Death Laid an Egg

1968 "See them tear each other apart. Then see what they do with the pieces."
5.9| 1h29m| NA| en| More Info
Released: 09 January 1968 Released
Producted By: Les Films Corona
Country: Italy
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

A love triangle develops between three people who run a high tech chicken farm. It involves Anna (who owns the farm), her husband Marco (who kills prostitutes in his spare time) and Gabriella (the very beautiful secretary). Marco continues to kill as jealousy becomes more prevalent on the farm.

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Director

Giulio Questi

Production Companies

Les Films Corona

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Death Laid an Egg Audience Reviews

Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.
ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.
Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.
Darkling_Zeist Jean-Louis Trintignant's character finds himself at the center of a bizarre conundrum, an idiosyncratic thriller laden with obscure Freudian motifs, art house posturing, and bravura camera styling's; but it's the film's gleeful lack of conformity that engenders 'Death laid An Egg' with such a rabid cult following. While the film contains the requisite murder, squabbling in-laws, micro-skirted dolly birds, and it is a giallo in only the broadest sense, as Guigli's aesthetic is far more oblique and cerebral than the average black gloves of death approach. Naturally, thriller convention plays a part here, but it cowers betwixt layer-upon-layer of psychedelic absurdity. 'Morte Ha fatto L'uovo' might be a Bunuel-esque satire of middle-class malaise and big business avarice, but in point of fact this glorious oddity remains too enigmatic for simple reductionism, and remains forever that most precious of cinematic artifacts a genuine cult movie deserving of the highest praises indeed.
Red-Barracuda Death Laid An Egg is truly a one off. While it does qualify as an early example of the giallo, more than anything it's a very weird art film. Director Giulio Questi seems to have been highly influenced by the New Wave, so the aesthetic is often very much at odds with the one we are used to in most other gialli. It seems more indebted to Jean Luc Godard than Mario Bava most of the time. There is even one very disturbing scene of a car crash that feels like a direct descendant of the bizarre and disturbing imagery from Week-End. This scene like many others utilises a very bold editing technique that pre-dates the similar work of Nicolas Roeg. There is no doubt that visually this is a very fascinating film. It mixes both surrealism and pop art to create a very weird atmosphere. But the oddness is certainly not limited to the aesthetics. The musical score by Bruno Maderna is very experimental indeed and very persistent. It fills most of the film, its avant-garde nature ideally suited. Then of course we have the setting. A chicken farm where bizarre scientific experiments are the order of the day is hardly a typical set-up for an Italian thriller. Moreover, in one gloriously oddball science fiction moment we discover that the scientists have developed a kind of headless and wingless chicken creature which they hope will make them very rich by turning the animal into nothing more than a hideous ready-made blob of meat. This sort of horrific surrealism isn't a far cry from the kinds of thing David Lynch would put into Eraserhead. But in this film it does have an obvious point, as it raises the question of where the moral line is in producing genetically modified animals for food. It's not exactly common-place for a giallo to raise important issues.Inside all this weirdness is a drama about a man, his wife, her assistant and a publicity agent from the egg people. It turns out that they are having different illicit relationships behind the other's backs. And there are different plots to do away with each other. On top of this the main man is seen at the beginning of the movie committing an act of brutal violence where he murders a woman in a motel room in a bravura opening scene that is expertly inter-cut with many edits of scenes showing a plethora of other odd and fetishistic behaviour happening simultaneously in the same motel. I guess the implication is that behind closed doors everybody is socially deviant in some way. As the film progresses this murderer and adulterer is shown to be the only one with the morality to reject the idea of the monster chickens. Overall there are several layers of complexity here and this has to be a re-watchable film for this reason. It's very much for people with a taste for the left-field and the bizarre. It's ridiculous it hasn't been given a proper DVD release.
myblackgloves This is a very strange giallo.I'm hesitant to even call it a giallo because it doesn't really have the style that we're used to when discussing the genre.I'd recommend it for fans of violent, offbeat movies. Mutant chickens? Tape recorded murder fantasies? Great stuff. There's a lot of fetishes.. like a guy covering his head in tape. It's sort of like a movie where people are just plain crazy.. but not in an uncontrolled surrealistic way. There's a giant egg, too. Sex, psychoses, and industrial terrorism (who killed the new headless mutant chickens?). It does not get any better than this. Hope this gets a proper Region 1 release.
lazarillo Like many other European thrillers this early Italian giallo was obviously very influenced by the French film "Diabolique" with it's basic plot of a wealthy husband, wife, and mistress all scheming against each other. And like the later film "So Sweet, So Perverse" the movie throws another man (Jean Sorel)into the mix as a kind of a fourth side to the main triangle. This movie is no conventional thriller, however. For one thing it has kind of psychedelic, surrealist pop-art late 60's sensibility to it that always threatens to overwhelm (and occasionally does) the rational story-line. For another thing, it has a VERY bizarre setting, a fully-automated chicken plant. (There's a scene where the scientists at the plant create "monster" chickens without wings or beaks that really makes one want to swear off poultry for life). This unusual setting adds a whole industrial conspiracy angle and, moreover, a weird sort of social commentary to the proceedings.The acting is all very good. Jean-Louis Tritigant plays a similar role to the one he'd later play in "So Sweet, So Perverse", but here he also might be a serial killer who is offing prostitutes in a roadside motel. Latin sex symbol Gina Lollabridga makes a rare appearance in this kind of film (which is actually much more entertaining than some of the bigger-budgeted movies she starred in)as the domineering wife. The young mistress is believably played by Ewa "Candy" Aulin, although she is not quite as enjoyable when she's not naked and not speaking in her natural (undubbed) heavy Swedish accent. (Aulin also appeared in another excellent, if even more obscure, giallo called "The Double"). The best thing about the movie though is the ending where EVERYBODY manages to get their just desserts--and then some. Definitely check this one out.