A rather predictable and light giallo yarn from genre specialist Umberto Lenzi, who creates a typical and unsurprising addition to the series which mixes an investigation with a series of elaborate murders. The film starts off well with the sleazy opening shots of a naked prostitute being lured to a bludgeoning and further nasty murders following. We then become involved in the investigation by one of the victims (who survived her attack but pretends to be dead) into the connection between all the slaughtered women, and it turns out that an event occurring in a hotel years previously links all the victims together. Together with her husband, she must try and prevent the living women from being slaughtered and try and find out the identity of the mysterious American with the silver half-moon key ring.

Unfortunately after the excellent first half-hour the film becomes less impressive and a little muddled in its exploration of potential suspects and hidden half-truths and mysteries. Thankfully Lenzi ties everything together for a rousing woman-in-peril finale which makes good use of a hand-to-hand fight scene in a swimming pool. The music is at times effective and the movie well photographed, but it's the Edgar Wallace-inspired plot which keeps it watchable throughout. The heroic leading man part is taken by the slightly wooden Antonio Sabato who fares passably but not brilliantly with the part, but as ever with these gialli he's supported by a pleasing cast of Italian females including Uschi Glas, Marisa Mell, and Rossella Falk. The set-piece murders are imaginative and not too gory, with one notable exception being the death-by-drill which is pretty nasty, splattery stuff. Not Lenzi's best giallo but a solid entry in the genre which at least looks good and passes the time amiably enough.

Umberto Lenzi is perhaps best known for his gory cannibal classics Eaten Alive! and Cannibal Ferox, but before those films he, like many Italian directors, dabbled in a variety of other genres: spaghetti westerns, peplum, Bond-style adventures, war films, and, of course, gialli. In typical giallo fashion, Seven Blood-stained Orchids opens with a murder, the killer decked out in black leather gloves and wide brimmed hat and carrying a switch-blade, the victim a beautiful (and semi-naked) woman.

From here on in, it's routine murder mystery material, Lenzi never pulling out the stops, delivering very little tension and noticeably failing to bring on the splatter that would typify his more famous movies. As the killer works his way through a series of (mostly topless) ladies, leaving a half-moon keyring as his calling card, concerned husband Mario (Antonio Sabato) tries to unravel the mystery before the maniac succeeds in bumping off his wife Giulia (Uschi Glas).

Mario is always one step behind the killer, meaning that there are plenty of deaths, but these are bloodless affairs and staged with little of the style synonymous with the genre. The use of a power drill results in the nastiest of the murders, but even this disappoints, the drillbit entering the victim through her dress; had this been made several years later, I've no doubt Lenzi would have had the spinning bit enter her skull, her eye, or her boobs, which would have definitely livened up proceedings.

Undoubtedly Lenzi's best film. More of a giallo than anything else he's made, af usually seems to deal in standard Hitchcock- influenced thrillers and forego the giallo tropes. Here however, all of the giallo trademarks are at play, and come together beautifully with a very well written story line.