The Curator of Schlock #284 by Jeff Shuster

The Case of the Bloody Iris

It’s a bloody good time. 

The Museum of Schlock is long overdue for an exhibit of Giallo, those wonderful Italian combinations of murder mystery and horror.

I’ve got my black gloves, trench coat, fedora, and black nylon facemask ready to go. Hey, just because a man dresses in such manner that doesn’t make him a serial killer. Don’t be so shallow.

1972’s The Case of the Bloody Iris from director Giuliano Carnimeo is a tour de force of sex, murder, and madness. The radiant Edwige Fenech portrays Jennifer Osterman, a young model who used to belong to a New Age cult, and by New Age, I mean Satanic.

Okay. Maybe that’s too far. Who am I too judge?

What am I judging?

This one guy from the cult married Jennifer, but then insisted that she be shared with the other men of the cult. I guess the orgy lifestyle wasn’t for Jennifer so she left the cult for the glamorous career of a fashion model. Her husband didn’t like that so he stalks her.

Oh, and the movie begins with a murder in an elevator. One of the models in the upper level apartments gets her throat slit. Another model named Mizar Harrington (Carla Brait) sees the corpus delicti in the elevator, but can’t be bothered to call the police because she must get ready for a show. In this show, Mizar stands on a stage and demands that one of the hot and bothered men in the crowd try to catch her and dominate her. If they can do this, Mizar will be his slave, ready to do whatever her captor wants.

None of the men in the audience can subdue her, but later that night, a psychopath wearing a trench coat, leather gloves, fedora, and black nylon facemask ties her up and drowns her in own bathtub.

The apartment gets rented to Jennifer and her friend Marilyn (Paola Quattrini). During a dinner party with a gentleman friend of Jennifer’s, Marilyn pretends to have drowned in the bathtub, only to spring up naked and laughing at the two of them. Pretty funny. I would be a little creeped out taking a bath in tub someone was drowned to death in, but Marilyn thinks it’s a lark. Jennifer’s gentleman friend is Andrea Antinori (George Hilton), a rich and handsome man who gets paralyzed by the sight of blood.

What else? We have a Police Commissioner Enci (Giampiero Albertini) who is busy trying to solve the murders when he’s not getting all liquored up. He sends his incompetent assistant Redi (Franco Agostini) to keep an eye on Jennifer. Redi witnesses Jennifer and Andrea eating at a fine restaurant while he’s stuck with a sad sandwich. While stuck in his sad stakeout car, Redi spies on Andrea’s fancy house as Andrea and Jennifer make mad, passionate love inside.  None of this is getting the police any closer to catching the murderer.

Who is the murderer? Could it be Jennifer’s obsessive ex-husband who thinks that Jennifer belongs to him (and the other creep-o men in the cult)?

Could it be the demented son of the old lady who lives in the apartment next door to Jennifer, the guy who reads all of those disgusting horror comics?

Or could it be Andrea, the perfect man who seems to have a problem with the sight of blood due to him getting into a car accident with his dad when he was a child, the blood from his dad’s lifeless corpse dripping on his face? I could tell you, but I have to get ready for a show. The Case of the Bloody Iris is currently on Amazon Prime Streaming.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.