Filippo Walter Ratti’s directing career had begun way back in 1946, with Crazy Desires of a Murderer being his last directing assignment. Ratti also qualifies as a forgotten director.
Ileana (Isabelle Marchall) is a young bubbly blonde who has just arrived back in Italy after an extended holiday in the Far East. She sets off for her home, her home being a castle. The castle belongs to her aged father, the Baron De Chablais. Ileana arrives at the castle with a group of friends in tow. She’s picked them up on her travels. Her daddy is not pleased. The old baron’s memory is failing but he does remember that he hates having guests.
What Ileana doesn’t know is that one of her friends has been using her as a drugs courier.
The baron is very rich. He’s a collector of Asian art and antiquities and his collection is worth a fortune. The De Chablais clan has the kinds of family secrets that you expect in a family that lives in a gothic castle.
The old baron had had a very young Thai wife. She died very young some years earlier, leaving a son. Something traumatic happened before she died, an event that left the son totally insane. No-one seems to know where the son is. He is assumed to be confined in an asylum somewhere. The viewer however knows that the son is still alive, kept locked up in a dungeon. The son, Leandro, amuses himself with his hobby - taxidermy.
So far the movie seems just as likely to turn out to belong to the gothic horror genre as the giallo genre, but it is a giallo.
There are two servants, Berta and Hans. Among his other duties Hans is responsible for keeping Leandro safely locked up.
After a night of booze, sex and erotic charades (yes really) the young people turn in for the night. One of them will not live to see the morning. It’s a shocking and brutal murder.
Anyone in the castle could have committed the murder. There are plenty of plausible motives. There is a fabulously valuable emerald that belonged to the baron’s late wife. That would be worth killing for. There are plenty of sexual intrigues that could lead to jealousies that could in turn lead to murder. The servants seem to be as debauched and sleazy as the guests. Even they could be suspects. The middle-aged family doctor has his secrets as well so he can’t be ignored as a suspect. The police commissario (Corrado Gaipa) is elderly and crippled but he’s no fool. He is however baffled. He knows there are a lot of secrets he needs to uncover if he hopes to catch the killer.
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The acting is quite competent. Filippo Walter Ratti also proves to be competent as a director. Ambrogio Molteni’s screenplay contains a few twists and plenty of red herrings.
There’s not much gore but there are a couple of gruesome scenes involving eyeballs. One of those scenes is very gruesome indeed.
There are quite a few topless scenes and sex scenes but overall it’s fairly tame for 1977 (some sources suggest the movie may have been made a few years earlier).
Crazy Desires of a Murderer is a fairly routine giallo with fewer murders than you might expect. There’s really only one spectacular killing and it’s the aftermath that is shocking rather than the murder itself.
Vinegar Syndrome’s Blu-Ray (from their Forgotten Gialli Volume 3 boxed set) provides an excellent 16:9 enhanced transfer. This set also includes Autopsy (1975) and Murder Mansion (1972). The latter is well worth seeing.
Crazy Desires of a Murderer is apparently still not available uncut in the UK but Vinegar Syndrome’s release is the full uncut version.
Where this movie does score is in the creepy scenes set in the castle dungeons and the atmosphere of decadence (a common enough feature of the giallo genre). Overall Crazy Desires of a Murderer is reasonably entertaining and it’s recommended.
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