A bunch of people converge in a large old castle and before long they start getting murdered and have their eyeballs removed! There's a paralyzed, clairvoyant patriarch, a returning countess, her deranged younger brother who is obsessed with taxidermy. There's drug smuggling via antique vases and one member of the party who is being pressurised by gangsters. Who could be guilty of the murders and why! A dogged detective arrives and starts sleuthing.

This is one of the gialli which combined a gothic element into its contemporary story. To that end we have the interiors of the old castle as the backdrop to much of the usual sex and violence recipe. Like most in this sub-genre, it has some nice cinematography and music by Piero Piccioni (with some Ennio Morricone music taken from A Lizard in a Woman's Skin, oddly enough). Unfortunately, the story isn't as interesting as it should be, given the ingredients and it often feels a bit half-hearted. There's just enough giallo craziness to take it over the line though.

This may seem like a very bizarre and silly statement, but bear with me. If the Giallo sub-genre is one big and joyful family, then "Crazy Desires of a Murderer" would be the weird and creepy uncle! He's unreliable and always involved in some sort of trouble, but his stories and lifestyle are utterly fascinating. Nobody openly appreciates his perverted remarks or his twisted sense of humor, but secretly everybody loves him just a little bit. And, finally, the family party or reunion simply isn't complete without him.

What I basically mean with the above gibberish is that "Crazy Desires of a Murderer" is a very atypical and experimental Giallo, but nevertheless one that keeps you intrigued and amused even though the overall sentiment at the end is disappointment. Arriving quite late at the party (the giallo's heyday ended around 1974-1975; while this was released in 1977), the script incorporates various other non-giallo styles, genres, and story elements.

The rudimentary plot of a spoiled rich girl and her eccentric friends being stalked by a sadist killer is pure and unhinged Giallo, obviously, but the setting at the remote old family castle with its mandatorily sinister inhabitants (a crippled patriarch, a spooky amateur-taxidermist son, a cold-blooded housemaid...) also makes the film an authentic gothic-horror effort. There's also a crime/thriller angle, since one of the guests at the castle is up to his neck into drug-smuggling and plans the theft of a valuable family jewel. As soon as the police inspector enters the scene, played by the eminent Corrado Gaipa, "Crazy Desires..." even almost turns into an Agatha Christie novel, since he's a sort of Poirot who draws all the attention to him and sets traps for the potential culprits. Last but not least, the film also shares the contemporary Italian fetish for eyeball-violence. There's a regrettably low number of kills in this film, especially considering the expanded cast, but the poor girl who gets it first suffers tremendously as her eyes are literally spooned out of the sockets and put in a bag.

As said, a very strange flick full of gratuitous sex and shocks, but also one that is ultimately unsatisfying. Director Filipo Walter Ratti has enough material here to fill at least two full-length movies, but stuffing everything into one script made it hectic and unnatural.

Sure, that's a pretty lurid title - the Italian title I vizi morbosi di una governante translates as Morbid Vices of a Housekeeper - and trust me, this lives up to it, what with an older woman using a mentally challenged man and a teenager sexually - not at the same time! - and then a game of charades which is mostly people yelling out the names of films while everyone else gropes one another.

There are more than a lot of camera zooms in here, as well as bad sartorial choices and even worse life ones. When Ileana and her bunch of hip friends - their words not mine - gather at a gothic castle owned by a wheelchair-bound older relative of one of the girls, things get pervy, weird and murdery, just as you'd expect.

If you are a hip friend or have hip friends (at which point that makes you a hip friend), then you should take this warning: do not go to hang out in gothic castles. Nothing, in my movie - not life - experience says that things will go well.

Meanwhile, two of these with it pals are using Chinese treasures to smuggler heroin - as you do - while Elsa the party girl ends up with both of her eyes torn out, just like Ileana's mother had done to her by a relative who has lost his mind and is possibly prowling the catacombs of the castle.

This would be the last film that Filippo Walter Ratti would direct. You may have seen his other movies, including Mondo Erotico, Operation White Shark and Night of the Damned. Screenwriter Ambrogio Molteni also wrote the two Black Emanuelle movies, as well as Yellow Emanuelle, Sister Emanuelle and Violence in a Women's Prison.

Speaking of Emanuelle, you may recognize Annie Carol Edel from Emanuelle and Francoise or perhaps from Almost Human or even The True Story of the Nun of Monza. No? How about Isabelle Marchall from Black Emanuelle? Or Patrizia Gori from Cry of a Prostitute, The Return of the Exorcist or as Francoise in Emanuelle and Francoise?