User Reviews

Despite having seen his name be connected to Spanish Gialli titles for a number of years,I've somehow have never got round to taking a look at the work of Paul Naschy.With the October Challenge coming up on the IMDb Horror board,I decided that it would be the perfect time to witness Naschy pick up a dragonfly from each corpse.

The plot:

Investigating the recent killing of a drug addict, Inspector Paolo Scaporella discovers that the murderer has left a small dragonfly statue on the victim's body,which leads to Scaporella fearing that a serial killer may be on the loose.Hitting nothing but dead ends over the addicts death, Scaporella soon discovers that a spree of killings is taking place,with each of the victims being left with a 'dragonfly.'Looking for a link among the victims, Scaporella finds out that each of them had a low-level connection to the city's underworld.Realizing that the killer is attempting to 'clean up' the city's underworld, Scaporella begins to tread deep into the underbelly of the city,in the hope that he will catch the murderer before the city is completely 'cleaned.'

View on the film:

For the screenplay of the film,co-writer/ (along with Ricardo Muñoz Suay) lead actor Paul Naschy takes an extremely distinctive approach to this Giallo,by showing Scaporella to be only half-interested in catching the killer,thanks to the murderer doing all of Scaporella's work for him!

Taking a deeply cynical view in Scaporella's investigation,the writer's give this Giallo a firm Film Noir heart,with the trash which the killer is pulling out of the city's gutter being matched by Scaporella finding out that all the power players in the city are set to go any distance,in order to keep their habits hidden underground.Along with its Film Noir heart,Naschy and Suay also give the title a delightful jet-black comedic streak,with Scaporella openly saying that he is happy that someone is doing the police's job for them,whilst the mysterious killer sends a letter which states that he really respects Scaporella.

Opening with an eye-catching, stylish murder scene,director León Klimovsky soaks the film up in a wonderful Film Noir atmosphere thanks to using worn,washed out colours to show the overflow of the underworld,which has got to the point where a Neo-Nazi can openly walk around in public!Along with the gritty Film Noir mood, Klimovsky also delivers wild lashings of Giallo,as Kimovsky's gives each of the murderer's blood splattered killings a mesmerising poetic quality.

Giving the film's cast (nothing personal guys!) an unexpected sense of glamour,the beautiful Erica Blanc (who in the uncut edition also appears naked) gives a terrific performance as Silvana Scaporella,thanks to Blanc showing Silvana determination to track down the killer to grow to the point where she ends up leaving her husband completely in the dust.Attacking on a delightfully stern note,Paul Naschy gives an excellent,brash performance as Paolo Scaporella,with Naschy tearing anyone who gets in his sight apart as he takes on the murky underworld,whilst hunting the mysterious killer,which helps to make this title a great nasty bite of Naschy.

Una Libelula Para Cada Muerto, or A Dragonfly for Each Corpse as it's more commonly known amongst English speaking audiences, is set in Milan where some drug addict low life named Franco Perotti buys his latest fix & heads home to inject but once there he is brutally murdered by a hatchet wielding psycho... Italy's finest Inspector Paolo Scaporella (Jacinto Molina under his usual Paul Naschy pseudonym) is on the case with the only clue being a small Dragonfly left on the body, Franco was the second to fall victim to the 'Dragonfly Killer' & as the bodies continue to pile up the pressure on Scaporella increases. It seems someone is waging a one person war on the drug users, dealers, prostitutes & the general scum of Milan. Scaporella has little to go on apart from the Dragonfly's & a drawing by one of the victims, a drawing of something that Scaporella can't quite make out but his wife Silvana (Erika Blnac) thinks she can which makes her the Dragonfly killer's next target...

This Spanish production was directed by Leon Klimovsky & I personally thought it was nothing more than a below average murder mystery that tries to spice it's undercooked story up with some nudity & fairly gory (for the time) murders. The script by star Jacinto Molina (under that name) is your basic who dun-nit & not one that particularly impressed me, it starts off well enough with a couple of decent kills but then all sorts of unlikely things happen to stretch the story out & I found the climactic unmasking of the killer very underwhelming. The film states early on that the killer is trying to 'clean up' Milan & in the final reckoning that's all it amounts too, so in that respect we know the killers motives from pretty much the first five minutes & after that it's just a case of them being found out which in the end Scaporella's wife does! Why didn't they just put her on the case in the first place? Also there's the usual stupid unrealistic character actions, for instance if you knew the identity of a sadistic killer who had brutally murdered at least five people would you try to black mail them & even worse meet up with them in the middle of the night in a completely deserted & isolated location? I mean that's just asking for trouble, isn't it? I don't get the roller-coaster escape bit either, if your trying to escape from the police why get on a roller-coaster? I mean a roller-coaster just travels around the same track & will always end up back where it started, right? There really is very little chance of escaping anywhere on a fairground roller-coaster. The film moves along at a reasonable pace, it has a fair few murder scenes although they're not that graphic & it's watchable but it's just not very clever, the killer's motives & identity are both disappointing & could have used more thought.

Director Klimovsky does OK, the film has that 70's sleazy horror atmosphere to it, there's a fair bit of nudity but it lacks gore or violence. Oh, isn't that title A Dragonfly for Each Corpse just great? The title is one of the main reasons I bothered with it & as many of you already know you can't judge a film by it's title. The fashions & facial hair are all very 70's & the film has a certain dated feel to it which I liked.

Technically the film is alright, it's well made enough with decent production values. The film was shot in Spanish & I can honestly say the dubbing & voice acting is absolutely terrible which gives the film an unintentional & unwanted comedic element. Naschy sports a fine moustache in this one, he's all man...

Una Libelula Para Cada Muerto is a by-the-numbers murder mystery that can't quite decide whether it wants to be a full on gory slasher or a thoughtful who dun-nit, it's somewhere between the two without totally satisfying in either department. Watch something like Tenebre (1982), The New York Ripper (1982) or Opera (1987) instead.

A "vigilante" of sorts is killing the corrupt citizens of Manila because he feels he has to clean up the city. Pimps, drug addicts, prostitutes. and homosexuals become his prime targets.

Paul Naschy plays a hard-shelled, tough detective assigned to the case. He soon realizes the killer may be closer to him than he thinks.

A DRAGONFLY FOR EACH CORPSE is a surprisingly well-made giallo that is filled with red herrings! You never really guess who the killer is until the last frame, and even then you may be wrong. Paul Naschy delivers a wonderful performance as the detective. It's a far cry from his "Waldemar Daninsky" films. He manages to pull it off successfully. Although his character may seem corrupt, he really isn't. He just wants to make the city a safe place. The way he pulls of a hard-nosed role while displaying empathy at the same time only further cements his capability as an actor. Erika Blanc (Devil's Nightmare, Kill Baby Kill!) is equally good in her role as Naschy's girlfriend. Typically, she portrays characters with a lot of sensuality. She still does this in this film, but also shows her fans that she is quite capable of playing a more serious, mature role this time around.

A few of the death scenes were very well-done, and are quite unsettling. The ending is suspense-packed up until the final frame. A DRAGONFLY FOR EACH CORPSE is a wonderful attention to any Naschy fans library. It's rather difficult to track down, though. However, you can acquire a legitimate bootleg copy from horrortheatervideo.com. Check it out if you are a huge fan of Naschy (like myself).

An Italian/Spanish co-production directed by León Klimovsky and written by Ricardo Muñoz Suay and Paul Naschy, who also stars as Inspector Paolo Scaporall, A Dragonfly for Each Corpse is about a killer taking out the junkies and sex workers of Milan and leaving behind a dragonfly sculpture on each body living up to the title of the movie.

Where most giallo films have five murders or so, this one goes wild with 15 murders, several of which are done with an umbrella knife. Scaporalla and his high fashion wife Silvana (Erika Blanc) follow this vigilante killer - who the police debate may be doing their job for them - and she gets so focused on the case that she studies crime scene photos in bed. Naked.

God bless giallo.

Alley brawls with Nazi bikers, chasing transvestite suspects through Luna Park (the site of a major part of Naked Girl Killed In the Park and an endearing relationship between Naschy and Blanc - I dream that they made several sequels of them as a Thin Man series of psychosexual whodunnits - pushes this movie toward the top of the list of giallo, even if it isn't made in Italy or even played there. It's also committed to sleaze, at least in the non-Spanish version. As the country was still super restrictive, Klimovsky shot a version that has every nude scene clothed. As someone that hates censorship, I have to exclaim how horrible the morals that keep Erika Blanc clothed are.

PS: Your ears do not deceive you. This movie takes liberally from the soundtracks of Bava's A Bay of Blood and Blood and Black Lace.

The popularity of the Giallo, which is a typically Italian cinematic product, truly skyrocketed during the early 1970's, so inevitably the rest of the European exploitation countries wanted a piece of this profitable cake as well. And righteously so! This trend resulted in a seemingly endless series of non-Italian thrillers that attempted to stay very close to the "fundamentals" of the Giallo-formula, whereas the genuine Italians productions were already making versatile variations on their own invention. You can immediately recognize "A Dragonfly for Each Corpse" as a non-Italian 70's Giallo just because it's so prototypic. There's the absurd title, for starters, but also the stereotypical macho police detective hero, the rhythmic soundtrack, the gratuitous depiction of sleaze, the absurdly nonsensical plot twists, the far-fetched red herring and the copious amount perverted sub-themes (including even necrophilia). Still, during the pre-credits opening sequence, I got worried for a second that perhaps director Léon Klimovsky and writer/lead star Paul Naschy misunderstood the Giallo concept after all, because the first murder victim is a man! Usually only blond and preferably voluptuous beauty queens are massacred in this sort of films…

The city of Milan is pestered by a series of vicious murders, but Inspector Scaporella doesn't really know whether to catch or congratulate the culprit, as all the victims are in one way or another related to the underground, like drug addicts, prostitutes and perverts. The Dragonfly Killer appears to be on a devoted cleansing mission and leaves a little dragonfly marble at the scene of each new crime as a status symbol. For you see, dead dragonflies were used in an ancient culture as a warning to those who were living immoral and impure lives. Inspect Scaporella's investigation doesn't advance very fast, even though his entire circle of friends seems to be involved, but that's probably because he wastes time discussing the case with his wife and even placing bets with her. She claims being able to solve the case before he does, going solely by her female intuition. And you know what? She's right, too!

"A Dragonfly for Each Corpse" is a reasonably satisfying example of the genre, but nothing too memorable. The plot and characters aren't as absorbing as, say, the films of Dario Argento or Sergio Martino, but everybody clearly tried their hardest. Some of horror scenes are very explicit and vicious, like when the inspector receives a human head at his home wrapped as a birthday present. The killer also uses a wide selection of weaponry to commit his murders, including spiked umbrellas, axes, golf clubs and oriental swords. It's safe to say that the fans of immense bloodshed are spoiled a lot more than the admirers of convoluted scripts and unpredictable endings. Paul Naschy, writer and lead actor of copious Spanish werewolf flicks and period pieces, is pretty cool as the inspector. He's a macho copper with a porno mustache and a lot of anger in that tiny body of his. Just looking at the amount of cigar he smokes is enough to get lung cancer. Recommended for the more experienced and tolerant Giallo fanatics amongst you.

A Dragonfly For Each Corpse seems at first glance to be a by-the-numbers copy of the Italian type of giallo, incorporating most of its tropes, but there are enough deviations from the formula that make it one of the better films in its genre. At the center of this film lies the cliché of the puritan-killer, a negative altruist who believes he or she is making the world a better place by ridding it of the morally impure. Akin to the antagonist in Lucio Fulci's 1972 masterpiece Don't Torture a Duckling, the murderer in Dragonfly is even more vicious, although the psychological motivation ultimately isn't as rich, layered or political as in Duckling. Naschy portrays the police investigator assigned to the case, and his character is about as far from Waldemar Daninsky as you're ever likely to see. It's wonderful to see Naschy portraying the cop in one giallo immediately after playing the red herring in the previous one (Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll). Donning a big bushy mustache (hubba-hubba!) and perpetually puffing a fat cigar, Naschy plays Inspector Scaporella to the hilt; and as screenwriter, Naschy serves up a slice of Milanese life that runs the gamut from the posh high-end aristocrats to the low-life street scum, and the red light districts that they frequent. Even though it's a trope of the genre as a whole, Naschy and Klimovsky display a particularly strong contempt for humanity in this giallo – no strata of people are left unscathed, unlike in the films of uber-Marxist Fulci, whose compassion always lies with the salt of the earth. But what Naschy does that I've never seen in an Italian giallo is give so much life to the protagonist's love interest. Mrs. Scaporella, played by genre-icon Erika Blanc, decides to try and solve the murders on her own, but what's Mrs. Scaporella's motivation to solve the crimes before her husband does? Could she be involved in the murders in some way? Though certainly no Nick and Nora Charles, Inspector and Mrs. Scaporella make a great pair, and it's ultimately the performances of Naschy and Blanc that qualify Dragonfly as a good movie. They and their banter help elevate this bloody body count of a film to one of the best Naschy (and Klimovsky) ever made. Very hard to find a copy of this, but it's out there and worth searching for.