| Death Laid an Egg | |
|---|---|
 Italianfilm poster | |
| Directed by | Giulio Questi |
| Written by |
|
| Produced by | Franco Marras[1] |
| Starring |
|
| Cinematography | Dario Di Palma[1] |
| Edited by | Franco Arcalli |
| Music by | Bruno Maderna[1] |
Production companies |
|
| Distributed by | Euro International Films |
Release date |
|
Running time | 110 minutes[2] |
| Countries | Italy France |
| Language | Italian |
Death Laid an Egg (Italian:La morte ha fatto l'uovo) is a 1968giallo film directed byGiulio Questi. Written by Questi andFranco Arcalli, the film starsEwa Aulin,Gina Lollobrigida andJean-Louis Trintignant.
Married couple Anna and Marco run a hi-tech automated poultry farm, breeding boneless chickens. Unbeknownst to Anna, Marco is a serial killer, who lures prostitutes to motel rooms before stabbing them. The arrival of Anna's cousin Gabri further fragments the troubled marriage, as she and Marco begin an affair and conspire to run away together. However, Gabri is actually plotting with her husband Mondaini to kill Anna and frame Marco, as they have discovered Marco's secret. When Marco discovers Anna's body in his hotel room, he cleans the crime scene and takes the body back to the farm to dispose of it. What Gabri and Mondaini do not know is that Marco's fixation is not with killing prostitutes, but simply hiring them to role-play murders, letting them go safely and handsomely paid. At the farm, Marco falls into a machine used to grind chicken feed in which he was trying to dispose of Anna's body. When the police arrive, having responded to the "murder" at the hotel and then coming to the farm to investigate Marco's alleged activities, the police focus their attention on Gabri, suspecting her of committing the murder out of sibling jealousy. Gabri and Mondaini are eventually arrested for Anna's murder, as the farm chickens feed on Marco's ground corpse.
Death Laid an Egg was directed byGiulio Questi, who co-wrote the screenplay with editorFranco Arcalli.[1] The pair had collaborated the previous year on theSpaghetti Western filmSe sei vivo spara, in the same roles.[4]
Death Laid an Egg was released in Italy on January 9, 1968.[5] The film has also been distributed internationally under the titlesA Curious Way to Love,Death Trap andPlucked.[6] It was re-released in France asLe Sadique de la Chambre 24 (transl. The Sadist in Room 24).[3]
TheMonthly Film Bulletin declared the film as "a genuine curiosity" with its "bizarre eroticism" concluding it was "not uninteresting, but unfortunately has the effect of giving some of the digressions rather more weight than the control narrative."[7]
Writing forAllMovie, Robert Firsching rated the film three stars out of five, and found it difficult to place in a genre, considering it a mix ofgiallo, science fiction anddrug film elements. Firsching described the film as "deliriously strange", noting that it was "a must-see for genre fans"; he also stated parts of the film resembleDavid Lynch'sEraserhead.[5] Luis Canales, in his bookImperial Gina, reports that the film "received lukewarm criticism" upon release, although he writes that both Questi and Lollobrigida were pleased with it.[8] Gian Piero Brunetta, author ofThe History of Italian Cinema, considered the film to be "worth remembering", comparing it to the works ofLuis Buñuel andMichelangelo Antonioni. Brunetta felt the film held several thematic undercurrents, dealing with the conditions of farm labourers and the changing social attitudes towards the class system in Italy.[9] In March 2015 the film was re-released as part of the Malastrana Film Series in the eventThe Killer Must Kill Again!: Giallo Fever, Part 2 as part of theAnthology Film Archives inNew York City overMalastrana Film Series on35mm.[10]