Vinegar Syndrome is back on the Italian exploitation kick with their Blu-ray box set of FORGOTTEN GIALLI VOLUME 3.

In AUTOPSY, a spate of suicides during Rome's tourist season are attributed to sun spots, but pathology student Simona Sanna (Mimsy Farmer, BODY COUNT) who is doing her dissertation on the difference between real and simulated suicides starts to suspect that the gruesome gunshot death of American tourist Betty (Gaby Wagner) might not have been self-inflicted but is conflicted about what to do about it since Betty's guilt-ridden priest brother Paul (Barry Primus, BOXCAR BERTHA) suspects that the older man his sister might have jilted is Simona's own playboy father Gianni (Massimo Serato, THE BLOODSTAINED SHADOW) who has a thing for comely American. Her developing relationship with Paul – who turned to the priesthood after a racecar crash that killed a dozen people and an institutional stay – arouses the jealousy and ire of her boyfriend Ed (Ray Lovelock, QUEENS OF EVIL), but Simona starts to realize that Betty's suspicious death may not be the only one when someone starts trying to drive her crazy and is plotting her own simulated suicide.

Pitched upon one of those high-strung Mimsy Farmer performances who leant her nervous countenance to films like FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET and THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY IN BLACK, AUTOPSY's queasy suicides and visions of living dead victims are window dressing for a relatively conventional but cleverly-scripted mystery from director Armando Crispino and regular writing partner Lucio Battistrada (THE HOUSE OF THE YELLOW CARPET). Although jobbing Crispino's previous giallo THE DEAD ARE ALIVE/THE ETRUSCAN KILLS AGAIN was set in a lofty world of country villas, symphony orchestras, and ancient archaeological sites peopled by the moneyed folk. AUTOPSY appears on the surface level to be a lower-budget effort, but the film's look is deliberate in its paring down of stylization, with its Roman tourist vistas bleached out both by the hot sun and the relative unimportance of the backdrop to "native" Simona and emotionally-distracted Lenox (even aesthete Ed is having trouble capturing a cathedral dome on film because the light is never right).

Also apparent upon subsequent viewings is the notion of class, with Simona and her father embodying the nouveau riche merchant class dealing in the kind of antiques that are mere decoration in Ed's family palazzo apartment; and the backstory of the case involves a stolen bible and the possible ransacking of antiquities during a recent flood in Florence in which it is noted by a character the coming together of divergent groups of Italian citizens to rescue the national heritage. Fortunately, the solution is more complex than the notion of one class taking retribution on another for a stolen family treasure.

Titled THE VICTIM for export, AUTOPSY earned its current moniker through Joseph Brenner Associates' U.S. theatrical release which chopped off the opening credits and started with the suicide montage and was also shortened in other spots while retaining nudity and violence. Anchor Bay's VHS and DVD editions – along with Blue Underground's direct port of the Anchor Bay DVD – featured an anamorphic widescreen transfer of the fully uncut Italian version including a few short scenes trimmed from the export cut, among them a brief exchange in which Simona explains the significance of sun spots – with the English track reverting to Italian with English subtitles for these bits (no subtitles were included for the full Italian track). While other gialli Anchor Bay put out were revisited in newer transfers in the years since, AUTOPSY was long available only in this SD master until Vinegar Syndrome's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray improves on the older transfer not so much in its marginally-improved colors and brightness so much as in conveying the queasy and sun-parched atmosphere and calling attention to little textural details, as well as revealing that the scenes exclusive to the Italian version seem to be of lesser quality than the rest of the original negative. English and Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 and Dolby Digital 2.0 mono tracks are included with English SDH subtitles for the English dub and English subtitles for the Italian track.

AUTOPSY is the most-stacked disc of the set in terms of extras, starting with an archival introduction with director Armando Crispino (4:40) at a screening in which he notes the advertising campaign of the film included a black mask for squeamish viewers. In "Editing & Rhythm" (11:42), editor Danielle Alabiso is interviewed by Crispino's son Francesco about AUTOPSY and Crispino's war film COMMANDO, noting the differences in style required for both films, and Crispino the elder's recall of the footage he shot initiating a two-day search for a shot he wanted for the film that turned out to come from a screen test done for the film. In "The Autopsy Papers" (9:54), Francesco Crispino gives the viewer an intriguing look at all of his father's documentation for the film including the original script DON'T KILL YOUR NEIGHBOR, the English script SUN SPOTS, script notes, changes to the continuity dialogue sheets, and other more provincial casting considerations for the principal roles.

In "Black Hole Sun" (38:39), Francesco Crispino provides a survey of his father's career starting on the culture page of an Italian journal under Raf Vallone, moving up when Vallone became a star in Rosselli's BITTER RICE, and Crispino's move from writer and assistant director to director, the inspiration for AUTOPSY while visiting an American morgue on a location scout for a failed project, and some other failed projects including APPARITIONS, which was to be the third of a giallo trilogy with AUTOPSY and THE DEAD ARE ALIVE. The disc also includes Italian opening and end (3:07) which suggest that one of the grading corrections Vinegar Syndrome might have done to the feature is getting rid of sickly green tinge that suffuses the credits which are also much darker than the feature or the past presentations, as well as the international THE VICTIM trailer (3:44). Sadly, they have not included the American trailer or TV spots.

In MURDER MANSION, the thick seasonal fog that descends upon the country roads of Soren derail the journeys of a disparate bunch of people – well-spoken biker Fred (Andres Resino, WEREWOLF SHADOW), hitchhiker Laura (Anna Lisa Nardi, THE CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL), motorist Porter (Franco Fantasia, SEVEN BLOOD-STAINED ORCHIDS), father-fixated businesswoman Elsa (Analia Gade, THE FOX WITH THE VELVET TAIL) suspicious of the business trip delay of her husband Ernest's (Alberto Dalbes, THE EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN), and her business partner Tremont (Eduardo Fajardo, EVIL EYE) and his long-suffering wife (Yelena Samarina, NIGHT OF THE SKULL) – who must take shelter in a cemetery-bordering mansion owned by beautiful Martha Clinton (Evelyn Stewart, THE BLOOD-STAINED BUTTERFLY). They are unnerved to discover that the surrounding village was supposedly abandoned after an epidemic of vampirism, and that Martha's lookalike grandmother was supposedly a witch who was killed in a crash along with her hulking chauffeur whose apparitions have already chased Elsa through the cemetery and whose spectral Rolls Royce nearly ran down Fred. As the night wears on, more of them fall victim to hauntings and death, but are they the victims of a vampire witch or a SCOOBY DOO-like hoax?

Reveling in its old dark house antics and atmosphere even as the plot becomes increasingly absurd, MURDER MANSION is a fondly remembered chiller from Avco-Embassy's "Nightmare Theatre" TV syndication package which also includes other Eurohorrors THE WITCHES MOUNTAIN, A BELL FROM HELL, FURY OF THE WOLFMAN, THE MUMMY'S REVENGE, and HORROR RISES FROM THE TOMB along with American horrors like DEAR DEAD DELILAH. The Italian-Spanish co-production is well-served by the latter's mossy and rustic locations – along with some interior and foggy exterior soundstage settings – as captured by Guglielmo Mancori (SPASMO) and a typically bombastic scoring effort by Marcello Giombini (THE EERIE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW) that actually suits the heavy-handed hauntings. Even knowing the solution to the mystery, the film still holds up to repeat viewings even under the less-than-ideal circumstances of 16mm TV prints and VHS transfers. Director Francisco Lara Polop had previously served as production manager on the Paul Naschy vehicles COUNT DRACULA'S GREAT LOVE and THE HUNCHBACK OF THE MORGUE, and his career would later encompass the genre of Spanish jobbing directors of the seventies and eighties: soft erotica including FORBIDDEN PASSION and the Harry Alan Towers fluff CHRISTINA.

Released directly to television in the United States by Avco Embassy, MURDER MANSION received three stateside VHS releases from Unicorn Video (with a wonderful clamshell case, the art of which is represented on the inside of Vinegar Syndrome's reversible cover) in English and Spanish, and from Avco Embassy owner Nelson Entertainment's sublabel Charter Home Entertainment, both of which were sourced from cropped 16mm TV prints (the latter with HiFi sound). Something Weird Video put out a clamshell VHS release from a 35mm print that was still cropped but featured a superior image as well as the entire English opening credits sequence (the TV prints chopped out a chunk of the credits sequence).

Mastered from a 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative, the restored framing of the 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen presentation and the heightened resolution reveals a wealth of details that went unnoticed in the poor quality presentations, like a German-language magazine on Elsa's coffee table suggesting that the film is not set in Spain, the transitions from location to sound stage exteriors, and some nice architectural accents and set decoration in the titular manse. There is also some heretofore unnoticed bits of dodgy bluescreen optical work revealing the exterior shots of the mansion to be a forced-perspective model with the picture window and open doorway matted in with the brighter image revealing the outlines. English and Spanish DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono and slightly lesser-quality Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 mono tracks are included along with English subtitles for the Spanish track and SDH subtitles for the English dub (English, Spanish, and Italian Dolby Digital tracks are also included). The Spanish track is helpful in identifying what appeared to be an out-of-context shot to be a flashback with an echo effect to the line "but you were asleep" heard over the shot while the English track does not have the effect and the line is uttered just before the shot.

The sole extra is "Lady of the Mansion" (19:58), an interview with actress Stewart who was already in Spain at the time for another film – the Carroll Baker thriller KNIFE OF ICE which was produced by the same Italian and Spanish companies and also featured Fajardo and Fantasia – and initially remember little about the film but suggests that she would remember if it were a negative experience. She has recently seen the film and starts to recall in conversation some details including the make-up appliances and Polop's enthusiasm for his directorial debut and allowing her the space to create an ambiguous character.

In CRAZY DESIRES OF A MURDERER, jet-setting Ileana De Chablais (Isabelle Marchall, CRIMES OF THE BLACK CAT) returns from Hong Kong with a retinue of hangers-on – embassy brat Bobby Jelson (Gaetano Russo, THRAUMA), playboy Pierluigi Rocca (Roberto Zattini), German tourists Gretel (Adler Gray, TALES OF EROTICA) and Elsa (Patrizia Gori, ELSA FRAULEIN SS), and Ileana's childhood sweetheart-turned-psychoanalyst Frank Hoffmann (future producer Giuseppe Colombo, THE STENDHAL SYNDROME) – and invites them to the family castello against the wishes of her elderly father the Baron De Chablais (Stuart Brisbane Colin, SECRETS OF A NURSE). Amidst the partying, which includes erotic charades and musical beds, Ileana keeps secret the confinement of her younger brother Leandro who was rendered mute by witnessing the rape and murder of his mother and only finds comfort in embalming and taxidermy along with the less-than-motherly attentions of housemaid Berta (Annie Carol Edel, WOMEN IN CELL BLOCK 7). When one of the interchangeable blondes of the party is found in bed the next morning stabbed and eyeless, the inspector (Corrado Gaipa, MY DEAR KILLER) suspects everyone in the castle of hiding something from him (including shifty butler Hans and the drunken family surgeon and embalming expert Dr. Olsen).

Although made in 1977, the film with its clash of jet setters in a medieval castle has the same kind of sixties lower-tier Italian gothic look as BURIAL GROUND or MALABIMBA but its sex and gore quotient seem tamer in comparison and the film meanders in spite of opportunities for incident and exploitation with horny couples, dark corridors, drug dealers, intimations of incest, and a tomb with an interred emerald ripe for violation. At best the film is a diverting throwback, at worst it is merely quaint. Director Filippo Ratti – billed as "Peter Rush" – had previously directed the imperfect but more entertaining supernatural gothic giallo NIGHT OF THE DAMNED.

Unreleased in the United States, CRAZY DESIRES OF A MURDERER received a letterboxed, English-subtitled cassette release from Redemption in the UK in 1996, but it was subject to BBFC cuts for an 18 certificate. Derived from a 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative, the 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen presentation looks more vibrant and undistorted in the blood reds and florid greens, while the lighting of Gino Santini (SHANGO) looks less harsh than it did on tape. Grain only become distractingly heavy before and during a few opticals. The Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 and Dolby Digital 2.0 mono tracks are relatively clean with post-dubbed dialogue and the possibly recycled cues of Piero Piccioni (CAMILLE 2000). The optional English subtitles call attention to the clunkiness of the dialogue.