Giallo movie starring Robert Hoffman, Ivan Rassimov & the incredibly beautiful Suzy Kendall & directed by Umberto Lenzi, who is perhaps best known for his cannibal movies. This one mixes up murder, love & insanity, focusing on the relationship between two brothers. I first viewed this in Italian & under the influence of a few beers and to be honest I totally lost what was going on. So I have just viewed it again but sober & in English. Thankfully it all made sense! Not the best giallo by any means but its well shot, has a nice musical score, packs in some suspense & has a good cast. Pretty tame on the sex & violence front. Rated 15 in the UK.Strange title though!

A lurid title, day for night filming, a young couple indulging in some tepid sex venture, the discovery of what appears to be a corpse; all of this leads into some instantly lovely title music and leaves us under no illusions – this is giallo territory! Brusque, humourless, hunk-cake poser Christian (Robert Hoffman) and his girlfriend discover an unconscious girl, Barbara (Suzy Kendall) on the beach and before long, she and rakish Christian have fallen in love. Soon, an intruder interrupts their courtship – before accidentally getting killed with his own gun. His corpse however, disappears … It's madness, I tell you. And yet it moves briskly, has a typically addictive soundtrack (usual suspect Ennio Morricone, not quite firing on all cylinders but as always, providing an elegant score) and contains more intrigue than you could shake a stick at. 'Spasmo' is a lot less ludicrous than the trailer (an urgently choreographed selection of scenes with an actor yelling the title over and over in an increasingly feverish manner), but also a lot less fun. Tell-tale bloodstains, espionage, the main man's miraculously self-cleaning clothes, corpse-like mannequins strewn about the place – all these things would add layers of intrigue if only the plot was more comprehensible. Someone seems to be out to drive Noel Edmonds-lite Christian mad and goes to extraordinary lengths to do so. He doesn't make it difficult, driven as he is by his libido making him an easy target. Simply engage him with a woman almost as beautiful as he is, and away we go.Eccentric in its story-telling to the point of delirium, it's impossible not to at least partially enjoy this mad-fest. Not the greatest giallo, it nevertheless takes a while to leave you.

Umberto Lenzi's "Spasmo" is not really a horror movie as much as a psychological thriller. There's minimal violence, instead focusing on the main character's (Robert Hoffmann) descent into confusion. But as Lenzi explained in an interview, he had the flick turn out as it does to demonstrate how sick Italy's elites are. Like Lenzi's earlier "Orgasmo" (retitled "Paranoia" in the US), "Spasmo" shows that all is not what it seems in this supposedly nice group of people. Still, the sequence of events leading up to that have some pretty neat occurrences. I will say that I liked "Orgasmo" better (partially for the scene of Carroll Baker in the shower), but this one is definitely worth seeing. Also starring Suzy Kendall, Ivan Rassimov and Guido Alberti.

Spasmo(1974)Umberto Lenzi Christian Bauman (Robert Hoffmann,Death Carries a Cane, Naked Girl Killed in the Park) and his girlfriend while strolling along a beach see what they think is s dead body of a woman lying face down in the sand, as it turns out the girl named Barbara (Suzy Kendall,The Bird with the Crystal Plumage,Circus of Fear) is alive and claims to have passed out with the heat, but when Christian turns his back for a moment Barbara speeds away in her car leaving only a clue of a jar marked Tucania, which turns out to the name of a large yacht moored in the local harbour, Christian gatecrashes a party on board in order to see more of this alluring young woman, the host and Barbara's lover Alex is none to pleased at his intrusion but allows him to stay anyway. Meanwhile a mysterious hit-man with a gun and the habit of rolling marbles round his hand watches the yacht from afar, but who is his intended prey? Barbara tired of the party on board offers Christian, the major shareholder in his family's plastics business a night he cant forget all he has to do is lose his beard, he doesn't need to be asked twice and before long he is in Barbara's bathroom removing the unwanted hair, but he is suddenly interrupted by the hit-man who comes through the window brandishing his gun, in the skirmish that follows Christian shoots and kills the intruder, Barbara horrified says they should run away together instead of notifying the police, they do this but return soon after only to find the body gone. Barbara suggests staying in the house of a Brazilian painter friend for a while, as she is away, it's a house that is filled with stuffed birds of prey and caged exotic animals, reluctantly Christian agrees, but the house has been let out to an ex reporter and his young female friend, a bizarre couple who persistently act strange, in fact Christian thinks everyone seems to be acting strange, he constantly thinks he is being watched or followed and nobody except him seems to be acting rationally at all, not even his new love. Nonetheless they accept an invitation to stay the night, where he has a quick liason with Clorinda the young woman of the house after which he flees the house speeding off to try and clear his head as to what is happening, he hears a dull thud from the trunk of the car, when he investigates he finds the hit-man there apparently dead, but he jumps up and orders Christian to drive to a local quarry where he aims to kill him for sure this time, again Christian gets the better of him kills him in a gloriously gruesome way, before setting him alight and pushing the car of the edge, below in the quarry he sees a man that he believes has been following him in a car with Barbara, he is even more confused now and follows them, they lead him to his own family business where he overhears them discussing with his brother Fritz Bauman (Ivan Rassimov,Jungle Holocaust,All the Colors of the Dark) their plan to have him locked up,the strange man mistakingly tells Fritz his brother has been killed in the quarry, Fritz is happy with this news, but this is the final straw for Christian and he sets out to take revenge on his sibling. A really bizarre film, with really off the wall dialogue,Christian after a mere few hours of knowing Barbara calls her his "sweet little whore" and the film is full of things that just don't add up and characters that don't seem to have any relevance or relation to each other. Interspersed between all the action are various scenes of latex dummies being hung, stabbed and found mutilated, these add to the films quirkiness and leave the viewer baffled as to their meaning., the films linear storyline you would think would make it easier to follow but its not the case, its not until the films finale that Lenzi finally reveals the brutal and shocking revelations. Susan George clone Kendall puts in a fine performance as does Hoffman, Rassimov fits nicely into his usual bad guy role only this time with a twist. This is not your typical Giallo and here Lenzi who took over from Lucio Fulci as director of the project after he quit, dispenses with genre cornerstones (blood, gore,masked killer,black gloves etc..a fact that might be off putting for Giallo traditionalists) in favour of colourful characterisations and an exploration of madness and the psyche, in fact he also dispenses with the usual dark urban landscapes in favour of burning bright sunshine by the sea, a brave move that just about succeeds. Ennio Morricone's score is more percussive than usual and is at times generic but not without its charm. Another surprise contributor to the US release was one Giorgio Romero?, who added scenes of gore at the American distributors request much to the chargrin of Umberto, these were later removed for the Shriek Show DVD, the picture quality of which is decent but the sound suffers from the occasional hiss, also included is a brief but very interesting interview with Lenzi who is never one to mince his words