The late bodybuilder/actor Mickey Hargitay stars as a criminal psychologist moonlighting as an unstable sex maniac who murders mini-skirted young women because of his impotency. The luscious and full-figured Rita Calderoni plays his beautiful wife who starts suffering from nightmares of medieval torture and lesbian orgies. The two leads are unwittingly pawns in this muddled, if hypnotic oddity of Italia sleaze that won't please the fainthearted but will delight grind house hounds.
After viewing this film a second time, there are some flaws that I would like to point out. Renato Polselli (under the pseudonym Ralph Brown) directs with such competent gusto in a blatant attempt to explore the deeper psychosis of Hargitay and Calderoni. The dialog is so painfully uninspired and over-dramatic that it felt like a demented version of Mexican soap operas. On the positive side, Ugo Brunelli's psychedelic cinematography perfectly captures what it's like for the audience to be trapped in hell. And if you thought the murder scenes were bad, take a gander at the lesbian fantasy sequence if you dare.
The Blue Underground release, obliviously a reprint from the Anchor Bay DVD, contains two different versions of DELIRUIM. The crappy, dubbed American version makes it worse with tacked on beginning and end sequences of Hargitay's psychological trauma as a soldier serving in Vietnam. The coherent, Italian language version contains more explicit material and different subplots which is a slight improvement to the latter cut. As a recommendation, the longer 102-minute cut is probably the best version to go for.
After viewing this film a second time, there are some flaws that I would like to point out. Renato Polselli (under the pseudonym Ralph Brown) directs with such competent gusto in a blatant attempt to explore the deeper psychosis of Hargitay and Calderoni. The dialog is so painfully uninspired and over-dramatic that it felt like a demented version of Mexican soap operas. On the positive side, Ugo Brunelli's psychedelic cinematography perfectly captures what it's like for the audience to be trapped in hell. And if you thought the murder scenes were bad, take a gander at the lesbian fantasy sequence if you dare.
The Blue Underground release, obliviously a reprint from the Anchor Bay DVD, contains two different versions of DELIRUIM. The crappy, dubbed American version makes it worse with tacked on beginning and end sequences of Hargitay's psychological trauma as a soldier serving in Vietnam. The coherent, Italian language version contains more explicit material and different subplots which is a slight improvement to the latter cut. As a recommendation, the longer 102-minute cut is probably the best version to go for.