Delirium

R0 DVD

Blue Underground 2008

Delirium is a sleazy and outrageous work of cinema by the Italian filmmaker Renato Poselli, he originally released it under the non-de-plume Ralph Brown. However, in Italy it was well known he was the director where it was released as Hot Delirium.

Herbert Lyutak (Mickey Hargitay) is a forensic psychologist who works alongside the police as a consultant profiler. He also has some major problems of his own; he is impotent and can only achieve satisfaction through sexual violence usually associated with strangulation.

The film opens as he is sitting alone in a bar. A young woman is playing music on the jukebox; he only seems to notice her legs. His face twitches and his attention is locked on her alone, the camera is focused on her legs, we do not even see who she is for some time. He offers her a lift to a local night club. However, she notices the way he stares obsessively at her, he grabs her, assaults her and then chases her into the river where he tears off her clothes while strangling her, to make sure the job is done right he smashes her head with a rock.

When he returns home we meet his wife Marcia, she suspects her husband is involved in the killings, especially after she finds a bloodied dress locked in a box. However, she is submissive and obsessively devoted to her husband so stands by him. Indeed she offers him the right to do “whatever he wants with her”. He seems obsessed with her neck and partially suffocates her, he then anally penetrates her with some sort of metal object.

These two characters, Dr.Lyutak and his wife, are superbly portrayed, they are credible and believable. The way in which Lyutak’s face twitches and twists, contorting with anger and rage, embodies his internal turmoil. The unquestioning devotion of his wife and her utter submission is disconcerting.

There is lots of weirdness in Delirium - sex, nudity, bungled police investigations, visions of lesbian nuns, sodomy and, of course, strangulation. There is an excellent electronic score and some great cinematography, this is certainly at the exploitation end of the Giallo genre.

This edition from Blue Underground includes both the original Italian release which comes in at 102 minutes and the re-edited American release of 85 minutes. The Italian release is much longer and is the original as envisioned by Poselli. The American release was heavily edited, including the addition of a Vietnam war sequence (!) and two extra murders as well as a very different ending. The Italian version seems to embody Poselli’s vision of a disturbed killer, driven by desires he cannot control, while the American version is much more “black and white” simply painting him as a psychopathic murderer. The cultural significance of these cinematic differences is worthwhile noting, the Italians seem more interested in the nuances of human experience and trying to understand the psychology of murder, while many American films seen content with a simple “good versus evil” approach.

The major extra is the "The Theorem Of Delirium" which is a selection of interviews with Writer/Director Renato Polselli and Star Mickey Hargitay.

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