Slaughter Hotel

REVIEW
Slaughter Hotel (La Bestia Uccide A Sangue Freddo) is nominally a giallo, the Italian word for yellow, as well as the national term for murder mysteries, yet the film is actually more of a sexploitation movie than a thriller, though part of the fun is watching the ways in which these two genres intermingle in the film. Director Fernando Di Leo is best known for his Italian crime dramas and Slaughter Hotel represents one of his few forays into horror/thriller cinema, yet he displays formidable skill for generating supsense and staging visually striking sequences of murder and mayhem though few could deny that the film's most aesthetically pleasing component is likely the Euro cult all-star cast. Stalwart cinema madman Klaus Kinski delivers another reliably fevered performance as the chief doctor at an isolated private clinic whose clientele seems to consist wholly of frequently nude, gorgeous female nymphomaniacs (including Euro genre favorites Rosalba Neri and Margaret Lee). When the archetypical giallo villain of a black gloved sadistic murderer begins to stalk the halls of the clinic, suspicion falls on everyone (though no one seems particularly troubled or cautious about the fact that patients are being slaughtered left and right) until the killer can be captured. Lee, Neri, and the other female cast members all contribute erotic charisma, and Di Leo ensures that the sexual elements are offset by some memorably grisly setpieces of violence (the killer's climactic encounter with a room of cowering nurses is a genuine shocker). Di Leo and cinematographer Franco Villa make excellent use of widescreen throughout Slaughter Hotel, and the film is in possession of a distinctive, often surreal visual sensibility.