Murder in a Blue World
Entry updated 3 May 2024. Tagged: Film.
Spanish film (1973; original title Una gota de sangre para morir amando ["A Drop of Blood to Die Loving"]; vt To Love, Perhaps to Die, 1975; Clockwork Terror, 1986). José Frade Producciones / Cinematográficas S.A. / Intercontinental Productions. Directed by Eloy de la Iglesia. Written by Eloy de la Iglesia, José Luis Garci, Antonio Fons, Antonio Artero and George Lebourg. Cast includes Sue Lyon, Christopher Mitchum, Ramón Pons and Jean Sorel. 100 mins. Colour.
In a seemingly affluent but repressive Near Future in a City beset by unexplained murders, Anna (Lyon) works as a nurse and receives an award for her dedication to her patients. Her boyfriend Dr Victor Sender (Sorel) is experimenting with electroshock therapy to "cure" violent criminals, especially juvenile delinquents, and allow them to re-enter society. Meanwhile, a gang of motorcycle-helmet-wearing, whip-wielding young men are terrorizing families and couples.
It is soon revealed that Anna is the murderer, luring men, often while disguised, back to her house and stabbing them in the heart with a surgical scalpel after Sex. David (Mitchum), who has been ejected from the gang after a fight with their leader, witnesses her disposing of one of the bodies. Finding out where she lives, he breaks into her home and sees her committing another murder. He then blackmails her and uses the money to buy a motorbike. Other members of his ex-gang assume he has stolen money from them to pay for this and beat him badly. When he is taken to hospital, Anna discovers that he is to be the subject of one of Sender's experiments. She takes him from his ward and kills him in her usual fashion in Sender's laboratory, but is discovered by Sender. Unseen by them, the patients that Sender had thought rehabilitated have reverted to violence, killing each other gruesomely.
This is for the most part a fairly weak attempt to cash in on the notoriety of A Clockwork Orange (1971) directed by Stanley Kubrick (which was still banned in Spain in 1973), down to the use of classical music as counterpoint to the action, and a blatant riff on the home invasion scene from Kubrick's film by having the family being invaded watch A Clockwork Orange on television; the film unconvincingly posits the scene as homage rather than rip-off. Like Kubrick, de la Iglesia and his co-writers are attempting social satire in an examination of violence as a response to totalitarianism, with Anna seeing herself as a guardian angel who allows her victims death after one moment of happiness, and David rejecting society's demands to be a "good citizen". The effect is more that of an uninspired exploitation film, not helped by poor dialogue and wooden acting. The futuristic trappings are mostly superficial, with outlandish but unoriginal décor and costumes in the home invasion scene, video phones, and a building where people can consult Computers on any questions they wish to ask. There is a nice scene at an auction where bidders try to buy some of Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon artwork (presumably in 1973, the idea of anyone bidding large sums of money for comic strip art would have seemed a distant prospect). [CWa]
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