Michael is a successful actor, but he has a scandal in his past: at a tender age he knifed his father to death. He and his girlfriend Deborah go to his mother’s for the weekend and are joined by the director and others from a recent film project. But they are given a rather cool reception by the superstitious housekeeper Oliver. Soon rude things begin happening to some of the guests, and Michael fears a repeat of his nightmare past is in progress.
Giallo Movie Review: Murder Obsession
Like many other movies, Murder Obsession has its fans and those who despise the film. I took a gamble with it and figured I’d give it a watch and decide for myself. Besides, the premise was interesting enough to make me want to give it a go; an actor, Michael (Stefano Patrizi), who has a morbid past and a seeming obsession with death after killing his abusive father when he was a kid, goes back home to see his mother after fifteen years. For some reason or another, he invites the cast and crew of his latest movie to his mother’s house. Having known little to nothing about this film, I went into this with the presumption that Michael invited the cast and crew to make a film at this large house in the countryside. This intrigued me. An actor obsessed with murder will take out the cast and crew one by one. Of course, this being a Giallo, there would be a twist, something more, something unforeseen. However, this was not the case. The reason for the gathering was, well, just that, a gathering of friends at his mother’s house. Sure, it would have been more plausible if the cast and crew were kids and there was a predetermined relationship between Michael and his mother, Glenda (Anita Strindberg), who bears a striking resemblance to Sharon Stone, but, again, the two have not seen each other for fifteen years. One would think that they had a lot of catching up to do, but, nope! It’s murdering time!
The film opens with a man who pounces on a woman, viciously strangling her, but something is amiss when we hear someone yell “cut!” We are on a movie set where our protagonist, Michael, plays a killer and lets the role get to him and he is, in fact, squeezing his co-stars, Beryl (Laura Gemser), neck too tightly. We are shown images of a yet-to-be-revealed past on the movie set, and Michael snaps back to his senses. Apparently, he feels such violent tendencies for the first time, and soon after, he becomes motivated to take his girlfriend, Debora (Silvia Dionisio), to visit his mother after being absent from her life for fifteen years. What’s more is that not only does he bring his girlfriend but thought it would be appropriate to bring some of the cast and crew of the film he is working on to visit his mother, including Beryl who if you remember was nearly choked to death on the set.
When they arrive at his mother’s house, or should I say mansion, we are introduced to the tall and robotic Oliver (John Richardson), the family butler. I say robotic that is the performance given to us by Richardson. A little too on the nose performance if you ask me. Things slow down in the movie as we get more exposition about Michael’s troubled past and his eerie relationship with his mother, who looks only a few years older than him. We also get more insight into the strange occurrences happening around the house, including a bizarre dream Deborah has involving some ritualistic business, bats where you can visibly see the strings, and a giant spider. At this point, I was lost regarding where the story was going.
There was not a lot going for the movie but plenty going against it including seemingly out of place, and abrupt, music, lots of gratuitous nudity, a dead woman that we can clearly still see breathing with a prosthetic on her chest that looks like a strip of bacon, and an obvious dummy’s head that was used to get axed, which was fun. Murder Obsession, for me, doesn’t get going until about an hour into the film. There were a lot of aspects of the plot that didn’t make sense at all and seemed confused as to where it wanted to go. It was as if the writers (all four of them) had different ideas, couldn’t come to a consensus, and just threw them all in. The production was cheap, and it showed with the special effects, the music, the set pieces and you can even see the reflection of crewmen in mirrors multiple times in one scene. That is just lazy. The twist was meh, the second twist was meh and the third twist was, let’s say it together, meh. This is just another example of the writers not knowing where to take the story and the lack of being able to make a final decision. There were some interesting and creepy visuals but, alas, Murder Obsession felt very amateur, low budget, and naïve almost like a student film. Yikes!