rarecultcinema:

Umberto Lenzi is one of my favorite directors and I love his giallo thrillers. Gialli are famous for featuring convoluted plot lines, but this one takes the cake! Spasmo is a weird film, even by giallo standards. The script jumps all over the place, and the convoluted plot twists feels like something straight out of a David Lynch movie. The film stars Robert Hoffman as Christian, a rich playboy, who finds a girl he mistakenly thinks is dead on a beach (the lovely Suzy Kendall of The Bird With the Crystal Plumage). Christian is then invited to her motel to have sex, but he is jumped in the bathroom by a pistol-wielding thug whom he accidentally kills! Or does he?? Moments later the body mysteriously disappears, with only the pistol and some blood on the bathroom floor to signify that the incident really happened. Or did it?? They decide to flee to a sea-front villa where a series of weird incidents take place, and the film periodically cuts away from the main plot to show us some weird mannequins with fake blood on them, all in various states of undress, tied to trees or dumped in the woods. Like I said, bizarre. I haven’t seen anything else quite like it before. Spasmo has a confusing first hour, populated by oddball characters, and it’s pretty tame compared to the works of Fulci, Argento or even Bava. Nonetheless, it works. I love this kind of bizarre cinema, and I don’t think the lack of violence and nudity hurt the film at all. It puts more focus on the plot. The story is a bit complicated, very bizarre and strangely hypnotic, so it’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, but I loved it!! It’s not as good as Seven Blood-Stained Orchids or as fun as Eyeball (two of Lenzi’s best) but it’s very entertaining, and the last scene neatly wraps up everything - even the mystery of the rubber dolls. The acting is better than you’ll see in most gialli, especially by Hoffman, Kendall and Eurocult legend Ivan Rassimov. Good ol’ Lenzi shows that he’s a competent director, creating genuine suspense as well as some haunting imagery, and it doesn’t hurt that the film has a dreamy soundtrack by the one and only Ennio Morricone.

Spasmo
Release year: 1974
Country: Italy
Director: Umberto Lenzi
Stars: Robert Hoffmann, Suzy Kendall, Ivan Rassimov, Adolfo Lastretti