''Il prato macchiato di rosso'' () is a 1973 Italian film directed by Riccardo Ghione.

Plot

Emilia-Romagna, Italy, early seventies. A Unesco agent discovers that blood is contained in a bottle of wine produced by a well-known Italian winery. A couple of hippies in their wanderings come across Antonio who accompanies them to the villa where he lives with his sister and brother-in-law. In the sumptuous house the two young men meet strange characters: a gypsy woman, a prostitute and a disquieting drunkard. The landlord, Michelino Croci, reassures them by saying that he is only a wine producer and loves to host strange people. In reality, Mr. Antonio is a madman who created a mechanism, a sort of robot capable of sucking blood from human bodies.

Cast

Style

Italian film critic and historian Roberto Curti described the film as mixing elements from the gothic genre, the thriller and a little bit of science fiction.

Production

Shortly after the release of director Riccardo Ghione's previous film ''A cuore freddo'', Ghione was working on his next film titled ''Vampiro 2000'' which was shot in the village of

Fiorenzuola d'Arda Fiorenzuola d'Arda (; egl, label= Piacentino, Fiurinsöla, or ) is a city and ''comune'' in Italy in the province of Piacenza, part of the Emilia-Romagna region. Its name derives from ''Florentia'' ("prosperous" in Latin). The "d'Arda" portion r ...

. Ghione announced a different film during this period, an adaptation of ''Il male oscuro'', the autobiography by

Giuseppe Berto Giuseppe Berto (27 December 1914 – 1 November 1978) was an Italian writer and screenwriter. He is mostly known for his novels ''Il cielo è rosso'' (''The Sky Is Red'') and ''Il male oscuro''. He was a prisoner at Camp Hereford from 194 ...

, which never came to fruition. ''Vampiro 2000'' eventually became retitled as ''Il pratto macchiato di rosso''.

Release

''Il pratto macchiato di rosso'' was distributed theatrically in Italy by Drago Film and had its premiere on 2 March 1973 in Fiorenzuola d'Arda. The film grossed a total of 56,364,000

Italian lire The lira (; plural lire) was the currency of Italy between 1861 and 2002. It was first introduced by the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in 1807 at par with the French franc, and was subsequently adopted by the different states that would eventually f ...

domestically on its initial release. According to Curti, after the film's release it vanished into obscurity to only be brought back to attention on a home video release around 2017.

Reception

Curti declared that ''Il prato macchiato di rosso'' retained a small level of notoriety in the village of Fiorenzuola where the memory of the shooting of the film remained vivid still in 2018.

Footnotes

References

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External links

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''Il prato macchiato di rosso''
at

Variety Distribution Variety Distribution is an Italian-based film distribution company. It distributes Italian films worldwide, produced from the 1930s onward. History Variety Distribution (formerly Variety Film and Variety Communications) has been in the film ...

1973 films Italian thriller films 1970s Italian films {{1970s-Italy-film-stub