I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

There are some murder and orgy scenes in "Delirio caldo" (simply called "Delirium" in English), but it seems like large portions of the movie pass with no action. It focuses on a series of murders and a certain man's possible involvement, but there's far less going on than I like to see in Euro-horror. Probably the most eye-opening aspect is the casting of Mickey Hargitay, better known as Jayne Mansfield's husband (and Mariska Hargitay's father); in a movie about Mansfield, Arnold Schwarzenegger played him.I watched the international version and bypassed the American version, so I can't comment on the differences between the two. But seriously, this is far from the best Euro-horror flick that I've ever seen. It's barely more than a way to pass time.I bet that they never imagined that the star would get played by a man who would later be in control of the world's sixth largest economy (if I remember right, California has that rank).

DELIRIUM (Renato Polselli - Italy 1972).If it's sleazy '70s exploitation you're looking for, packed with sexual violence and some truly twisted proceedings, look no further. I've watched some weird stuff in my lifetime, but this one truly hits the mark. Clearly, Polselli is a first-class hack and this is an incredibly shoddy piece of work, but somehow it was compelling enough (or just plain weird) to keep watching. I'm not sure though what that says about the film's qualities. At least it says something... Hungarian muscle man Mickey Hargitay is criminal psychologist Dr. Herbert Lyutak who picks up a sweet young thing at a local bar, and gets the uncontrollable urge to strangle her at the sight of the girls legs. This is one wacky doctor that turns out to be a homicidal maniac, or is he? The local police doesn't suspect him, that's for sure, and treat him with the utmost respect. As a criminal psychologist, they even consult him to catch the culprit. The investigating police officers don't seem very trustworthy of a murder investigation. The one in charge is a skinny, somewhat suspicious looking chap, wearing a garish red blouse through the entire film (this is 1972, ya know). His assistant is a seriously groovy dude, impeccably coiffured with a perfectly trimmed beard and wearing some very cool Italian suits. No, he does not look tacky at all, the latest fashions is all he wears. But this was the English countryside, I digress. The primary source of income for the local female population seems to walk the streets, mostly on deserted country roads or the village square, where they don't seem to do a lot of business. It's only a small village, after all. But it's very convenient for deranged sex killers with a taste for young women. Problem is, our two police officers haven't got a clue how to crack the case. Even after the fifth killing, the two detectives come little further than exclaiming this is yet another identical case. They come up with the luminous idea of using some woman as bait (she was actually not just someone, but I can't remember) who is also killed, but these two don't hesitate to use this tactic again and employ some more female bait. To complicate matters, Dr. Lyutak's beautiful wife (Rita Calderoni) is tormented by visions of medieval torture and lesbian orgies, a perfect excuse to throw in some more naked female flesh and gratuitous torture scenes. Rather distracting is the film's English setting, unconvincingly done as usual in Italian films, since the film excels in very picturesque outdoor scenes in the Italian countryside and even a shot from a roof that immediately betrays the location as Rome(!). To make up for its completely nonsensical "plotline", Polselli throws in three killers(!) and since there are no likable characters in the film anyway, the only way to watch this is for an almost continuous wacky stream of hallucinations involving torture SM-style, chain whipping, bondage, masturbation and lost of killings of course. It's a glorious mess, but Polselli keeps the action going, so it's never really dull. Anchor Bay presents this as an "astonishing 1972 oddity by the notorious Renato Polselli (under the pseudonym Ralph Brown)." Well, this oddity is presented in both the Italian and U.S versions, which are radically different. The American version opens with Vietnam footage explaining how Dr. Lyutak got his trauma, an explanation completely lacking in the Italian version. Regarding the American version, Anchor Bay neatly explains the original Vietnam footage was lost and some of this footage was taken and inserted in this version from a Danish VHS-copy and is presented with subtitles. To my surprise, it's actually a Dutch copy they used here, the subtitles were unmistakeably Dutch. Furthermore, in the American version, Hungarian born Mickey Hargitay's own voice is used (he only spoke English, no Italian), but his accent is even thicker than Arnold Schwarzenegger in his early days (which Hargitay humorously admits in an accompanying interview), so it's very hard to understand what he's saying. Incidentally, Schwarzenegger would even play Mickey Hargitay in the 1980 film THE JAYNE MANSFIELD STORY! In any case, the Italian version is taken from a much better print, so I'd advise anyone to start with that one. Camera Obscura --- 7/10

This is a somewhat crazed and depraved giallo. The Anchor Bay DVD contains both the international and the American versions of the film. Both are very different. The U.S. version has a Vietnam War framing device similar to that used in Jacob's Ladder almost 20 years later. It also contains two more murders and is slightly more coherent than the international version, despite being about 20 minutes shorter. But both versions of Delirium are, well, delirious.The film concerns a homicidal doctor who is a serial murderer of young women. Just when he starts to be questioned by police for his involvement in the killings another maniac starts a murdering spree that confuses the issue.The whodunit aspect of this movie is a little obvious. So the mystery element is less important. Instead, the film works best as a demented series of shock scenes, all strung together by a loose plot. The editing is not very good but it adds a bit to the haphazard nature of the film as we are jerked around from scene to scene. The music score by Gianfranco Reverberi is very effective in sustaining the delirious atmosphere.This is a very sexually explicit giallo. There is a multitude of female full-frontal nudity on display. The murder scenes are often pretty misogynistic, not something uncommon to the genre, but a little more extreme here than normal. There are also some well shot S&M dream sequences that feature writhing naked women! The plot is a little over-convoluted. Once again, this is a common giallo feature but, again, more-so here than normal. It can be quite difficult to follow the narrative as the story is all over the place. This fact is made even more apparent when watching both versions of the movie, you will see that scenes are ordered quite differently.Overall, this giallo movie is weak on narrative but compensates for that with, well, excess. The effect is a film that is true to it's title. It really is delirious.

Renato Polselli's "Delirio Caldo"/"Delirium" is a sleazy giallo made in 1972.Of course the film isn't as good as Dario Argento's masterpieces but if offers plenty of sleaze to satisfy fans of Italian smut.The acting is pretty bad(really,this time it's horribly over-the-top,not even amusing!),but some killings are pretty nasty.According to my reliable friend the original edit of the film(the true "director's cut")is the Italian version that is on Anchor Bay's DVD release.The French video version under the title "Au Dela Du Desir" is the most explicit version available.This version,which is not the director's intended original cut has extra footage shot for a European market that demanded more X-factor in content.There are at times extra seconds to the violence and some much stronger sexual content(such as the bath murder where the victim enjoys the assault,even allowing herself to be masturbated with the end of a whip and sucking it before being lashed savagely to her death!).The re-arranging of the order of some sequences as well as the usage of alternate edits and new footage does create a different tale to an extent...Anyway,give this one a look.Oh,and Rita Calderoni is very cute.