In the Folds of the Flesh (1970)

An Italian/Spanish giallo, In the Folds of the Flesh (1970) boasts a fabulously convoluted plot in which identities are uncertain, memories are unreliable and reality ever changing.  After a mildly psychedelic title sequence, the film starts off with a flashback, with an on-the-run criminal stumbling into the grounds of a remote coastal property to see a woman apparently burying her murdered lover, after which he is arrested and sent to prison.  The film continues episodically in the present, with various characters visiting the property, only to be murdered in bizarre fashion.  First of all, a cousin of the vanished lover turns up, only to end up stabbed to death by his cousin's daughter after he comes onto her - with the cousin's lover and her son covering up the murder.  They even kill the visitor's dog.  Then a friend of the murdered man turns up looking for him, again tries to seduce the daughter, only to be decapitated by her.  At which point it becomes clear without a doubt that she is completely insane, as she has no recollection of the first killing and quickly forgets that she has decapitated another man.  Again, the crime is covered up.  With two bodies dissolved in an acid bath, ostensibly used for cleaning up the bones and other artefacts of ancient Etruscans supposedly found on the property, the convict, now released after spending thirteen years in prison, turns up with blackmail on his mind.  After terrorising the three occupants of the villa, he ends up poisoned in the bath, before also taking a trip to the acid bath.  Just when they think they are going to get some peace, another visitor arrives, claiming to be the missing lover who has been in hiding due to threats on his life by a criminal gang he had fallen out with, explaining his change in appearance on having had plastic surgery.  But is he who he says he is?  Is he really the murderous girl's father?  Indeed, is she the real daughter?  And what happened to the woman's daughter?  Everything is answered via a series of fraught flashbacks that turn the plot on its head and the arrival of another visitor.

Not satisfied with a plot that twists and turns like a corkscrew and numerous stabbings, poisonings and decapitations, director and co-writer Sergio Bergonzelli embellishes In the Folds of the Flesh with as many bizarre embellishments as he can think of.  These include a pair of pet vultures at the villa, scenes in a psychiatric hospital, implied incest child rape and even a flashback to a Nazi concentration camp.  It also has one of the most perfunctory endings of any giallo, with a detective who has just spent most of his screen time pretending to be her father, cheerfully telling a girl that has just been released from psychiatric care and has just been subjected to a series of traumatic revelations about her past, that the villa is now hers and leaving her there as he drives off with her surrogate family in custody for multiple murders.  Ultimately, In the Folds of the Flesh can't help but be entertaining with its bizarre plot and trappings, with the constant plot twists and revelations keeping you watching to see just how much weirder it can get.  Unfortunately, it is all so overwrought that it is impossible to ever take seriously, with several of the characters grotesquely overplayed and the supposedly shocking decapitations quite unconvincing, with rubber heads bouncing all over the place.  Many elements, like the concentration camp flashback, are entirely gratuitous, (but nonetheless were, predictably, exploited to full effect on the video cover of the film's VHS release).  In spite of the bizarreness of the plot and characters, Bergonzelli's direction is relatively straightforward, boasting little in the way of fluid camerawork and off beat framing of shots often associated with the giallo genre and with the episodic nature of the script giving it a halting pace.  Which, perhaps, is no bad thing, as a flamboyant visual style on top of all the other weirdness would most likely have pushed the film over into complete incomprehensibility.  Overall, however, the film's production values are generally pretty good, with an attractive and well utilised main location and some wonderfully late sixties/early seventies decor on view.  Special mention should be made of Fernando Sancho, a familiar face in many Spanish genre films of the era, who plays the convict with obvious relish, making him a truly repulsive uncouth slob devoid of any redeeming features.  Lacking the style of the best of its genre, In the Folds of the Flesh does its best to make up for this with its lunatic plotting, overheated melodrama and its cast of neurotic and disturbed characters.