Rome: Simona (Mimsy Farmer) is a young medical student intent on writing a dissertation for the university. The topic of the paper is on forensic medicine, and the young girl seeks material for her research in the Roman morgue: studying a series of anonymous corpses and participating in several autopsy examinations.
As she proceeds, delving deeper into the matter, a series of disturbing suicides troubles the sunny, torrid city: people from a wide variety of walks of life take their own lives with increasing frequency. Until Betty (Gaby Wagner), a young American woman, kills herself near Ostia beach. The young "victim" was a resident of the "Rose Garden," right next door to Simona. The student, under stress from the crude images she is subjected to at the morgue, begins to fear for her safety.
The series of frightening suicides, meanwhile, is dismissed by some university professors as a consequence of sudden "sunspot" activity: capable of altering the psychic balance of people, already under great stress from the abnormal summer heat wave...
But this is, in truth, only part of the truth: for in addition to the "sunspots" the hand of a vicious and ruthless killer acts in the crowded Roman streets...
Armando Crispino had already given excellent signs in the direction of the fine giallo L'Etrusco Uccide Ancora (The Etruscan Kills Again) from a few years earlier, and with Macchie Solari he confirms a rare flair for the genre.
The narrative plot, which initially seems to be ascribable to a pure Horror, veers toward the finale to the classic "detective story," mixing the "ingredients" with perfect calibration and stuffing the whole affair with particularly gore and splatter images: the sequences and photos inside the morgue.
Although, at times, the script is rather convoluted, Crispino makes up for it with skillful use of M.o.P., with the aid of excellent performances (the Farmer and Lovelock in particular) and with the effectiveness of excellent special effects...
It should be noted that the talented Mimsy Farmer devoted herself, at that time, to starring in a series of Italian Thrillers (among others Four Flies of Grey Velvet, Black Cat and The Scent of the Lady in Black)...
Music by Ennio Morricone, for a truly unique film in the Italian film scene of the time: which must, even today, find a worthy home video edition...
Review by Undying1
