Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Bezenby Paul Naschy once again knows what the people want by writing and starring in this over the top giallo full of murder, twists, sleaze, and transvestite roller coast shoot outs.Paul is a burly cigar chewing cop who likes to slap perps about, and is given a new case: that of tracking down a killer who is wasting the city's undesirables types, including junkies and hookers. Every time a corpse is discovered, a glass dragonfly is also found at the scene. I thought it was cool that Paul was allowed to keep these on the wall of his living room for some reason, but then his wife Erika Blanc ended up doing most of the work anyway, so maybe it was best she kept an eye on the stuff.Of course, polite society gets involved and it turns out they have just as many vices as those unclean types. Paul's friends turn out to be just as bad, what with the professor who is a necrophile who likes to have strippers lie in coffins, then there's the confusing love dodecahedron involving everyone else Paul knows, except the gay guy, because being gay is enough to have you killed in a film like this. Needless to say someone Paul knows is the killer, but as the body's pile up, can he unveil the killer before the killings get closer to home?The killer is dressed in the usual gialli uniform - black gloves, comfortable shoes, comfy socks, and has quite the collection of weapons at his (or her!) disposal. People are attacked with axes, umbrellas with spring loaded blades, knives and such like, but the blood is kept subtle. Nudity isn't however, which will keep you awake between the murder scenes.My absolute favourite bit was when Paul somehow uncovered a drug ring and the gang leader, fresh from doing a transvestite show, realises the cops are arriving on the scene, takes the time to dress back up in drag again before getting on a roller coaster and firing a gun blindly while on the ride. Simply delightful. This is also a film that isn't too concerned about how life like the dummies are, which makes things funnier. If a bad Paul Naschy film exists, I haven't seen it yet. Another daft winner!

gavin6942 A killer (with impressive red pants) is cleaning up the streets of Milan by murdering deviants, prostitutes and members of the underworld. An ornamental dragonfly, soaked in the blood of the victim, is left on each body.The script was written by Paul Naschy, who was influenced (much like everyone else of the era) by Dario Argento's "Bird With the Crystal Plumage" (1970). In this story, Naschy creates the mythology that a dragonfly is a Chaldean symbol for someone undesirable. While this is probably entirely contrived and fabricated, it does make for an interesting back story and motivation for the killer. This is a Spanish/Italian co-production that curiously never got a release in Italy. And while the giallo genre is usually thought of as exclusively Italian, this film proves that rare exceptions exist. Heck, it even has a very "gialloesque" title. Apparently the reason for Italy's involvement was to get around Spanish censorship. In actual fact, the Italian component is quite slim -- the Milan sequences are merely exteriors, with all the indoor shots done in Spain. Being in Spain was helpful, considering that Naschy was appearing in the now-forgotten "Tarzán en las minas del rey Salomón" (1974) at the same time.The film has been described not only as a giallo, but more of a giallo / poliziottesco hybrid. And with good reason. Being largely Spanish rather than Italian, it could not be a pure giallo in the strictest sense. But moreover, the focus here is on the police and their attempts to catch the killer. In the giallo genre, the police are generally peripheral characters, with the central protagonist being an amateur, someone who just happened to see something or sense something at a certain moment. Rarely in those films is it the police who are successfully tracking the killer.What you have to love about this film, if nothing else, is the use of an umbrella for a weapon. To me, that conjures up images of the Penguin (the Batman villain), but never before has it been so menacing as shown in this film. "Umbrella as weapon" is an interesting motif, and there are real examples in history of umbrellas modified to be guns. But this may be the first time we see an umbrella knife on film.The music is from the CAM library, and you may have heard some of it before in Mario Bava's "Kill Baby Kill" (which perhaps not coincidentally starred Erika Blanc) or Bava's "Blood and Black Lace". In fact, much of it sounds familiar, probably because it is so heavily recycled.According to Mirek Lipinski, "Dragonfly" never saw a theatrical release in the United States, nor did it ever come out on video. Given how strong this film is among Naschy's filmography, that is slightly shocking, but presumably Lipinski is correct. That makes the 2017 Blu-ray from Scream Factory all the more special. Between the crisp picture and informative commentary, it is clearly a must-have for fans of either Naschy or the giallo film.

accattone74 A Dragonfly For Each Corpse seems at first glance to be a by-the-numbers copy of the Italian type of giallo, incorporating most of its tropes, but there are enough deviations from the formula that make it one of the better films in its genre. At the center of this film lies the cliché of the puritan-killer, a negative altruist who believes he or she is making the world a better place by ridding it of the morally impure. Akin to the antagonist in Lucio Fulci's 1972 masterpiece Don't Torture a Duckling, the murderer in Dragonfly is even more vicious, although the psychological motivation ultimately isn't as rich, layered or political as in Duckling. Naschy portrays the police investigator assigned to the case, and his character is about as far from Waldemar Daninsky as you're ever likely to see. It's wonderful to see Naschy portraying the cop in one giallo immediately after playing the red herring in the previous one (Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll). Donning a big bushy mustache (hubba-hubba!) and perpetually puffing a fat cigar, Naschy plays Inspector Scaporella to the hilt; and as screenwriter, Naschy serves up a slice of Milanese life that runs the gamut from the posh high-end aristocrats to the low-life street scum, and the red light districts that they frequent. Even though it's a trope of the genre as a whole, Naschy and Klimovsky display a particularly strong contempt for humanity in this giallo – no strata of people are left unscathed, unlike in the films of uber-Marxist Fulci, whose compassion always lies with the salt of the earth. But what Naschy does that I've never seen in an Italian giallo is give so much life to the protagonist's love interest. Mrs. Scaporella, played by genre-icon Erika Blanc, decides to try and solve the murders on her own, but what's Mrs. Scaporella's motivation to solve the crimes before her husband does? Could she be involved in the murders in some way? Though certainly no Nick and Nora Charles, Inspector and Mrs. Scaporella make a great pair, and it's ultimately the performances of Naschy and Blanc that qualify Dragonfly as a good movie. They and their banter help elevate this bloody body count of a film to one of the best Naschy (and Klimovsky) ever made. Very hard to find a copy of this, but it's out there and worth searching for.

Red-Barracuda A Dragonfly for Each Corpse is quite unusual in that it is a Spanish movie filmed in Italy. More specifically, it tries to pass itself off as an Italian giallo. By the time this had been released this particular sub-genre had already past its peak years but its characteristics were so well established by that point that they could be mimicked quite easily. This film doesn't just copy the conventions of the genre; it also goes to the trouble of setting its action in Milan to make it seem even more like a true Italian product.Its director was León Klimovsky who made quite a lot of genre pictures, including the impressive Vampire's Night Orgy (1974). In this one, he directs the top Iberian horror actor of the day, Paul Naschy. This chunky leading man appeared in many genre pics and in this instance he plays a cynical, violent cop who investigates a serial murder case. The killer's calling card is a wax dragonfly left on the corpses of the victims, all of whom are considered 'degenerates'. Interestingly, Naschy's detective actually seems to sympathise with the killer's objectives for the most part! Anyway, what follows is a violent and sleazy whodunit, where the mystery killer batters their way through the cast via a variety of slaughter methods.The mystery here is, as is typical for the genre, somewhat convoluted with quite a large selection of suspects/victims. It's not a bad mystery though, even if it might be a bit heavy on the police procedural side of things. Admittedly it does end with a particularly biscuit-taking lack of explanation for the mayhem that we have just spent the last 90 minutes witnessing and the unmasking of the killer is somewhat underwhelming too. But this is not really a deal-breaker given that gialli in general often put very little effort into this side of things. On the other hand, there is a pleasing selection of salacious content sprinkled throughout to keep things interesting such as violent murders, completely gratuitous nudity, a seedy plot-line and a stupendously silly set-piece where one character tries to make a getaway on a roller-coaster car! So all-in-all, a pretty enjoyable movie with the requisite lack of political correction and an abundance of of-its-time fashions that make these films so much fun.