Umberto Lenzi's "Spasmo" is not really a horror movie as much as a psychological thriller. There's minimal violence, instead focusing on the main character's (Robert Hoffmann) descent into confusion. But as Lenzi explained in an interview, he had the flick turn out as it does to demonstrate how sick Italy's elites are. Like Lenzi's earlier "Orgasmo" (retitled "Paranoia" in the US),"Spasmo" shows that all is not what it seems in this supposedly nice group of people. Still, the sequence of events leading up to that have some pretty neat occurrences. I will say that I liked "Orgasmo" better (partially for the scene of Carroll Baker in the shower),but this one is definitely worth seeing. Also starring Suzy Kendall, Ivan Rassimov and Guido Alberti.

Troubled Christian Bauman (a solid and likable performance by Robert Hoffman) discovers the beautiful Barbara (beguiling Suzy Kendall) lying unconscious on the beach. Christian's subsequent involvement with Barbara soon finds him thrust into a puzzling and dangerous world populated by decadent rich oddballs with something awful to hide.

Director/co-writer Umberto Lenzi keeps the compelling, if convoluted, story moving along at a constant pace, does an able job of crafting a dreamy, perplexing, and potently morbid atmosphere (the hideously lifelike female mannequins littered throughout the bleak and surreal landscape are an especially inspired and unsettling touch),and concludes everything on a startling grim note. Hoffman and Kendall make for attractive and appealing leads; they receive sound support from Ivan Rassimov as Christian's protective brother Fritz, Adolfo Lastretti as the menacing Tatum, Mario Erpichini as the possessive Alex, Monica Monet as the alluring, yet enigmatic Clorinda, and Guido Alberti as helpful old-timer Malcolm. Ennio Morricone's exquisitely haunting and harmonic score rates as another major asset. Ditto Guglielmo Mancori's handsome widescreen cinematography. Granted, Lenzi doesn't deliver much in the way of either gore or sleaze, but the tricky winding narrative certainly keeps the viewer guessing about what's actually going on right until the alarming end.

I don't know whether it was director Umberto Lenzi's intention or not, but in Spasmo he created a masterpiece of the absurd, a film so convoluted, disjointed, and bizarre in execution that it becomes strangely hypnotic, forcing the viewer to watch to the very end. I can't say I particularly liked the film enough to recommend it to anyone but avid giallo fans, but one thing I can guarantee... you won't have seen anything else quite like it before.

The film stars Robert Hoffman as Christian, a businessman slowly drawn into a strange and terrifying mystery after finding the enigmatic Barbara (Suzy Kendall) laying unconscious on a beach. To try and adequately explain the plot further would take me well over my IMDb word limit, but suffice to say that it's a disorientating head-scratcher, a psychological thriller that veers wildly from one scene to another, seemingly at random, with characters that repeatedly come and go for no rhyme or reason; the dialogue is equally strange, and yet the cast plays everything with complete sincerity, even when having to utter lines as strange as ""Hey, you remind me of a dying chicken" and "It's all so absurd, meaningless. And what's absurd is dangerous".

In true giallo style, Lenzi attempts to pull all the plot threads together in the film's closing moments, but although the revelations in the finalé do justify Lenzi's strange style of direction to a degree, and clears up why there are frequent shots of female mannequins throughout the film, it doesn't adequately explain why Christian is afraid of the dark, or why Barbara prefers her men without beards.