A gory Italian horror made on a shoestring budget at the fag-end of the genre's popularity, BLOOD DELIRIUM is an often disturbing look at psychological terror and madness that recalls Joe D'Amato's BLUE HOLOCAUST amongst other films. Although much of the graphic violence is implied rather than explicitly shown, this is still an exceptionally sleazy film that mixes in themes of dementia, sexual perversion, necrophilia and sadism into one unwholesome brew. Drawing on the acting talents of two acting stalwarts better known for their contributions to the Euro-action genre, director Sergio Bergonzelli rises above his material by creating a complex and intelligent story only occasionally let down by unwanted cheesy supernatural effects which dispel the realism that the film strives to create elsewhere. The version of this film I watched was a poor dupe of the Greek original and somehow the bad quality of the film added to the effect, giving it a dirty feel all round.The best thing about this film is the sleazy atmosphere of perversion and death which favourably recalls such Gothic classics from the golden age of Italian horror as Freda's THE TERRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK. Bergonzelli does well with his story, keeping it afresh with a steady pace (despite not much in the way of action happening) and inventive camera-work. The film mixes together such diverse elements as doppelgangers, ghosts, and supernatural intervention; physical horror, with maggoty skulls and bodies being hacked up and disposed of in an acid bath; mock heroics toward the end of the production, and a sub-plot involving the use of blood as paint which seems to recall 1965's COLOR ME BLOOD RED. The ending is way over the top and comes straight out of left field, but is oddly appropriate for such a weird, disjointed production.John Phillip Law (NO TIME TO DIE) takes the lead as the troubled artist with a Van Gogh obsession who finds his imagination sorely diminished after the death of his wife, and must contend with madness and psychopathy from both outside and in. However, he is upstaged here by the great Gordon Mitchell (THE GIANT OF METROPOLIS) in his last major film appearance as the sleazy and sexually perverted butler, Herman. Mitchell gives it his all as the insane but faithful butler without going over the top, giving a scarily convincing portrayal of an unhinged mind and stealing his scenes every time - a really good performance and, I'm inclined to say, one of his best ever. Along with the sleazy gore scenes, the film packed in tons of female nudity (the opening sequence has a woman wandering around topless for about fifteen minutes) to "up" the exploitation content and the end result is an unfairly neglected slice of Italian madness that ranks up there with some of the best of the country's horror output - a puzzle then, as to why this has been forgotten when much trashier fare is still lauded to this day.

First of all, this flick is extremely hard to find, so I had to search real hard around the globe to track it down until I did in a full uncut version with irremovable Greek subtitles. And it was a VHS copy, luckily not to much damaged and English spoken. After five minutes it was already clear that this was an Italian production. But surely not one of those giallo productions. The style of filming was typical, the shots, the sound, the dubbing. You are immediately involved in the movie, a bit Gothic in the beginning with the ghost appearing in the castle. Also the unnecessary nudity in the beginning, not that we mind, had nothing to do with the flick but is/was typical Italian style. The movie itself is about a painter losing his wife and becoming mad when he sees another girl that looks really the same like his dead wife. But he goes nuts and his , let's call him the butler , is insane too. After the painter his wife died and laying in her coffin the butler starts making love to her, necrophilia. So this flick becomes weirder and weirder, they capture some girls, hang them upside down, slice their throat and use the red stuff to paint. And the butler cuts the bodies in pieces after you guess, misused their bodies. It still gets weirder so one to watch, if, as said in the beginning you are able to catch a copy.

Possibly the rarest Italian horror film out there and most definitely also one of the absolute weirdest productions ever to be released, "Blood Delirium" is NOT a giallo-mystery, NOT a zombie-flick and surely NOT a brainless slasher rip-off! This is something new and entirely different from Italy; a brutal horror story that successfully blends together harrowing drama elements with artsy themes and repulsively perverted footage. John Philip Law, the former action stud from "Barbarella" and "Danger: Diabolik", stars as a slightly deranged painter who lives in an isolated ramshackle castle and he firmly believes he's the reincarnation of Vincent Van Gogh. When his beloved wife Christine dies, he suddenly loses all his artistic inspiration but remains in the castle with the necrophiliac butler Herman. The painter eventually falls back in love with Sybille, who's the mirror image of his departed wife, but his inspiration doesn't really return until he discovers the blood of young murdered girls as the ideal shade of red paint. "Blood Delirium" is quite a disturbing film, especially since the sequences involving necrophilia & misogyny are illustrated like it's the most common thing in the world. For example, when the painter is still mourning for his deceased wife, the crazy butler (perfect role for exploitation-veteran Gordon Mitchell) crawls on top of her corpse and starts caressing it. Later in the film, the two men also dig up severely decomposed corpses, assault defenseless girls and carelessly dismember their limbs to make painting. Their actions are a lot more unsettling to behold, because they don't look or behave like your average homicidal maniac or demented serial rapists. "Blood Delirium" literally oozes with dark and bitter atmospheres, as it deals with complex characters and their even sicker world perspectives. It's not just another silly and gory 80's flick, but a devastating depiction of man's darkest mind-corners. The are loads of resemblances between Sergio Bergonzelli's script and Vincent Van Gogh's actual tragic life, which is a truly brilliant and original concept for a horror film. Bergonzelli clearly didn't have a large budget to work with, but the film nevertheless looks stylish and competent. The photography is rather monotonous, but this suits the overall tone of the film and especially the melancholic music tunes are terrific. "Blood Delirium" is an extremely difficult film to find, and I don't understand why. I'm sure this would be an authentic Italian cult treasure, if only it could reach a slightly wider audience on DVD. Catch it if you can!

This extremely rare Italian film (the only ever video release I know is the Greek one - it probably was never released even in its country of origin) is a thoroughly interesting movie, even though the production values are very low and it is, without a doubt, an oddball of a movie.John Phillip Law is a troubled painter on the edge of madness; his slightly psychotic state of mind becomes worse as his wife, who always gave him inspiration and faith, dies. Soon after her death he discovers his butler (played nicely sickening by Gordon Mitchell) trying to rape her corpse, which fills him with fury, but he needs the butler as an assistant because he would be helpless without him. After his wife is buried, the painter doesn't feel any inspiration anymore and is unable to get a painting done. So he decides to get his wife back and steals her corpse from the cemetery (with a help of the butler, of course). At the opening of his latest exhibition, he meets Sybille, a woman that resembles his wife almost like a twin sister. He invites her to his lonely castle, and at first, she likes it there. But the painter's state of mind gets worse, even though she gives him new confidence. Problem is that his inspiration stays missing, until his butler kills a girl and he realizes how beautiful blood is. He starts to use blood as "the color of life", while the butler has to dispose from the bodies. When the woman discovers this, she has to be kept hostage in the lonely castle...The story sounds a little bit like a retelling of Herschell Gordon Lewis's "Color Me Blood Red" from 1965, but this isn't the case. This one is rather a horror drama that somehow falls between the two genres: For a drama, it is too much exploitation, and for a horror film, it is too dramatic and not exploitation enough for not to write not gory enough.Law and Mitchell are strikingly convincing in their roles of rather perverse characters, and the sound track adds to the atmosphere, although it doesn't seem to be always appropriate to the melancholy mood of the picture. The film also contains supernatural elements that are hardly convincing but somehow still fit into this weird work.Director Bergonzelli is probably best known for his psychedelic giallo "Nelle Pieghe Della Carne" (aka In the Folds of the Flesh) from 1970. in one scene, he even repeats an element of his earlier film: The butler disposes of the bodies by putting them into sulfuric acid - the same way the protagonists do it in "Nelle Pieghe". And the atmosphere in "Delirio di Sangue" contains also some rather psychedelic attitudes, if not that obvious.It seems clear that Bergonzelli, who also wrote the screenplay, was inspired by the life and madness of Vincent van Gogh, a portrait of whom hangs on the wall of the painter's working room. Needless to say that the notion of van Gogh makes a scene with an ear that gets cut off necessary - and the viewer won't get disappointed.All in all, "Delirio di Sangue" is a wonderfully strange piece of celluloid. I assume that most viewers would consider it as a piece of crap, because it's made on a very low budget, neither delivers any action packed moments nor even scenes of excessive gore or sympathetic dramatic protagonists you could identify with. It's a quite nihilistic film, with an oddly repulsive plot, which makes it unique in a certain way.A very interesting film that is far too little known, but which won't be appreciated by a broad audience, I guess. My rating: 7 out of 10.