THE KILLER RESERVED NINE SEATS is a giallo with a difference – instead of focusing on a murderer targeting a string of women around a city, the plot of this one harks back to classic murder mysteries a la Agatha Christie as it has a bunch of people trapped in a single location and being offed one by one by an unknown killer. Here, the setting is an effectively spooky old theatre, and the killer is somebody who wears an eerie disguise when carrying out his crimes. If this set-up sounds familiar, it's because Michele Soavi virtually remade this as a slasher film in 1987, entitled STAGE FRIGHT. However, while Soavi's film is packed with tension, drama and violence, and as a result is a very good film, THE KILLER RESERVED NINE SEATS is one of those overly talky films that it's a real chore to sit through.Director Giuseppe Bennati only made this one giallo film and it seems that he's uncomfortable with the genre. The scenes are all very staged and the dialogue seems to go around in circles; when the eventual identity of the killer(s) is revealed at the film's climax, it all seems unbelievable and contrived, not the effect it was supposed to have, I imagine. The cast is packed with familiar faces – Lucretia Love from THE SHE-BEAST, Paola Senatore and Janet Agren from EATEN ALIVE, Chris Avram from A BAY OF BLOOD, Andrea Scotti and Howard Ross from absolutely tons of Italian genre flicks – but nobody seems to be making much of an effort here in the acting stakes and it all feels distinctly so-so.The murders are routinely staged and there's the typical genre cliché of having the women strip off before they die (and this wouldn't be a giallo without a couple of lesbians in it, would it?). Expect murky stabbings and one unpleasantly sexualised murder which really pushes the boundaries of bad taste. While the theatre setting is always effective in these type of films, the action that plays out just isn't interesting enough to bother with – which is why this giallo flick is so hard to come by.

Great fun! Indeed, great title, great poster, great costumes for all the ladies and great how easily they just slip off. Actually, the poster is a heavily censored and cropped impression of what really happens in the film. There are many and varied kills but the one depicted here was by far the most extreme. Saddled with the hoary old Ten Little Indians plot, we have, of course, a whole bunch of people we are not interested in and who cannot be fully explained to retain the possibility that any one of them could have killed the rest. Possibly needlessly, on top of this we have a concurrent supernatural plot suggestion, that doesn't particularly improve things. But never mind, the theatre is a wonderful setting giving endless nook and crannies, corridors and overhead and subterranean spaces for the victims to be chased and caught and spectacularly killed. The chit chat gets a bit tedious but the sudden clinches and arch performances a hoot. Must have been as much fun to make as it is to watch.

Interesting, although not completely well-made, example of the Italian supernatural thriller, "L'assassino ha riservato nove poltrone" is a movie that suffers from a lot of shortcomings, but still it moves and after all convinces the spectator. It has to its credit the well-built atmosphere of discomfort and psychological perversion, the good art direction and the costumes. The script suffers from a lot of holes and clear improbabilities, but still it can hold the spectator's breath with a plot that is quite original, although the spooky theater under a curse is a fairly recurrent element in the tradition of Italian horror (I remember Renato Polselli's "Il mostro dell'Opera", Michele Soavi's "Deliria", as well as the well known "Opera" and "Il fantasma dell'Opera", directed by Dario Argento). Apart from this, there's a good dose of pleasant and sexy female nudes and the usual lesbian background to whom no Italian thriller can renounce. Taking everything into consideration, I can say this is a quite good movie, charmingly rough in the development of the plot, in the direction and in the acting (all the actors are habitué of the popular genres of Italian cinema), but it's also an interesting and amusing movie you can enjoy.

This rather rare giallo traps nine adults who are connected with each other in a particular way (e.g. by blood, intrigue or rivalry) in an abandoned theatre. Needless to say that one by one falls victim to a masked killer who seems to have staged their unplanned meeting in the old building, where 100 years before terrible murders had happened. The real problem is that supernatural forces are also involved in the events that haunt the nine victims-to-be. Is the killer human or something beyond?The setting of a spooky old theatre is ideal to unfold an intense, haunting atmosphere. Therefore it's no surprise that there are some genuinely creepy scenes here. Unfortunately, the movie is overall too talky to keep the suspense, and the well staged murder scenes just don't really fulfill their immense potentials (they are still nasty, though).All in all, the interesting, claustrophobic story sadly becomes mediocre through the slow direction, but this film is still recommended for all those who admire gialli - there are many thrillers that are by far inferior.