Death Laid an Egg (1968)

Directed by Giulio Questi

Starring Ewa Aulin, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Gina Lollobrigida

Rated R

Italy 

"Don't count on me to understand anything!" 

This alarmingly surreal Giallo centers on a pop-art chicken farm run by some maniac (Jean-Louis Trintignant), his hot wife (a forty-and-fit Gina Lollobrigida), and his equally hot (and blonde) secretary (Ewa Aulin, AKA the big-eyed chick from Candy), with whom he is having an affair. What makes him a maniac? Every week he goes to a local hotel, picks out a prostitute, stabs her to death, and then has sex with her corpse. Every fuckin' week!  

But here's what he doesn't know: his wife (who owns the farm) is working with the chicken company to breed headless, wingless chickens that are all meat, no cluck. When he discovers these hideous mutants, he goes bananas and tears up the place, thereby ushering in his doom. And everybody else's, as well. 

Oh, and here's the important bit: wifey finds out about his whore habit (although not about the murder-y bits) and decides, for some unfathomable reason, to show up at the hotel dressed like a hooker to catch him in the act. Or something. I couldn't really figure out why, although it is a key plot point. Anyway, the point is, the secretary buys her a bunch of lingerie and then she tries it on. That part was excellent. 

The grisly/bizarre finale is supposed to wrap everything up nicely - and I do get where they were going - but by then, there's so many loose ends left dangling in the breeze that it really just muddies the bloody waters even further. Also, the cinematography made me woozy - lots of extreme closeups - and the pseudo-industrial soundtrack (made, I think, to sound like angry chickens) is a headache. 

Still, it's a giallo about a futuristic chicken farm. And Gina Lollobrigida is in her underwear in it. Therefore, it's a mothercluckin' good time.  

- Ken McIntyre