Spasmo (1974)

Spasmo is a 1974 giallo from Umberto Lenzi and it’s an odd one.

We start with a young couple making out in the woods. In an old house they find a girl’s body dangling from the rafters. Then we cut to Christian (Robert Hoffman) who has taken his girlfriend to a spot by the sea, a spot that meant a lot to him in childhood. They find a dead girl on the beach.

But in both cases things are not at all what they seem.

We keep seeing dolls. Life-size life-like female dolls. By now we’re starting to get an uncomfortable uncanny valley feel from this movie.

Christian meets Barbara (Suzy Kendall) and chats her up. He has a very smooth line in chat-up patter. He tells her she’s a sweet sweet whore. Girls just love it when you call them whores. Barbara tells him she’s not a whore but she’ll sleep with him if he shaves his beard off. Christian can’t get to the razor quickly enough. Then the guy with the gun appears. There’s a scuffle and soon it’s a dead guy with a gun. Because this is a movie Barbara and Christian don’t go to the police and explain that it was self-defence. No, they decide to go on the run.

Barbara’s boy friend shows up and he is definitely up to something.

Barbara suggests that they hide out in a house belonging to a Brazilian lady painter friend who is in Rio at the moment. Nobody will know that they’re there. But somebody does know, and is watching them.

There’s a sinister guy who keeps popping up, and a couple of other guys as well, all of whom seem to be very interested in Barbara and Christian. There’s a growing sense of danger, but we don’t know if it’s Christian or Barbara who are in danger. Or both of them.

We don’t really know who any of these people are. We suspect they’re not the people they say they are.

People get killed but we’re still not sure who they were or what they were up to.

Are we dealing with a conspiracy or a lone crazed killer or something else. Those dolls keep turning up. Naked or semi-naked female dolls, some with knives stuck through them, some hanging by noses. That obviously suggests a psycho killer, or it could suggest that someone wants it to appear that there’s a psycho abroad.

Christian overheats a conversation that makes him even more convinced that he’s in danger. He’s not sure if he can trust Malcolm and Clorinda. They just turned up at the house and claim that they’re renting it. They seem to be a couple although Malcolm is decades older than Clorinda. Christian can’t shake the feeling that some of the people he’s encountering are people he’s seen before.

Maybe he should ask his brother Fritz (Ivan Rassimov) for help. Fritz has always helped him in the past.

The atmosphere of paranoia is gradually ramped up. Those mutilated female dolls keep showing up. Things get weirder.

We know there’s either a madman or a clever criminal at work but it could be any one of three of the major characters and we have no idea what the person’s motivations are. We get mystery as well as suspense. We definitely get plenty of suspense but it’s a kind of diffused suspense because we don’t know which of the characters we should be fearing for.

Umberto Lenzi was one of the pioneers of the giallo but by 1974 he was convinced that giallos had become too formulaic. Spasmo is his attempt to try something new. It has plenty of giallo trademarks - it’s stylish with an edge of strangeness and it has action and suspense but there are no black-gloved killers and the weirdness level is much higher than in typical giallos. It’s actually a very successful attempt to vary the giallo formula.

There’s very little nudity (just a couple of brief topless scenes) and no gore at all. This was also a deliberate choice on Lenzi’s part. He wanted to focus tightly on the psychological thriller aspect.

The acting is good, with Suzy Kendall being very good and Robert Hoffman being very good indeed in a nicely underplayed performance.

The house belonging to the painter provides a cool setting - it’s isolated, on the sea and it looks like a fortress.

Shriek Show’s DVD release offers an excellent transfer plus a very good interview with Umberto Lenzi.

Spasmo is really a great offbeat semi-giallo and it’s highly recommended.