Death Falls Lightly (1972)

Very Cool!!!

Sadly Over-hyped

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Ultra-obscure giallo involving a man in a lot of trouble. He returns home one night after working away to find that his wife has been murdered. Due to the nature of his job, he does not go to the police but instead goes to his lawyer, who arranges for him to be set up in an abandoned hotel while they try and establish an alibi.You see, our man here is a drug courier and has no alibi because he was up to no good, stayed well out of the road of people, and cannot rely on anyone to say he was out of town when his wife was killed because his associates cannot reveal themselves. The lawyer knows this as he's just as corrupt as anyone else, and has to find out who really killed the guy's wife, although I didn't really work out why they kept the guy alive instead of just shooting him.So, the guy ends up locked in an abandoned hotel with his mistress and at first it's all 'hey, let's watch a porno and get it on' but soon they are bickering and fighting with each other. Things go from bad to worse when it turns out that someone else is in the hotel with them, then things goes completely off the deep end when someone gets murdered in the hotel and our poor guy has to help dispose of the body! What's going on then?At first it seems like we're in for a very long, boring film with two people trapped in a hotel arguing and having flashbacks but soon things get very surreal with even our poor guying shouting "What's happened to reality?" while a strange sexy lady has a bath in a bare room while a monkey plays on a perch in the background, loud parties reveal themselves to be recordings, and weird hippy types outside spout absolute nonsense that I guess is supposed to be some sort of comment on the state of Italy in the early seventies.Also strange is that we often get to hear people's thoughts. Not just the protagonist, but everyone, and usually it's some bizarre comment on someone they've just met. You'll be scratching your head so much you'll have a groove in it by the time things are explained so absurdly you'd think they were just making the thing up as they went along.Yet it's for these very reasons that this one is worth tracking down. There's little nudity and blood, but enough daftness to keep you going. Good lighting effects too - in a hotel where there's seemingly no electricity, you still get to see what's going on, which can sometimes be the downfall of any horror film.

From the same director and indeed the same year as the similarly hard to categorise, Byleth comes this strangely hypnotic blend of thriller cum ghost story cum giallo. I have seen this categorically denied as a giallo and yet I beg to differ. There are many a wide eyed moment, plenty of kills amid the sex and more than a hint that someone may be going mad. In addition there is an absolutely wonderful nod to Bird With a Crystal Plumage, and this scene with the locked glass doors probably ranks as the film's best. There is also, in this movie set within a hotel a scene most reminiscent of The Shining, though this might well have inspired the writer Stephen King, rather than Kubrick. Well worth a watch, if you can find it.

Being in the mood of watching a Giallo that would be fun,but easy going,I had a quick look at some Giali titles by the side of my TV,and noticed that one starring "Amuck" actress Patrizia Viotti, (who sadly died at just age 44 in 1994) looked like one that would perfectly fit what I was looking for.The plot:Getting back from a "business" trip to Milan,Giorigo Darica returns home and is welcomed by the sight of his murdered wife.Terrified by the murder scene and also due to having a worrying feeling that his wife's murder is connected to his "business" relations.Rushing to get urgent advice from his lawyer over how he can stay away from getting implemented with his wife's murder. Darica's lawyer advises him that he should go and stay in a disused 80 floor hotel.Picking up his mistress Liz for company in the abandoned building,Liz and Giorigo soon start to suspect that the hotel is not actually empty,but instead contains things that go bump in the night.View on the film:Whilst Stelio Candelli's performance as Darica is disappointingly wooden,Patrizia Viotti brings a great sense of boundless energy to the film,with the terrific scenes of Liz getting in a violent struggle with Darica allowing Viotti to show the full effects of the closed off surrounding's on Liz.For the first half of the movie,co-writer/ (along with Luigi Russo) director Leopoldo Savona makes the first half of the film a supernatural Giallo,as Savona fills the hotel with atmospheric low lighting, smoke,and a surprisingly fun,a head of its time pre-Goblin Rock song by Mark Sigis Porter.Sadly,as the second half of the film brings the supernatural elements to this Giallo crashing down to earth, Savona loses the delicacy which he had been using to build up a good atmosphere,by instead making the end of the film one which leaves a feeling of Darica and Liz's time in the hotel as being a near complete waste of time

A man returns to Mila from an out-of-town trip to find his wife brutally murdered. Realizing he doesn't have a decent alibi, he doesn't call the cops, but immediately goes to see his lawyer. It turns out that, via the lawyer, he is connected to powerful corrupt men and is helping them traffic drugs. Since it isn't in anybody's interest that the man get arrested, the lawyer puts him up in an eerie, old and nearly abandoned hotel, although he is quite annoyed that his client insists on bringing his sexy young mistress (Patrizia Viotti)along with him. Immediately strange things begin to happen in the hotel: strange music is played at odd hours, the man stumbles upon the elderly owner of the hotel who has apparently just killed HIS wife and needs help burying her, and the owners' strange but attractive daughter keeps trying to seduce him. Perhaps the old hotel is haunted, or maybe someone is trying the beleaguered murder suspect crazy? I'd recommend this giallo to giallo fans. Everybody else may be a little put off by the bizarre beginning and the rather ridiculous plot twists at the end. Hardcore giallo fans, however, will no doubt eat this kind of absurdity up and ask for seconds. This is not a great giallo by any means. The acting is generally pretty poor, but the sexy Patrizia Viotti will probably make an impression (on male viewers at least). Viotti played Barbara Bouchet's murdered lesbian lover in the giallo classic "Amuck", but she was understandably overshadowed in that one by Bouchet and Rosalba Neri. This is her show all the way though, and while she's certainly no Meryl Streep acting-wise, she does get nice and naked several times. The music by Mark Sigis Porter is also, uh, interesting. The title song is basically a bad Jimi Hendrix imitation, but, god knows, there are far worse people to badly imitate than Hendrix.Casual viewers may want to pass on this, but giallo fans should definitely seek it out