Strip Nude for Your Killer

With a title like Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975), you are going to expect nudity. But it is as if director Andrea Bianchi had shouted “abbiamo bisogno di piu nudita” every day on set.

One of the bloodiest gialli I have seen: fingers, ears and breasts all removed by the killer in black leather motorcycle gear. The fact they wear a crash helmet and use a car to despatch their victims is just another aside in the plot. Critics called it “unabashedly sadistic and a more sordid example of the giallo genre”.

Starring the queen of the genre, Edwige Fenech, sporting a pixie haircut. Fenech plays photography assistant to Nino Castelnuovo’s Carlo, a womanising chief photographer at the model agency where all the victims work. Carlo is not above choking Magda when she questions whether he is the killer, but this is seen as just part of their relationship for Magda. She is besotted and ready to forgive him for his casual abuse.

A solid jazz score by Berto Pisano is one of the high points. Edwige plays vulnerable Magda with compassion, but Castelnuovo’s Carlo is played with sleazy aplomb, which ultimately makes him unlikeable even when he is saving Magda from threat.