Lester Parsons (nicknamed "The Maniac" by the media) uses lonely hearts to meet rich women, brutally kill them and steal their money to fund his gambling addiction. As a fan of Lucio Fulci and Italian horror in general I was looking forward to watching this for the first time, however I was quite surprised (and disappointed) to find out that it is a horror/black comedy, even worse is that it's not a very good one. There is plenty of very graphic gore, some of it looks good, some of it looks very fake, but no complaints on that count. Sadly I found the "comedy" side of it poor, it's either just not funny or it's plain stupid, for example Lester is chasing a victim in his car down a dirt track. The victim could easily have come off the track but instead tries to out-run a Mercedes! Another scene has Lester stopped at a police road block, incredibly the cop fails to notice that the passenger in the front seat is a corpse, drrrr! There is an overuse of happy waltz style music during the "funny" parts, which is then countered by ripping off Psycho's shower scene music for the kills. Filmed on 16mm it does look a bit odd watching this on a widescreen TV, although I found it rather disappointing I'll probably give it another go.
Review of Touch of Death
