Italia's Next Chopped Model Week! Day 14: The Case of the Bloody Iris

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight marks the end of Italia's Next Chopped Model Week.  What a week it's been, ranging across five decades.  We've been witness to styles both timeless and dated, mostly the latter.

The final selection of the week is one of my all time favorite gialli, at least in my top three.

The Case of the Bloody Iris was written by Ernesto Gastaldi, director of Libido...you know, the movie y'all chose to start the month off with.  In the time period between Libido and Iris, Gastaldi had perfected the formula: Beautiful women, a gloved killer, all sorts of red herrings, you name it, Iris has it in spades.

A call girl is murdered in an elevator of a high rise apartment building.  She is discovered by Mizar (Carla Brait), a stripper/model.  Later that night, after a performance at an exclusive club (coaxing men into wrestling with her, promising to be their sex slave if they win...and she's never lost), Mizar returns home.  But when she comes home, she is knocked unconscious (by a karate chop to the throat (?)) and drowned in her bathtub.

After the murder, Jennifer (Edwige Fenech) and her ditzy, Goldie Hawn-esque best friend Marilyn (Paola Quattrini) end up getting a deal on the apartment.  Of course they jump on it.  The rent's most likely super cheap, and since the murder victim was drowned, there's no pesky blood stains to worry about.

However, Jennifer is constantly harassed by Adam, who led a creepy free-love sex cult that she has escaped from.  Adam refuses to let her go, believing she still belongs to him.

Meanwhile, the murders continue, and a mysterious man keeps breaking into the apartment, terrorizing Jennifer.

I'm just going to leave it at that.  This film needs to be sought out at all costs.  Luckily, I have an amazon.com link to it at the bottom of this blog, so you don't have to go far.  The film is a prime example of everything a giallo has to offer, including one of my favorite giallo scores (by Bruno Nicolai). Not to mention the beautiful set pieces, such as this scene, one of my favorite scenes, like, ever:

Edwige Fenech, naked, covered in flowers.  Oh.  My.  Goodness.  Gracious.

As I mentioned earlier, Iris is one of my favorite gialli of all time.  On top of everything else I mentioned, the film is also endlessly rewatchable and perfectly paced.  I've rewatched this one quite a few times, and never get tired of it.  That's something rare for me, since I'll admit rewatching is not something I do too often.

So what are you waiting for?  Go seek this one out now.  If nothing else, you'll thank me for the entire scene that I took the above pic from.

Later.
-Justin