Catching up with the Loose Cannons podcast, I finally got around to watching the subject of their
Halloween episode, The Lady In Red Kills Seven Times.
When people around a young fashion
photographer named Kitty (Barbara Bouchet) start dropping like flies,
she wonders if it really is her family curse (where an ancestor
referred to as The Red Queen comes back from the dead every hundred
years to take seven lives) or just someone trying to angle in on her
family inheritance.
This was a great giallo that easily
makes into the upper echelon of the dozens that are out there. It has
pretty much everything you could ask for, an interesting looking
killer (a figure in a white mask and red cloak) a score from one of
the greats, Ennio Morricone and a wonderfully stylish look. The
latter you would expect, of course, but I love how space is used in
this film. Everything is wide open, whether it be something dramatic
like this;
or just the layout of someone's
apartment. It's all so beautifully cinematic.
It also wouldn't be a giallo without a
convoluted plot, of which The Lady has in spades. I think there are
more characters in this than Blood & Black Lace and Bay of Blood
combined. I'm exaggerating, but it is extremely difficult to keep
this bevvy of beauties straight without a score card. Apart from the
striking Barbara Bouchet (who also appeared in Lucio Fulci's awesome
Don't Torture A Duckling and Silvio Amadio's Amuck that features one
of my fave lines ever in “that woman is a mystery I'd rather not
solve!”) and a young Sybil Danning, the rest run together in a haze of seventies hairstyles.
![]() |
Barbara Bouchet as Kitty Wildenbrück in The Lady In Red Kills 7 Times |
Regardless of whether you may always be
following what the hell's going on, you will never be bored. There
are several great murder scenes in this, one including a fence spire
and another of someone getting curbed – although not quite as well
executed as when Dario Argento did it three years later in Profondo Rosso. I'd say the only thing I didn't like was a super unnecessary rape that got thrown in, almost as an afterthought. It's gross and
also makes the next scene fairly comical when the assailant
approaches Kitty saying, “I know who the killer is! Hey, why are
you running away??”
So, if you like gialli, this is
definitely a must watch because, well, it has all of the things that
make them great. It also has a colour in the title which is kind
of a prerequisite.
![]() |
Handy giallo title generator. |
No comments:
Post a Comment