IN THE FOLDS OF THE FLESH (1970)

A title card tells us that a violent shock can damage the mind. Next up, it's night in a big house overlooking the sea; the decapitated corpse of a man, Andre, is surrounded by a woman and two children. We assume a situation in which a wife has killed her abusive husband, and the kids, as per the title card quote, will be damaged by seeing this, but we're not sure. [As viewers will soon figure out, virtually nothing in this film can be taken at face value, so you may assume that many of my assumptions as I summarize the plot are eventually revealed to be wrong.] As some cops chase a motorcyclist on a nearby road, the woman, named Lucille, starts an empty motorboat and pushes it out to sea. Pascal, the motorcyclist and crook on the run, sees her bury the headless body on the property. Pascal is captured even as the cops tread all over the fresh grave. Another title card quotes Freud: "What has been remains embedded in the brain, nestled in the folds of the flesh." Thirteen years later, Lucille still lives at the seaside villa with the two grown children, the possibly neurotic Colin and the possibly frail Falesse. Michel, a cousin of Andre's, arrives for a visit, bringing his German shepherd. We discover that the world believes that Andre died by misadventure in the motorboat we saw Lucille set adrift. But Michel's dog snoops around and starts to dig up the 13-year-old grave, so Colin strangles it—remember it, because we'll see it again. Then Michel is caught snooping around in the house and after Falesse has sex with him, she kills him. Colin and Lucille take the body to the cellar to dissolve it in acid. The next visitor is a boorish goateed man named Alex, friend of Michel's. Colin and Falesse engage in erotic dancing and deep kissing in front of him (this seems to confirm the incestuous vibe we've been getting from the two). When Alex makes out with Falesse, he slips her wig off, she complains that only her father can touch her hair, then she decapitates him. We see a seemingly unrelated scene of a psychiatrist at an asylum taking custody of a young woman. Next, back at the villa, who should show up Pascal, with a gun, wanting to use the knowledge he has about that night thirteen years ago to engage in some blackmail. He seems to have the family at a disadvantage, until he doesn't.

There are more plot points, more kink, and eventually explanations, but unlike some online reviewers, I won't spoil the surprises—some ridiculous, some delicious—since full enjoyment of this film depends on us watching the characters and motivations get untangled. In addition to incest and decapitation and rape and insanity, we get flashbacks to a Nazi concentration camp, Etruscan skulls, caged pet vultures, sexual psychosis, plastic surgery, an ingenious bathtub murder set-up, and some very strange and colorful fashion choices for the adult children. I'm not sure that everything is explained clearly—I'm still uncertain about the incest angle—but it doesn't matter for this deliriously nutty giallo. The film has a decadent feel, but there's not much sex or nudity, and the murders, especially the decapitations, are more campily artificial than gory. I suspect the actors, directed by Sergio Bergonzelli, had little idea what was going on from scene to scene, so any judging of the acting has to be on a superficial level. Eleonora Rossi Drago grounds the film as best she can as Lucille, who generally remains calm and keeps a level head no matter what craziness is going on around her. Emilio Gutierrez Caba (pictured at left) is absolutely right as the debauched but passive and generally ineffective Colin; he’s good looking in an unhealthy way. Pier Angeli, who had a strong Hollywood career in the 50s (Somebody Up There Likes Me, The Silver Chalice) doesn't seem comfortable as Falesse, but her role is the most difficult since she’s carrying the most secrets. Fernando Sancho is gross and off-putting as Pascal, as he should be. The only other cast member to stand out to me is Victor Barrera (pictured at top right with Angeli) as Alex, and that’s more for his looks than anything else, since he's not around very long.

Everyone calls this a giallo, and while it does have that feel from time to time, it's not a traditional whodunit. We know who's doing most of the killing because we see the murders happen—except for the very first death which does remain shrouded in mystery until the end. It also has other markers of the giallo, with crazy camera moves, psychedelic visual fragmentation, a convoluted (some might say nonsensical) plot, heavy if not explicit sexual content, and bright colors all around. Bergonzelli seems to want to subvert most of our expectations of giallo—the most nudity we see is, perhaps offensively, in the Nazi flashbacks—and some critics call this a dark comedy or a giallo parody, which I totally get. I didn't notice the background score too often, but the main theme borrows a few notes from Doctor Zhivago's "Lara's Theme." This is not the movie to use to introduce newcomers to the giallo genre, but presented with gin martinis all around, this might be a good party movie for serious film buffs. [Criterion Channel]