Crew
Director – Roberto Montero, Screenplay – Luigi Angelo, Italo Fassan & Roberto Montero, Story – Luigi Angelo & Italo Fassan, Producer – Eugenio Florimonte, Photography – Fausto Rossi, Music – Giorgio Gaslini, Special Effects – Viantonio Ricci, Art Direction – Massimo Bolongaro. Production Company – P.C.R. (Produzioni Cinematografiche Romane).
Cast
Farley Granger (Inspector Capuana), Sylva Koscina (Barbara Capuana), Chris Avram (Professor Casali), Silvano Tranquilli (Paolo Santangelli), Annabella Incontrera (Franca Santangelli), Krista Nell (Renata), Luciano Rossi (Gastone), Sandro Pizzoro (Roberto), Angela Covello (Bettina Santangelli), Jessica Dublin (Rossella), Susan Scott (Lily), Fabrizio Moresco (Piero), Benito Stefanelli (Lily’s Husband), Femi Benussi (Serena)
Plot
Police inspector Capuana investigates a series of killings where a masked figure wearing all black is killing women. All of the victims are wives who have been engaged in adultery. The killer leaves photos he has taken of them caught in the act scattered across the body with the faces of the men scratched out. Capuna and his investigators believe the killer is some type of sex maniac.
The giallo film was a genre that emerged in Italy in the 1960s, popularised by Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace (1964). The giallo is a form of psycho-thriller that places an emphasis on sado-sexual deaths and extravagant stylistic effects. (A more detailed listing of the genre can be found here at Giallo Films).
The Slasher … Is the Sex Maniac! is fairly standard as giallo of this era go. As was established in Blood and Black Lace, the killer wears a fedora, black gloves and coat and here also has what looks like a stocking over their face. As always with giallo, the identity of the killer is revealed at the end but this could have been chosen by getting the members of the cast to select straws at random. Despite all the focus on sex maniacs, nothing is done to establish the individual’s motivation. The one minor difference over most other giallo is that this is pitched as a Police Procedural and the plot focuses on the police investigation into the killings.
This brings us to the title The Slasher … Is the Sex Maniac!, which it should be noted is one that was placed on the film in English-language release. (It also goes by the alternate less sensationalistic English-language title So Sweet, So Dead). The Italian title Rivelazioni di un Maniaco Sessuale al Capo Della Squadra Mobile translates as Revelations of a Sex Maniac to the Chief of the Flying Squad, which is at least somewhat more accurate a representation of what the film is about. My other gripe about the version in dvd release from Code Red that I ended up watching is that it is a dubbed version. I would much prefer to watch the film in its original language ie. as near to the original release as possible – although to be fair the dubbing is not bad and by no means intrusive.
The film itself is an average example of the giallo, passable but nothing standout. There is plentiful nudity. On the other hand, what is sorely lacking is the directorial style that the likes of Mario Bava and Dario Argento imbued the genre with. Roberto Montero’s handling is fairly ordinary from a directorial standpoint. The kills are nothing more than the masked figure coming up behind the victims. The best of these is one sequence where a woman is pursued down a beach by the killer.
There is the whole sex maniac aspect of the title, which does cause you to do a double take today. There has always been a pathological sexuality at work in the psyche of the giallo film – all that focus on beautiful women being killed in various states of undress. However, The Slasher … Is the Sex Maniac! goes beyond that and tries to speculate about the psychological motivation to the killer. It is rather laughable to watch the film in a more enlightened (2020s) era of serial killer profiling and more liberal attitudes towards non-hetero sexualities. Lines like “Maybe it’s the work of a homosexual … out of jealousy. My theory is supported by the fact that all the lovers’ faces have been erased from the photos.” Or else “Or maybe an impotent man. Impotent men often have a mortal hate for women they cannot possess.”
Even aside from that, the film seems determined to offer up a range of odd characters, including the clearly gay suspect Cleopatra in the waiting room and Luciano Rossi as a very weird mortician who has a creepy fascination with the corpses he tends, including photographing them and keeping their pictures on their wall where he insists they look normal. Beyond that, the film’s greater fascination is with adultery and in women who engage in such being punished. Although here the divided pathology of the giallo comes to the fore – the line-up of women engaged in adultery is shown with them undressed and in bed with their paramours ie. with the intent of titillating us, followed by their dead bodies after the fact (frequently also nude). It is as though the film is caught between desire for the women and a stern moral disapproval for their actions.
In 1976, US distributors re-edited the film with hardcore pornographic footage featuring actors Harry Reems and Kim Pope and prepared to release it under the title Penetration. Star Farley Granger however sued and the film was withdrawn from US release.
Roberto Montero (sometimes billed as Roberto Bianchi Montero) directed over sixty films between the 1950s and his death in 1986. These dabble in most genres of the day including comedies, domestic dramas, crime films, Spaghetti Westerns, war films, Peplum, various Mondo exploitation documentaries, the Euro spy film and erotica. However, The Slasher … Is the Sex Maniac! is the only film of Moreno’s that concerns us here.
Trailer here