Riccardo Ghione's amusing and self-aware black comedy takes a rather wry look at a very real concern in the early 1970s-
Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock" was required reading on college campuses back in 1972 and the alarmist book "about the future and the shock that its arrival brings" was only a forerunner of the fears the "Me Decade" grappled with, especially on screen with nightmarish fare like WESTWORLD and DEATHRACE 2000. Two other 1973 cautionary tales, SOYLENT GREEN and TRAITMENT DE CHOC, also envisioned a cannibalistic future but THE BLOODSTAINED LAWN, the third in this futuristic triptych, goes "where no man has gone before" by making light of the rampant paranoia.
Amoral aristocrat Nina Genovese (Marina Malfatti, who looks a bit like Sharon Tate), her mad scientist husband (who looks a lot like Soupy Sales right down to the big bow ties), and the brother she's in love with bring a drunk, a hooker, a gypsy, and a pair of hippies back to their ultra-modern estate for some dope, orgies, and music but soon the guests disappear one by one to become the secret ingredient of a rejuvenating wine the depraved trio bottle and sell. Meanwhile, "special guest star" Nino Castelnuevo (Nino Newcastle??), he of CAMILLE 2000 fame, plays a UNESCO agent hot on their trail of blood...
Nina, dead serious about a superior race, makes good use of society's "disposables" in an increasingly over-populated world and insists to her love-struck brother that "only money brings happiness" as the decadent rich get yet another roasting, only this time on the lighter side and very well done. Director Ghione also has fun inverting "happy" clichés like lovers (in this case, the hippie couple) running in slo-mo over hill and dale (twice!) and the life-size "Robbie The Robot" gadget the villains use to extract their victim's lifeblood is more ridiculous than anything else. The hip-and-happening score is oh so "of its time" and the garish decade's flashy fashions and decor also serve the story well. It's (kind of) classy Eurotrash that doesn't take the doom-and-gloom predictions about the future too seriously and does for the wine industry what DEATH LAID AN EGG did for poultry farms.
