Delitto carnale

I was blown away when I saw Cesare Canevari's UNA IENA IN CASSAFORTE (Hyena In The Safe 1968) a couple of years ago, thinking if Radley Metzger had made a giallo this would have been it, so I was very much looking forward to the director's second stab at the Italian horror sub- genre and boy what a letdown it turned out to be. I've seen this film compared to sleazy gialli like GIALLO A VENEZIA, PLAY MOTEL, and THE SISTER OF URSULA but that would be a disservice to those venerable video nasties since there's no plot, mystery, violence, or gore to speak of when a posse of pretty people gather at a hotel to await the funeral of an uncle and pass the time having sex even after a couple of bodies turn up. So do the police to ensure they all stay right where they are so everyone's more than happy to keep on coupling and the killer, when revealed, is even more ridiculous if such a thing is possible. That said, the talented director knows how to compose a shot and the soft lens does give the film a dreamlike quality but wow, what a wasted opportunity. The epitome of "there's less to this than meets the eye", CRIMES OF THE FLESH is a plot less soft-core sex film that's not very explicit and a little too whitebread (except for some lesbianism) so even voyeurs get shortchanged. Future XXX star Moana Pozzi's in this but I don't know who she was since there's no character names next to the actors on the film's IMDb page.

Cesare Canevari's DELITTO CARNALE is his contribution to the giallo genre. It is also sadly his last film to date. The plot is about a number of people who check into a hotel to wait for a funeral. Nobody seems to really miss the old man who has died because all they do is get drunk and have non-stop sex, which is slightly disturbing because most of them are related in one way or another. Then, about halfway into the film, the first dead body turns up and of course the police forces them to stay in the hotel so that the killer can strike again ... The rest of the film is about them trying to figure out who the killer is because the police doesn't seem to do much about finding him.

DELITTO CARNALE is pleasantly sleazy with tons of (sometimes quite graphic) nudity. Canevari, the director of such trippy underground classics as MATALO and THE NUDE PRINCESS, also manages to give the film a slightly dreamlike atmosphere and that, combined with the really excellent score by Mimi Uva, makes the film memorable and elevates it above the average.

The final film from director Cesare Canevari, the man who brought us infamous Nazisploitation classick The Gestapo's Last Orgy, giallo-esque erotic murder mystery Killing of the Flesh (AKA Delitto carnale) is packed with sex and nudity, including full frontal from a bevy of Italian beauties, but somehow it still manages to be about as stimulating as filing a tax return.

It's a full fifty minutes before anyone turns up dead, the film focussing on the sexcapades of family members gathering at architectural monstrosity Hotel Gemini for the funeral of a murdered relative. Despite one of the women being convinced that the killer is amongst them, the group get smashed (on J&B whisky, of course) and fornicate with each other without a care in the world (and with zero concern for the fact that they are all related).

I don't quite understand how Canevari manages to make this extremely boring, but he does, and I was struggling to stay awake long before the dead bodies started to pile up. Not that the film gets any more interesting once they do - the deaths are few and far between, bloodless and lack the style and imagination that gialli are renowned for. As is de rigeur for the genre, the killer's identity and motive are revealed in the final act, and are as uninspired as the rest of the movie.

Other reviews here on IMDb liken the film to Play Motel and Giallo A Venezia. I don't: it's nowhere near as demented or as sleazy as those, and is a real chore to sit though. 2/10.

A group of decadent and filthy rich people arrive at the empty hotel where a deceased rich man lived.Soon they are copulating like crazy and the murders begin...Cesare Canevari's "Sensual Murder" is one of the sleaziest gialli I have ever seen.It's on par with "Giallo a Venezia","La Sorella di Ursula" and "Play Motel" when it comes to graphic sleaze and sexual debauchery.Unfortunately the film fails as a giallo simply because there is not enough murders and violence.Canevari filled "Delitto Carnale" with as much sex and nudity as he could.The film is quite erotic and arousing in places,unfortunately the action quickly becomes dull and uninteresting.6 sleazies out of 10.