Tutti Defunti ... Tranne i Morti

All the Souls ... Except the Dead
Neun Leichen hat die Woche

Italy 1977
produced by
Antonio Avati, Gianni Minervini for A.M.A. Film
directed by Pupi Avati
starring Gianni Cavina, Francesca Marciano, Carlo Delle Piane, Greta Vayan, Michele Mirabella, Flavia Giorgi, Giulio Pizzirani, Bob Tonelli, Luciano Bianchi, Carla Astolfi, Pietro Bona, Ferdinando Orlandi, Valentino Macchi, Andrea Matteuzzi, Cesare Bastelli
written by Antonio Avati, Pupi Avati, Gianni Cavina, Maurizio Costanzo, music by Amedeo Tommasi

review by
Mike Haberfelner

After the Marquis has died, his greedy family shows up at his place to get their hands on his fortune ... only to find out there's nothing much to inherit - or is there? Enter door-to-door salesman Dante (Carlo Delle Piane), who just happens to have a book to sell that contains the family history, the family secret, and a weird prophecy about nine of ten family members dying before the family treasure is unearthed. For whatever reason, sexy Ilaria (Francesca Marciano) introduces Dante to her family as her fiancé, and when his car breaks down and the mansion is cut off from civilisation, he wills in to become part of her charade ... and then someone starts murdering the family members one after the other, in the most gruesome (but sometimes very creative) ways. Dante is able to get private investigator Martini (Gianni Cavina) to the mansion to investigate, but he only manages to miss all the clues and make manners worse ... and ultimately, only Dante, Ilaria, Martini, and the house nurse (Greta Vayan) are left alive. Ilaria manages to solve the puzzle about the family treasure, but someone has beaten our surviving foursome to the pie ... but who? The Marquis himself, that's who, he has only faked his own death to make the prophecy come true and get his hands on the treasure. And he gets away with it too, thanks to ... the nurse, who has been his accomplice right from the start. But wait a minute, if he's not dead, then only eight have died and the math wouldn't fit the prophecy any longer. Well, the housenurse has a deadly cure for that, administered to the Marquis ...

Though often labeled a giallo spoof (due to the fact that director Pupi Avati has quite a background in giallos I suppose), this is actually more of a parody of old dark house murder mysteries from 30 to 40 years earlier, with most genre elements in plain sight, from the inheritance with greedy relatives and a treasure hunt to the usual hidden passageways, the hapless hero who actually doesn't belong to the story and the predictably bodycount (to point out that old dark house mysteries were actually direct descendants of giallos is of course academic). And as so many old dark house parodies, this one falls flat on its face, as the genre as such is a parody on itself already - and this film here does nothing but to add a few funny faces, a few jokes that border the vulgar, and bits of not all that well conceived slapstick to the mix. Sure, there are certain elements of atmosphere you'd expect from a master horror director like Pupi Avati - but not nearly enough to make this anything more than a rather uninteresting genre spoof.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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