Death Laid an Egg (1968)

The Worst Film Ever

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Absolutely Fantastic

A Masterpiece!

It is one of the more famous and well made Giallo thrillers produced in Italy. This somewhat controversial gore flick follows a twisted killer played by Jean Louis Trintignant. It comes off like a vintage period piece for the sixties, extremely colorful, vintage shadow-draped cinematography and very sexy.It has more of a pop culture beat than expected of the genre, which is usually dark. The avant guard soundtrack is definitely off-putting.It is rare that a Giallo in this period has no nudity. This is to be expected with Gina Lollobrigida in the lead, as the most she ever showed was her butt. Ewa Aulin was wasted as she has many many nude roles. Lollabrigida never achieved the film status of Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot. It's not surprise as Bardot had many nude roles, and Loren had a few, but Lollabrigida...well

Death Laid An Egg is truly a one off. While it does qualify as an early example of the giallo, more than anything it's a very weird art film. Director Giulio Questi seems to have been highly influenced by the New Wave, so the aesthetic is often very much at odds with the one we are used to in most other gialli. It seems more indebted to Jean Luc Godard than Mario Bava most of the time. There is even one very disturbing scene of a car crash that feels like a direct descendant of the bizarre and disturbing imagery from Week-End. This scene like many others utilises a very bold editing technique that pre-dates the similar work of Nicolas Roeg. There is no doubt that visually this is a very fascinating film. It mixes both surrealism and pop art to create a very weird atmosphere. But the oddness is certainly not limited to the aesthetics. The musical score by Bruno Maderna is very experimental indeed and very persistent. It fills most of the film, its avant-garde nature ideally suited. Then of course we have the setting. A chicken farm where bizarre scientific experiments are the order of the day is hardly a typical set-up for an Italian thriller. Moreover, in one gloriously oddball science fiction moment we discover that the scientists have developed a kind of headless and wingless chicken creature which they hope will make them very rich by turning the animal into nothing more than a hideous ready-made blob of meat. This sort of horrific surrealism isn't a far cry from the kinds of thing David Lynch would put into Eraserhead. But in this film it does have an obvious point, as it raises the question of where the moral line is in producing genetically modified animals for food. It's not exactly common-place for a giallo to raise important issues.Inside all this weirdness is a drama about a man, his wife, her assistant and a publicity agent from the egg people. It turns out that they are having different illicit relationships behind the other's backs. And there are different plots to do away with each other. On top of this the main man is seen at the beginning of the movie committing an act of brutal violence where he murders a woman in a motel room in a bravura opening scene that is expertly inter-cut with many edits of scenes showing a plethora of other odd and fetishistic behaviour happening simultaneously in the same motel. I guess the implication is that behind closed doors everybody is socially deviant in some way. As the film progresses this murderer and adulterer is shown to be the only one with the morality to reject the idea of the monster chickens. Overall there are several layers of complexity here and this has to be a re-watchable film for this reason. It's very much for people with a taste for the left-field and the bizarre. It's ridiculous it hasn't been given a proper DVD release.

A fun, if more convoluted than usual, giallo. My copy seemed to end rather abruptly and with much in the air. Not sure if that was how it was supposed to end or what but nonetheless, I enjoyed it and especially enjoyed Ewa Aulin, who was quite the hottie.

This has to be one of the most cutting edge film's made to date , its wholly surreal and has a dreamlike quality that hypnotises me. When i first saw this film I don't think I blinked , then I watched it again straight off, it has an addictive charm that should be open for everyone too see, why its not being picked up by a distributor I will never know. The plot is an odd one , a mixture of industrial terrorism (who killed the new headless mutant chickens that yeild so much meat), Romance , Perversion and just plain odd. In the opening scene in a hotel while a prostitute is being brutally murdered we cut to a man covering his head in tape , someone pouring out toothpaste and various hideous rich people snorting with laughter. From the start it gives the message that everybody is mad, with their hidden psychosis and more obvious ones. Going any further into the plot will spoil the film so I will say nothing. Its worth trying to find this one , I got mine in Greece in the late 80's , but there must be some out there , somewhere.