Tema: Film
Tip: Plakat

48 x 68 cm
2 x presavijen
movie poster, AFFICHE de FILM

Deep Red (Italian: Profondo rosso), also known as The Hatchet Murders, is a 1975 Italian giallo film, directed by Dario Argento and co-written by Argento and Bernardino Zapponi. It was released on 7 March 1975. It was produced by Claudio and Salvatore Argento, and the film`s score was composed and performed by Goblin. It stars Macha Meril as a medium and David Hemmings as a pianist who investigates a series of murders performed by a mysterious figure wearing black leather gloves.

In a house at Christmas Time, two shadowy figures are seen in silhouette struggling until one of them is stabbed to death while a child`s scream is heard. A bloody knife is then dropped on the floor by a child`s feet.

Years later in Rome, psychic medium Helga Ulmann (Macha Méril) holds a lecture in a theater where she senses that there is a killer in the audience that she cannot identify. Later that night, while Ulmann is in her apartment someone kicks the door in and murders her with a meat cleaver. Helga`s slaying is prefaced by a child`s doggerel song, which serves as the murderer`s calling card. British jazz musician Marcus Daly (David Hemmings), out drinking with his gay best friend Carlo (Gabriele Lavia), is walking home when he sees Helga being attacked through the window of the apartment building both live at. Marcus rushes inside to help, but he`s too late as she bleeds to death after her neck pierces the broken shards of a window.

After the police arrive, Marcus realizes he had seen a certain painting among a group of portraits on the walls of the victim`s apartment, which seems to have disappeared. Further complicating issues is the presence of female reporter Gianna Brezzi (Daria Nicolodi). Gianna has been sent to cover the murder and snaps a photo of Marcus, much to his annoyance. The next day, Gianna`s article on the murder is on the front page of the paper - complete with a photo of Marcus and a headline proclaiming him the chief witness to the murder.

That evening, Marcus hears music playing in his house that he doesn`t recognize. Marcus barely escapes the murderer (who seeks to kill the `star witness`) by locking himself in his study. Later, he plays the song to Professor Giordani (Glauco Mauri), a psychiatrist and boyfriend of Helga, who theorizes that the music is important because it played an integral part in a traumatic event during the killer`s past. Gianna (who is now following Marcus due to guilt about causing the killer to target him) hears about a folktale involving a haunted house in which a singing child is heard, followed by the shrieking of someone being murdered.

Investigating the source of the both song and folktale, the search leads Marcus and Gianna to a story from a book written by Amanda Righetti (Giuliana Calandra), titled House of the Screaming Child, which describes a long-forgotten murder. Marcus tries to find Amanda to talk to her about the book, but the unseen killer arrives at her villa first and kills Amanda by drowning her in a bathtub filled with scalding hot water. The dying Righetti manages to write a message on the wall of her steam-filled bathroom before expiring. The two find her body, but are afraid that the police will think Marcus did it and leave without calling anyone. Thanks to a picture from the book, Marcus locates the house where the folktale originated and learns from the caretaker that no one has lived in the house since 1963, when the previous owner disappeared. Marcus searches the house by himself, removing plaster from a wall that uncovers a child`s drawing of a little boy holding a bloody knife next to a murdered man and a Christmas tree. Only after Marcus leaves the room, more plaster falls off, revealing a third figure in the drawing. Marcus confides in Carlos the information he has gathered in hopes that the native Italian might be able to provide more information on the drawing and the `House of the Screaming Child` urban myth. The drunken Carlo becomes aggressive with Marcus, demanding Marcus stop his investigations and just leave town with Gianna.

Meanwhile, Giordani investigates the Righetti murder scene. On a hunch, he turns on the hot water in the bathroom and sees part of the message left on the wall by the murder victim. When Giordani returns to his office that night, he`s distracted by a mechanical doll toy someone has snuck into his office. The unseen killer then breaks in and fatally stabs him in the neck after bashing his teeth in on a mantelpiece/table. Marcus and Gianna (both of whom have fallen in love with each other by this point) also discover a clue that the former initially overlooked in the photo of the deserted house, realizing a window on one of the walls is missing. Marcus returns to the deserted house after dark and uses a pickaxe to knock down an end-wall in a hallway. Soon, he discovers a secret room with a skeleton by a Christmas tree. The unseen figure arrives and knocks Marcus unconscious. The house is set on fire, but Marcus is dragged out by Gianna.

Marcus and Gianna go to the caretaker`s house to call the authorities. There, Marcus discovers the caretaker`s young daughter Olga has drawn an identical drawing of the little boy with a bloody knife standing next to a murder victim. Olga tells them she copied the drawing from an old file in the archives at her junior-high school. Marcus and Gianna then break into the school to search the archives for this drawing. Marcus finds the painting, which has the name of Marcus`s friend Carlo on it. He looks for Gianna and finds she has been stabbed. Carlo suddenly appears before Marcus holding a gun and threatens to kill him for getting too close to the truth. Just as the police arrive, Carlo flees and climbs over a wall only to get hooked onto a rebar transported by a passing truck and is dragged down the street until he is gruesomely killed by having his head run over by a speeding car.

The case is apparently wrapped up with Carlo being the killer. After Marcus drops off the wounded Gianna at the hospital, he heads back to the scene of the crime. Suddenly, he realizes that Carlo couldn`t have killed Ulmann because they were together right before the murder took place, as well as seeing Carlo looking at the killer walking away. Marcus then enters the Ulmanns` apartment and, after looking around, finally remembers what he saw that night in a mirror reflection, which he thought was a portrait, was the face of the killer. When he turns back, the killer appears in front of him, finally revealed to be Carlo`s insane mother, Martha (Clara Calamai). In a flashback to the Christmas scene, a young Carlo witnesses his mother stabbing her husband because he tried to have her committed to a psychiatric hospital. Carlo, traumatized, picks up the bloody knife and stares at it, then Martha entombs her husband`s body in a room of the house.

Martha confronts Marcus and tries to kill him by wielding a meat cleaver as she chases him out of the apartment to an elevator. He is then struck in the shoulder by the meat cleaver, but manages to kick Martha toward the elevator shaft. When the long necklace she`s wearing gets caught in the bars of the shaft, Martha is decapitated after Marcus pushes the elevator button. He is left staring into a deep red pool of Martha`s blood.

David Hemmings as Marcus Daly
Daria Nicolodi as Gianna Brezzi
Macha Méril as Helga Ulmann
Eros Pagni as Supt. Calcabrini
Giuliana Calandra as Amanda Righetti
Clara Calamai as Martha (Carlo`s mother)
Gabriele Lavia as Carlo
Piero Mazzinghi as Bardi
Glauco Mauri as Prof. Giordani
Aldo Bonamano as Carlo`s father
Liana Del Balzo as Elvira
Vittorio Fanfoni as Cop taking notes
Dante Fioretti as Police photographer
Geraldine Hooper as Massimo Ricci
Jacopo Mariani as Young Carlo (as Iacopo Mariani)
Nicoletta Elmi as Olga
Furio Meniconi as Rodi
Fulvio Mingozzi as Agent Mingozzi
Lorenzo Piani as Fingerprint officer
Attilio Dottesio as Florist