Footprints in Delirium: Exploring the Art Giallo, Part 2

In episode fifteen, Kat and Samm continue their three-part exploration of the art giallo film, with an emphasis on some unconventional and unfairly neglected titles, beginning with Slaughter Hotel (1971). The only giallo film from Fernando di Leo, this follows a mysterious, medieval weapon-wielding killer at a country asylum for troubled women, where the doctors (including Klaus Kinski) are hoping to discover the identity of the murderer before any more of their patients are dispatched. Renato Polselli’s absolutely insane Delirium (1972) is focused on a psychiatric consultant to the local police, who moonlights as a particularly vicious serial killer.

Like Delirium, Luigi Cozzi’s The Killer Must Kill Again (1975) revolves around a series of implausible but highly entertaining twists, as a man trying to get rid of his wife just happens to stumble across a killer for hire and blackmails the man into service. Two joyriding teens accidentally get in the way. The similarly titled The Killer is on the Phone (1972) follows a woman with amnesia who is being stalked by a murderer (played by the wonderful Telly Savalas), while Joe D’Amato’s Gothic-tinged Death Smiles on a Murderer (1973) has a plot so insane that brevity just can’t do it justice.