Libido (1965)

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Beginning with a quote from some bloke called Freud that is mainly irrelevant to the film that follows, four people travel to an isolated seaside mansion. It includes the current owner who twenty years before had witnessed his father kill someone in the mansion, his wife, his friend who is also the estate manager and his wife too. Then the plot unravels this way and that to a satisfying conclusion. There are only four characters in the film but even with that number the script manages to keep the viewer guessing. The acting is good enough and Carlo Rustichelli provides a suitable plangent music score. Romy Garron's black and white cinematography is excellent, either within the mansion, along the sunny countryside or above the rocky shoreline. It's an early giallo but it's a good one.

Libido is the kind of film that proves I'm totally justified in obsessively tracking down every Italian horror film I can find in chronological order, because it's a Giallo that fools you into thinking you've got the plot all worked out, then turns it all on its head, then turns it all on its head again, then boots you in the balls with a sufficiently nasty ending.Christian is one of those unlucky kids who accidentally witnesses his father murdering some floozy in a mirrored room. Seems his dad took a header off a cliff shortly afterwards, leaving his creepy mansion in the hands of Paul until Christian turns 23 in three months time. Now the time is closing in, Christian, and his wife, and Paul, and his really, really ditzy wife all head off to the mansion to do the admin before the fortune falls into Christian's hands.Paul's wife Bridgette (played by gorgeous Mara Maryl) finds the mirrored room and wants to sleep there, so later on Christian gets an eyeful when she dances in her pants for Paul, while Christian's brain juice is getting all donked up with a mixture of desire, trauma from a flashback, and wondering how six hundred year old actor Pigozzi isn't cracking a fatty right there on screen.Also it seems that Christian's dad might not be dead at all as his pipe turns up and his favourite chair starts moving on its own (wouldn't be a mid-sixties Italian film without all that crap happening I guess!). So is Christian mad, or is someone trying to drive him mad, or has his father actually returned from the dead to tie up another floozy? This film starts off very intriguing (the credits are played out over various images of the murdered woman) and then fools you into thinking it's a mediocre Scooby Doo type thing before making you care about characters you were suspicious about from the start. I only spotted one single clue in the dialogue that may have pointed to the ending but that was that. So many twists in this one and the dark ending makes this one of the best Gialli from the sixties I've watched so far. They should have given Luciano Pigozzi bigger roles like the one he as here - He ditches the 'Igor' type act that he had in Terror Creature From the Grave and comes across as initially a bad guy to a guy perhaps discovering too late that he been made a mug of.One last note: Dario Argento must have had his notebook out for this one - children witnessing murders, creepy toys, kid's music - all of these turn up in Profondo Rosso!

Haunted by a terrible tragedy, a young man brought back to his family's old home by his wife and friends finds his long-held belief in a legacy of family-led mental disorders has come to bear when they succumb to strange happenings and must try to keep him sane in order to leave.This was quite the troubled if enjoyable Giallo effort. What really tends to hold this one down is the fact that a vast majority of the film is based around the idea of his past coming back to haunt him without anything actually happening. It plays like a stodgy Gothic chamber-drama more than an actual horrific effort, filled with long- winded scenes of him monologuing about the past and his fears of its recurrence in his personality followed by their increasingly incessant pleas for him to regain his sanity, leaving this one incredibly dry and long-winded for much of it's running time. Even being distracted by the elaborate Gothic setting or the inviting mystery at hand doesn't really offer up much as it becomes quite obvious early on that little is actually happening with such long stretches of time between action, and the repetition of these events merely reinforces this since that's what happens for a large part of the film. Due to the lack of more traditional Giallo-based elements, that really leaves this one with the seriousness of its set-up to sustain any attention in the first half and that causes this to feel way too drawn-out for way too long throughout this section of the film. Once it becomes more involved with the idea that the father has returned and it starts in on some rather more lively antics there's some likable work at play here as the preponderance of Gothic architecture and settings makes for a suitably chilling scenario to base the kind of psychological torment-style plot that this one hinges on as it does follow the kind of stylistic plot- points needed for that kind of payoff to occur. The walk-throughs of the castle-grounds thinking back on the events he experienced as a child that plays over the whole affair, the sight of the figure off in the distance of the castle grounds who disappears before they can offer any kind of identification of the figure leaving behind only the footprints on the carpet and the later discovery of the dead body in their midst play off quite effectively here. The film really hits its stride, though, in the final half-hour which is where it really starts to get interesting with the revelation of who's behind the whole affair and their intentions which sets up some rather fun action in the house as everyone tends to reveal their true intentions all leading up to the great shock at the finale that makes for a rather nice ending. Still, the overall blandness on display does hurt this one considerably.Today's Rating/PG: Mild Violence.

If you see this movie to the end, you might want to get admitted to the nearest bedlam. You don't believe in ghosts? Yet they exist, and they do all kind of things in people's houses, they smoke someone's pipe, they use your chair, armchair, lounge or swing, they walk your corridors, etc. Why we find them only in large houses, mansions and castles? In the houses of poor people, never. Neither outdoor in open field, in public squares, in the streets, etc. Only in grandiose interiors, which belong to rich members of the society. And always occurring late after midnight, never in daily time. And if not accompanied by a black cat or creaking door, then they make their presence announced by severe thunder and lightning. OK, I have to confess that I like Italian movies the most. But this is an exception, I waited impatiently to see on the screen the word "Fine"(The End).