Director Lucio Fulci burst into prominence in the late 70's early 80's due to his gore exploits in a succession of undead oriented films. He became king of Italian Splatter after his efforts such as Zombie and House by the Cemetery. His use of maggots and intestines remains legendary, especially in the prolonged regurgitating scene from Cemetery.

This movie is one of his earlier efforts and it is muted and even quite stylish for a director who made his name on shocking people with bucket loads of upfront gore. The films qualifies as yet another Italian "Giallo" (violent murder mystery) where a series of brutal murders leads to a most shocking twist of a finale. Like so many of these Italian shockers, the murders are explained away in the final reel as a result of childhood trauma's resulting in deeply scarring psychological wounds. Torso, Deep Red, Bird with the Crystal Plumage all spring to mind as having a similar theme and technique. This movie is set in a small village where a silent killer is brutally murdering young boys for no apparent reason or motive.

As the death toll mounts, we are introduced the usual range of potential killers…there is the demented old man who makes voodoo effigies and receives messages from St. Benadict, there is his insane daughter who uses the voodoo knowledge for her own dark deeds, there is the silent widow, the priests mother who carries a small autistic child around with her, there is the red headed siren who likes to tease young boys by flaunting her nudity in front of them who also has an interest in Black magic, there is the kindly priest who runs a refuge for urchins who seemingly doesn't have an evil bone in his body.

Its fairly well put together and even quite stylishly shot by Fulci who thankfully only resorts to his notorious gore tactics for one most horrendous scene where a gang of villages beat the hell out of the village witch. Fulci's instincts to shock come to the fore during this nightmarish scene and it is as uncomfortable to view as any of his entrails or maggot scenes. There is no way this particular scene would get past censors today. Other than this distasteful episode the film holds fairly well together as a murder mystery though there is no conceivable climax or heightening of tension. The acting is reasonable for a film of such low production costs.

Not particularly frightening, nor particularly exciting, it is however a film that must be watched by anyone with a serious interest in horror, especially Euro horror. Surely the most intriguing aspect of this movie is its wonderfully odd title!