THE COLD-BLOODED BEAST (1971)
aka Slaughter Hotel, La Bestia uccide a sangue freddo, Asylum Erotica
Article 2649 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-7-2008
Posting Date: 11-13-2008
Directed by Fernando Di Leo
Featuring Klaus Kinski, Margaret Lee, Rosalba Neri
Country: Italy

Women at a luxurious mental clinic are being murdered by a psycho.

Some mental clinic; it’s in a luxurious mansion laden with easily accessible offensive weapons (axe, crossbow, sword, etc), and even has a working iron maiden in the lobby for anyone to use. Of course, one of the patients is a nymphomaniac (who gets an inordinate amount of screen time), but there’s a lesbian nurse and her favorite patient as well, and a woman with sudden homicidal cravings, too. The movie tries to be stylish, but since every scene goes on too long (especially the scenes in which it tries to establish mood and suspense) it just becomes dull. If there’s a real plot here, it’s given short shrift so they can have the requisite scenes of sex and nudity. I wouldn’t doubt that there’s probably a subtext to all of this, but I find little more here than a compendium of its own excesses. It comes across like a cross between DON’T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT, any given slasher film, and a foreign soft-core porno movie.