Autopsy
Anchor Bay Entertainment
DVD, 1973, 100 minutes

review by Lee Peterson

"You know your corpses, but I know my souls!"
--Father Paul (Barry Primus)

"You may know a lot about corpses, fella, but you've got a lot to learn about women!"
 --Ed (Ray Lovelock)

During a severe, sunspot-induced heat wave, the city of Rome is plagued by a series of violent suicides. Simona, a young forensic pathologist (Mimsy Farmer, of Dario Argento's 4 Flies on Grey Velvet ), is buckling under the strain of her suicide research (for a thesis examining "real" versus "staged" suicides), amid unsettling hallucinations of re-animated corpses. They sit upright on their slabs, alternately scream in agony and grin at her, and even have sex with each other! Her private life is in a shambles, much to the dismay of her unsympathetic boyfriend Ed (Let Sleeping Corpses Lie's Ray Lovelock). 

When an apparent suicide victim is found on the beach, Simona recognizes the victim as a woman she met the day before, who had shown no suicidal tendencies. The dead woman's brother Paul, a shady priest with a mysterious past (Barry Primus, of Martin Scorsese's Boxcar Bertha ) believes his sister was murdered, and Simona's investigation suggests that he may be correct. 

Released in Italy as Macchie Solari  in 1973, Autopsy was eventually released in the U.S. in 1975, with over 15 minutes missing. Anchor Bay's glorious new dvd release restores the film to its full, uncut, 100-minute running time. The 1.85:1 transfer looks absolutely perfect, with no noticeable scratches or compression problems at all. The (somewhat restrained) color schemes look natural, and the image is so sharp that if it weren¹t for the '70s clothes and hairstyles, you'd think the film was shot yesterday.

Weird, unsettling imagery (cinematographer Carlo Carlini also did fine work on Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye  and Black Emmanuelle ), loads of gore, and copious amounts of nudity (albeit mostly of the corpse variety) plus a great, eerie Ennio Morricone score leave no question that you're in '70's Italian horror territory. Director Crispino followed this with 1977's Frankenstein: Italian Style (not to be confused with the same year's Frankenstein '80 ).

Also included on the disc are an alternate Italian language track (but no English subtitles, so you're on your own), an international trailer (retitledThe Victim ) and a U.S. theatrical trailer that reveals the identity of the film's killer! 

Anchor Bay's dvd is a definite must-have for all fans of Italian horror (and a must-see for Dario Argento fans who think he's the first and last word in the genre). To the already-converted, it's time to throw away the bootlegs (the "uncut" Japanese laserdisc optically censored the shocking, naughty mounds of pubic hair--for our own good, of course).

If you're new to the Italian horror scene, c'mon...there's always room for a giallo .
 
OFFICIAL WEB SITE:
www.anchorbayentertainment.com

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