Perhaps one of the most grotesque cinema deaths. Two lovers in a meadow. The husband discovers them and fires and then kills himself, in front of the little daughter. The lover played by Gianni Dei, totally naked, flies in the air as if he had been hit by a bazooka.
Thus began "Un bianco vestito per Marialé" by Romano Scavolini best known for "Nightmare" a splatter of 1981. Here in 1972 he is in a thriller that follows the fashion of the era, entering the gothic genre and in the wake of Bava/Argento.
Scavolini is not bad, both behind the camera and cinematography and although the atmospheres are certainly not innovative he manages to achieve suggestive moments, such as the setting of the first scene and later, good thriller moments.
If he had also had a decent script, he would have created a really good film, but the script by Remigio Del Grosso and Giuseppe Mangione is quite predictable from the beginning.
You know how it goes: if a child sees father and mother die (and the lover in a silly way) it is possible that she grows up with some problem, right? If we then learn that the grown up girl has married a man who keeps her segregated at home, well... it is natural to expect something from one of the two. So in the first ten minutes we have already some possible developments and everything becomes very clear when Mariaelé succeeds in inviting different friends to her house, secretly from her husband.
The development of "the locked room" and the mysterious deaths, underline even more extreme predictability, saved only by the direction of Scavolini, which manage psychedelic parties with masked people, sex scenes, working with an excellent cast.
Marialé (interpreted as the mother by Ida Galli, also known as Evelyn Stewart) as mentioned invites a large and picturesque group of friends to her house. We have Ivan Rassimov, blond and good, the beautiful Pilar Velazquez, Ezio Marano, Giancarlo Bonuglia, Shawn Robinson, Edilio Kim and finally Luigi Pistilli sinister husband of Marialé and Gengher Gatti, who plays a creepy butler.
Everyone wants to visit the huge villa from top to bottom and find in the cellar strange vintage clothes and also the white dress worn by Marialé's mother on the fateful day. The dinner opens to psychedelic moments and especially to the murders, but when the blood begins to circulate, we are already almost at sixty minutes of viewing and we have sat by long useless scenes and soporific dialogues. This acceleration does not improve things, but makes think even more about the fact that Scavolini has thrown away an excellent opportunity that also benefits from the music composed by Fiorenzo Carpi and Bruno Nicolai.