A long Roman Holiday: That's what washed-up actor Farley Granger and his lover Bob Calhoun spent over in Italy in the 70s, resulting in the most dreadful c-flick bummers of Granger's career. So Sweet, So Dead isn't the worst of the bunch, though also not exactly a Roberto Rossellini movie: A fiendish maniaco sessuale (see Italian title) is slashing adulterous women who by happy chance all give us eye candy galore before they meet their maker – the usual stupido giallo fare, this one despite the lousy exploitation script nonetheless now and again creating a crude indiscrete-charm-of-the-bourgeoisie feel, including the quite intriguing soundtrack by Giorgio "Musica totale" Gaslini culminating in atonal territory while accentuating a Scena Carnale Grande with Miss Drop-Dead Voluptous 1972, Nieves Navarro, getting up for a truly unfaithful ride. Breathless moments the movie can't live up to, the dichotomy between clothes-off and hats-off being a fair way wider than that between the Apollonian and the Dionysian.

An interesting addition to the Giallo genre. Most commentators have concentrated on the apparent misogyny and gratuitous nudity as well as the unfortunate version with porno inserts (which I haven't seen). I'm not sure about the first criticism and as to the second aspect it's an integral part of Giallo. Why else would most of us sit through badly dubbed plodding dialogue and awful acting except for the occasional glimpse of the unadorned form of Babara Bouchet or Sylvia Koscina? To mind my far more interesting is the political undertone referencing the corruption of the upper classes in 1970s Italy which is in tune with "respectable" movies such as 'Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion' and 'Illustrious Corpses'. I wouldn't want to spoil the movie for those haven't seen it, but there are also definite similarities with later efforts such as 'Dressed to Kill' and 'Seven'.In the Giallo catalogue, I'd put this up with 'Don't Torture a Duckling'. Not as flashy as Argento, but it has something. My DVD is I think a video transfer. Maybe time for a proper digital version?

The rap on this giallo is that it is especially moralistic and misogynistic; however,I found the first charge to be untrue and the other greatly exaggerated. A crazed killer is murdering unfaithful wives and leaving photographic evidence of their dalliances next to the bodies. This certainly SEEMS pretty moralistic. But the betrayed husbands don't come off any more sympathetically than the wives. Many knew about their wives' infidelities and/or were playing around themselves (one husband of a murder victim is himself having an affair with another murder victim). Moreover, the killer doesn't turn out to be motivated by vengeance. He is killing these women because he can get away with it, because their high society husbands will thwart the investigation of the beleaguered inspector(Farley Granger) at every turn lest they themselves be publicly exposed as cuckolds! This kind of deep cynicism is typical of later period gialli and Italian poliziani films, but there's nothing especially moralistic about it. Viewed in this way, even the final actions of the detective, which are certainly appalling and take away the only remaining likable and sympathetic character in the movie, are clearly more a final act of despairing cynicism than of righteous anger. As for the misogyny charge, the raison d'etre of this movie seems to be to show a lot of attractive European actresses (Silva Koscina, Femi Benussi, Annabella Incontrerra, Nieves Navarro, Krista Nell) in various states of undress, and the filmmakers don't seem to care too much whether these women are alive, dead, or dying at the time. The movie lacks the flair, the garish delerium, and the stylized violence of better gialli, but it's not really all that different in it's attitude toward women--they're a decorative canvas for a painting of depravity and brutality. But just because the painting isn't very good doesn't make this film any more or less morally reprehensible than other gialli. In fact, the only really sympathetic character in the whole movie is the college-age daughter (Angela Covello) of one of the murder victims, who hilariously admonishes her boyfriend's "bourgeois politics" while he fumbles with the buttons on her blouse. The incompetent filmmakers, however, inexplicably drop this potential heroine halfway through. An appealing female protagonist would have done a lot to mitigate the lingering misogyny, but here this movie once again suffers from its own incompetence.

Most movie buffs will have seen the captioned Hitchcock film from 1950 and perhaps the earlier "Rope" (1948) but here is a chance to see another Farley Granger performance 22 years down the line - I was impressed how little he had aged.He plays Inspector Capuana in this very average Italian horror film from 1972.In fact I found him unwittingly distracting because I kept thinking of the above films and how he now looked a bit like Rock Hudson in his mature years, wearing a moustache.Put simply, it is the story of a psychotic maniac who murders unfaithful wives by stabbing them after first taking the necessary photographic evidence which he then liberally sprinkles at the murder scene to "justify" his act.I was amazed how he knew who all these faithless wives were and where he found the time for his "hobby".The victims all seemed to know each other so the film seemed to be set in a hot bed of adultery.All the usual horror film cliches were present - the murderer who always seems to magically appear in the house by apparantly walking through solid doors and windows,(doesn't anyone ever lock their houses in horror films?).The chase scene where despite the girl running away, the slower moving maniac is always closer behind, the car door which is always locked preventing escape, the closed doors and windows etc.My! how all these women loved to smoke!!None of them seemed happy unless puffing away continually - its amazing they hadn't all died earlier from lung cancer!.I only bought the video to see Krista Nell but she only had one decent scene and then gets "bumped off" for her trouble before her boyfriend arrives at her house for "a bit of nooky".My video arrived with rather irritating Japanese subtitles.What was rather comical was that Farley Granger was obviously originally speaking his lines in English (the other actors in Italian) but his voice had then been overdubbed by another English speaking actor so we could understand.Instead, I kept hearing in my head his real voice from "Strangers oon a Train"..."Bruno you're crazy"!I won't provide spoilers in the extremely unlikely event anyone would want to buy this title after reading this review.The plot becomes rather repetitve after a while and the characters of the femaile adulterous victims become very one dimensional and there is a lot of bare bosom around from virtually all these lady victims.Another "comical" character was the blond mortuary attendant, he really seemed to be in his element as a rabid necrophilliac!Overall poor and I rated it 3/10.