Who else but a black-gloved killer could provide the menace for a giallo? (That’s rhetorical.) In Seven Blood-Stained Orchids, the staple of such Italian films murders lovely women, leaving them half-naked and clutching an amulet shaped like a crescent. The press dub him “the Half-Moon Maniac,” and among his victims are a street prostitute, an abstract artist and a newlywed in a train.

The latter, Giulia (Uschi Glas, The Sinister Monk), survives, but the cops and her metrosexual fashion-designer husband, Mario (Antonio Sabato, Grand Prix), stage a funeral to give them the upper hand, as well as protect her. Mario and Giulia whisk away on their honeymoon, but instead of putting their parts against one another where they belong, they stick their noses where they don’t, investigating leads in hopes of uncovering the killer’s identity before he kills again.

Or at least before he kills too many times again, as the man is quite prolific.

Once revealed, the motive for his madness strikes one as underwhelming, but it’s the getting there that counts, and Seven Blood-Stained Orchids is enjoyable up until those final few minutes. It bursts with great pedigree among Italian cult cinema: Umberto Lenzi (Spasmo) directs and co-writes with Roberto Gianviti (Don’t Torture a Duckling), based upon an Edgar Wallace novel; Riz Ortolani provides a superb, groove-laden score; and standing out among the eye candy is the gorgeous Marisa Mell (Danger: Diabolik). —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

The fourth of Universal Pictures’ six-film Inner Sanctum Mystery series, The Frozen Ghost stars a lean Lon Chaney Jr. as mentalist Gregor the Great. He puts on bravura stage shows in which he hypnotizes his assistant/fiancée, Maura (Evelyn Ankers, reuniting with Chaney after The Wolf Man), into being able to read the thoughts and Social Security numbers of audience members.

One clearly soused skeptic thinks it’s a whole lotta phooey, so Gregor invites him onstage. Unfortunately, the drunk dies while under Gregor’s trance. Although doctors dub it a case of natural causes, Gregor believes he killed the guy with his eyes, so he breaks his engagement and wallows in guilt.

He hopes to begin life anew at a wax museum, of all places, but the beware-the-stare problem rises again. “Tragedy is determined to follow me wherever I go,” bemoans poor Gregor. As with all the hourlong Inner Sanctum pictures, what seems supernatural is easily explained by the unremarkable end.

While the museum boasts likenesses of Cleopatra, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Atilla the Hun, Lady Macbeth and the head of Marie Antoinette, the setting is not used to its full potential. Don’t expect the creepiness of 1933’s Mystery of the Wax Museum. Also, don’t expect a ghost — frozen, thawed, room-temp or otherwise. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

If Herschell Gordon Lewis had tackled a mystery, I believe it would resemble Massage Parlor Murders! (exclamation point theirs), a Big Apple-born slice of sexploitation by first- and last-time directors Chester Fox and Alex Stevens. Credited as assistant director is character actor George Dzundza (Basic Instinct), who briefly appears as a suspect in the case, a portly john dubbed by a trick as “Mr. Creepy.” Which among these three men is most responsible for the static camera and odd cutaways is anyone’s guess.

Budweiser and Schlitz men, respectively, detectives Rizotti (George Spencer, If You Don’t Stop It … You’ll Go Blind!!!) and O’Mara (John Moser) investigate the string of homicides of several masseuses/prostitutes around town by a pair of shaky hands in rubber gloves. One girl is smashed face-first into a mirror; another, smothered with a towel before being doused in acid. It’s the work of a Jack the Ripper of jack-off joints, or, as Rizotti puts it in one of the many scenes of voice-over, “Man, there’s sure a lotta sick weirdos in this town!”

That particular line is spoken during a montage of glorious, dangerous Times Square at night, where the 42nd Street marquees hawk such psychotronic fare as 5 Fingers of Death, The Young Seducers, Seven Golden Men, Blood of Dracula’s Castle and Black Belt Jones. Yes, if nothing else, Massage Parlor Murders! is quite a curio — both the film itself and everything in it.

Luckily, “if nothing else” does not apply. The flick has plenty to offer, being packed with nudity as gratuitous as the wallpaper is gaudy; a naked pool party/orgy, complete with balloons and streamers; rambling “comedian” Brother Theodore as an astrologer; and a car chase that completely outdoes The French Connection … provided we’re only talking about the number of fist-shakin’ fishmongers and mismatched sound effects, and we totally are.

I should note that Massage Parlor Murders! is not porn, although it sure feels like it should be. There’s just that much ineptitude riding behind the camera and uncredited script, which inversely makes the movie that much more interesting and watchable. Rizotti and O’Mara don’t so much as solve the mystery as Fox and Stevens realize they have about three minutes left ’til the closing credits, resulting in an absolute howler of an ending that’s really Quite Something to See. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

From its first scene set at a rock quarry, My Dear Killer certainly knows how to grab your attention: with a decapitation via construction equipment. The prime suspect is, naturally, the crane operator, but he has no prior criminal record and soon is found hanged. The police prepare to close the case, but Inspector Peretti (George Hilton, Blade of the Ripper) has a hunch it’s murder, and proves it.

Taking only a little time out to romance his doctor girlfriend (Marilù Tolo, Marriage Italian Style), Peretti throws himself into his investigation. He finds that the case bears geographic ties to a still-unsolved one involving a little girl who was kidnapped and subsequently found murdered along with her father post-ransom. Peretti believes the cases, while separated by roughly 52 weeks, are linked, and is determined to bring closure to both.

In the process, a black-gloved killer is busy knocking off virtually everyone Peretti questions. Quips a fellow officer, “Soon, they’ll have enough bodies to make up an ice hockey team.”

Directed by Tonino Valerii (My Name Is Nobody), the Italian-made film is more of a police procedural with a touch of giallo vs. the other way around, title and cover art be damned. Aside from the opening beheading (rather tame, to tell the truth) and one character’s unfortunate encounter with a circular saw, few elements dare take that path. The Ennio Morricone score helps guide viewers through the semisolid, but admittedly minor mystery. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

As the seventh in the utterly splendid, 14-film series that paired Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, 1944’s The Spider Woman is one of the most purely entertaining. It’s also as close as the franchise got to adapting Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” story — a perennial favorite.

In a lively opening montage, London is abuzz about the rash of “Pyjama Suicides,” so named because people have suddenly killed themselves in the middle of the night, with neither rhyme no reason. But as Holmes notes, suicides are apt to leave notes, which these unfortunate souls didn’t; therefore, he suspects murder, my dear Watson, murder.

He’s right, of course, especially since the victims were catching Zs behind locked doors. Before the midpoint of the film, both Holmes and the viewer already know the culprit — the titular female, Miss Adria Spedding (Gale Sondergaard, The Mark of Zorro) — but not her methods. One can surmise from the title that spiders may be involved, and they are, but there’s more to it than that.

With arachnids, Holmes’ presumed death, a creepy mute boy and a nerve-wracking finale at a carnival shooting gallery that presages Saw‘s devilish traps, The Spider Woman throws lots at the wall, and nearly all of it sticks. It helps the running time is 63 minutes, period, but a greater emphasis on comedy keeps proceedings from even nearing the realm of dull, as well. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.