By 1974 the giallo genre was running out of steam and the films were getting more complicated, more violent and altogether weirder in an attempt to keep viewers coming. Director Umberto Lenzi made two that year, this one and the equally absurd Eyeball, leaving one to hope that Lenzi was putting the audience on and not the stark raving lunatic the films give the impression he was. Whereas Eyeball is a more conventional giallo, with a hooded killer picking off a variety of unwitting victims, Spasmo is more of a "Gaslight"-inspired venture. Someone may be trying to drive the irrepressible Robert Hoffman mad, but he needs little help, and the last fifteen minutes contain the strangest twists I've yet seen in a giallo. Those looking for a stylish thriller will be disappointed by the plant-the-camera-and-shoot direction, and don't expect anything like a plot that's worth following or characters with any relation to human beings. What makes it worth seeing is the genuinely dream-like story, linear yet impossible to follow, and the way each sequence transition requires a twisted justification by the viewer to accept that Yes, maybe it is possible that someone would do this. Here and there a haunting Morricone score comes in, sad and lovely as the one in "My Dear Killer," and there are inexplicable scenes of an unseen man stabbing female dolls, his identity revealed only at the very end in one the finale's many left-field twists. The only giallo remotely comparable to this one is Death Laid An Egg, and at least that had the excuse of being from the 1960's and (I assume) the use of mind-altering chemicals by its creators. I can't imagine what state of mind the filmmakers of this mini-classic were in while making it, but you'd be hard-pressed to find another film like it.
Review of Spasmo
