Death Laid an Egg (1968)

Disappointment for a huge fan!

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

It is one of the more famous and well made Giallo thrillers produced in Italy. This somewhat controversial gore flick follows a twisted killer played by Jean Louis Trintignant. It comes off like a vintage period piece for the sixties, extremely colorful, vintage shadow-draped cinematography and very sexy.It has more of a pop culture beat than expected of the genre, which is usually dark. The avant guard soundtrack is definitely off-putting.It is rare that a Giallo in this period has no nudity. This is to be expected with Gina Lollobrigida in the lead, as the most she ever showed was her butt. Ewa Aulin was wasted as she has many many nude roles. Lollabrigida never achieved the film status of Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot. It's not surprise as Bardot had many nude roles, and Loren had a few, but Lollabrigida...well

Poultry is the key theme here. There are problems down on the chicken farm and so a marketing manager is brought in to sort things out. His belief is that 'chickens are an integral part of society' and before you say 'cluck' he's come up with some brand new concepts: playboy poultry, feathery smoking jackets and 'chicken happenings in the room of truth'.But then what to do about the mutations that have suddenly started appearing on the farm and which give a whole new meaning to the term' headless chicken'? Boss Jean-Louis Trintignant has been too busy with (possibly murderous) S&M sessions at the local hotel to notice. But then someone squawks to the cops and he's forced to go on the lam. Meanwhile, his wife Gina Lollobridgida and her dizzy blonde secretary hatch a plan of their own. Cameraman Dario Di Palma shoots it all with a flair that matches the abstract paintings on the walls of the interiors, while the editing evokes memories of the underground. The dubbing is terrible and I'd say switch the sound off but then you'd miss a great avant garde score from Bruno Maderna and some frankly unbelievable dialogue. Sum total: genius.

Death Laid An Egg is truly a one off. While it does qualify as an early example of the giallo, more than anything it's a very weird art film. Director Giulio Questi seems to have been highly influenced by the New Wave, so the aesthetic is often very much at odds with the one we are used to in most other gialli. It seems more indebted to Jean Luc Godard than Mario Bava most of the time. There is even one very disturbing scene of a car crash that feels like a direct descendant of the bizarre and disturbing imagery from Week-End. This scene like many others utilises a very bold editing technique that pre-dates the similar work of Nicolas Roeg. There is no doubt that visually this is a very fascinating film. It mixes both surrealism and pop art to create a very weird atmosphere. But the oddness is certainly not limited to the aesthetics. The musical score by Bruno Maderna is very experimental indeed and very persistent. It fills most of the film, its avant-garde nature ideally suited. Then of course we have the setting. A chicken farm where bizarre scientific experiments are the order of the day is hardly a typical set-up for an Italian thriller. Moreover, in one gloriously oddball science fiction moment we discover that the scientists have developed a kind of headless and wingless chicken creature which they hope will make them very rich by turning the animal into nothing more than a hideous ready-made blob of meat. This sort of horrific surrealism isn't a far cry from the kinds of thing David Lynch would put into Eraserhead. But in this film it does have an obvious point, as it raises the question of where the moral line is in producing genetically modified animals for food. It's not exactly common-place for a giallo to raise important issues.Inside all this weirdness is a drama about a man, his wife, her assistant and a publicity agent from the egg people. It turns out that they are having different illicit relationships behind the other's backs. And there are different plots to do away with each other. On top of this the main man is seen at the beginning of the movie committing an act of brutal violence where he murders a woman in a motel room in a bravura opening scene that is expertly inter-cut with many edits of scenes showing a plethora of other odd and fetishistic behaviour happening simultaneously in the same motel. I guess the implication is that behind closed doors everybody is socially deviant in some way. As the film progresses this murderer and adulterer is shown to be the only one with the morality to reject the idea of the monster chickens. Overall there are several layers of complexity here and this has to be a re-watchable film for this reason. It's very much for people with a taste for the left-field and the bizarre. It's ridiculous it hasn't been given a proper DVD release.

This has to be, and I mean has to be, the worst, and I mean worst movie ever made! I saw this major stink-bomb on Miami Beach, at the Cinema Theater on Washington and 12th Street. My dad was with me, and he was a real movie lover. We went to the movies at least 3 days a week, and on many weekends we went movie-theater hopping seeing 6 films in one day! Anyhow, even my dad thought this was the all-time worst. This film makes Plan 9 from Outer Space look like Citizen Kane! Now it's hip for movie lovers to rate this a "cult" classic, representing the acid-rock of the late 1960s. The truth to the matter is, this is a bizarre, weird, strange, dull, slow-moving, badly scripted, and terribly acted, piece of junk. And I liked "Satin's Sadists"! So, I usually like the off-beat and obscure films as well. But, I'm sorry I say, I really can't think of one good thing to say about this film. So, for me at least, PLUKED, is a real Turkey!!!!