Razor Fangs, the grotesque man beast of the Goose Lord gang, crept his way to the collapsed Men’s stall. I figured Edwige, my kangaroo companion from my misadventures in North America, was dead, felled by the wicked Razor Fangs. The leather clad freak bushed some of the remnants aside. A bright red boxing glove burst out of the rubble much to the surprise of myself and Razor Fangs. The fiend hissed as Edwige rose back to the surface, her tail wrapped around a Ferguson toilet that was about to come crashing down on his head. — To be continued. 

Tonight’s movie is 1975’s A Dragonfly for Each Corpse from director León Klimovsky. Finally, we have a more standard Giallo movie. Animal themed title? Check. Black gloved killer? Check. Bumbling Italian police that can’t solve anything so it’s up to the American living abroad to catch the killer? Nope. We have an Italian detective as our protagonist this time around. Paul Naschy plays Inspector Paolo Scaporella, a cigar chomping, no nonsense kind of man with a mustache to boot.

The movie begins with a drug addicted painter getting his latest heroin fix. We then see a mysterious figure with black gloves withdraw a sword and start hacking away at the artist. The killer really goes to town on this guy. Later, we see Inspector Scaporella about to beat the living daylights out of the local peeper in the park when the commissioner calls him in. The commissioner informs Inspector Scaporella that the dead body of that painter has been found, the latest in the Dragonfly Murders. The killer keeps leaving a calling card of a plastic dragonfly on each corpse.

The next victim is a prostitute. Different weapon of choice this time around. The killer has one of those umbrellas that shoots out a knife at the tip, the kind the Penguin from Batman uses. Another dragonfly and the police are still baffled. Inspector Scaporella is assigned the case. Later that night, he makes a spaghetti dinner for his girlfriend, Silvana (Erika Blanc), and informs her that he’s been assigned the Dragonfly Murders. She’s happy for him, thinks this will be his big chance, but Scaporella is worried.

The Dragonfly Killer hacks a few potheads to bits with an axe and then trashes their apartment. One of the victims managed to grab a fancy button from his attacker before he died, the only clue Inspector Scaporella has. The only thing that links the victims together is their connection to the underworld. Inspector Scaporella thinks he might have a sick vigilante on his hands, someone who wants to clean the streets of Milan of all the filth.

We get other sordid things in this movie like smokey strip clubs, a learned professor who, naturally, is into necrophilia, a Neo Nazi biker gang and a shootout at a roller coaster, It all culminates with a final showdown between Inspector Scaporella and the killer inside a crumbling office complex. Not bad for an Italian Gialli. Wait. What? A Dragonfly for Each Corpse was a Spanish production. The Spanish made Giallo movies! My world just got a little bigger.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, and episode 575) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.