This movie has three different, genuinely descriptive titles: the direct Italian translation "Crime in the Mirror", the English title "Death on a Four Poster" (the centerpiece murder takes place on a four-poster bed with a mirrored canopy), and the somewhat blunt but still very accurate alternate English title "Sexy Party". The movie starts out as kind of a low-rent version of "La Dolce Vita" as six young, attractive couples are having a swinging party and playing all kinds of hedonistic games in an old castle. It takes kind of a Gothic horror turn, however, when one of the male protagonists (John Drew Barrymore)has a premonition of something terrible occurring, which proves eerily correct after he leaves the party. Here the movie kind of resembles contemporary Italian horror films like "Bloody Pit of Horror" or "The Vampire and the Ballerina" where jaded modern protagonist are menaced by supernatural forces. But this eventually turns out to be much more of a stylized murder mystery, putting it more in the category of a very early giallo thriller.
This movie is very 60's Italian-style sexy. There's no nudity really, but the actresses Antonella Lualdi and Luisa Rivelli are absolutely smoking-ass hot even with their clothes on, and there's a strong atmosphere of erotic decadence such as a scene where the Rivelli character's compulsive-gambler boyfriend "loses her" in a dice game to the malicious Lualdi character, and the latter sends her off to a room for ten minutes with another male guest (where whatever happens is left mostly to the viewer's imagination). This movie kind of reminded me of a contemporary early black-and-white giallo "Libido" in that it manages to be even more sexy than most 70's Italian films that were far, far more graphic.
The most famous actors here though are undoubtedly two male ones. The very eccentric and enigmatic John Drew Barrymore was the descendant of the famous Barrymore family as well as the father of Drew Barrymore. Whatever talent the latter has, she undoubtedly got from him rather than her groupie mother, but John Drew was such an errant talent that he spent much of career working in strange European movies like this, and often not working at all. Michael Lemoine, who plays one of the other male guests, is a very strange-looking guy, but a decent actor and kind of a Svengali character in real life who hooked up with various luscious Euro-beauties like Janine Reynaud and used them to carve out a career as both a performer and director in erotic European films (He and Reynaud collaborated with Jess Franco on some of the latter's more interesting work). This is a good movie. I'd recommend it.
This movie is very 60's Italian-style sexy. There's no nudity really, but the actresses Antonella Lualdi and Luisa Rivelli are absolutely smoking-ass hot even with their clothes on, and there's a strong atmosphere of erotic decadence such as a scene where the Rivelli character's compulsive-gambler boyfriend "loses her" in a dice game to the malicious Lualdi character, and the latter sends her off to a room for ten minutes with another male guest (where whatever happens is left mostly to the viewer's imagination). This movie kind of reminded me of a contemporary early black-and-white giallo "Libido" in that it manages to be even more sexy than most 70's Italian films that were far, far more graphic.
The most famous actors here though are undoubtedly two male ones. The very eccentric and enigmatic John Drew Barrymore was the descendant of the famous Barrymore family as well as the father of Drew Barrymore. Whatever talent the latter has, she undoubtedly got from him rather than her groupie mother, but John Drew was such an errant talent that he spent much of career working in strange European movies like this, and often not working at all. Michael Lemoine, who plays one of the other male guests, is a very strange-looking guy, but a decent actor and kind of a Svengali character in real life who hooked up with various luscious Euro-beauties like Janine Reynaud and used them to carve out a career as both a performer and director in erotic European films (He and Reynaud collaborated with Jess Franco on some of the latter's more interesting work). This is a good movie. I'd recommend it.