Libido (1965)

Making our way up the giallo ladder we take a look at the next entry in the cult sub-genre of Italian thrillers, a little black and white film that has more the makings of a true thriller than the typical gruesome slasher that giallo ultimately began to morph into.

Giancarlo Giannini, an actor I see more and more as I peruse through Italian cinema, (most of you would recognize him from the first two Daniel Craig Bond films), plays Christian a young man returning to his childhood home where he witnessed his father murder a women in a mirror lined room while tied to a bed.  Following this his father committed suicide by jumping off the cliffs outside their home.  Twenty years later Christian makes his first visit back to the abandoned compound, about to come of age and take control of his inheritance.  

Clearly Christian is still affected by the experiences he witnessed as a child and returning to the house seems to only bring back those horrid memories. But something strange is going on as Christian begins to see his father's pipe freshly lit sitting on the table next to a chair that's rocking with no one in it, a strange male figure in the yard at night, and other odd occurrences that cause him to believe he's going mad, like his father!  Or is the family lawyer, Paul, (whom he doesn't completely trust) attempting to push him over the edge into insanity as to claim his inheritance?

Libido is an interesting thriller, aside from the off-screen murder the main character's father commits at the beginning of the film, and the climax at the end, Libido spends most of the film simply building up the mystery and intrigue to the nice series of twists at the end.  The meat of the film focuses on the progression of Christian's reverting back into a broken state of mind and struggling not to give into the murderous perversions that plagued his father.  Much like The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Libido succeeds in setting forth a creepy aura thoroughly assisted by the musical score, being in black and white and the setting of an old abandoned mansion.  

As is with most of these films the predictability factor in terms of the conclusion is a big deciding factor in terms of my overall enjoyment, especially when there's not much in the way of action (murders) going on in film.  While it's pretty obvious someone within the group (Christian's finance, Paul (the lawyer) and Paul's young tart of a wife) is in on the attempt to make Christian go insane, the final revelation and the series of twists that follow were well executed and not incredibly foreseen. Overall, Libido is another good example of a good, compact, low budget thriller and what makes it even better is it was supposedly filmed in eighteen days as part of a bet!  Bet won I should say! 

7/10