''Death Laid an Egg'' ( it, La morte ha fatto l'uovo) is a 1968 ''

giallo In Italian cinema, ''Giallo'' (; plural ''gialli'', from ''giallo'', Italian for yellow) is a genre of mystery fiction and thrillers that often contains slasher, crime fiction, psychological thriller, psychological horror, sexploitation, and, ...

'' film directed by

Giulio Questi Giulio Questi (18 March 1924 – 3 December 2014) was an Italian film director and screenwriter.Marco Giusti, Dizionario dei film italiani stracult, Roma, Frassinelli, 2004. Questi was born in Bergamo. He wrote short stories and filmed se ...

. Written by Questi and

Franco Arcalli Franco "Kim" Arcalli (13 March 1929 – 24 February 1978) was an Italian film editor and screenwriter best known for his work with Bernardo Bertolucci and Michelangelo Antonioni. Life and career Born in Rome by a Venetian family, his last name ...

, the film stars

Ewa Aulin Ewa Birgitta Aulin (born 13 February 1950) is a Swedish former actress who appeared in a number of Italian and some American films in the 1960s and 1970s. She is remembered for playing the title character in the cult film ''Candy'' where she appea ...

Gina Lollobrigida Luigia "Gina" Lollobrigida (born 4 July 1927) is an Italian actress, photojournalist, and politician. She was one of the highest-profile European actresses of the 1950s and early 1960s, a period in which she was an international sex symbol. As o ...

and

Jean-Louis Trintignant Jean-Louis Xavier Trintignant (; 11 December 1930 – 17 June 2022) was a French actor. He made his theatrical debut in 1951, and went on to be regarded as one of the best French dramatic actors of the post-war era. He starred in many classic fi ...

Plot

Married couple Anna and Marco run a hi-tech automated poultry farm, breeding boneless chickens. Unbeknownst to Anna, Marco is a serial killer, who lures prostitutes to motel rooms before stabbing them. The arrival of Anna's cousin Gabri further fragments the troubled marriage, as she and Marco begin an affair and conspire to run away together. However, Gabri is actually plotting with her husband Mondaini to kill Anna and frame Marco, as they have discovered Marco's secret. When Marco discovers Anna's body in his hotel room, he cleans the crime scene and takes the body back to the farm to dispose of it. What Gabri and Mondaini do not know is that Marco's fixation is not with killing prostitutes, but simply hiring them to role-play murders, letting them go safely and handsomely paid. At the farm, Marco falls into a machine used to grind chicken feed in which he was trying to dispose of Anna's body. When the police arrive, having responded to the "murder" at the hotel and then coming to the farm to investigate Marco's alleged activities, the police focus their attention on Gabri, suspecting her of committing the murder out of sibling jealousy. Gabri and Mondaini are eventually arrested for Anna's murder, as the farm chickens feed on Marco's ground corpse.

Cast

as Anna *

as Marco *

as Gabri * Jean Sobieski as Mondaini * Renato Romano as Luigi * Cleofe Del Cile as Prostitute #1 * Biagio Pelligra as Chemical operator * Giulio Donnini as Hotel Manager * Aldo Bonamano as Police Inspector * Margherita Horowitz as Marco's secretary * Vittorio Andre * Cleofe Del Cile * Monica Millesi * Ugo Arinolfi

Production

''Death Laid an Egg'' was directed by

, who co-wrote the screenplay with editor

. The pair had collaborated the previous year on the

Spaghetti Western The Spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's film-making style and international box-office success. The term was used by foreign critics because most o ...

film '' Se sei vivo spara'', in the same roles.

Release

''Death Laid an Egg'' was released in Italy on January 9, 1968. The film has also been distributed internationally under the titles ''A Curious Way to Love'', ''Death Trap'' and ''Plucked''. It was re-released in France as ''Le Sadique de la Chambre 24'' ().

Reception

The ''

Monthly Film Bulletin ''The Monthly Film Bulletin'' was a periodical of the British Film Institute published monthly from February 1934 to April 1991, when it merged with ''Sight & Sound''. It reviewed all films on release in the United Kingdom, including those with a ...

'' declared the film as "a genuine curiosity" with its "bizarre eroticism" concluding it was "not uninteresting, but unfortunately has the effect of giving some of the digressions rather more weight than the control narrative." Writing for

AllMovie AllMovie (previously All Movie Guide) is an online database with information about films, television programs, and screen actors. , AllMovie.com and the AllMovie consumer brand are owned by RhythmOne. History AllMovie was founded by popular-cult ...

, Robert Firsching rated the film three stars out of five, and found it difficult to place in a genre, considering it a mix of ''

'', science fiction and drug film elements. Firsching described the film as "deliriously strange", noting that it was "a must-see for genre fans"; he also stated parts of the film resemble

David Lynch David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, visual artist and actor. A recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 2019, Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, and the César Award for Be ...

's ''

Eraserhead ''Eraserhead'' is a 1977 American surrealist film, surrealist horror film written, directed, produced, and edited by David Lynch. Lynch also created its Eraserhead (soundtrack), score and sound design, which included pieces by a variety of oth ...

''. Luis Canales, in his book ''Imperial Gina'', reports that the film "received lukewarm criticism" upon release, although he writes that both Questi and Lollobrigida were pleased with it. Gian Piero Brunetta, author of ''The History of Italian Cinema'', considered the film to be "worth remembering", comparing it to the works of

Luis Buñuel Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and m ...

and

Michelangelo Antonioni Michelangelo Antonioni (, ; 29 September 1912 – 30 July 2007) was an Italian filmmaker. He is best known for directing his "trilogy on modernity and its discontents"—''L'Avventura'' (1960), ''La Notte'' (1961), and ''L'Eclisse'' (1962 ...

. Brunetta felt the film held several thematic undercurrents, dealing with the conditions of farm labourers and the changing social attitudes towards the class system in Italy. In March 2015 the film was re-released as part of the Malastrana Film Series in the event ''The Killer Must Kill Again!: Giallo Fever, Part 2'' as part of the

Anthology Film Archives Anthology Film Archives is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema.New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

over

Malastrana Film Series ''Short Night of Glass Dolls'' (Italian: ''La Corta notte delle bambole di vetro'') is a 1971 Italian giallo film. It is the directorial debut of Aldo Lado and stars Ingrid Thulin, Jean Sorel and Barbara Bach. Plot The corpse of reporter Grego ...

35mm 35 mm may refer to: * 135 film, a type of still photography format commonly referred to as 35 mm film * 35 mm movie film, a type of motion picture film stock * 35MM 35 mm may refer to: * 135 film, a type of still photography format ...

.NY! Argento, Bava and more 35mm “Giallo Fever” coming to Anthology Film Archives
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Footnotes

References

* * *

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Morte ha fatto l uovo 1968 films 1968 horror films 1960s thriller films Giallo films 1960s Italian-language films Italian thriller films Films directed by Giulio Questi 1960s Italian films