Midnight Transmission No. 17

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A Lenzi Convergence

Program Notes by Dax Silver

Seven Blood-Stained Orchids

I am told this is Lenzi competing with Dario Argento.
I reject the premise.

Competition implies symmetry.

Argento dreams in stained glass and baroque angles. Lenzi works in concrete and fingerprints. If The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is an opera house murder, Orchids is the alley behind it.

The killer here does not perform. He completes tasks.

The postcards are not theatrical. They are administrative.
The violence is not balletic. It is procedural.

And yet—
listen to Riz Ortolani.

The score floats above the brutality like perfume trying to mask copper. Romance curdled by inevitability. It is the only softness in a film that otherwise refuses to blink.

If Buzz watches this for the blood, I watch it for the restraint.
Lenzi is learning how little elegance he needs.

Spasmo

This is the fracture.

If Orchids was Lenzi proving he could play the game, Spasmo is Lenzi asking whether the board exists at all.

Everyone looks interchangeable.
Everyone lies.
Mannequins appear where people should be.
People appear where mannequins should be.

The film does not unfold. It disintegrates.

I do not experience this one as narrative. I experience it as erosion. Identity softens. Certainty warps. The camera begins to distrust the human face.

There is a moment — you’ll know it — where you realize the film is not withholding answers.

It simply does not believe in them.

Purple varnish chips during this screening.

Almost Human

The gloves are gone.

Lenzi no longer cares about aesthetics. He cares about rot.

Tomas Milian plays Giulio as a void in human form. Not charming. Not stylish. Not misunderstood. A man so insecure he converts humiliation into violence with terrifying speed.

Other criminals recoil from him.
That is the thesis.

The city is not a playground. It is a pressure cooker.

And then the score—
Ennio Morricone abandons lyricism. Percussion hammers like an artery about to rupture. Brass stabs like impatience.

The music does not glorify Giulio.
It indicts him.

By this point in the night, I am no longer watching genre cinema.
I am watching a society shedding its pretense.

Closing Remarks

The progression is deliberate:

  • Style.

  • Instability.

  • Collapse.

Giallo becomes paranoia.
Paranoia becomes civic decay.

Lenzi’s gift is not beauty.
It is escalation.

If Buzz’s hands are blackened with grease, mine are stained violet.
Different residue. Same devotion.

Midnight is not a time.
It is a threshold.

— D.S.

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