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Hello and welcome to this commentary
track for Riccardo Ghioni's 1973

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horror oddity Il Prato Macchiato di
Rosso, or The Bloodstained Lawn.

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My name is Rachel Nisbet, I'm a film
critic specialising in Italian genre

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cinema, and today we're going to look at
this rather strange title in the outer

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margins of Italian horror and
exploitation cinema of the 1970s.

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This is a film that doesn't fit
comfortably in any one category.

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It's shallow adjacent, yes, but... Also
part psychedelic horror, part political

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allegory and part grotesque social
satire.

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It's the kind of film that could only
have emerged from the volatile cultural

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climate of post -1968 Italy.

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Disillusioned, experimental and deeply
suspicious of power in all its forms.

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And yet, it's also very much a product
of genre cinema's low -budget ingenuity.

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Shot in the vineyards and villas of
Emilia -Romagna, with a cast that

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both shadow royalty and, bizarrely,
singer -songwriter Lucio Della.

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Over the next hour and 20 minutes, we'll
be exploring the film's production

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history, its thematic ambition, and its
relationship to the wider traditions of

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Italian horror.

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We will also look at its cast, director
and various other components of the

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film, such as its release, music and
filming locations.

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Whether you're a seasoned cult cinema
obsessive or coming to this one for the

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first time, I hope this track gives you
further insight into this curious entry

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in Italian genre cinema.

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So, The Bloodstained Lawn is a
particularly elusive film when it comes

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classification.

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It straddles a range of modes and
influences and has often been gripped,

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reflexively, within the orbit of giallo
due to its Italian origin, period of

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production and evocative title.

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However, I think it's fair to say that
the film resists straightforward

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placement within any single genre and
its inclusion in giallo discourses tends

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to reflect the poorest boundaries of
Italian genre cinema rather than

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to conventional codes.

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In many ways, it's more accurate to
describe the blood -stained lawn as

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adjacent. It somewhat shares the feel
and aesthetics of the genre.

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You know, its title evokes the familiar
colour and violent act formula, and its

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structure includes elements of mystery,
eccentric upper -class villainy, and a

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sequence of disappearances. But it lacks
the core features typically associated

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with the archetypal shallow.

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There's no black -glove killer, no
escalating kill count, it lacks an

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investigative protagonist in the
traditional sense, and there is no

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murder mystery to unravel.

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Instead, the film's villains are known
to the audience from the outset, and the

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tone leans more towards satirical horror
than stylised suspense.

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The Nocturnal published Solomente Jarl
refers to the film as a borderline Jarl,

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acknowledging its peripheral status
within their tradition.

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Sir Moly, Luigi Cozzi and Antonio
Tintori in Italian horror movies

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film as an example of 60s -style
psychedelic horror, suggesting that its

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lie more in the post -Gothic, counter
-cultural strand of horror filmmaking

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in the giallo -thriller hybrid that
crystallised around Argento's The Bird

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a Crystal Plumage.

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Indeed, the film owes as much to post
-68 political allegory, Gothic horror

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low -budget science fiction as it does
to any crime -thriller lineage.

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The most effective categorisation might
therefore belong to a brief but

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fascinating strain of Italian genre
cinema that sought to modernise

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through social commentary and genre
hybridity, which most notably includes

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Carada Farina's They Have Changed Their
Face, a film that was released in 1971,

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which we'll return to later on.

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That said, the film's visual and tonal
stylings – its production design, its

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mirror orgy scene, the lurid excesses of
its aristocratic villains, splashes of

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crimson -hued violence and the
occasional moments of investigative

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do echo the shadow mode.

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It's perhaps in this register that The
Bloodstained Lawn earns its shadow

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-adjacent status – not as a narrative or
structural shadow, but As a film

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operating in the aesthetic, affective
and cultural proximity to the genre, it

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shares with Django a fascination with
surfaces, decadence and psychosexual

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menace, but diverges in its preference
for grotesque irony over taut suspense.

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So arguably, The Bloodstained Lawn is
best approached not as a strict example

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any one genre, but as a hybrid artefact.

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Equal part psychedelic horror, satirical
sci -fi, post -gothic grotesque and

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socio -political exploitation cinema.

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It's undoubtedly this refusal to conform
that has led to its uneven reception

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and belated cult appeal.

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If the shadow is often concerned with
the violence of seeing, the blood

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lawn is more concerned with the violence
of systems, of class, of science, of

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commerce. It just happens to deliver
that critique wrapped in the trappings

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pulp and parody.

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But to address a wider point, the
tendency to apply the giallo label to

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corner of 1970s Italian genre cinema
often obscures more than it reveals.

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While the term once referred to a
loosely defined cycle of stylish murder

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mysteries, it has since ballooned into a
catch -all category, retroactively

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imposed on films that diverge and
somewhat radically from the conventions

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form. And it's this reflex to classify
that can be naturally limiting.

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And expecting every film with violent
set pieces or lurid aesthetics to adhere

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to the narrative mechanics of a shadow
certainly sets audiences up for a kind

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structural disappointment where
deviation is mistaken for failure.

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Films like The Bloodstained Lawn don't
reject genre so much as mutate it,

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blending horror, satire and social
allegory in ways that sit, perhaps

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uncomfortably, with rigid taxonomies.

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Rather than stretching the definition of
shallow to fit every outlier, it's

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perhaps more useful to recognise these
works as operating in adjacent, often

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more subversive, creative registers,
unruly, hybrid and deliberately

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uncategorisable.

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The Bloodstained Lawn was originally
developed under the working title

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du Amira, or Vampire 2000.

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This early title reflects director
Riccardo Ghioni's initial concept, a

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modernised quasi -scientific take on the
vampire myth, refrained for the late

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industrial era.

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The subtitle 2000 inevitably suggests a
forward -looking, quasi -futuristic

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approach, aligning with the film's
inclusion of technological horror and

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speculative satire.

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However, under producer pressure, Guioni
agreed to a title change in order to

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better capitalise on then -current
trends in Italian horror marketing.

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The final title, Il Prato Macchiato di
Rosso, or The Bloodstained Lawn, mimics

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the naming format that had become a
hallmark of the giallo and horror

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the early 1970s.

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And this new title naturally carried
more of an air of mystery while

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aesthetically suggestive, despite the
fact that it ultimately had little to do

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with the literal events of the plot.

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So, especially to modern audiences, the
film's title suggests a genre

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classification it doesn't meaningfully
belong to, which only deepens the sense

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of disorientation story -wise.

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The Bloodstained Lawn sounds like a
giallo, lurid, violent, perhaps centred

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around a whodunit structure, but what
unfolds is something far stranger.

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Riccardo Ghioni is one of those odd
peripheral figures in Italian cinema

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directorial career was brief, albeit of
interest.

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The Bloodstained Lawn was his third and
final film, and while it's often treated

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as a cult curio, the film marks the end
point of an unconventional creative

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trajectory.

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One fuelled less by commercial ambition
than by artistic restlessness.

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Born in 1922 in Acquitermi, northern
Italy, he came from a family of cultural

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pedigree. His father, Franco Ghioni, was
a renowned conductor at La Scala and

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worked alongside Toscanini.

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But Riccardo's interest lay not in music
but in cinema, specifically a cinema

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that broke away from convention and
engaged directly with real life.

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His earliest and perhaps most radical
contribution to Italian film came in the

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early 1950s when Pioni co -founded
Documento Menzilli, a short -lived but

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ambitious cinematic magazine built on
collaboration and experimentation.

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Working alongside the young Marco
Ferreri and backed by names like Cesar

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Zavattini, Rossellini and Michelangelo
Antonioni, the project was meant to be a

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revolutionary antidote to the state
-sponsored newsreels of post -war Italy.

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Documento mensili ending to do for
cinema what avant -garde literary

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had done for literature.

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Combine reportage, fiction, poetry and
social critique in short, sharp

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essays.

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Despite its pedigree, the project
collapsed after just three issues,

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under financial obstacles and political
resistance.

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It was an early sign of what would
become Guioni's enduring pattern.

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Bold ideas, prestigious collaborators,
and a system unwilling, or unable, to

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support them.

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After this collapse, Dioni pivoted to
screenwriting.

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He co -supervised the script for Alberto
Luchuda's Il Capoto, and played a key

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production role in La More Incita, a
neorealist anthology film featuring

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Fellini, Antonioni, and others.

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Intended as a radical continuation of
neorealism, La Mori and Citta was

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seen by many as its epitaph.

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Throughout the 1960s, Guioni continued
writing, often uncredited, on popular

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Italian genre films, especially Commedia
all 'Italiana and the emerging wave of

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erotic dramas.

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Films like Fotografando Patrizia and
Scandalosa Gilda, which he co -wrote

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in his career, in the mid -1980s,
suggest a pragmatic writer for higher

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far from his avant -garde beginnings.

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But even in his most commercial work, he
retained an eye for provocation and

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absurdity. It wasn't until the late
1960s that Guioni finally stepped behind

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camera. His directorial debut, La
Relazione Sessuale, released in 1968,

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erotic pseudo -documentary sex drama
inspired by psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich

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co -scripted by a young Dario Argento.

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It featured staged interviews, erotic
set pieces and a scathing critique of

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bourgeois hypocrisy.

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It aimed to explore sexual liberation
but quickly veered into farce,

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between provocation and parody.

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His follow -up, A Quare Fredo, in 1971,
took that same caustic tone and applied

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it to a toxic bourgeois marriage,
imploding under the weight of sexual

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resentment, economic sadism and
nihilistic misanthropy.

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Like his debut, the film was critical of
the era's shifting social values, but

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resisted easy moralising.

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If anything, it viewed revolution itself
with a kind of amused fatalism.

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The Bud St. Lawn was his third and final
film, and it plays like a grotesque,

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genre -bending satire of Italian society
at the tail end of its post -war

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optimism.

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Here the vampires are literal and
metaphorical.

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Aristocrats who drain the blood of
hippies and sex workers to sell to the

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developing world, smuggling it inside
wine bottles.

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Gioni gleefully mixes horror tropes with
pop political allegory and psychedelic

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absurdity, throwing in Lucio Dalla as a
boozy tramp alongside a robot shaped

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like a tin can and a sex room accessed
through a giant vulva.

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It's a film that feels both thrown
together and pointedly deliberate,

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execution, sharp in intent.

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Dramatically, we can see the
similarities between The Bloodstained

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Gioni's earlier work.

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All three films take aim at the
hypocrisies and contradictions of

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society, particularly its relationship
to sex, power and repression.

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In La Relazione Sessuale, the critique
is pseudo -clinical.

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Stage interviews and Reikian theory
presented as titillation and satire.

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Acquare Freddo brings that critique
inside the home, where marital intimacy

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curdles into mutual contempt and
emotional sadism.

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And in The Bloodstained Lawn, the
domestic and the ideological collide

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violently. Sex, class, science and
generational revolt are all thrown into

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same lurid blender.

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Across these films, Pioni consistently
dismantles the veneer of civility in

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Italian post -war life.

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His bourgeois characters are not just
flawed, they are decadent, deranged or

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quietly monstrous.

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The hippies and outsiders who wander
into their orbit are treated with

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ambivalence, sometimes exploited,
sometimes mocked, but rarely heroic.

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Guioni doesn't offer a revolution as
redemption.

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Instead, his films suggest that every
system, sexual, political, familial,

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eventually devours its participants.

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It's this mixture of cynicism, absurdity
and occasional flashes of grotesque

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sincerity that gives his brief
directorial output its strange, lopsided

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coherence.

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If his career feels truncated, it's not
for lack of thematic clarity.

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He only had a vision, bleak, satirical
and defiantly out of step with market

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trends.

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As a director, Guioni was never a
stylist. His camera work is functional,

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pacing perhaps questionable, but what he
lacked in polish he made up for in

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ideas, and his films are suffused with
irony, contempt, and the stubborn

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to fit into tidy categories.

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If he had a strength, it was his ability
to cross genres, bring together high

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-minded critique with low -budget
exploitation, and treat all of it –

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norms, countercultural affectation,
cinematic convention – with equal

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Guioni saw himself somewhat as a
provocateur, not a craftsman.

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He openly admitted that shame had no
place in directing, and it shows.

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The Bloodstained Lawn isn't just a film,
it's 1960s countercultural optimism

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curdled into absurdism and dressed in
the cheapest horror trappings available.

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It's incoherent, yes, but also strangely
resonant.

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A vampire film where the real monsters
are the bourgeoisie bottling blood for

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profit. He only never directed again
after The Bloodstained Lawn. His later

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years were spent mostly in the margins.

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In the 1980s and early 1990s, Gioni
resurfaced as a scriptwriter on a run of

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00:15:09,070 --> 00:15:13,590
erotic thrillers and commercial genre
fare, often working with directors like

220
00:15:13,590 --> 00:15:15,650
Joe D 'Amato or Bruno Gaburo.

221
00:15:16,390 --> 00:15:21,730
His name tied to pulp, softcore and late
-night cable staples, often buried

222
00:15:21,730 --> 00:15:23,610
beneath more marketable names.

223
00:15:24,450 --> 00:15:28,430
And yet, in his best moments, Gioni was
something else entirely.

224
00:15:29,290 --> 00:15:33,230
He was a frustrated auteur, restless,
ironic, allergic to convention.

225
00:15:33,990 --> 00:15:38,190
His films, especially The Bloodstained
Lawn, refuse easy categorisation.

226
00:15:38,770 --> 00:15:42,870
They're too weird for prestige cinema,
too ideologically borrowed for

227
00:15:42,870 --> 00:15:46,850
straightforward exploitation, and too
amateurish for mainstream horror.

228
00:15:47,150 --> 00:15:51,310
But they are undeniably his, and in an
industry so often driven by compromise,

229
00:15:51,830 --> 00:15:54,610
that in the end might be his greatest
legacy.

230
00:15:57,930 --> 00:16:01,810
As we've already discussed, Ghioni
conceived the project under the working

231
00:16:01,810 --> 00:16:03,050
Vampiro 2000,

232
00:16:03,810 --> 00:16:07,270
intending it as a modern -day vampire
allegory.

233
00:16:07,790 --> 00:16:11,210
But it wasn't the only project he was
working on at the time.

234
00:16:11,670 --> 00:16:16,070
He also announced he was developing an
adaptation of Giuseppe Berto's Il Malle

235
00:16:16,070 --> 00:16:21,250
Oscuro, a 1964 novel that could not have
been further removed in tone or

236
00:16:21,250 --> 00:16:22,250
intention.

237
00:16:22,860 --> 00:16:27,500
Berto's book is an introspective, semi
-autobiographical account of a man

238
00:16:27,500 --> 00:16:32,400
undergoing psychoanalysis, grappling
with paternal authority, existential

239
00:16:32,400 --> 00:16:34,900
and the lingering psychological scars of
fascism.

240
00:16:35,180 --> 00:16:39,720
Where The Bloodstained Lawn is lurid,
externalised and carnivalesque, Il

241
00:16:39,720 --> 00:16:43,840
Scuro is internal, cerebral and steeped
in post -war malaise.

242
00:16:44,160 --> 00:16:49,100
The idea of Guioni adapting such a novel
is fascinating, but alas, the project

243
00:16:49,100 --> 00:16:51,440
never progressed beyond its initial
announcement.

244
00:16:52,430 --> 00:16:56,650
Whether due to lack of funding,
commercial doubts, or just a general

245
00:16:56,650 --> 00:17:00,630
Guioni's own priorities, it quietly
vanished in development, leaving The

246
00:17:00,630 --> 00:17:05,329
Bloodstained Lawn as the last baffling
entry in his truncated directorial

247
00:17:05,329 --> 00:17:06,329
career.

248
00:17:06,589 --> 00:17:10,569
The filming of The Bloodstained Lawn
took place over the late spring and

249
00:17:10,569 --> 00:17:16,030
of 1972, with principal photography
reportedly spanning from May -June

250
00:17:16,030 --> 00:17:17,410
to August of that year.

251
00:17:18,540 --> 00:17:22,740
The entire shoot occurred on location in
Emilia -Romagna, with a particular

252
00:17:22,740 --> 00:17:27,880
concentration in and around the town of
Fiorenzuola d 'Arda, in the province of

253
00:17:27,880 --> 00:17:32,800
Piacenza. The Genovese villa, where much
of the film takes place within, was a

254
00:17:32,800 --> 00:17:33,800
real estate.

255
00:17:34,660 --> 00:17:38,920
Additional scenes were filmed in Castel
Arquato, another town in the region

256
00:17:38,920 --> 00:17:42,800
known for its medieval architecture, but
we'll return to the filming locations

257
00:17:42,800 --> 00:17:44,980
later on in this commentary track.

258
00:17:46,800 --> 00:17:51,120
Given its tight shooting schedule and
modest resources, the production

259
00:17:51,120 --> 00:17:55,080
with a skeletal crew and made extensive
use of local support.

260
00:17:56,040 --> 00:18:00,460
According to local accounts, the film's
backers, an outfit known as Canguro

261
00:18:00,460 --> 00:18:05,540
Cinematographica, collapsed financially
either during or immediately after the

262
00:18:05,540 --> 00:18:08,580
shoot. This left the project in a
precarious position.

263
00:18:09,530 --> 00:18:13,850
A retrospective article from Priorenzo
notes that the production went bankrupt

264
00:18:13,850 --> 00:18:17,230
and the actors had to cover the cost of
the final shots themselves.

265
00:18:17,770 --> 00:18:22,690
Perhaps a speculative claim, but
interesting nonetheless, although one to

266
00:18:22,690 --> 00:18:27,250
perhaps with a pinch of salt. But this
all aligns with the broader pattern of

267
00:18:27,250 --> 00:18:31,530
resourceful, low -budget filmmaking that
characterised much of Italian genre

268
00:18:31,530 --> 00:18:32,890
cinema at the time.

269
00:18:34,220 --> 00:18:37,440
The financial constraints were evident
throughout the film's execution.

270
00:18:38,000 --> 00:18:42,400
Special effects were rudimentary, most
infamously the blood extraction robot,

271
00:18:42,540 --> 00:18:45,700
and visual continuity was sometimes
questionable.

272
00:18:46,020 --> 00:18:50,240
Yet this very rawness is arguably part
of the film's later cult appeal and

273
00:18:50,240 --> 00:18:51,240
charm.

274
00:18:51,390 --> 00:18:54,930
The production, though likely fraught
with compromise, gave rise to a uniquely

275
00:18:54,930 --> 00:18:59,550
bizarre and politically loaded work that
defied easy classification, and which

276
00:18:59,550 --> 00:19:04,290
today stands as a fascinating artefact
of Italian genre cinema operating at the

277
00:19:04,290 --> 00:19:05,290
fringes.

278
00:19:07,980 --> 00:19:12,500
So our central protagonist here is not
the investigatory figure, that's Nino

279
00:19:12,500 --> 00:19:17,620
Castelnova's UNESCO agent who occupies a
far more secondary role and whom we'll

280
00:19:17,620 --> 00:19:22,720
return to shortly, but rather Max and
arguably his nameless companion cum

281
00:19:22,720 --> 00:19:23,720
girlfriend.

282
00:19:24,740 --> 00:19:29,040
Max was played by the actor George
Willing, whereas his girlfriend was

283
00:19:29,040 --> 00:19:30,140
Daniela Caroli.

284
00:19:30,900 --> 00:19:35,600
Both are figures who remain largely
obscure today, even to dedicated fans of

285
00:19:35,600 --> 00:19:36,600
Italian genre cinema.

286
00:19:37,210 --> 00:19:40,850
Yet within the Bloodstained Lawn, their
performances are central, not just

287
00:19:40,850 --> 00:19:45,370
narratively but thematically, as they
embody the film's collusion between

288
00:19:45,370 --> 00:19:49,090
counter -cultural innocence and decadent
institutional corruption.

289
00:19:49,850 --> 00:19:52,670
George Willing in particular is a
curious case.

290
00:19:52,970 --> 00:19:57,670
Little is known of his biography, but
his filmography situates him briefly but

291
00:19:57,670 --> 00:20:02,730
vividly within the fringes of late 60s
and early 70s European cinema.

292
00:20:03,820 --> 00:20:09,200
He had previously appeared in Vortex,
The Face of Medusa in 1967, a surreal

293
00:20:09,200 --> 00:20:14,560
Greek -British production directed by
Nikos Kondouros, and later he appeared

294
00:20:14,560 --> 00:20:20,360
Aldo Lado's Who Saw Her Die in 1972, a
Venetian sitch -out in which he plays

295
00:20:20,360 --> 00:20:21,860
supporting role of Andra.

296
00:20:23,240 --> 00:20:29,420
There's also a credit in Franco
Bracani's Necropolis from 1970, an

297
00:20:29,420 --> 00:20:34,540
fragmented meditation on death featuring
a cast of anarchic wandering figures.

298
00:20:34,960 --> 00:20:39,320
These roles collectively sketch a
portrait of an actor cast less for star

299
00:20:39,320 --> 00:20:44,420
than for his ethereal, slightly
androgynistic screen presence, well

300
00:20:44,420 --> 00:20:47,180
films caught between the psychedelic and
the fatalistic.

301
00:20:48,940 --> 00:20:52,940
His portrayal of Max in The Bloodstained
Lawn sits squarely with this lineage.

302
00:20:53,300 --> 00:20:58,860
He plays the almost parodic and
archetypal hippie character, a bell

303
00:20:58,860 --> 00:21:02,620
-wearing, curly -haired youth who plays
folk music on his guitar and smokes

304
00:21:02,620 --> 00:21:03,620
weed.

305
00:21:04,230 --> 00:21:09,230
Max's girlfriend are not lured to the
Genovese house by greed or lust, but by

306
00:21:09,230 --> 00:21:11,030
the vague promise of generosity.

307
00:21:11,390 --> 00:21:15,330
And in that way, Willing's performance
becomes a stand -in for a certain kind

308
00:21:15,330 --> 00:21:20,770
doomed 70s idealism, ripe for
exploitation by the film's vampiric

309
00:21:21,850 --> 00:21:24,830
Arguably, Carolli's character is even
more underwritten.

310
00:21:25,030 --> 00:21:29,630
She isn't even given a name and
functions primarily as a source of

311
00:21:29,630 --> 00:21:32,690
and a vehicle for peril in the film's
climatic sequences.

312
00:21:33,800 --> 00:21:37,640
Though Carolli's screen career was
relatively short -lived, it would later

313
00:21:37,640 --> 00:21:39,640
lasting life in the recording studio.

314
00:21:40,380 --> 00:21:45,180
After a handful of acting credits,
including Alberto Lachuda's Le Faro di

315
00:21:45,180 --> 00:21:50,840
in 1974 and the satirical Movie Rush in
1976, where she was credited as Kim

316
00:21:50,840 --> 00:21:55,600
Carolli, she transitioned into voice
acting, becoming a prolific and

317
00:21:55,600 --> 00:21:58,860
recognisable presence in Italy's dubbing
industry.

318
00:22:01,140 --> 00:22:03,120
There's something fitting about that.

319
00:22:03,520 --> 00:22:06,840
Both Carolli and Willing, remembered
largely for the Bloodstained Lawn,

320
00:22:06,880 --> 00:22:12,440
represent the transient, often
disposable faces of 1970s European genre

321
00:22:12,940 --> 00:22:16,320
Figures who drift in, leave an
impression and vanish.

322
00:22:16,840 --> 00:22:20,720
Willing disappears from the record
entirely after the mid -1970s.

323
00:22:21,130 --> 00:22:24,330
Corolli, in contrast, endures invisibly
through voices.

324
00:22:24,810 --> 00:22:29,630
And in this film, with its fixation on
blood, bodies and the extraction of

325
00:22:29,630 --> 00:22:34,090
youth, that tension between presence and
disappearance becomes eerily resonant.

326
00:22:35,130 --> 00:22:40,070
But on the subject of hippies
themselves, in 1970s Italian

327
00:22:40,350 --> 00:22:45,450
counterculture was often a target of
scorn, fascination and moral reckoning.

328
00:22:46,190 --> 00:22:51,170
Free love, political idealism, barefoot
wanderers on the open road, all ripe for

329
00:22:51,170 --> 00:22:56,330
dissection, desecration and, more often
than not, ritual slaughter at the hands

330
00:22:56,330 --> 00:22:57,690
of Italy's genre directors.

331
00:22:58,830 --> 00:23:02,970
Films like The Bloodstained Lawn didn't
just feature hippies, they fed them into

332
00:23:02,970 --> 00:23:03,970
machines.

333
00:23:04,670 --> 00:23:07,830
The setup is familiar by this point in
Italian cinema.

334
00:23:08,030 --> 00:23:13,310
A pair of young outsiders, romantic,
sexual, naive, find themselves in

335
00:23:13,310 --> 00:23:14,310
else's world.

336
00:23:14,670 --> 00:23:18,790
That world might be a villa such as
here, a castle, a crumbling estate, a

337
00:23:18,790 --> 00:23:23,810
secluded bay, but it always belongs to
someone older, richer, and more

338
00:23:24,190 --> 00:23:28,350
And the interlopers always end up
punished, seduced, or annihilated.

339
00:23:28,570 --> 00:23:29,810
Sometimes all three.

340
00:23:30,630 --> 00:23:36,730
My father's last words to me, Max says,
were, For me, you might as well be dead.

341
00:23:37,550 --> 00:23:41,590
It's a line that speaks to family
estrangement but also to a broader

342
00:23:41,590 --> 00:23:44,210
generational reckoning in post -war
Italy.

343
00:23:44,830 --> 00:23:49,290
These aren't simply freewheeling
hippies, they're the children of men who

344
00:23:49,290 --> 00:23:53,950
through fascism, who in many cases were
fascists or at the very least complicit

345
00:23:53,950 --> 00:23:55,070
in its social order.

346
00:23:56,000 --> 00:24:01,600
So for that generation raised on
discipline, national duty and moral

347
00:24:01,780 --> 00:24:06,700
the counterculture of politics,
sexuality and rootlessness weren't just

348
00:24:06,900 --> 00:24:08,240
they were arguably offensive.

349
00:24:08,860 --> 00:24:12,300
The rejection of ideological as much as
emotional.

350
00:24:12,760 --> 00:24:16,860
The youth of the 1960s weren't just
disappointing sons and daughters, they

351
00:24:16,860 --> 00:24:21,240
a threat to the social code their
parents had either enforced or survived.

352
00:24:22,540 --> 00:24:26,620
In the Bloodstained Lawn, the young are
already considered dead, socially,

353
00:24:26,800 --> 00:24:29,780
morally, politically, and the villa
simply makes it literal.

354
00:24:30,420 --> 00:24:34,180
Their blood is to be extracted, not by
monsters, but by the kind of polite,

355
00:24:34,380 --> 00:24:38,380
cultured inheritors who keep old systems
alive under new veneers.

356
00:24:39,980 --> 00:24:43,620
This generational divide is at the heart
of the film, even if it's masked by

357
00:24:43,620 --> 00:24:46,260
sex, science fiction, and surrealist
kitsch.

358
00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:50,760
The hippies are wanted for their energy,
their vitality, their blood, but they

359
00:24:50,760 --> 00:24:51,760
are not welcome.

360
00:24:51,950 --> 00:24:55,090
They are guests only in the way castle
are guests at a slaughterhouse.

361
00:24:55,750 --> 00:24:58,070
It's a narrative that repeats across the
period.

362
00:24:58,630 --> 00:25:03,090
In Tanina Chervi's Queens of Evil, the
wandering idealist finds himself

363
00:25:03,090 --> 00:25:04,990
by a trio of seductive witches.

364
00:25:05,690 --> 00:25:09,870
In Oasis of Fear, two libertine youths
are lured into a villa by an older woman

365
00:25:09,870 --> 00:25:12,390
who turns out to be far more dangerous
than they are.

366
00:25:13,090 --> 00:25:16,610
In Tragic Ceremony, a group of modern
friends stumble into a black mass.

367
00:25:16,990 --> 00:25:20,870
And in A Bay of Blood, they barely
stumble at all before they're

368
00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:25,660
The mechanism is always the same. Modern
youth, with its looseness and

369
00:25:25,660 --> 00:25:29,520
liberation, crashes into an older world
that is repressed, perverse and deadly.

370
00:25:30,820 --> 00:25:33,420
There's something particularly Italian
about the way these stories unfold.

371
00:25:34,260 --> 00:25:38,860
Unlike their American counterparts,
where the lone hitchhiker faces rednecks

372
00:25:38,860 --> 00:25:43,040
religious fanatics, Italian films cast
the enemy as something more refined.

373
00:25:44,120 --> 00:25:48,600
Aristocrats, bourgeois intellectuals,
genteel monsters who speak well and

374
00:25:48,600 --> 00:25:49,600
impeccably.

375
00:25:50,080 --> 00:25:54,860
The violence is not rural or backward.
It is organised, inherited, civilised.

376
00:25:55,840 --> 00:25:59,520
In The Bloodstained Lawn, the satire is
broad but strangely resonant.

377
00:25:59,840 --> 00:26:01,440
The wine that's really human blood.

378
00:26:01,860 --> 00:26:06,160
The idle rich toasting one another while
corpses pile up out of the frame.

379
00:26:06,520 --> 00:26:10,440
The hippies, idealistic and expendable,
are merely the latest fuel source.

380
00:26:11,060 --> 00:26:13,340
The film seems to shrug as it reveals
its machinery.

381
00:26:13,880 --> 00:26:15,880
Of course, this is what the system does.

382
00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:22,740
Inevitably, there's a kind of quota in
these films for nudity or sex scenes, as

383
00:26:22,740 --> 00:26:25,760
we just saw in that encounter between
Max and his girlfriend.

384
00:26:26,480 --> 00:26:30,560
And their insistence on sharing a room
despite being offered separate ones

385
00:26:30,560 --> 00:26:34,920
gestures towards the sexual liberalism
associated with the counter -cultural

386
00:26:34,920 --> 00:26:36,080
youth of the time.

387
00:26:36,780 --> 00:26:40,600
As with much exploitation in genre
cinema of the period, there's an

388
00:26:40,600 --> 00:26:45,100
of titillation, most obviously later on
in the orchestrated orgy sequence.

389
00:26:46,040 --> 00:26:49,780
Neither scene, the one we've just seen,
or that one to come is especially

390
00:26:49,780 --> 00:26:54,380
sensual. They function more as
obligations than as erotic moments.

391
00:26:55,400 --> 00:26:59,480
But what stands out most, however, is
this image of the Romany girl, who I

392
00:26:59,480 --> 00:27:04,440
believe is called Venemina, bound naked
to a bed with rope, supposedly because

393
00:27:04,440 --> 00:27:05,440
of her epilepsy.

394
00:27:05,980 --> 00:27:10,980
But the framing of the scene leans
heavily into a bondage aesthetic,

395
00:27:10,980 --> 00:27:14,360
mix of apparent medicalisation and
sexualised control.

396
00:27:14,940 --> 00:27:18,560
It's somewhat unsettling, pointing to
the film's undercurrent of sadism and

397
00:27:18,560 --> 00:27:22,700
way that female bodies can sometimes be
used and displayed less as erotic

398
00:27:22,700 --> 00:27:26,640
subjects than as objects of domination.
It is a very striking image in the film,

399
00:27:26,700 --> 00:27:30,080
a bit more sexually perverse than some
of the other scenes, which seems strange

400
00:27:30,080 --> 00:27:33,300
to say when we have this orgy scene that
takes place later on, but I think it's

401
00:27:33,300 --> 00:27:35,260
that idea of someone being bound to a
bed naked.

402
00:27:36,840 --> 00:27:41,600
Zena Mina was played by Barbara Marzano.
Marzano was an Italian actress active

403
00:27:41,600 --> 00:27:46,380
in the early 1970s, one of her roles in
primarily erotic and genre cinema.

404
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:50,520
Discovered by director Fernando de Leo,
she appeared in the controversial L

405
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:56,160
'Istituzione in 1973 and cult titles
like The Bloodstained Lawn Here,

406
00:27:56,160 --> 00:28:00,080
The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance and
Torso, where she played a hippie dancer.

407
00:28:00,780 --> 00:28:05,540
Her screen career was brief, spanning
from 1972 to 1975.

408
00:28:07,310 --> 00:28:11,930
Nina's brother Alfiero, played by
Claudio Biava, served primarily as a

409
00:28:11,930 --> 00:28:13,030
of victims for Dr.

410
00:28:13,230 --> 00:28:17,210
Genovese's perverse experiments, again a
dead -eyed henchman whose obedience

411
00:28:17,210 --> 00:28:18,930
masked deeper complicity.

412
00:28:19,570 --> 00:28:24,230
Biava was an Italian former actor who
had a prolific if low -profile career in

413
00:28:24,230 --> 00:28:27,170
the 1950s, 60s and early 1970s.

414
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:31,840
A character, actor and supporting
player, Biava appeared in more than 30

415
00:28:31,840 --> 00:28:37,020
between 1955 and 1972, working across
many of the popular Italian genres of

416
00:28:37,020 --> 00:28:38,020
time.

417
00:28:38,080 --> 00:28:42,040
Though rarely in leading roles, he
became a familiar face in the background

418
00:28:42,040 --> 00:28:44,480
war dramas, comedies and action films.

419
00:28:45,120 --> 00:28:49,660
One of Biava's most notable appearances
was in Mauro Bolognini's Matteo, a

420
00:28:49,660 --> 00:28:53,660
critically acclaimed period drama from
1970 about labour struggles in Florence.

421
00:28:54,560 --> 00:28:58,760
In that film, he portrayed Nardini, a
socialist organiser, a small but

422
00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:02,480
part in a production that won its lead
actress, Ottavia Piccolo, the Best

423
00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:03,820
Actress Award at Cannes.

424
00:29:04,780 --> 00:29:08,240
Biava's inclusion in Matteo linked him
to the era's trend of socially conscious

425
00:29:08,240 --> 00:29:09,240
filmmaking.

426
00:29:10,060 --> 00:29:13,900
Throughout the mid -1960s, Claudio Biava
frequently popped up in Italy's popular

427
00:29:13,900 --> 00:29:14,900
genre pictures.

428
00:29:15,060 --> 00:29:19,380
He had roles in a string of spaghetti
westerns, four in total, including Ramon

429
00:29:19,380 --> 00:29:21,780
the Mexican and A Stranger in Paso
Bravo.

430
00:29:22,650 --> 00:29:26,190
In these Euro -Westerns, he usually
played secondary characters, such as a

431
00:29:26,190 --> 00:29:28,330
townsman, a henchman, etc, etc.

432
00:29:28,950 --> 00:29:31,450
Biafra also ventured into the booming
Euro -spy genre.

433
00:29:31,790 --> 00:29:36,630
For instance, he appears in Super 7
Kiyama Kairo, a playful James Bond

434
00:29:36,630 --> 00:29:37,630
of the period.

435
00:29:38,110 --> 00:29:41,510
His film credits further include war
adventure films and crime capers.

436
00:29:41,930 --> 00:29:45,850
In Machine Gun McCain, an Italian
-American gangster film, Biafra again

437
00:29:45,850 --> 00:29:47,310
solid support in a small role.

438
00:29:48,540 --> 00:29:50,460
Biava's screen persona was versatile.

439
00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:54,420
He was the kind of actor who could be a
soldier in one film, a gang member in

440
00:29:54,420 --> 00:29:55,860
the next, and a comic foil thereafter.

441
00:29:56,820 --> 00:30:00,540
This adaptability served the Italian
studio system, which churned out diverse

442
00:30:00,540 --> 00:30:03,100
films to meet audience demand in the
60s.

443
00:30:03,780 --> 00:30:07,260
Despite working with notable directors
and stars, Claudio Biava never became

444
00:30:07,260 --> 00:30:08,260
famous himself.

445
00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:12,020
A true, where do I know where that
actor's from, of Italian cinema.

446
00:30:13,180 --> 00:30:17,560
Curiously, after 1972, he left the film
industry entirely and little is known

447
00:30:17,560 --> 00:30:18,560
about his life thereafter.

448
00:30:19,160 --> 00:30:23,180
His sudden retirement and subsequent
whereabouts remain a bit of a mystery,

449
00:30:23,180 --> 00:30:28,080
while not celebrated by name, Biafra's
contributions to 1960s and 70s cinema

450
00:30:28,080 --> 00:30:32,180
illustrate the importance of reliable
character actors in Italian films.

451
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:38,980
We'll return to Nino Castelnuovo's
character and to the actor himself later

452
00:30:38,980 --> 00:30:40,320
this commentary track, but...

453
00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:45,200
Here we briefly see him encounter Dr
Antonio during his investigation in the

454
00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:47,560
somewhat nebulous role of UNESCO agent.

455
00:30:48,300 --> 00:30:52,500
The scene set in the winery's office is
an early example of something that

456
00:30:52,500 --> 00:30:53,680
recurs throughout the film.

457
00:30:54,420 --> 00:30:58,060
Castelnovo, a seasoned actor with
considerable screen presence, frequently

458
00:30:58,060 --> 00:31:01,240
shares scenes with individuals who were
not professional performers.

459
00:31:02,990 --> 00:31:06,370
As we'll touch on again shortly, many of
the film's minor roles were filled by

460
00:31:06,370 --> 00:31:10,270
locals, giving certain scenes a slightly
awkward, halting rhythm.

461
00:31:11,430 --> 00:31:15,290
It's almost comical to realise that
Castelnuovo, an actor with international

462
00:31:15,290 --> 00:31:19,970
recognition, is rarely afforded the
opportunity to act opposite another

463
00:31:19,970 --> 00:31:23,850
professional. And yet, there's something
oddly charming about that disparity.

464
00:31:24,470 --> 00:31:27,130
For the people involved, it must have
been quite the anecdote.

465
00:31:27,430 --> 00:31:29,850
A brush with star power, however brief.

466
00:31:31,150 --> 00:31:34,210
In a more polished production, a
character like the winery manager might

467
00:31:34,210 --> 00:31:38,230
been portrayed by a seasoned character
actor, perhaps to inject a bit of dry

468
00:31:38,230 --> 00:31:43,550
comedy or to add a note of menace, here
either due to budgetary limitations or

469
00:31:43,550 --> 00:31:44,730
as a gesture of goodwill.

470
00:31:45,170 --> 00:31:49,370
Perhaps towards the individual we're
about to discuss, the part went too

471
00:31:50,070 --> 00:31:54,730
The result is a kind of accidental
realism, a clumsy authenticity that sits

472
00:31:54,730 --> 00:31:58,730
oddly within the film's otherwise
surreal universe, but in its own way

473
00:31:58,890 --> 00:32:00,790
contributes to the strange charm of the
film.

474
00:32:02,310 --> 00:32:04,630
Here's something rather interesting
about the film.

475
00:32:04,870 --> 00:32:08,690
At the very end of the credits, the
producers thank an individual named

476
00:32:08,690 --> 00:32:10,470
Cavaliera Italo Testa.

477
00:32:11,010 --> 00:32:14,010
Now, Italo Testa was no anonymous
backer.

478
00:32:14,230 --> 00:32:18,710
He was in fact a celebrated winemaker
and the founder of the Testa Cellars in

479
00:32:18,710 --> 00:32:22,910
Castel Arcato, located in the Piacenza
region of Emilia -Romagna.

480
00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:28,760
an area historically known for producing
Gaterno, a deeply rooted local red wine

481
00:32:28,760 --> 00:32:31,100
made from Barbera and Bonarda grapes.

482
00:32:31,320 --> 00:32:35,900
And you can see Gaterno in the film,
from the bottles poured at dinner and

483
00:32:35,900 --> 00:32:39,920
in crates and cellars, to its
distinctive label, which Castelnuovo

484
00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:41,360
him as he investigates.

485
00:32:42,320 --> 00:32:45,660
So, with the Bloodstained Lawn being
filmed predominantly in and around

486
00:32:45,660 --> 00:32:50,740
Fiorenzola d 'Arda, a short drive from
Castellarcato, the film's winery and

487
00:32:50,740 --> 00:32:54,800
cellar scenes were shot there, with the
cooperation of the Testa winery.

488
00:32:55,240 --> 00:32:59,080
The dank wine cellars we see on screen
were reportedly part of the Testa

489
00:32:59,080 --> 00:33:03,020
facilities, and several background
performers, such as the blue -coated

490
00:33:03,020 --> 00:33:07,340
shown in the cellar sequences, were
Testa employees enlisted during

491
00:33:09,230 --> 00:33:13,610
Testa himself, as recounted by wine
writer Renato Bergonzini, was a kind of

492
00:33:13,610 --> 00:33:18,170
living folkloric figure, witty, sharp
and full of pride for the wines of his

493
00:33:18,170 --> 00:33:23,290
valley. By the 1970s, his winery was a
thriving, if somewhat chaotic operation.

494
00:33:24,370 --> 00:33:27,590
Known for both his eccentric charm and
his commitment to regional identity,

495
00:33:27,970 --> 00:33:32,890
Italo Testa was a man who, in
Bergonzini's words, connected historical

496
00:33:32,890 --> 00:33:33,890
with innovation.

497
00:33:34,720 --> 00:33:38,780
In a strange way, that ethos mirrors the
bloodstained lawn itself, an eccentric

498
00:33:38,780 --> 00:33:42,020
hyper -local production that blends
tradition with experimentation.

499
00:33:43,020 --> 00:33:46,560
The presence of Tessa's name in the
credits is a reminder of how even the

500
00:33:46,560 --> 00:33:51,220
strangest cinematic artefacts are rooted
in real places, real communities and

501
00:33:51,220 --> 00:33:55,560
real histories, however bizarrely they
may be reimagined on screen.

502
00:33:57,639 --> 00:34:01,740
Practical effects artist Roberto
Balbibeta handled the gore effects in

503
00:34:01,780 --> 00:34:05,260
and while this isn't really a gore
effect per se, I rather like this moment

504
00:34:05,260 --> 00:34:08,699
where Max and his girlfriend have a
shower in wine, but what could easily be

505
00:34:08,699 --> 00:34:09,699
blood.

506
00:34:11,659 --> 00:34:15,400
The Bussy Lawn doesn't allude to
fascism, it parades it.

507
00:34:15,620 --> 00:34:19,580
From its Aryan -coded siblings to its
pseudoscientific monologues and

508
00:34:19,580 --> 00:34:25,100
rhapsodising over Wagner, the film
places fascist ideology squarely at its

509
00:34:25,100 --> 00:34:26,100
centre.

510
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:30,940
Nina and Alfiero, blonde, blue -eyed and
visibly incestuous, are styled less as

511
00:34:30,940 --> 00:34:35,139
characters than as grotesque symbols of
racial purity and dynastic wrath.

512
00:34:35,960 --> 00:34:38,800
Alfiero at one point even wears a
literal brown shirt.

513
00:34:39,159 --> 00:34:43,120
He only doesn't so much hint at the
fascist legacy as drag it out of the

514
00:34:43,120 --> 00:34:47,440
-war subconscious and place it in plain
view, stripped of subtlety or shame.

515
00:34:48,560 --> 00:34:53,520
The villains, Dr Antonio, Nina and
Alfiero, reflect a decadent bourgeois

516
00:34:53,739 --> 00:34:59,340
but they also articulate, in explicit
terms, the ideological remnants of

517
00:34:59,340 --> 00:35:02,560
as they persist in Italy's supposed
modernity.

518
00:35:03,480 --> 00:35:09,600
Nina declares, Her

519
00:35:09,600 --> 00:35:16,000
aesthetic elitism dovetails seamlessly
with ideological

520
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:17,000
fascism.

521
00:35:17,640 --> 00:35:21,440
In her worldview, beauty is
hierarchical, and so too is life.

522
00:35:22,280 --> 00:35:26,940
Her brother speaks the language of
aristocratic entitlement, her husband

523
00:35:26,940 --> 00:35:28,220
language of eugenics.

524
00:35:28,660 --> 00:35:33,780
Later he says, man is shit. From being
tall, blonde and thin, he becomes dark,

525
00:35:33,860 --> 00:35:35,660
short, fat, ugly and hairy.

526
00:35:36,840 --> 00:35:40,100
We must improve on nature's
imperfections, he sneers.

527
00:35:40,860 --> 00:35:45,680
His speech parodies the rhetoric of the
ubermensch, cloaked in the cold logic of

528
00:35:45,680 --> 00:35:46,900
scientific progress.

529
00:35:47,600 --> 00:35:52,220
He doesn't so much seek to heal but to
refine, to manufacture a perfect being

530
00:35:52,220 --> 00:35:53,500
from harvested blood.

531
00:35:53,920 --> 00:35:57,860
He's part Frankenstein, part Mengele,
and wholly convinced.

532
00:35:59,480 --> 00:36:04,020
Peony's satire is intentionally crude,
but within that crudeness is a

533
00:36:04,020 --> 00:36:09,160
on how fantasies of racial and
intellectual superiority were never

534
00:36:09,160 --> 00:36:11,180
extinguished after the fall of fascism.

535
00:36:11,540 --> 00:36:14,300
They simply re -emerged in new guises.

536
00:36:14,970 --> 00:36:18,290
such as medical innovation, cultural
refinement, social order.

537
00:36:19,230 --> 00:36:21,470
The brown shirts have become white
coats.

538
00:36:21,710 --> 00:36:23,850
The gas chambers, clinical laboratories.

539
00:36:24,250 --> 00:36:27,690
The propaganda, monologues about value,
efficiency and perfection.

540
00:36:28,350 --> 00:36:33,010
The villa isn't a parody of Nazi horror.
It's a continuation of its logic,

541
00:36:33,010 --> 00:36:36,870
dressed in Italian 70s lounge decor and
wine bottle smuggling.

542
00:36:38,670 --> 00:36:42,430
That logic extends to the selection and
treatment of victims.

543
00:36:43,280 --> 00:36:48,020
Sex workers, alcoholics, Romanies and
drifters like you, as Nina coldly

544
00:36:48,020 --> 00:36:51,860
describes the hippies, are not killed
out of hatred but processed for use.

545
00:36:52,480 --> 00:36:55,180
Their blood is more valuable than petrol
or gold.

546
00:36:56,040 --> 00:36:59,620
Their deaths are framed as morally
justified and economically rational.

547
00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:03,120
Only money gives happiness, the
Genoveses say.

548
00:37:03,420 --> 00:37:06,940
We help these wretches by giving their
lives purpose as product.

549
00:37:07,720 --> 00:37:11,760
These grotesque justifications expose a
worldview where exploitation is not

550
00:37:11,760 --> 00:37:16,740
hidden but moralised, where meritocracy,
capitalism and fascist eugenics

551
00:37:16,740 --> 00:37:18,600
converge into a single rationale.

552
00:37:19,940 --> 00:37:22,500
Sexual decadence intensifies this
critique.

553
00:37:23,080 --> 00:37:27,480
Nina's implied incestuous relationship
with Alfiero and the orgiastic rituals

554
00:37:27,480 --> 00:37:31,500
she stages for guests locate the
Genovese household within the tradition

555
00:37:31,500 --> 00:37:35,480
libertine horror, where power, not
pleasure, is the real currency.

556
00:37:36,750 --> 00:37:40,170
The mirrored sex party, observed through
mirrors by Antonio and Nina,

557
00:37:40,410 --> 00:37:44,470
literalises its central theme,
dehumanisation as spectacle.

558
00:37:45,270 --> 00:37:50,090
The elite do not merely exploit others'
bodies, they watch, analyse and curate

559
00:37:50,090 --> 00:37:51,090
their degradation.

560
00:37:51,350 --> 00:37:55,410
The robot, often dismissed for its
kitsch appearance, is the perfect

561
00:37:55,410 --> 00:38:01,090
for the system, a clunky, bureaucratised
machine of medicalised cruelty, absurd

562
00:38:01,090 --> 00:38:03,610
in form but rather disturbing in
function.

563
00:38:05,160 --> 00:38:08,700
By the time the film collapses into
surreal horror, the allegory has already

564
00:38:08,700 --> 00:38:09,700
done its work.

565
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:15,080
The Genoveses are not historical Nazis,
they are bourgeois fascists retooled for

566
00:38:15,080 --> 00:38:19,340
the post -war moment, successors to a
regime whose language and methods have

567
00:38:19,340 --> 00:38:20,600
simply changed costume.

568
00:38:21,870 --> 00:38:25,530
The Bookside Lawn, for all its mess and
excess, which I do not deny is present

569
00:38:25,530 --> 00:38:30,150
here, insists that fascism survives not
in flags, but in systems and in

570
00:38:30,150 --> 00:38:34,410
families, and in the genteel smiling
faces of those who believe their taste,

571
00:38:34,650 --> 00:38:36,910
their money, and their blood makes them
superior.

572
00:38:40,080 --> 00:38:43,760
So, as I've already mentioned, The
Bloodstained Lawn was filmed

573
00:38:43,760 --> 00:38:48,680
Fiorenzola d 'Arda, with additional
scenes filmed in Castel Arcato. In

574
00:38:48,680 --> 00:38:52,660
particular, the scenes where we see Nino
Castelnova wandering outside looking

575
00:38:52,660 --> 00:38:56,320
for directions, which was filmed on Via
Giuseppe Ramondini.

576
00:38:57,460 --> 00:39:01,200
The film's primary location is the
modernist villa of the Genovese family.

577
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:06,720
This house was not a set but a real
residence in Fiorenzola d 'Arda owned at

578
00:39:06,720 --> 00:39:10,300
time by a Mr Mondelli who was thanked in
the closing credits.

579
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:14,900
Details like the small Summer Wendy
house visible in the garden which we're

580
00:39:14,900 --> 00:39:19,960
to see were genuine features of
Mondelli's property and were likely

581
00:39:19,960 --> 00:39:21,060
the film by Dione.

582
00:39:22,380 --> 00:39:26,580
Although needless to say the mirrored
room with its unmistakably vulva -shaped

583
00:39:26,580 --> 00:39:29,260
entrance was not an original feature of
the home.

584
00:39:30,670 --> 00:39:34,330
Another notable location featured in the
film is the Resorgimento Nightclub

585
00:39:34,330 --> 00:39:39,130
Cinema, a dual -purpose venue that had
only recently opened its doors in 1971.

586
00:39:40,610 --> 00:39:44,290
Fittingly, it was at this very cinema
that The Bloodstained Lawn premiered in

587
00:39:44,290 --> 00:39:49,330
1973, a pleasingly self -referential
touch given its appearance in the film

588
00:39:49,330 --> 00:39:50,249
itself.

589
00:39:50,250 --> 00:39:54,150
The waiter who we'll later see serving
drinks in the club's interior was in

590
00:39:54,150 --> 00:39:58,790
a local projectionist, and when the film
debuted, his brief on -screen moment

591
00:39:58,790 --> 00:40:00,930
reportedly drew cheers from the
audience.

592
00:40:02,270 --> 00:40:05,610
The film naturally attracted
considerable interest from the local

593
00:40:05,870 --> 00:40:10,070
with many residents becoming involved in
small roles or as extras during the

594
00:40:10,070 --> 00:40:11,070
production.

595
00:40:11,290 --> 00:40:15,410
There's a certain charm to this kind of
grassroots participation where even the

596
00:40:15,410 --> 00:40:18,250
most surreal material had a lived -in
local context.

597
00:40:19,760 --> 00:40:24,320
It brings to mind another film from the
period, Reflections in Black by Tano

598
00:40:24,320 --> 00:40:28,860
Chimorosa, where the choice of a lesser
-seen location became a minor event in

599
00:40:28,860 --> 00:40:29,860
itself.

600
00:40:30,220 --> 00:40:34,340
The novelty of a film crew descending on
a quiet town sparked local curiosity,

601
00:40:34,480 --> 00:40:37,020
and many residents ended up appearing on
camera.

602
00:40:38,080 --> 00:40:42,080
So for those of a certain age, such
productions become remembered events,

603
00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:45,180
of the social and cultural fabric of the
place itself.

604
00:40:56,270 --> 00:41:01,830
The eccentric Dr. Antonio Genovese was
played by Enzo Tereschio, an Italian

605
00:41:01,830 --> 00:41:06,490
character actor whose career spanned
stage, television and film from the

606
00:41:06,490 --> 00:41:07,990
through to the 1970s.

607
00:41:08,250 --> 00:41:13,030
He was especially active in the 1960s
and early 70s, becoming known for the

608
00:41:13,030 --> 00:41:14,930
gravitas he brought to supporting roles.

609
00:41:16,350 --> 00:41:20,450
Tereschio appeared in over 30 films,
often cast as authority figures or

610
00:41:20,450 --> 00:41:24,130
intellectuals, and he's remembered for
several key performances in Italian

611
00:41:24,130 --> 00:41:25,350
cinema of that era.

612
00:41:26,800 --> 00:41:30,400
One of his most notable film roles was
in Bernardo Bertolucci's acclaimed drama

613
00:41:30,400 --> 00:41:35,600
The Conformist, in which Taraschio
played Professor Luca Quadri, the anti

614
00:41:35,600 --> 00:41:37,600
-fascist target of an assassination
plot.

615
00:41:39,340 --> 00:41:42,880
Another of Taraschio's memorable roles
is in the hugely popular spaghetti

616
00:41:42,880 --> 00:41:44,960
Western comedy Trinity Is Still My Name.

617
00:41:45,640 --> 00:41:48,300
Uniquely, this is his only foray into
the Euro -Western genre.

618
00:41:48,800 --> 00:41:53,480
He played Mitch, the sheriff of San
Jose, opposite the comic duo of Terence

619
00:41:53,480 --> 00:41:54,480
and Bud Spencer.

620
00:41:55,720 --> 00:42:00,160
The film's massive success gave
Taraschio a place in Italy's 1970s pop

621
00:42:00,160 --> 00:42:01,160
landscape.

622
00:42:01,440 --> 00:42:05,760
He also appeared in genre films like the
gothic horror The Night Evelyn Came Out

623
00:42:05,760 --> 00:42:09,040
of the Grave and the shadow thriller The
Dead Are Alive, reflecting the

624
00:42:09,040 --> 00:42:11,860
diversity of Italian cinema in the early
1970s.

625
00:42:14,920 --> 00:42:18,960
On television, Enzo Taraschio was a
familiar face in Italian miniseries and

626
00:42:18,960 --> 00:42:19,928
dramas.

627
00:42:19,930 --> 00:42:24,630
He portrayed Prosecutor Villefort in a
1966 TV adaptation of The Count of Monte

628
00:42:24,630 --> 00:42:25,630
Cristo.

629
00:42:30,650 --> 00:42:35,010
In the 1970s, he starred in series such
as A Come Andromeda, the crime series

630
00:42:35,010 --> 00:42:39,970
Joe Petrosino and Successi a Lisbona,
often in serious authoritative roles.

631
00:42:40,810 --> 00:42:44,110
His background in theatre, including
work with famed director Giorgio

632
00:42:44,110 --> 00:42:48,650
in the 1950s, honed his craft and he was
respected for tackling difficult parts

633
00:42:48,650 --> 00:42:49,990
on stage and screen alike.

634
00:42:51,430 --> 00:42:53,130
Taraschio was also a voice actor.

635
00:42:53,530 --> 00:42:56,770
He dubbed characters in other Italian
films, such as dividing voices in

636
00:42:56,770 --> 00:42:58,830
spaghetti westerns for international
actors.

637
00:43:00,070 --> 00:43:04,650
After 1972, Taraschio gradually retired
from film work. He left quietly and

638
00:43:04,650 --> 00:43:05,990
passed away at the age of 87.

639
00:43:06,890 --> 00:43:11,270
While not a household name, Enzo
Tereschio remains a familiar presence of

640
00:43:11,270 --> 00:43:14,950
and 70s Italian cinema and television,
particularly within the genre

641
00:43:14,950 --> 00:43:15,950
of that era.

642
00:43:19,370 --> 00:43:22,210
I'm going to return to his character in
a bit because there's lots of

643
00:43:22,210 --> 00:43:26,150
interesting things to say about Dr
Antonio, but first I can't let this

644
00:43:26,150 --> 00:43:29,990
pass without comment because in terms of
production design, it's certainly a

645
00:43:29,990 --> 00:43:30,990
choice.

646
00:43:35,980 --> 00:43:39,120
So this is certainly a scene that
warrants attention for its production

647
00:43:39,300 --> 00:43:41,220
courtesy of Arrigo and Queenie.

648
00:43:41,840 --> 00:43:46,400
The setting is the villa's secret party
room, a disorientating hall of mirrors

649
00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:50,680
accessed through a surreal fabric
divider depicting a stylised vulva.

650
00:43:51,260 --> 00:43:54,540
The symbolism is hardly subtle, but
undeniably fitting.

651
00:43:54,900 --> 00:43:59,300
The sight of an orgy is entered through
a literalised vagina threshold, one that

652
00:43:59,300 --> 00:44:00,880
Max dives into headfirst.

653
00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:06,200
And in one particularly crude but
striking touch, Valentina's pink fur

654
00:44:06,200 --> 00:44:08,600
it's pulled through the opening, mimics
the look of Labia.

655
00:44:08,920 --> 00:44:12,680
So it extends the metaphor into absurd
physical comedy.

656
00:44:13,500 --> 00:44:17,260
For viewers familiar with Italian genre
cinema, this detail will almost

657
00:44:17,260 --> 00:44:22,880
certainly evoke Niki de Saint Phalle's
iconic 1966 installation on a monumental

658
00:44:22,880 --> 00:44:27,680
walk -in sculpture of reclining women,
an image famously echoed in Piero

659
00:44:27,680 --> 00:44:30,160
Civizzappa's The Frightened Women in
1969.

660
00:44:31,630 --> 00:44:36,030
Keone's version is less elegant but no
less pointed, a garish theatrical

661
00:44:36,030 --> 00:44:40,550
reminder that sex, spectacle and power
are always bound together in this film's

662
00:44:40,550 --> 00:44:42,070
version of the bourgeois id.

663
00:44:48,110 --> 00:44:51,010
It's always rather fun to comment on the
fashions and films from this period,

664
00:44:51,250 --> 00:44:54,550
and anyone familiar with Marina
Maffatti's screen presence during the

665
00:44:54,550 --> 00:44:58,690
1970s will immediately recognise her
distinctive sartorial signatures.

666
00:44:59,090 --> 00:45:03,310
An array of chokers, plunging necklines,
offset by high -necked collars.

667
00:45:03,770 --> 00:45:07,750
In the bloodstained lawn, she wears a
shiny mirrored disc waistcoat paired

668
00:45:07,750 --> 00:45:09,690
wide -legged black palazzo trousers.

669
00:45:10,130 --> 00:45:14,450
An ensemble she also donned in Umberto
Lenzi's Seven Bloodstained Orchids.

670
00:45:15,210 --> 00:45:18,310
The matching weird choker, however,
appears to be a new addition.

671
00:45:19,050 --> 00:45:23,710
The effect is striking, futuristic yet
ceremonial, transforming her into a kind

672
00:45:23,710 --> 00:45:27,830
of space -age dominatrix countess,
perfectly in keeping with the film's

673
00:45:27,830 --> 00:45:29,250
heightened, decadent tone.

674
00:45:30,350 --> 00:45:34,150
Dr Antonio, meanwhile, brings his own
kind of absurdist flamboyance to the

675
00:45:34,150 --> 00:45:38,750
screen. His oversized bow ties,
particularly the vibrant red one

676
00:45:38,950 --> 00:45:41,350
reinforce the film's saturated colour
palette.

677
00:45:42,060 --> 00:45:45,700
His exaggerated accessories, paired with
the soft cardigans and slightly

678
00:45:45,700 --> 00:45:50,100
dishevelled manner, speak to his role as
both mad scientist and infantilised

679
00:45:50,100 --> 00:45:54,620
husband. There's something deliberately
regressive about his costuming. He's

680
00:45:54,620 --> 00:45:59,080
dressed less like a genius than a
precocious schoolboy, a detail Nina

681
00:45:59,080 --> 00:46:05,240
mocks alongside his robots and science
fiction style creations, which she

682
00:46:05,240 --> 00:46:06,320
describes as toys.

683
00:46:07,820 --> 00:46:12,520
His intellect may be twisted, but his
fashion suggests a rested development, a

684
00:46:12,520 --> 00:46:15,460
man cosplaying authority while clinging
to childish vanity.

685
00:46:17,440 --> 00:46:21,380
Returning to the film's overt
flirtations with fascist imagery,

686
00:46:21,380 --> 00:46:24,020
costume is its most explicit sartorial
reference.

687
00:46:24,760 --> 00:46:28,400
Dressed in a brown shirt, jodhpur -style
riding trousers and black leather

688
00:46:28,400 --> 00:46:32,580
jackbooks, he evokes the visual language
of 20th century authoritarianism.

689
00:46:33,390 --> 00:46:37,630
The brown shirt is a visual cue too
loaded to ignore, and its pairing with

690
00:46:37,630 --> 00:46:41,770
features and imperious body language
reinforces his role as the brute

691
00:46:41,770 --> 00:46:43,150
of the household's ideology.

692
00:46:44,170 --> 00:46:48,330
In a film obsessed with bloodlines,
racial purity and the hierarchy of

693
00:46:48,630 --> 00:46:53,050
costuming becomes another weapon in the
Genovese family's arsenal, causing not

694
00:46:53,050 --> 00:46:55,010
just its expression, but as declaration.

695
00:46:57,420 --> 00:47:01,580
Doctor Antonio Genovese is the
bloodstained blonde's most outlandish

696
00:47:01,580 --> 00:47:05,920
and its clearest embodiment of grotesque
ideology, dressed as progress.

697
00:47:06,800 --> 00:47:11,580
Played with surreal seriousness by Enzo
Taraschio, Genovese veers widely between

698
00:47:11,580 --> 00:47:14,080
the deranged visionary and the utterly
ridiculous.

699
00:47:14,800 --> 00:47:18,600
In another film, he might be a second
-rate Bond villain, but here he's

700
00:47:18,600 --> 00:47:22,800
something more unsettling. A man who
believes he's a poet of science,

701
00:47:22,800 --> 00:47:26,260
for his brilliance and destined to save
humanity by purging it.

702
00:47:27,280 --> 00:47:30,960
Providing comic relief, whether
intentional or not, Genovese lurches

703
00:47:30,960 --> 00:47:35,540
film in an ever -changing rotation of
massive bow ties, patterned shirts and

704
00:47:35,540 --> 00:47:36,720
theatrical monologues.

705
00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:41,440
He bemoans his life's indifference to
his genius, and yet the science he

706
00:47:41,440 --> 00:47:42,580
is patiently ludicrous.

707
00:47:43,180 --> 00:47:46,600
His lab is less a space of innovation
than a carnival sideshow.

708
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:51,000
A smiling head on a spindle, a toothed
robot that laughs, an inflatable heart

709
00:47:51,000 --> 00:47:54,700
pumping through rubber tubes, and a wine
-fuelled vampire machine that somehow

710
00:47:54,700 --> 00:47:57,440
both harvests blood and vaporises
impurity.

711
00:47:58,080 --> 00:48:02,680
It's the visual language of innovation
gone feral, more prank shop than

712
00:48:02,680 --> 00:48:03,680
facility.

713
00:48:04,100 --> 00:48:07,400
And yet within this clutcher of
absurdity lies something darker.

714
00:48:08,250 --> 00:48:12,370
Genovese is not just a deluded man
playing at genius, he is a fascist

715
00:48:12,370 --> 00:48:13,870
in mad scientist drag.

716
00:48:14,550 --> 00:48:19,010
His obsession with immortality and
physical perfection is rooted in

717
00:48:20,070 --> 00:48:24,210
Even when he claims morality is a myth
of the past, there's no grandeur to it,

718
00:48:24,250 --> 00:48:25,630
just blank -eyed certainty.

719
00:48:27,110 --> 00:48:31,730
Genovese doesn't seem evil by his own
measure, he's a visionary, but his

720
00:48:31,730 --> 00:48:35,850
is one where life is only valuable if it
conforms to his aesthetic ideal.

721
00:48:36,460 --> 00:48:39,200
where use is currency and difference is
contamination.

722
00:48:39,980 --> 00:48:43,180
The grotesque irony is that he believes
himself benevolent.

723
00:48:44,560 --> 00:48:48,660
In the end, Genovese is a man so
consumed by his own fantasy of progress

724
00:48:48,660 --> 00:48:49,900
cannot recognise its horror.

725
00:48:50,160 --> 00:48:54,660
His machines are laughable, but his
ideology isn't. And that's what I rather

726
00:48:54,660 --> 00:48:59,040
like about The Bloodstained Lawn. In
draping fascist logic in kitsch and

727
00:48:59,260 --> 00:49:02,160
it reminds us that monstrosity doesn't
always arrive in jackbooks.

728
00:49:02,540 --> 00:49:06,540
Sometimes it comes in an oversized
bowtie surrounded by comical robots and

729
00:49:06,540 --> 00:49:07,540
inflatable hearts.

730
00:49:09,160 --> 00:49:12,620
Central to the bizarre allure of The
Bloodstained Lawn is its robotic blood

731
00:49:12,620 --> 00:49:16,720
extraction machine, a contraption so
outlandish and incognito that it's

732
00:49:16,720 --> 00:49:18,900
the film's most iconic and divisive
element.

733
00:49:19,720 --> 00:49:24,220
Visually, the robot resembles something
out of a 1950s American B -movie. A

734
00:49:24,220 --> 00:49:28,520
bulbous tin -can body, thick rubber
vacuum hoses for arms, and a leering

735
00:49:28,520 --> 00:49:31,260
plastered across its face like a cartoon
death mask.

736
00:49:31,780 --> 00:49:35,760
It trundles around with stiff mechanical
glee, admittedly evoking laughter

737
00:49:35,760 --> 00:49:36,900
rather than dread.

738
00:49:37,900 --> 00:49:41,080
From a production standpoint, the robot
is clearly the product of a limited

739
00:49:41,080 --> 00:49:44,920
effects budget, reportedly assembled
from repurposed household appliances,

740
00:49:45,400 --> 00:49:47,240
vacuum parts and paper mache.

741
00:49:47,740 --> 00:49:51,060
But its aesthetic awkwardness is, in its
own strange way, effective.

742
00:49:51,940 --> 00:49:55,700
Rather than undermining the film's
horror, the robot enhances its

743
00:49:55,880 --> 00:50:00,420
acting as both a parody of technological
progress and a grotesque embodiment of

744
00:50:00,420 --> 00:50:01,720
the film's thematic cynicism.

745
00:50:02,160 --> 00:50:06,700
It's ridiculous, yes, but also
horrifying in its bureaucratic

746
00:50:07,480 --> 00:50:11,400
Victims are strapped in, drained and
discarded with clinical regularity.

747
00:50:13,160 --> 00:50:17,480
Symbolically, the robot is many things.
On one level, it literalises the process

748
00:50:17,480 --> 00:50:21,720
of human commodification, turning bodies
into units of value to be extracted and

749
00:50:21,720 --> 00:50:23,380
sold, like any other product.

750
00:50:24,000 --> 00:50:27,880
The film's bourgeois villains may cloak
their actions in pseudo -scientific

751
00:50:27,880 --> 00:50:32,380
language or philanthropic rhetoric, but
the robot exposes the underlying

752
00:50:32,380 --> 00:50:33,380
mechanism,

753
00:50:33,780 --> 00:50:35,480
silence repackaged as efficiency.

754
00:50:36,720 --> 00:50:40,560
On another level, the robot operates as
a parody of the mad scientist's

755
00:50:40,560 --> 00:50:44,500
assistant, replacing the gothic
hunchback with a mechanised proxy.

756
00:50:45,220 --> 00:50:49,340
Its artificiality mocks the idea of
progress, revealing technology not as

757
00:50:49,340 --> 00:50:53,000
liberation, but as a tool of domination
in the hands of the elite.

758
00:50:53,560 --> 00:50:57,740
So, The Robot and the Bloodstained Lawn
occupies a peculiar space in Italian

759
00:50:57,740 --> 00:51:02,700
genre cinema, too good to be menacing,
too central to be dismissed, and too

760
00:51:02,700 --> 00:51:04,880
thematically rich to be written off as
camp alone.

761
00:51:05,600 --> 00:51:09,080
It is a comic book horror invention that
speaks volumes about the film's

762
00:51:09,080 --> 00:51:14,000
nihilism, its distrust of modernity and
its gleeful embrace of pulp absurdity.

763
00:51:15,760 --> 00:51:19,900
While the Italian thriller and horror
cycle of the 1970s occasionally flirted

764
00:51:19,900 --> 00:51:23,760
with science fiction motifs, few films
embraced the hybrid quite as audaciously

765
00:51:23,760 --> 00:51:25,120
as The Blood Stained Lawn.

766
00:51:25,820 --> 00:51:30,000
At its core as one of the strangest
conceits in 1970s Italian genre cinema,

767
00:51:30,810 --> 00:51:34,390
A robotic blood extraction device housed
in the wine cellar of an aristocratic

768
00:51:34,390 --> 00:51:39,230
villa, used to drain the blood of
unsuspecting victims, hippies, sex

769
00:51:39,470 --> 00:51:43,130
the working poor, which is then bottled
and sold abroad for profit.

770
00:51:44,170 --> 00:51:48,670
This mechanical vampire is absurd as it
is memorable, and it aligns with the

771
00:51:48,670 --> 00:51:52,730
film with a peculiar lineage of Italian
horror where technological interventions

772
00:51:52,730 --> 00:51:55,430
destabilise otherwise familiar tropes.

773
00:51:56,270 --> 00:51:59,690
Like Armando Crespino's Autopsy, in
which a hospital device picks up

774
00:51:59,690 --> 00:52:03,250
communications from the dead, or the
thought -reading camera of the police

775
00:52:03,250 --> 00:52:07,390
blundering in the dark, The Blessing's
Lawn uses its sci -fi element not as

776
00:52:07,390 --> 00:52:11,730
window dressing, but as an ongoing
metaphor for broader anxieties about

777
00:52:11,730 --> 00:52:14,810
commodification and the mechanisation of
the body.

778
00:52:15,550 --> 00:52:20,450
The robot is deliberately clunky and
cartoonish, more tin toy than terrifying

779
00:52:20,450 --> 00:52:24,050
automaton, but this only sharpens the
film's darkly comic tone.

780
00:52:24,830 --> 00:52:26,910
Its grotesqueness becomes allegorical.

781
00:52:27,290 --> 00:52:31,610
Technology here is not progress, but the
cold face of dehumanised capitalism.

782
00:52:33,470 --> 00:52:37,830
Unlike more structurally conventional
Jolly, where scientific elements like

783
00:52:37,830 --> 00:52:42,030
ocular imaging device in Argento's Four
Flies and Grey Velvet are folded into

784
00:52:42,030 --> 00:52:44,090
the investigative framework to resolve
the mystery,

785
00:52:44,830 --> 00:52:48,850
the Bloodstained Lawn foregrounds its
machine not as forensic tool, but as an

786
00:52:48,850 --> 00:52:50,430
instrument of systematic violence.

787
00:52:51,320 --> 00:52:54,900
The film's villains, bourgeois pseudo
-intellectuals posing as

788
00:52:54,940 --> 00:52:57,860
use the robot not to uncover truth, but
to harvest life.

789
00:52:58,640 --> 00:53:00,000
This inversion is crucial.

790
00:53:00,380 --> 00:53:05,100
Where Argento's quasi -science offers
revelation, Fioni's offers only

791
00:53:05,100 --> 00:53:06,100
and profit.

792
00:53:06,820 --> 00:53:10,940
The robot with its archaic pincers and
vacuum tubes is not just an emblem of

793
00:53:10,940 --> 00:53:15,480
retro -futurist horror, but a mechanism
of class vampirism, draining the young

794
00:53:15,480 --> 00:53:18,060
and poor to sustain elite decadence.

795
00:53:22,440 --> 00:53:25,440
In this sense, the Bloodstained Lawn
stands apart from its more famous

796
00:53:25,440 --> 00:53:29,860
counterpart. Its science fiction
component isn't a plot twist or a

797
00:53:29,860 --> 00:53:33,520
gimmick, it's a central metaphor for a
collapsing social contract.

798
00:53:34,080 --> 00:53:37,620
It literalises the process by which the
powerful feed off the powerless,

799
00:53:37,920 --> 00:53:42,420
rendering bodies into resources with
bureaucratic efficiency and

800
00:53:43,340 --> 00:53:47,600
That the machine is both laughable and
lethal is part of the point. The

801
00:53:47,600 --> 00:53:50,540
machinery of exploitation often hides
behind absurdity.

802
00:53:51,760 --> 00:53:55,160
As such, The Bloodstained Lawn may be an
outlier in the Italian horror canon,

803
00:53:55,340 --> 00:53:59,580
but it's also a key example of how
science fiction elements can

804
00:53:59,580 --> 00:54:02,820
horror rather than heighten it, in any
conventional sense.

805
00:54:04,180 --> 00:54:08,040
The film arguably doesn't aim for
suspense or fear in the typical genre

806
00:54:08,300 --> 00:54:12,600
instead it veers towards the grotesque
and the absurd, using its lo -fi

807
00:54:12,600 --> 00:54:15,300
technological premise as a kind of
satirical lens.

808
00:54:16,400 --> 00:54:19,880
If the Giallo traditionally dissects
individual pathology, revealing the

809
00:54:19,880 --> 00:54:24,320
traumas, obsessions or psychosexual
fixations of a lone killer, Gioni's film

810
00:54:24,320 --> 00:54:27,320
offers something more expansive and
disconcerting.

811
00:54:27,540 --> 00:54:32,100
A portrait of systematic pathology, in
which the violence is bureaucratised,

812
00:54:32,240 --> 00:54:36,400
monetised and rendered through a
surrealist machine that hums, clanks and

813
00:54:36,400 --> 00:54:37,400
bleeds.

814
00:54:38,620 --> 00:54:42,940
Nino Castanova's role as an alleged
UNESCO agent is a curious one.

815
00:54:43,610 --> 00:54:46,370
I mentioned earlier that The
Bloodstained Lawn doesn't follow the

816
00:54:46,370 --> 00:54:49,730
narrative beats of The Shallow,
particularly when it comes to centring

817
00:54:49,730 --> 00:54:50,730
investigative protagonist.

818
00:54:51,270 --> 00:54:56,310
And yet Castelnuovo's character is
nominally just that, a man following a

819
00:54:56,310 --> 00:54:59,390
strange trail of wine bottles being used
to smuggle human blood.

820
00:55:00,070 --> 00:55:04,270
His credentials as the UNESCO agent
rather than a police inspector or

821
00:55:04,270 --> 00:55:08,390
are never properly explained and feel
more like a surreal flourish than a

822
00:55:08,390 --> 00:55:09,610
deliberate narrative choice.

823
00:55:10,540 --> 00:55:13,980
He conducts interviews with key figures
connected to the winery, but remains

824
00:55:13,980 --> 00:55:16,260
oddly detached from the film's core
action.

825
00:55:17,500 --> 00:55:21,160
We know structurally that he's on a
collision course with the Genovese

826
00:55:21,160 --> 00:55:25,400
and the horrors it houses, but his
investigation never feels like the

827
00:55:25,400 --> 00:55:29,180
engine of the plot, certainly not in the
way it would in a conventional shadow.

828
00:55:30,140 --> 00:55:33,500
He uncovers the link between the wine
business and the Genoveses, and a bottle

829
00:55:33,500 --> 00:55:39,420
of whiskey ends up serving as a vital
clue, but the tension never builds

830
00:55:39,420 --> 00:55:44,090
him. Instead, his presence feels
perfunctory, more a framing device than

831
00:55:44,090 --> 00:55:45,090
protagonist.

832
00:55:45,830 --> 00:55:49,190
It's particularly striking given
Castelnuovo's star power at the time.

833
00:55:49,410 --> 00:55:53,490
One could easily imagine a version of
the film that leans into his charisma

834
00:55:53,490 --> 00:55:57,590
reframes the story through his
perspective, a classic outsider

835
00:55:57,590 --> 00:55:59,470
uncovering a decadent conspiracy.

836
00:56:00,050 --> 00:56:04,550
But The Bloodstained Lawn opts for
something more fragmented, even

837
00:56:05,550 --> 00:56:08,750
Castelnuovo's investigator never quite
integregates into the...

838
00:56:09,460 --> 00:56:13,680
never quite integrates into the
narrative, or even his arrival at the

839
00:56:13,680 --> 00:56:17,040
lacks drama, and there's no real sense
of entanglement with the various players

840
00:56:17,040 --> 00:56:18,360
inside the Genovese household.

841
00:56:18,920 --> 00:56:22,180
No stakes, no seduction, no
psychological game -playing.

842
00:56:22,480 --> 00:56:26,680
There is no real connection or
consequence to his presence. He simply

843
00:56:27,060 --> 00:56:30,840
moves through the space, and bears
witness to the horror he feels oddly

844
00:56:30,840 --> 00:56:31,840
from.

845
00:56:32,740 --> 00:56:36,620
In this way, Castelnuovo becomes
something like the audience surrogate,

846
00:56:36,620 --> 00:56:38,320
detached one, neutered of agency.

847
00:56:39,230 --> 00:56:42,950
He's not a hero nor a moral centre. If
anything, he's a hollow bureaucrat

848
00:56:42,950 --> 00:56:45,790
drifting through a nightmare he neither
controls nor understands.

849
00:56:46,510 --> 00:56:47,810
That might be the point.

850
00:56:48,070 --> 00:56:51,330
In a film so concerned with systems of
power and institutional decay,

851
00:56:51,690 --> 00:56:54,390
Castelnau's character may represent the
ultimate irony.

852
00:56:54,790 --> 00:56:59,070
An international agent investigating
crimes against humanity rendered

853
00:56:59,070 --> 00:57:02,810
and irrelevant in the face of grotesque
private wealth and pseudoscientific

854
00:57:02,810 --> 00:57:05,050
fascism masquerading as progress.

855
00:57:09,040 --> 00:57:12,820
Francesco Nino Castelnuovo was a film
-intelligent actor who became an

856
00:57:12,820 --> 00:57:16,880
international heartthrob in the 1960s
thanks to his starring role as the young

857
00:57:16,880 --> 00:57:21,320
mechanic in Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas
of Cherbourg, a film regarded as one of

858
00:57:21,320 --> 00:57:24,540
the most indisputable masterpieces of
1960s French cinema.

859
00:57:25,880 --> 00:57:29,120
Castelnuovo's tender romantic
performance opposite Catherine Deneuve

860
00:57:29,120 --> 00:57:33,220
Umbrellas earned the film a Palme d 'Or
and Oscar nominations and made him

861
00:57:33,220 --> 00:57:34,220
famous worldwide.

862
00:57:34,920 --> 00:57:39,300
In Italy, however, Castelnuovo's career
truly blossomed afterwards, focusing on

863
00:57:39,300 --> 00:57:43,920
domestic films and television throughout
the late 1960s and 1970s.

864
00:57:44,940 --> 00:57:48,240
Before his big break, Castelnuovo had
appeared in small film roles.

865
00:57:48,560 --> 00:57:53,240
He can be spotted in Lucino Visconti's
Rocco and His Brothers, and he trained

866
00:57:53,240 --> 00:57:55,340
an actor at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan.

867
00:57:56,140 --> 00:57:58,940
His post -Scherborg years included
diverse projects.

868
00:57:59,680 --> 00:58:04,180
He starred in Vittorio De Sica's
ensemble comedy in Mondo Novo and played

869
00:58:04,180 --> 00:58:08,440
Mexican bandit alongside an
international cast in the action

870
00:58:08,440 --> 00:58:09,440
-Man Army.

871
00:58:10,000 --> 00:58:15,300
One notable role was in As Armand in
Camille 2000, a stylish modernised

872
00:58:15,300 --> 00:58:20,300
adaptation of La Dame aux Camellias,
which showcased Castelnuovo in a daring

873
00:58:20,300 --> 00:58:21,300
central light.

874
00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:25,380
And as we mentioned earlier, the
Bloodstained Lawn was originally to be

875
00:58:25,380 --> 00:58:30,600
Vampiro 2000, so it goes to show how the
2000 suffix was often utilised as a

876
00:58:30,600 --> 00:58:35,680
shorthand for futurism, eroticism or
stylic reinvention during the period.

877
00:58:37,040 --> 00:58:41,200
Back home in Italy, Nino became a
household name with the 1967 Rye

878
00:58:41,200 --> 00:58:43,420
miniseries I Promisi Sposi.

879
00:58:44,430 --> 00:58:48,110
The show's huge popularity, even the
Pope reportedly praised his performance,

880
00:58:48,530 --> 00:58:51,570
cemented Castelnuovo as a leading man in
Italian media.

881
00:58:52,550 --> 00:58:55,310
Throughout the early 1970s, he balanced
film and television.

882
00:58:55,710 --> 00:58:59,530
He appeared in genre films such as Lucio
Filci's spaghetti western Massacre Time

883
00:58:59,530 --> 00:59:03,170
and The Giallo's Strip Need for Your
Killer, and continued with television

884
00:59:03,170 --> 00:59:04,170
dramas.

885
00:59:04,530 --> 00:59:09,650
By the late 1970s, Castelnuovo was
especially visible on Italian TV, even

886
00:59:09,650 --> 00:59:11,670
becoming the face of a famous corn oil
commercial.

887
00:59:12,560 --> 00:59:16,820
In that long -running advert, he leapt
over a fence in one take, a stunt that

888
00:59:16,820 --> 00:59:18,340
Italians still remember fondly.

889
00:59:19,100 --> 00:59:23,400
This mid -career turn as a fitness icon
of sorts kept him in the public eye and

890
00:59:23,400 --> 00:59:25,680
demonstrated his athletic vitality.

891
00:59:26,740 --> 00:59:30,580
Later in life, he had a brief return to
international cinema with a cameo as an

892
00:59:30,580 --> 00:59:31,880
archaeologist in The English Patient.

893
00:59:33,130 --> 00:59:37,410
Nino Castelnuovo's legacy rests on his
contributions to 60s to 70s European

894
00:59:37,410 --> 00:59:42,190
cinema, from the romance of umbrellas to
popular Italian screens, and his status

895
00:59:42,190 --> 00:59:44,490
as an endearing matinee idol of the era.

896
00:59:49,050 --> 00:59:53,190
Alongside Nino Castelnuovo, the most
credible and recognisable actor in the

897
00:59:53,190 --> 00:59:55,150
is undoubtedly Marina Malfatti.

898
00:59:56,260 --> 01:00:00,400
Malfatti was an Italian actress who rose
to fame in the late 1960s and became an

899
01:00:00,400 --> 01:00:03,120
icon of Italian horror cinema in the
1970s.

900
01:00:03,780 --> 01:00:07,580
Trained in drama in Paris as a teenager,
she returned to Italy and started on

901
01:00:07,580 --> 01:00:10,680
stage and in minor film roles by the end
of the 1950s.

902
01:00:11,300 --> 01:00:16,480
Her theatre breakthrough came in 1960,
when the actor Arnaldo Foa chose her as

903
01:00:16,480 --> 01:00:20,760
co -star in the play Two for the Seesaw,
launching a prolific stage career

904
01:00:20,760 --> 01:00:22,860
alternating between comedy and drama.

905
01:00:24,340 --> 01:00:28,380
Malfatti's enduring legacy, however,
comes from her work in 1970s Italian

906
01:00:28,380 --> 01:00:32,800
cinema. With her elegant presence and
mysterious charisma, she became a

907
01:00:32,800 --> 01:00:34,980
face of Italy's shallow and occult
horror wave.

908
01:00:35,660 --> 01:00:39,480
She's best known for a string of cult
horror films, notably The Night Evelyn

909
01:00:39,480 --> 01:00:43,120
Came Out of the Grave and The Red Queen
Killed Seven Times, which earned her

910
01:00:43,120 --> 01:00:45,100
international recognition among horror
fans.

911
01:00:46,200 --> 01:00:50,640
Often playing aristocratic or enigmatic
figures, Malfatti brought a theatrical

912
01:00:50,640 --> 01:00:52,740
gravitas to lurid storylines.

913
01:00:53,450 --> 01:00:57,330
Other significant titles in her
filmography include Seven Bloodstained

914
01:00:57,570 --> 01:01:01,050
All the Colours of the Dark, The Fourth
Victim, and A Black Rhythm for Deborah,

915
01:01:01,390 --> 01:01:04,530
many of which have since become
Eurohorror favourites.

916
01:01:05,210 --> 01:01:09,530
Her roles frequently involve
supernatural or demonic themes,

917
01:01:09,530 --> 01:01:12,370
status as a 1970s Italian horror icon.

918
01:01:13,750 --> 01:01:17,110
By the late 1970s, Malfatti shifted
focus back to theatre.

919
01:01:17,920 --> 01:01:21,880
collaborating with prominent playwrights
and directors in the 1980s, while

920
01:01:21,880 --> 01:01:23,540
largely stepping away from film.

921
01:01:24,520 --> 01:01:30,480
In 1983, her performance in Elektra in
1983, which I've said repeatedly, earned

922
01:01:30,480 --> 01:01:32,660
her prestigious Mascara d 'Argento
award.

923
01:01:33,940 --> 01:01:37,980
The Bloodstained Lawn is emblematic of
Marina Malfatti's cinematic performance

924
01:01:37,980 --> 01:01:38,980
of the period.

925
01:01:39,600 --> 01:01:44,120
Poised, imperious and emotionally
detached, with a cool surface that often

926
01:01:44,120 --> 01:01:46,340
something more perverse or volatile
beneath.

927
01:01:47,530 --> 01:01:52,050
As Nina Genovese, the haughty mistress
of the villa, Malfatti brings a precise

928
01:01:52,050 --> 01:01:56,610
iciness to her character, projecting
both Aryan arrogance and deadened

929
01:01:56,610 --> 01:01:57,610
sensuality.

930
01:02:01,150 --> 01:02:05,190
This attachment was a hallmark of
Malfatti's performances during the early

931
01:02:05,190 --> 01:02:09,490
1970s. Women who are elegant, unreadable
and implicated.

932
01:02:10,090 --> 01:02:14,150
Rarely emotional, never innocent and
always one step removed from the action,

933
01:02:14,350 --> 01:02:15,730
yet commanding it nonetheless.

934
01:02:17,070 --> 01:02:19,950
In The Bloodstained Lawn, that distance
becomes part of the horror.

935
01:02:20,250 --> 01:02:24,610
She's not a screaming victim or femme
fatale, she's something more unsettling,

936
01:02:24,610 --> 01:02:27,590
true ideologue, utterly convinced of her
own superiority.

937
01:02:30,410 --> 01:02:34,910
The role of the drunk was played by
Lucio Dalla, not a professional actor,

938
01:02:34,910 --> 01:02:37,190
hugely celebrated figure in his native
Italy.

939
01:02:38,250 --> 01:02:42,170
Lucio Dalla was one of Italy's most
beloved singer -songwriters, known for

940
01:02:42,170 --> 01:02:45,170
soulful voice and the genre -blending
quality of his music.

941
01:02:46,140 --> 01:02:50,240
He first emerged in the 1960s music
scene, bringing a background in jazz to

942
01:02:50,240 --> 01:02:51,640
Italy's pop and beat movement.

943
01:02:52,580 --> 01:02:56,860
Hailing from Bologna, Dall was a
prodigious clarinet player in his youth

944
01:02:56,860 --> 01:02:58,220
played in local jazz bands.

945
01:02:58,600 --> 01:03:02,080
One of his bandmates was in fact future
film director Pippi Avati.

946
01:03:03,120 --> 01:03:08,200
By the mid -1960s, he transitioned to
singing, encouraged by established

947
01:03:08,200 --> 01:03:09,200
Gino Paoli.

948
01:03:10,120 --> 01:03:14,660
Dalla's initial releases, a mix of
bluesy pop and experimental tunes, met

949
01:03:14,660 --> 01:03:20,480
limited success. In fact, his 1965 solo
debut at the Canseguero Festival puzzled

950
01:03:20,480 --> 01:03:22,620
audiences with its unconventional style.

951
01:03:23,220 --> 01:03:27,680
However, Dalla persevered and began to
find his voice as singer -songwriter

952
01:03:27,680 --> 01:03:29,140
towards the decade's end.

953
01:03:30,240 --> 01:03:34,680
The breakthrough arrived at the San Remo
Festival in 1971 when Lucio Dalla

954
01:03:34,680 --> 01:03:37,300
performed the song 4 -3 -1943.

955
01:03:38,400 --> 01:03:42,580
This poignant ballad about an unwed
mother, originally titled Gesu Bambino,

956
01:03:42,780 --> 01:03:47,440
before censors insisted on a change, won
the third prize and became an instant

957
01:03:47,440 --> 01:03:48,440
classic.

958
01:03:49,100 --> 01:03:52,780
The song marked Dallas' first major hit
and showcased his gift for combining

959
01:03:52,780 --> 01:03:54,920
memorable melody with sensitive
storytelling.

960
01:03:55,780 --> 01:04:02,540
He followed up with the 1972 San Remo
entry Piazza Grande in 1972, an ode to a

961
01:04:02,540 --> 01:04:06,240
homeless man in Bologna, further
solidifying his reputation for heartfelt

962
01:04:06,240 --> 01:04:07,240
narrative songs.

963
01:04:08,330 --> 01:04:12,830
In the early 1970s, Dalla embarked on a
bold creative partnership with poet

964
01:04:12,830 --> 01:04:14,030
Roberto Roversi.

965
01:04:14,630 --> 01:04:18,230
Together, they created three avant
-garde albums where Roversi's

966
01:04:18,590 --> 01:04:22,250
socially charged lyrics, combined with
Dalla's eclectic compositions, produced

967
01:04:22,250 --> 01:04:23,530
critically acclaimed results.

968
01:04:24,930 --> 01:04:29,010
By the late 1970s, Lucio Dalla had
become a self -sufficient songwriter.

969
01:04:29,720 --> 01:04:34,340
ending his collaboration with Roberto
Reversi and releasing Come Profondo Il

970
01:04:34,340 --> 01:04:37,860
Mare, a pivotal album that marked his
full creative independence.

971
01:04:39,060 --> 01:04:44,220
Hits from his 1979 album Lucio Dalla
cemented his popularity, while his

972
01:04:44,220 --> 01:04:47,780
Republic tour with Francesco De Gregori
became a cultural milestone.

973
01:04:51,430 --> 01:04:54,750
Dello's contribution to Italian music
lay not just in his songs, but in how he

974
01:04:54,750 --> 01:04:58,810
expanded the boundaries of pop, infusing
it with jazz, introspection and

975
01:04:58,810 --> 01:04:59,810
experimentation.

976
01:05:00,490 --> 01:05:04,770
Even early on, he showed an
unconventional streak, famously

977
01:05:04,770 --> 01:05:06,690
Yardbirds at Sanremo in 1966.

978
01:05:08,210 --> 01:05:12,570
Though he reached global success in the
1980s with Caruso, it was the 1960s and

979
01:05:12,570 --> 01:05:16,950
70s that shaped his voice, eccentric,
emotional and profoundly Italian.

980
01:05:18,780 --> 01:05:23,200
Sanremo typically takes place in
February, so Lucio Dal's involvement in

981
01:05:23,200 --> 01:05:27,060
Bloodstained Lawn came hot on the heels
of his rising mainstream success,

982
01:05:27,400 --> 01:05:31,320
particularly following his well
-received performance of Piazza Grande

983
01:05:31,320 --> 01:05:32,520
1972 festival.

984
01:05:33,460 --> 01:05:38,360
His casting in the film was a deliberate
stunt, a celebrity cameo designed to

985
01:05:38,360 --> 01:05:41,200
draw attention, but it wasn't just a
walk -on role.

986
01:05:41,980 --> 01:05:46,340
Dalla plays the comic boozy vagrant, a
near -mute figure who stumbles through

987
01:05:46,340 --> 01:05:48,180
the film's events with comedic presence.

988
01:05:48,960 --> 01:05:53,940
He's a figure of chaos and absurdity,
often present at moments of horror yet

989
01:05:53,940 --> 01:05:56,320
blissfully unaware of the danger around
him.

990
01:05:57,760 --> 01:06:02,320
More than a physical presence, Dalla
also contributed musically, composing

991
01:06:02,320 --> 01:06:05,780
performing the film's theme song, Il
Prato Macchiato di Rosso.

992
01:06:07,120 --> 01:06:11,000
The folk rock ballad plays over the
opening and closing credits and provides

993
01:06:11,000 --> 01:06:13,520
tonal counterpoint to the film's violent
surrealism.

994
01:06:14,280 --> 01:06:18,700
According to Italian sources, it was
written specifically for the film,

995
01:06:18,700 --> 01:06:21,660
Dalla's signature lyrical style with
Ghioni's offbeat vision.

996
01:06:23,360 --> 01:06:27,200
In casting Dalla, Ghioni capitalised on
the singer's star power, but also

997
01:06:27,200 --> 01:06:29,320
injected a layer of metatextual irony.

998
01:06:30,120 --> 01:06:35,180
Here was a singer known for poetic,
socially engaged songwriting now reduced

999
01:06:35,180 --> 01:06:39,300
a stumbling fool who doesn't understand
anything happening around him, murders

1000
01:06:39,300 --> 01:06:40,300
and all.

1001
01:06:40,620 --> 01:06:44,860
It's an inversion that borders on
satire, an artist of deep cultural

1002
01:06:44,860 --> 01:06:49,740
repurposed as a clueless observer in a
landscape of decadence and death.

1003
01:06:52,680 --> 01:06:56,980
The Bustin' Blonde score was composed by
Teo Uccelli, a seasoned Italian

1004
01:06:56,980 --> 01:07:01,640
composer known for his work on comedies
and exploitation films, including Amok,

1005
01:07:01,780 --> 01:07:06,820
and collaborations with Marco Ferreri,
who was a contemporary and collaborator

1006
01:07:06,820 --> 01:07:07,820
of Chione's.

1007
01:07:08,540 --> 01:07:13,760
For this film, Uccelli created an
eclectic mix of folk rock, psychedelia,

1008
01:07:13,760 --> 01:07:17,200
and avant -garde cues that mirror the
shifts from satire to horror.

1009
01:07:18,600 --> 01:07:21,720
Uccelli's score moves between whimsical
and unsettling.

1010
01:07:22,270 --> 01:07:26,550
He uses dissonant electronics, plucked
strings and psychedelic lounge cues to

1011
01:07:26,550 --> 01:07:28,090
undercut traditional horror beats.

1012
01:07:29,070 --> 01:07:32,790
The standout moment comes in the mirror
room orgy scene where the prog rockish

1013
01:07:32,790 --> 01:07:35,090
psychedelic music heightens the surreal
spectacle.

1014
01:07:36,110 --> 01:07:38,830
His use of musical motifs also reflects
character.

1015
01:07:39,630 --> 01:07:44,290
Max and his companion are framed with
gentle acoustic guitar while Dr

1016
01:07:44,290 --> 01:07:46,570
scenes are scored with eerie electronic
sounds.

1017
01:07:47,760 --> 01:07:51,880
Even moments of supposed dread, like the
use of the vampire machine, are scored

1018
01:07:51,880 --> 01:07:55,860
with absurd fanfares, reinforcing the
film's satirical undercurrent.

1019
01:07:56,820 --> 01:07:59,920
Wagner's presence on the Villa Stereo
adds another layer of commentary,

1020
01:08:00,220 --> 01:08:04,360
contrasting the elite's fascist
posturing with the freewheeling music of

1021
01:08:04,360 --> 01:08:05,360
hippies.

1022
01:08:07,440 --> 01:08:11,840
This intersection of machinery and blood
in the Bloodstained Lawn places the

1023
01:08:11,840 --> 01:08:16,560
film within a lineage of horror and
speculative cinema of the 1970s that

1024
01:08:16,560 --> 01:08:19,720
explores the commodification of the
human body through technology.

1025
01:08:20,340 --> 01:08:25,500
In Guioni's case, the robot is a
deliberately absurd creation, part scrap

1026
01:08:25,500 --> 01:08:30,500
cartoon, part medical industrial
apparatus that serves to literalise how

1027
01:08:30,500 --> 01:08:34,740
bodies of the poor and marginalised are
harvested and transformed into profit.

1028
01:08:35,689 --> 01:08:40,550
It's a blunt metaphor, but one that taps
into a deeper cultural anxiety, that

1029
01:08:40,550 --> 01:08:45,229
machines, once symbolic of progress and
modernity, can become mechanisms of

1030
01:08:45,229 --> 01:08:49,710
clinical violence when placed in the
service of capitalism or elite control.

1031
01:08:50,710 --> 01:08:55,069
This theme returns with Sleeker Menace
and Ferret Vampire, where the blood

1032
01:08:55,069 --> 01:08:57,729
-sucking machine takes the form of a
seductive sports car.

1033
01:08:58,450 --> 01:09:02,630
In this tech horror satire, a rally
driver tests a prototype vehicle that

1034
01:09:02,630 --> 01:09:04,590
non -petrol, but human blood.

1035
01:09:05,609 --> 01:09:09,810
Unlike Guioni's crude extraction system,
which commodifies blood for sale under

1036
01:09:09,810 --> 01:09:14,770
the guise of a winery, Hertz's car
consumes it directly, turning the driver

1037
01:09:14,770 --> 01:09:15,830
part of the fuel supply.

1038
01:09:16,630 --> 01:09:20,210
One system bottles blood for profit, the
other burns it for speed.

1039
01:09:20,450 --> 01:09:22,710
The metaphor in both cases is brutal.

1040
01:09:23,029 --> 01:09:24,590
Human life reduced to resource.

1041
01:09:25,370 --> 01:09:28,450
Together they form a low -tech, high
-tech dialectic.

1042
01:09:28,830 --> 01:09:32,990
Dione's machine is grotesque and manual,
Hertz's is slick and self -contained,

1043
01:09:33,189 --> 01:09:37,729
but both mask vampiric violence beneath
the surface of modern progress.

1044
01:09:40,810 --> 01:09:46,370
A similarly disturbing logic underpins
Alan Jesua's shock treatment, in which

1045
01:09:46,370 --> 01:09:50,670
elite health spa offers rejuvenation
therapies to wealthy clients by secretly

1046
01:09:50,670 --> 01:09:52,649
siphoning blood from trafficked
immigrants.

1047
01:09:53,770 --> 01:09:57,490
Here the horror is fully
institutionalised, the facility is

1048
01:09:57,490 --> 01:10:00,290
respectable, while the extraction occurs
off -screen.

1049
01:10:00,890 --> 01:10:05,130
There is no visible machine, only
systematic infrastructure where bodies

1050
01:10:05,130 --> 01:10:06,750
murdered but drained and recycled.

1051
01:10:07,690 --> 01:10:11,590
Like Gioni's wine -bottling operation,
the clinic hides its violence behind a

1052
01:10:11,590 --> 01:10:15,550
facade of benevolence, masking
cannibalistic economies in the language

1053
01:10:15,550 --> 01:10:16,550
wellness.

1054
01:10:16,880 --> 01:10:21,200
The similar premise underpins Horror
Hospital, in which a sinister country

1055
01:10:21,200 --> 01:10:25,080
masquerades as a health retreat, luring
vulnerable young people under the

1056
01:10:25,080 --> 01:10:26,080
promise of rehabilitation.

1057
01:10:27,120 --> 01:10:30,620
While far campier in tone, the film
shares Shock Treatment's vision of

1058
01:10:30,620 --> 01:10:33,120
institutionalised horror cloaked in
therapeutic language.

1059
01:10:33,840 --> 01:10:37,780
Here too, bodily autonomy is stripped
under the guise of wellness, minds are

1060
01:10:37,780 --> 01:10:40,860
wiped, bodies repurposed and violence is
mechanised.

1061
01:10:42,700 --> 01:10:46,320
The theme of medicalised extraction also
appears in Michael Crichton's Coma,

1062
01:10:46,320 --> 01:10:50,340
where healthy patients are deliberately
placed in comas so their organs can be

1063
01:10:50,340 --> 01:10:51,440
harvested and sold.

1064
01:10:52,180 --> 01:10:54,560
The violence is again institutional,
procedural.

1065
01:10:55,300 --> 01:10:59,760
While Gioni's robot is comical,
Crichton's system is disturbingly

1066
01:10:59,760 --> 01:11:04,460
both films gesture towards the same
ideas, that science and medicine can be

1067
01:11:04,460 --> 01:11:06,320
-opted into market -driven brutality.

1068
01:11:08,430 --> 01:11:12,750
Even more broadly allegorical is Richard
Fleischer's Soylent Green, where the

1069
01:11:12,750 --> 01:11:15,870
bodies of the poor are literally
processed into food for the elite.

1070
01:11:16,470 --> 01:11:20,570
The film's industrial slaughterhouse
finale makes its thematic point

1071
01:11:20,570 --> 01:11:24,910
clear. As with The Bloodstained Lawn,
consumption is no longer metaphorical

1072
01:11:24,910 --> 01:11:25,910
mechanical.

1073
01:11:26,380 --> 01:11:30,600
Similarly, Larry Cohen's The Stuff plays
on the horror of ingestion, where a

1074
01:11:30,600 --> 01:11:34,500
parasitic dessert devours its consumers
from within, flipping the logic of

1075
01:11:34,500 --> 01:11:36,880
consumption into one of reverse
exploitation.

1076
01:11:37,520 --> 01:11:40,440
In each case, human value is reduced to
yield.

1077
01:11:41,840 --> 01:11:46,100
Johnny's film then belongs not to the
traditional genre lineage of Baroque

1078
01:11:46,100 --> 01:11:50,220
murder mysteries, but to a stranger,
more politically loaded subset of

1079
01:11:50,420 --> 01:11:54,220
one where blood is not spilled in
passion, but extracted with purpose.

1080
01:11:55,160 --> 01:11:58,620
Where the body is not feared for what it
contains, but prized for what it can

1081
01:11:58,620 --> 01:12:01,980
give, and where machines are not
monsters, but factories for death.

1082
01:12:02,660 --> 01:12:06,420
Whether in the form of a cartoonish
robot, a gleaming car, or a sterile

1083
01:12:06,620 --> 01:12:10,640
each represents a world in which
technology no longer serves life, but

1084
01:12:10,640 --> 01:12:11,640
it.

1085
01:12:13,900 --> 01:12:17,460
As I mentioned earlier, a useful point
of comparison for The Bloodstained Lawn

1086
01:12:17,460 --> 01:12:19,780
is Carada Fiorina's They Have Changed
Their Face.

1087
01:12:20,640 --> 01:12:24,560
another Italian film of the period that
uses vampiric themes to explore the

1088
01:12:24,560 --> 01:12:25,920
quiet brutality of systems.

1089
01:12:26,740 --> 01:12:31,360
Though tonally distant, Gioni's film is
grotesque and theatrical, Serena's

1090
01:12:31,360 --> 01:12:35,920
minimalist and cool, but both express a
shared anxiety that modern power no

1091
01:12:35,920 --> 01:12:40,220
longer arises with violence, but through
ideology, compliance and the illusion

1092
01:12:40,220 --> 01:12:41,220
of choice.

1093
01:12:42,160 --> 01:12:45,620
Where The Bloodstained Lawn literalises
exploitation through a blood -harvesting

1094
01:12:45,620 --> 01:12:48,920
machine massed by a winery, They Have
Changed Their Face presents a subtler

1095
01:12:48,920 --> 01:12:52,720
horror. the slow absorption of identity
into a corporate system.

1096
01:12:54,860 --> 01:12:57,740
Freenex quickly reworked the Dracula
myth for the modern era.

1097
01:12:58,260 --> 01:13:02,820
The reclusive CEO Giovanni Nosferatu
presides over a sterile visit villa

1098
01:13:02,820 --> 01:13:06,860
power operates through branding,
automation and the promise of upward

1099
01:13:08,160 --> 01:13:12,380
Cars, the very product of the company,
replace carriages and the road to the

1100
01:13:12,380 --> 01:13:15,380
estate becomes a stand -in for the
journey to the vampire's lair.

1101
01:13:16,320 --> 01:13:18,620
Blood is no longer needed. Consent is.

1102
01:13:18,880 --> 01:13:20,780
The bite is replaced by the contract.

1103
01:13:21,960 --> 01:13:26,860
Both films belong to a 1970s European
wave of institutional horror in which

1104
01:13:26,860 --> 01:13:31,320
villas, clinics and corporations conceal
systems of extraction beneath polished

1105
01:13:31,320 --> 01:13:35,560
exteriors. She only satirises elite
medical science.

1106
01:13:36,020 --> 01:13:37,940
Farina targets consumer capitalism.

1107
01:13:38,460 --> 01:13:42,560
One is rural and grotesque, the other
urbane and cool, but both challenge the

1108
01:13:42,560 --> 01:13:45,000
illusion of progress framed by wealth
and power.

1109
01:13:47,470 --> 01:13:52,010
The film's final victim is the sex
worker played by Dominique Basquero.

1110
01:13:52,450 --> 01:13:56,430
Now, Dominique Basquero is a French
-Italian actress who became a prominent

1111
01:13:56,430 --> 01:14:01,030
figure in Italian genre cinema of the
1960s. And with her striking dark beauty

1112
01:14:01,030 --> 01:14:05,510
and cosmopolitan background, Basquero
found success playing seductive vamps,

1113
01:14:05,510 --> 01:14:10,090
femme fatales and action heroines in
dozens of popular European genre films.

1114
01:14:10,910 --> 01:14:14,290
Born in Paris, she later moved to Italy
and grew up in the Piedmont region

1115
01:14:14,290 --> 01:14:16,230
before returning to Paris as a teenager.

1116
01:14:17,070 --> 01:14:21,410
working as a model and showgirl before
transitioning to film in the mid -1950s.

1117
01:14:21,910 --> 01:14:26,730
In 1960, Buschero moved back to Italy,
which was then a hub of international co

1118
01:14:26,730 --> 01:14:31,030
-productions, and she quickly became a
star in commercial genres like Pet Plum,

1119
01:14:31,030 --> 01:14:34,450
Euro Spy, Adventures, spaghetti
westerns, and of course, show thrillers.

1120
01:14:35,670 --> 01:14:40,490
Buschero debuted in Italian cinema in
1960 with the fifth western in Dallaro

1121
01:14:40,490 --> 01:14:44,210
FIFA, alongside comedians Ugo Tannazzi
and Walter Chiari.

1122
01:14:45,050 --> 01:14:48,710
She then stole scenes in sword and
sandal films, notably as the Queen of

1123
01:14:48,710 --> 01:14:53,730
Birdmen in Ulysses Against the Son of
Hercules in 1962, where her portrayal of

1124
01:14:53,730 --> 01:14:55,550
fantasy queen became a camp highlight.

1125
01:14:56,770 --> 01:15:00,770
Basquero found her footing as a femme
fatale in Euro spy films, a genre then

1126
01:15:00,770 --> 01:15:01,770
its peak.

1127
01:15:01,990 --> 01:15:05,890
In films like Hong Kong Hot Harbour and
Secret of the Chinese Carnation, she

1128
01:15:05,890 --> 01:15:08,430
played villainesses entangled in
espionage plots.

1129
01:15:09,510 --> 01:15:12,970
Perhaps her most famous role of this
kind was in Argoman, the Fantastic

1130
01:15:12,970 --> 01:15:13,970
Superman.

1131
01:15:14,240 --> 01:15:15,940
a kitschy superhero -spy hybrid.

1132
01:15:17,240 --> 01:15:20,600
Basquero delivered a scene -stealing
turn as the chief villainess who seduces

1133
01:15:20,600 --> 01:15:22,320
the hero and later tortures him.

1134
01:15:23,520 --> 01:15:27,900
In the early 1970s, as trends shifted,
Basquero continued to appear in the

1135
01:15:27,900 --> 01:15:28,799
new fads.

1136
01:15:28,800 --> 01:15:32,700
She featured in shallow thrillers such
as The Iguana with a Tongue of Fire, Who

1137
01:15:32,700 --> 01:15:36,360
Saw Her Die with George Lazenby, and All
the Colours of the Dark with Edwidge

1138
01:15:36,360 --> 01:15:37,360
Finneck.

1139
01:15:37,400 --> 01:15:41,260
She also showed up in spaghetti westerns
like And the Crows Will Dig Your Grave.

1140
01:15:42,030 --> 01:15:45,050
One of her final film roles was here in
The Bloodstained Lawn.

1141
01:15:46,610 --> 01:15:50,630
The Scariff's personal life took a
dramatic turn in the 1970s. She was

1142
01:15:50,630 --> 01:15:55,150
romantically involved with Claudio
Camasso, or Claudio Volante, the brother

1143
01:15:55,150 --> 01:15:57,150
famed actor Jean -Marie Volante.

1144
01:15:58,390 --> 01:16:02,430
Camasso became embroiled in a scandal,
allegedly planting a bomb in the

1145
01:16:02,710 --> 01:16:05,670
and later died by suicide in prison in
1977.

1146
01:16:06,910 --> 01:16:10,950
This tragedy, combined with the changing
film industry, prompted Basquero to

1147
01:16:10,950 --> 01:16:12,810
retire from cinema around 1974.

1148
01:16:14,010 --> 01:16:18,130
She withdrew to her childhood village of
Frosino in northwest Italy, where she

1149
01:16:18,130 --> 01:16:19,130
still lives.

1150
01:16:19,630 --> 01:16:23,790
In later years, Vosgero emerged as an
advocate for Optican language and

1151
01:16:23,790 --> 01:16:24,789
in that region.

1152
01:16:24,790 --> 01:16:28,310
Though she stepped out of the spotlight,
her enduring legacy is tied to the

1153
01:16:28,310 --> 01:16:32,890
pulpy delights of 60s Italian cinema,
where her glamour, charisma and screen

1154
01:16:32,890 --> 01:16:36,750
intensity made her an unforgettable
presence in so many cult classics.

1155
01:16:37,840 --> 01:16:41,620
And what I really love about her death
scene is that it very much feels like a

1156
01:16:41,620 --> 01:16:45,760
modernised gothic. And though often
discussed in relation to shallow and

1157
01:16:45,760 --> 01:16:49,820
exploitation cinema, The Bloodstained
Lawn also kind of operates as a

1158
01:16:49,820 --> 01:16:54,600
gothic, fusing the speculative
grotesquery of Frankensteinian horror

1159
01:16:54,600 --> 01:16:59,440
erotic sadism and class critique typical
of 1970s Italian genre filmmaking.

1160
01:17:00,650 --> 01:17:05,730
If Shadow often revels in contemporary
decadence and urban paranoia, Joanie's

1161
01:17:05,730 --> 01:17:10,490
film turns instead to the aristocratic
villa, the mad scientist and the

1162
01:17:10,490 --> 01:17:15,930
unnatural creation, staples of gothic
fiction refracted through a satirical,

1163
01:17:15,990 --> 01:17:17,230
late -capitalistic lens.

1164
01:17:18,490 --> 01:17:22,590
The most overt invocation of Mellie
Shelley's Frankenstein comes in the

1165
01:17:22,590 --> 01:17:24,470
climactic, blood -harvesting sequence.

1166
01:17:25,470 --> 01:17:29,090
The scene is deliberately theatrical and
gothic. Lightning cracks outside the

1167
01:17:29,090 --> 01:17:32,790
villa as Nina, dressed in a high -necked
Victorian -style white blouse, looks on

1168
01:17:32,790 --> 01:17:34,290
with unblinking composure.

1169
01:17:34,870 --> 01:17:39,150
The scarer's character lies prone on
what can only be described as a mortuary

1170
01:17:39,150 --> 01:17:44,670
-style slab as the robot, part absurd
invention, part symbolic executioner,

1171
01:17:44,670 --> 01:17:46,510
begins its mechanical extraction.

1172
01:17:47,550 --> 01:17:52,250
The setting evokes the laboratory as
tomb, a modern reworking of

1173
01:17:52,250 --> 01:17:56,030
attic, where scientific ambition meets
sacrificial ritual.

1174
01:17:56,630 --> 01:17:59,090
The scene is both clinical and gothic.

1175
01:18:00,570 --> 01:18:04,630
Rather than resuscitating the dead as
Frankenstein's monster did, the

1176
01:18:04,630 --> 01:18:07,430
drain the living, yet the logic is
somewhat parallel.

1177
01:18:07,890 --> 01:18:10,910
Both stories centre on elites who
attempt to override nature.

1178
01:18:11,210 --> 01:18:13,870
In Frankenstein, this is framed as
scientific hubris.

1179
01:18:14,430 --> 01:18:18,150
In The Bloodstained Lawn, it is a
mixture of capitalist extraction and

1180
01:18:18,150 --> 01:18:22,550
eugenics. In both, the body becomes a
site of experimentation and control.

1181
01:18:22,950 --> 01:18:26,870
The horror lies in the violence itself,
but also in the cold rationality with

1182
01:18:26,870 --> 01:18:27,870
which it is administered.

1183
01:18:28,930 --> 01:18:32,970
In The Bloodstained Lawn, Gioni embraces
gothic motifs without returning to the

1184
01:18:32,970 --> 01:18:37,670
past. There are no cobwebs, no castles,
no crumbling crypts. Instead, the film

1185
01:18:37,670 --> 01:18:39,770
offers a gothic built from modernity.

1186
01:18:40,050 --> 01:18:42,470
It is science fiction by way of the
gothic.

1187
01:18:42,780 --> 01:18:47,040
shallow by way of Frankenstein, horror
refracted through its satire of class

1188
01:18:47,040 --> 01:18:48,040
clinical power.

1189
01:18:48,420 --> 01:18:52,560
In doing so, Dione's film aligns itself
with a broader European mode of horror

1190
01:18:52,560 --> 01:18:56,880
that understands the body as back -to
-ground, a site where ideology, medicine

1191
01:18:56,880 --> 01:18:58,300
and machinery intersect.

1192
01:18:58,760 --> 01:19:03,160
The robot is the modern monster, the
slab the new altar, and Nina the

1193
01:19:03,160 --> 01:19:06,140
of a ritual in which death is
administered, not suffered.

1194
01:19:09,420 --> 01:19:13,220
It's perhaps worth mentioning the
artwork often associated with the

1195
01:19:13,220 --> 01:19:16,460
Lawn as it has become one of the primary
ways the film is referenced.

1196
01:19:17,530 --> 01:19:20,750
The reason for this is the striking and
surreal illustration frequently

1197
01:19:20,750 --> 01:19:25,730
attributed to it, which is of a blonde
woman with voluminous curls whose body

1198
01:19:25,730 --> 01:19:29,750
merges with that of a deep sea creature,
and her breasts are covered by its

1199
01:19:29,750 --> 01:19:33,570
glowing yellow eyes while its gaping,
jagged -toothed mouth connects to her

1200
01:19:33,570 --> 01:19:34,890
feminine, scaly legs.

1201
01:19:35,410 --> 01:19:40,190
This eerie fusion of horror, 1950s
-style science fiction and eroticism has

1202
01:19:40,190 --> 01:19:42,910
earned the artwork a bit of a cult
following online.

1203
01:19:44,170 --> 01:19:48,710
However, despite its frequent
association with the Plotstein's lawn,

1204
01:19:48,710 --> 01:19:51,890
Julio Questi's Death, Laid and Egg,
where it appeared in Greek promotional

1205
01:19:51,890 --> 01:19:56,330
materials and various bootleg releases,
it was never actually commissioned for

1206
01:19:56,330 --> 01:19:57,209
the film.

1207
01:19:57,210 --> 01:20:01,870
The piece was created by Lee McLeod, a
prolific illustrator known for his work

1208
01:20:01,870 --> 01:20:05,030
in paperback novels, movie posters and
commercial art.

1209
01:20:06,240 --> 01:20:10,040
MacLeod's signature style, often
infusing horror and sci -fi, led to

1210
01:20:10,040 --> 01:20:14,160
collaborations with Charles Band's Full
Moon Pictures on titles like Puppet

1211
01:20:14,160 --> 01:20:18,740
Master and Subspecies, while his most
famous work includes posters for Batman,

1212
01:20:19,060 --> 01:20:20,980
Pocahontas and Howard the Duck.

1213
01:20:21,820 --> 01:20:25,500
His extensive portfolio ensures that
most people have encountered his artwork

1214
01:20:25,500 --> 01:20:26,500
some form.

1215
01:20:29,520 --> 01:20:33,440
In reality, the deep -sea creature
hybrid illustration was designed for an

1216
01:20:33,440 --> 01:20:35,540
entirely different film, Inhuman.

1217
01:20:36,180 --> 01:20:41,920
This unrealised 1986 Empire
Entertainment production carried the

1218
01:20:41,920 --> 01:20:45,200
the most beautiful creature to ever walk
the face of the earth is the most

1219
01:20:45,200 --> 01:20:46,880
savage beast to ever ravage it.

1220
01:20:47,440 --> 01:20:51,420
The artwork appeared in Empire US's
press materials, but never made it to an

1221
01:20:51,420 --> 01:20:52,420
actual release.

1222
01:20:53,350 --> 01:20:56,610
Given that Italian posters often bore a
little resemblance to the films they

1223
01:20:56,610 --> 01:21:00,890
promoted, it's understandable how this
evocative illustration became so widely,

1224
01:21:01,110 --> 01:21:03,210
but mistakenly linked to the
Bloodstained Lawn.

1225
01:21:03,770 --> 01:21:08,090
For example, it was used for its Italian
DVD release, but it's fascinating to

1226
01:21:08,090 --> 01:21:11,690
imagine what kind of film Inhuman must
have been, given the striking nature of

1227
01:21:11,690 --> 01:21:12,669
its artwork.

1228
01:21:12,670 --> 01:21:15,770
However, I presume for those who seek
out the Bloodstained Lawn based on that

1229
01:21:15,770 --> 01:21:19,710
striking poster design, they might be
disappointed to see no connection

1230
01:21:19,710 --> 01:21:21,010
artwork and film.

1231
01:21:31,020 --> 01:21:36,080
The Bosnian lawn received its censorship
visa on the 13th of November 1972 on

1232
01:21:36,080 --> 01:21:39,840
the condition that it was prohibited for
minors under the age of 18 for its

1233
01:21:39,840 --> 01:21:44,540
erotic and nude scenes, those of
violence against people and those

1234
01:21:44,540 --> 01:21:45,900
the use of narcotic substances.

1235
01:21:48,140 --> 01:21:51,880
The Bloodstained Lawn was distributed
theatrically in Italy by Drago Film and

1236
01:21:51,880 --> 01:21:57,140
premiered on 2 March 1973, with its
first screening held, fittingly, at the

1237
01:21:57,140 --> 01:22:00,900
Risorgimento Cinema, the very venue
featured in the film itself.

1238
01:22:01,820 --> 01:22:05,880
To promote the release, locals
reportedly drove to the streets with a

1239
01:22:05,980 --> 01:22:09,080
announcing the premiere in classic small
-town fashion.

1240
01:22:10,570 --> 01:22:15,070
Some sources suggest that a wider
theatrical rollout didn't occur until

1241
01:22:15,070 --> 01:22:18,130
which point any commercial momentum had
already faded.

1242
01:22:18,570 --> 01:22:24,670
Its domestic box office earnings, 56 .36
million lira, were modest even by low

1243
01:22:24,670 --> 01:22:27,830
-budget genre standards, and the film
quickly vanished from circulation.

1244
01:22:29,480 --> 01:22:34,420
Now, looking through press cuttings
online from archive newspapers, I found

1245
01:22:34,420 --> 01:22:40,160
the film was purportedly broadcast
various times in the 1980s. It was

1246
01:22:40,160 --> 01:22:46,500
on GRP Televisione and Tele Studio T in
1980, Studio Nord in 1982, Tele

1247
01:22:46,500 --> 01:22:49,880
Montegiove in 1984 and Tele Taveri in
1988.

1248
01:22:50,860 --> 01:22:53,920
But a lot of people would have missed
that that lived there at the time. They

1249
01:22:53,920 --> 01:22:57,260
probably would have missed those
broadcasts or maybe they weren't

1250
01:22:57,260 --> 01:23:00,900
where they lived. So the film
disappeared and it became almost this...

1251
01:23:01,240 --> 01:23:04,380
tell that the older generation would
maybe tell the younger generation about

1252
01:23:04,380 --> 01:23:05,920
this film that was shot in the area.

1253
01:23:06,580 --> 01:23:10,380
But really it didn't have any lasting
legacy other than where it was shot. It

1254
01:23:10,380 --> 01:23:13,960
was probably underseen by the vast
majority of other regions in Italy.

1255
01:23:14,240 --> 01:23:19,500
And it's only really become known in
recent years due to its release and

1256
01:23:19,500 --> 01:23:20,500
bootlegs circulating.

1257
01:23:21,960 --> 01:23:25,980
The interest is obviously for fans of
cult European cinema, specifically cult

1258
01:23:25,980 --> 01:23:26,980
Italian cinema.

1259
01:23:27,120 --> 01:23:31,140
And hopefully with this release, it
brings a whole new audience to the film.

1260
01:23:31,140 --> 01:23:35,060
whether they enjoy the outlandish
premise is a whole other question

1261
01:23:35,400 --> 01:23:39,640
But for me personally, I really like The
Bloodstained a lot. I do think it's

1262
01:23:39,640 --> 01:23:43,620
worth talking about these socio
-political issues in the film. I know

1263
01:23:43,620 --> 01:23:48,060
of people, it will seem like I'm trying
to analyse far beyond what the film

1264
01:23:48,060 --> 01:23:48,898
really deserves.

1265
01:23:48,900 --> 01:23:52,220
But I think it's when we look at the
background of recording, as a director,

1266
01:23:52,500 --> 01:23:57,320
look at his contemporaries and the
themes that he was interested in and

1267
01:23:57,320 --> 01:24:02,120
present in his previous works. I don't
think it's unreasonable to assume that

1268
01:24:02,120 --> 01:24:06,700
these ideas about the bourgeois and
fascism and Italian society are that.

1269
01:24:07,290 --> 01:24:10,410
far -fetched when they were clearly
themes that he was interested in as a

1270
01:24:10,410 --> 01:24:13,670
director and as a writer because i don't
know if i explicitly said in the

1271
01:24:13,670 --> 01:24:16,930
commentary but he was the man that wrote
the script the screenplay for the film

1272
01:24:16,930 --> 01:24:22,310
so it's very much his uh work um with
what concerned him as a director and

1273
01:24:22,310 --> 01:24:26,250
as we've touched upon already he wasn't
particularly great as a director maybe

1274
01:24:26,250 --> 01:24:30,700
because of his background as a
screenwriter that's where he was more

1275
01:24:30,700 --> 01:24:33,960
as i've already said i think it would be
fascinating to see what this film would

1276
01:24:33,960 --> 01:24:37,880
have looked like under the direction of
another director or with amendments made

1277
01:24:37,880 --> 01:24:42,110
to the script It's hard to know how much
of it was his vision. As I said, it was

1278
01:24:42,110 --> 01:24:46,890
written by him, so presumably the ideas
and themes here were what he wanted to

1279
01:24:46,890 --> 01:24:52,710
convey, but the production limitations
might have caused the product to be very

1280
01:24:52,710 --> 01:24:56,970
different from what he envisioned. But
as I said, as a film, it very much lives

1281
01:24:56,970 --> 01:25:01,070
in the hearts of the people that lived
in the area at the time.

1282
01:25:07,210 --> 01:25:10,510
The buzzing lawn is certainly an oddity
when it comes to the cinema of its era,

1283
01:25:10,590 --> 01:25:15,030
but also speaks to the creativity and
eccentricities of a film industry where

1284
01:25:15,030 --> 01:25:18,790
genre boundaries were fluid and
experimentation thrived on the fringes.

1285
01:25:19,350 --> 01:25:23,430
Pulpy and baroque, but pulsing with
genuine socio -political subtext, it's

1286
01:25:23,430 --> 01:25:26,590
absurd and at times ridiculous, but also
strangely revealing.

1287
01:25:27,010 --> 01:25:31,870
A satire of aristocratic rot, scientific
hubris, and the exploitation of youth

1288
01:25:31,870 --> 01:25:32,950
disguised as progress.

1289
01:25:33,870 --> 01:25:37,210
The Bloodstained Lawn showcases the
blood -soaked bizarre charm of Italian

1290
01:25:37,210 --> 01:25:39,730
exploitation cinema at its most
deranged.

1291
01:25:40,190 --> 01:25:43,910
And that concludes this commentary track
on The Bloodstained Lawn. Thank you so

1292
01:25:43,910 --> 01:25:44,910
much for listening.