HumanoidOfFlesh
"The Morbid Habits of the Governess" is one of the most obscure gialli I have seen.A group of men and their women is invited to a villa and then stalked and murdered by a mysterious killer who collects their eyeballs.Slow-moving and melancholic giallo with several macabre set-pieces and plenty of delicious sleaze.Corrado Gaipa's police inspector is especially memorable as are two sexy ladies Isabelle Marchall and Patrizia Gori.The film was released in 1995 on VHS by Redemption and after selling very poorly faded into complete obscurity.The moody score helps to create some suspenseful moments and the acting is solid.If you are a fan of Eurotrash you can't miss "Crazy Desires of a Murderer".7 out of 10.
lazarillo
A group of hip friends gather at a Gothic castle owned by a wheelchair- bound older relative of one of the girls (Isabella Marchall). One couple in the group, unbeknownst to the others, is smuggling heroin in some Chinese artifacts the protagonist has brought back from the Orient to give to her elderly relative. Meanwhile the deranged uncle of the protagonist, who supposedly killed the protagonist's mother (his own sister)and cut out her eyes, is wandering the catacombs spying on everyone. When one of the guests (Patrizia Gorzi) is murdered and her eyes subsequently disappear, suspicion naturally falls on the mad uncle. But is he being set up? The plot here is actually pretty lame. There's also a real lack of recognizable acting talent compared to other gialli. (Patrizia Gorzi had been in "Emanuelle's Revenge" and "Possessor", but she only has a small part and the rest of the cast are virtual unknowns). The eyeball murders are gory but pretty low-tech and nothing to write home about frankly. This movie has style to burn though, and that's where it really succeeds. The old castle makes for an interesting setting. The visual are top-notch (with very good cinematography and editing) and the music is very memorable. In some ways it's kind of an old-fashioned Gothic horror movie (like "Tomb of Torture" or "The Virgin of Nuremberg"), but definitely with a late 70's sensibility as far as sex and gore go.Gialli were really never known for their great plotting, but for their visual style and music. And if you compare this movie to "Sister of Ursula" the next year and "Play Motel" the year after that, it's clear that the genre faded not so much because the stories got dumber (or because they basically turned into softcore porn flicks), but because their unique style slowly drained away over the years. As far as a late 70's gialli goes this is actually pretty good. I'd recommend to giallo fans at least if no one else.
Steve Nyland (Squonkamatic)
The thing that makes really good murder mystery movie work is the inclusion of the unexpected: The least likely person you would suspect is actually slaughtering young women, removing their body parts, and the local big gutted cop is the last person in the world who can put two & two together before it's too late. With the best of them we actually never find out who the killer is, or their identity is questionable at best and arrived at for the convenience of the dim witted cast members who want their ordeal to be over rather than actually solving the mystery. Think Bob Clark's original 1974 classic "Black Christmas" and you'll see what I mean: He admitted even he never knew who the killer really was, and he wrote the damn movie.MORBID HABITS OF THE GOVERNESS is not a very good Giallo movie, but then neither is painting by numbers a good representation of art. It services the need by taking up space on the wall and looking pretty, but in the end all you're left with is 11x14 inches of wall covered up. Which is my metaphor for this movie -- It absorbs 85 minutes of time for Giallo fans and manages to look like a Giallo movie, has the plot of a Giallo movie, the expected body count and perversity that Giallo fans demand, even if it isn't executed in a very imaginative way. We get the usual motley collection of Italian hipsters sequestered at a secluded Italian villa (they call it a castle, I say its a villa) that is the property of a young baroness who's mother was killed by her brother. He chopped out her eyes and embalmed them to remember her by, is a taxidermist by hobby who is mute, and the family keeps him in check by keeping him strung out on heroin. The motley collection of hipsters are at the castle to steal the heroin to pay off some gangsters, and after another improbably debauched Italian party the various couples pair off for sex, including the inventive use of a phallic candle that is sadly relegated to an off-screen tease.During the night someone brutally slaughters one of the young women guests and carves out her eyeballs -- so you KNOW the killer cannot possibly be the young taxidermist who carves the eyeballs out of the bodies of dead women. That would be too easy, so instead the movie sets up a labyrinth of deceit and debauchery that really isn't as deceitful and debauched as it thinks it is, and that's even giving the movie credit for being 30 years old. Point being that if you have seen more than three or four of these things you know that the film is going out of it's way to set up the young doped up taxidermist as the villain, and that the real killer will be the last person in the world you'd think of -- which in this case is the first person in the world you would think of, unless you are a total newb. Only the movie thinks the taxidermist guy is guilty, the audience knows better, the heavy-gutted cop knows better, the victims know better, and even the young taxidermist guy knows better. Too bad he couldn't tell anybody about it, or was too stoned to just write it down.Put quite simply, this film and it's so-called mystery is a complete waste of time ... unless you really get a vibe off Giallo thrillers involving semi-deviant sex, gruesome murders, cloistered atmosphere of dread, and a smirking, know it all big gutted cop who's two steps ahead of the killer to the point where he sets himself up as a victim just to snare the guilty party. And wouldn't you know it if it turns out he was right all along. The result isn't very satisfying unless you relish this kind of stuff, and even then most real Giallo fans will be stone bored between the murders & sexual bouts, which serve merely as waypoints for viewers to navigate the film's 85 minutes or so of length. They are checkpoints for your flight list that you can X off as the film progresses, knowing that you pretty much touched all the requisite bases. It's a formula, like painting by numbers, and if you need a certain patch of wall covered there you go. The movie serves the same role for Giallo fans who feel they have been allotted 85 minutes more of life then they can really make use of on their own.I'm one to talk though, I worship Spaghetti Westerns, which were also made by the Italians and downright formulaic to the point of being predictable ... There's always some guy who's being sprung from prison after 15 years to avenge the killing of his brother or father or father & brother -- it never fails, and I almost never cease to be entertained by the things. Thats why I love Italian genre cinema: They always end up giving you the goods in the end, or at least whatever it was you went looking for in the movie. If you go looking for a Giallo mystery in MORBID HABITS OF THE GOVERNESS you will be pleasantly surprised to find that's exactly what you'll get. Anyone else, however, will likely be bored to tears after the inventive scene with the candlestick phallus, which was about the only thing in this movie I didn't see coming.4/10
Paul Petroskey
Pretty boring Italian mystery. Lots of things happen that seem to have little relevance to the plot. When people are killed, their eyes are removed (the bad effects are shown graphically). Not much to reccommend here, even for fans of Italian mysteries ("giallos").
