Happy hangover Sunday, fellow horror hos and bros. I’m dipping back into the giallo well for today’s post, and while our subject today leans slightly more toward erotica than horror, it was still fairly bloody and a lot of fun, so we’re just gonna roll with it. That cool with everybody? Good.

1972’s The Case of the Bloody Iris (also known by the ridiculously convoluted title Perché quelle strane gocce di sangue sul corpo di Jennifer?, or Why Are Those Strange Drops of Blood on Jennifer’s Body?) was directed by Giuliano Carnimeo under the pseudonym Anthony Ascott. It stars the gorgeous Edwige Fenech, who was in tons of European sex comedies and gialli back in the day, and it also boasts a pretty much nonstop cavalcade of perky, bouncing boobage, if you’re into that kind of thing (and who isn’t?).

In fairly standard giallo fashion, the plot revolves around a killer with a black trenchcoat and hat, a black mask completely obscuring the face, and a wicked, scalpel-type knife which slices through pretty ladies with deadly efficiency and much spilling of garish crimson tempera paint. There is also the standard parade of red herrings, where almost anyone could be the murderer; is it main character Jennifer’s creepy ex-husband, who wants to draw her back into their nekkid orgy sex-cult days and keeps stalking her, leaving torn-up irises in her path? Is it her new beau/landlord, who has a strange aversion to blood and at one point tells her, “Wait until you find out what a bastard I am”? Is it the über-fey, walking-gay-stereotype photographer, who drinks like Dylan Thomas and has some of the movie’s most hilarious lines? Or how about that lecherous lesbian in the apartment next door? Or the busybody old bat in the building who rants about “whores” and buys piles of horror magazines from the newsstand every morning? Hell, what about the dismissive police inspector who gives more of a shit about collecting rare stamps from the crime scenes than he does actually solving the murders? The finger of suspicion falls on each one of them in turn, and the viewer doesn’t see the killer unmasked until the final five minutes, in what is actually a pretty fantastic, tense scene.

As I implied earlier, this film is actually more like a mystery/sex farce with horror elements thrown into the mix than it is a traditional horror film. Yes, there are bloody murders aplenty, and there are creepy scenes of the victims being stalked in darkened streets and boiler rooms, but there are also psychedelic montages of the aforementioned nekkid orgies, topless blonde bimbos making light of shocking crimes while covered in soap bubbles, modeling sessions involving strategic body paint, and some good old fashioned erotic nightclub wrestling. There is also some patented early-70s misogyny (purported good guys smacking girls around and everyone being all NBD about it) and homophobia (personified in photographer Arthur, who is the gayest gay who ever gayed), plus a really bizarre, laissez-faire attitude that nearly all of the characters manifest toward the series of murders at the center of the plot. For example, at the beginning of the film, when a nameless call girl is stabbed in the elevator of the apartment building where the bulk of the action takes place, the residents who find her are all, “Eh, she doesn’t live here, so whatevs,” and that includes the first-on-the-scene, exotic dancer Mizar, who sees the bloody dead body and is all, “Huh, shame about that. Well, gotta split, got shit to do. Guess I’ll take the stairs.” Of course, she’s the next one to get offed, but still…kinda odd. Maybe the director was trying to make a statement about the modern world and its uncaring attitude toward others or something. Backing up this hypothesis is the scene where Jennifer’s goofball roommate Marilyn is stabbed to death on a crowded city street, and walks around bleeding and crying for help while pedestrians walk uncaringly around her. So yeah, could be a message there.

This is actually a decent giallo if you’re more into the softcore porn aspects of the genre, and if you don’t mind a copious amount of silliness and overdone seventies stereotypes. It’s a tad slow to get started, but the mystery is intriguing, and it’s unlikely that you’ll guess who the murderer is until the end (or at least I didn’t guess until right before the mask came off, but that might just be because I’m a big dummy). Of course it’s not up there with, say, Deep Red or Blood and Black Lace, but if you’re a giallo fan, it’s a pretty enjoyable little trifle.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends. Goddess out.