The Killer Reserved Nine Seats (1974)
An enjoyable giallo which echoes Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians in that ten people invited to a theater end up getting murdered over the course of a night.
Plots like this are no stranger to the Giallo genre, even the great Mario Bava had a stab at one for 70's Five Dolls For An August Moon, yet The Killer Reserved Nine Seats is neither derivative nor cliched.
Although the opening half hour is rather slow moving with too much talk the film settles down into a suspenseful watch. The film often strikes a claustrophobic chord with it's eerie atmosphere - the theater is practically a character in it's own right - as well as embracing lashings of sleaze, often in weirdly surreal moments such as Paola Senatore putting on a record amid the mayhem and dancing semi-naked for no real reason other than because she can.
As with the best Gialli the killer is unseen until the end but their handy work is there for all to see including the most unconvincing nailing of a hand i've ever seen. Giannetto De Rossi would not have been impressed.
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