The Blood Stained Shadow (DVD)

This well-handled giallo thriller was directed by Antonio Bido (Il Gatto dagli Occhi di Giada). After a young girl is murdered by a mysterious stranger, the young Stefano (Lino Capolicchio) comes home to Venice to visit his brother (Craig Hill), a priest with many enemies. As people start dying left and right, Bido introduces an odd assortment of characters, including a wife-killing doctor, an abortionist, and a nutty gay Count (Massimo Serato) who molests children. Stefano tries figuring out the mystery while having an affair with an interior decorator (Suspiria's Stefania Casini). It might be argued that the plot is merely a reworking of Lucio Fulci's superior Non se Sevizio un Paperino (1971), with shades of Capolicchio's previous starring turn in Pupi Avati's La Casa dalle Finestre che Ridono (1976), but in Italian genre film, the question of derivative plotlines becomes almost superficial. It works, and should please Euro-thriller fans. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi