Umberto Lenzi delivers a giallo that has all the trademark elements fully in place, but somehow fails to achieve the right level of madness to produce a true classic. I'm not quite sure why, though. Let's blame Antonio Sabato!

No – let's get to the story instead. Someone wearing the standard issue giallo killer uniform (black gloves, floppy hat, raincoat) is murdering women in and around Rome, at rather a rapid rate, too! This guy knows how to create a giallo atmosphere – not only does he shake things up on the variety side, he also leaves a weird silver crescent next to the bodies.

His third victim (I think) is the bride of Antonio Sabato, and she gets cut up on a train while her husband out buying McEwan's Export from the train bar. He attends her funeral while the cops take everybody's pictures covertly, but it's all a ruse! She's still alive though I'm sure her relatives are going to be chuffed when they find that out.

Antonio then gets on the job of finding out who the killer is, with the aid of the police to a certain extent. He discovers that all the woman being offed all stayed at a certain hotel at a certain time, but why are they being killed? And who is this American people keep referring to? And did Bruno Corazarri just say he gave the American a chewie?

So we've got the stupid clues, the Euro-babes, the set piece kills, what have you, but I couldn't help but feel that Antonio Sabato wasn't pushing himself as the hero (and I felt the same way about him in The Man with Icy Eyes), so his lack of animation made the film at bit dull. Or maybe that was due to the film following the giallo formula a bit too strictly (although the 'death by drill' was an eye opener). It could because I've watched about a hundred of these films in about six months. YOU DECIDE!

Before Cannibal Ferox and Eaten Alive!, Umberto Lenzi had his Giallo films. They are different from the American murder-mysteries in that we actually see the crime taking place, not just CSI showing up to process the scene, and we usually get lots of blood and tits with the deed.

OMG! A scene from The Driller Killer. The "Half-Moon Maniac" uses what is convenient to get the job done.

The last "victim" sets herself up for the kill to catch the maniac.

It doesn't work, and Mario (Antonio Sabato) keeps looking. Can he get home and save his wife, Giulia (Uschi Glas) before the killer strikes?

Great film, even though it was dubbed.

Umberto Lenzi is perhaps best known for his gory cannibal classics Eaten Alive! and Cannibal Ferox, but before those films he, like many Italian directors, dabbled in a variety of other genres: spaghetti westerns, peplum, Bond-style adventures, war films, and, of course, gialli. In typical giallo fashion, Seven Blood-stained Orchids opens with a murder, the killer decked out in black leather gloves and wide brimmed hat and carrying a switch-blade, the victim a beautiful (and semi-naked) woman.

From here on in, it's routine murder mystery material, Lenzi never pulling out the stops, delivering very little tension and noticeably failing to bring on the splatter that would typify his more famous movies. As the killer works his way through a series of (mostly topless) ladies, leaving a half-moon keyring as his calling card, concerned husband Mario (Antonio Sabato) tries to unravel the mystery before the maniac succeeds in bumping off his wife Giulia (Uschi Glas).

Mario is always one step behind the killer, meaning that there are plenty of deaths, but these are bloodless affairs and staged with little of the style synonymous with the genre. The use of a power drill results in the nastiest of the murders, but even this disappoints, the drillbit entering the victim through her dress; had this been made several years later, I've no doubt Lenzi would have had the spinning bit enter her skull, her eye, or her boobs, which would have definitely livened up proceedings.