Another movie I tracked down to watch basically because of the Ennio Morricone score, particularly the mellow, haunting title piece, Spasmo (1974) is a giallo mystery that was quite unusual. Starting off with a man (Robert Hoffmann) finding a woman knocked out on the beach (Suzy Kendall), the film’s tone is very over the top in the dialogue (“I swear I killed a man in Barbara’s bathroom!”), the camera moves, the plot twists, almost to the point of parody – though I’m sure the director Umberto Lenzi didn’t think he was doing that, and was more placing you a heightened state as the initially smooth male protagonist played by Hoffman, slowly unravels because of everything going on around him. There’s also weird mannequin life sized dolls that pop around the place, a red-shirted, black-suited hitman that looks like (but is not) Dario Argento, a seaside ambience, and classic giallo presence Ivan Rassimov (those steely eyes! That rigid jaw!) in the mix. This was entertaining, almost like a cartoonish Hitchcock copycat.
VHS Tracking 