you know). Right, let's do some thematic diving!

The two main points that Questi is making, as far as I can make out, concern, broadly speaking, vegetarianism and socialism. It might be more correct to say that they are the two causes he's supporting. The sequence showing chickens being killed and cleaned goes on for an uncomfortably long time, which is, of course, entirely the point. Questi is showing us a tiny part of the process by which chicken arrives on our plates ready for consumption. He shows us apparatus which itself 'consumes' the chickens, allowing for their swift execution, and then lingers over the process by which the carcasses are relieved of  their feathers. The scene is shot fairly matter-of-factly, and the power, and message, comes from the fact that we're aware that we're watching real animals being slaughtered and treated. The sound effects and editing do accumulate a sort of weight, though, and anyone who can watch the sequence without feeling even the tiniest bit queasy deserves to be given free chicken dinners for life.

The farm workers, who gather outside the perimeter, occasionally breaching it to issue empty threats against Marco and Anna, represent the Workers  being abandoned by Big Corporations in the race to accumulate wealth. The attitude of the corporation is neatly summed up when Marco's concerns about genetically modifying chickens are dismissed as being "moral," which is outside their wheelhouse of concerns. The machinery which is shown to be more efficient and cost-effective than the workers is also shown to be dangerous, as it consumes people and animals indiscriminately. 

There are parallels drawn between the workers and the chickens, again made rather explicit by the advertising campaign Mondaini presents to Marco, which (hilariously) seeks to anthropomorphise the chicken by presenting him in a variety of everyday human roles.  The corporation exploits the chickens for profit, just as it previously exploited the workers, who have been consumed and spat out by the system much as the mechanised killing apparatus taken in chicks and spits out paste. The final shot of the film, showing a police officer eating a chicken egg, is another heavy-handed depiction of the Powerful Elite consuming those lower than them.

So, Questi is pro-vegetariamism and anti-worker exploitation. One further layer which is worth uncovering concerns the difference between illusion and reality. There are a couple of different ways in which this is interrogated in the film; the most obvious being the use of real footage of chickens being slaughtered versus the illusory murders of humans, achieved using make-up effects. However, there's another layer to this, as (SPOILER) Marco's prostitute killings are revealed to be nothing more than kinky role play, with the prostitutes willingly playing dress-up (and extolling his virtues to the police when they come asking about him). Neither Gabri not Mondaini know that these killings are just pretend; they think Marco genuinely kills the hookers, which forms the cornerstone of their devious plan to take over the family business. You could stretch things a bit and say that Questi's taking aim here at those who object to cinematic violence, or at least conflate it with real life acts. His previous film, Django, Kill!  was certainly violent, but, like this film, it took place in an idiosyncratic world, very much divorced from reality. And Questi, who fought in the resistance during WW2, was very much aware of the realities of actual violence.

'Idiosyncratic' is certainly an apt term to describe the world in which Death Laid takes place (just patting myself on the back there for coming up with it a couple of sentences ago). Real human emotions are on display-the ennui of the ageing rich couple is a constant theme, and Marco and Gabri share one scene in which he articulates an achingly-real desire to escape his life and start again. The fact that we think he's a murderer undercuts the scene's effectiveness somewhat, but it nonetheless achieves a certain level of nostalgic resonance. Marco's perpetually confused friend, who's recovering from electro-shock therapy and searching for a road which sounds suspiciously like the one in Robert Frost's wood, evokes ideas of memory, life decisions and whether we can ever truly begin again.