Directed by Eloy de la Iglesia
Written by Antonio Artero, Antonio Fos, José Luis Garci, Eloy de la Iglesia + George Lebourg

Formats

VHS - PAL (Widescreen)
DVD R2 - originally supposed to be out Summer 2001, but that page hasn't been updated since 2/01. Still listed as Coming Soon.

Foreign Titles

France - Le Bal du vaudou
Spain - Una Gota de Sangre para Morir Amando
UK - Clockwork Terror
US Alternate -  To Love, Perhaps to Die

Notes

• The whole thing is a ripoff of A Clockwork Orange and features a bit from it.

• Another Kubrick connection is Sue Lyon stars in the film and was the star of Lolita.

• Made and released in Spain 8/22/73

• 98 minutes, English Dubbed

• Rated R

• Composer - Georges Garvarentz

Summary - Official

Often described as 'the Spanish Clockwork Orange' is a controversial shocker set in a near future world. Honest citizens live in terror as gangs of leather-clad whip-wielding sadists roam the night time streets. Meanwhile, in a top secret laboratory, strange mid controlling experiments are being conducted. Against this background a beautiful nurse tries to ease the pain of those condemned to die. But who really is this angel of mercy and what is the purpose of her mission? Features Sue Lyon (Lolita) and Chris Mitchum (Jess Franco's 'Faceless').

'intelligently overturns all the usual clichés of the genre' - Positif

Pictures

VHS Cover - Front
VHS Cover - Back
Lobby Card - droogs with whips

My Summary

    The movie opens with an ad on TV about a blue drink. "Blue! Blue! Blue!" they cry. Then the news reports about another young man who was murdered. Now you know where the awkward title comes from. 
    Anne is a nurse who is receiving a big humanitarian award from the hospital where she works. Dr. Victor Senater is her colleague who has affections for her that she turns down. He is so proud of her and wants to take her out to diner. She doesn't really care about the award or his advances, but agrees to go if he won't talk of old times. They talk about work and other boring banter and he tells her he is giving a talk on violence on TV later that he wants her to see.
    Soon after we see her at home watching him on TV and there are many wigs all around. Then we cut to a family watching him on TV. Then we cut to four young guys in black leather with red motorcycle helmets driving an orange dune buggy - how is that for menacing!? They soon show up at said house and ring the doorbell. The son goes and answers it as he is expecting his Uncle Sam. The boys all have bullwhips and proceed to smash the place up. The leader calls the husband a mongrel and makes him bark. He then takes the wife into the bedroom to rape her. Two guys take the husband off to beat him some more, leaving one thug behind. He is David (not making father Robert Mitchum proud) and he decides to take his whip and boot to everything in sight while the kid watches. Nothing is seen or heard from the bedrooms.
    Cut to an art auction. Anna and Victor are there bidding on lost Flash Gordon comic art found in an excavation in New York (I can't make this up). Anna really wants it and so does the guy sitting next to her. They bid back and forth and she wins for the hefty sum of $100! When she sees he is a cripple she goes over and gives him her number. Does she feel guilty now? Much later that night he comes over to her house and she seduces him. After sex he says he saved up for a long time to try to buy the Flash Gordon art (his high bid was $80?!). He tells her this is a fantasy come true for him and he wants to stay the night. She agrees and when he closes his eyes she stabs him through the heart. So now we know who the murderer is.
    Meanwhile the red helmet gang finds a couple making out in a car on a dark road and they go up to them and smash their windows out. Then they pull them out of the car and hit and harass them. David then sees a police helicopter overhead and says they should take off. This upsets the leader since he calls the shots, but they do leave just in case. When they get back to their lair, the leader demands an apology from David. He won't do it and a whip fight ensues. It's back and forth a bit, but the leader's buddy makes sure David doesn't get too much advantage and eventually joins in pummeling and whipping him. Nick, David's gang friend, is too weak to be of any help. David is left battered and bloody.
    Anna starts dragging the body through the rainy night past her dogs to her car. When it comes time to dump it - it is now broad daylight so everyone can see what she is doing. She dumps the body into the river and David sees this as he is crashed out on a nearby bridge. Even though she is far away and he is tired and beaten, he is able to catch the license plate as she speeds away. In the films' oddest scene he goes to some computer bank and announces he wants the address of the person with that license plate and gets it.
    Later Anna and Victor are together and she asks what is happening in the secret project on the third floor that he is running. He tells her that it deals with making criminals useful again to the state. and takes her up that night for a demonstration. The subject is put on a table, strapped down and bombarded with high pitched sounds in three phases. There is no attempt to explain how this will stop them from being violent - deaf, maybe. Anna is horrified by what she sees and she is a killer! Victor takes her home and tries to rekindle something, they had a relationship at one time, but she isn't interested. He can't understand why she stays in her parents giant house alone. She explains how they weren't rich and they both died of an overdose at the same time - convenient.
    There is a commercial on TV where the man wears panther underwear and it is supposed to make him virile. There is even a scene later where they are directing the commercial!? Anna goes to a club where women can purchase men and take them home for the night. She is in an old woman disguise (hence all the wigs) that should fool no one, but does. The underwear guy goes to the club for the first time and she picks him up. He carries on and on about how perfect he is in body, but empty inside and wishes she was a young, pretty blond. No problem there, she just goes upstairs and changes. They have sex and she kills him right through the heart with a scalpel in one shot.
    David finds Nick to see what is going on with the gang. Nick tells him that the money they had stashed was stolen and the two other guys think David stole it in revenge for his beating. It is safe to say he is out of the gang for good. 
    Anna is taking care of an old dying man at the hospital and he tells her that he read somewhere that all the people in the cities are alive, but really dead inside. This makes an impact on her. So that night she dresses up like man and goes to another bar to look for a young man. Is it a gay bar? What is she trying to accomplish?
    David decides to go check out Anna's house and see what he can find. He pacifies the dogs with some meat, and then climbs up to a second story window to get in. He goes all through the house looking for clues. Most doors are locked, but he conveniently finds a chest in the basement that is unlocked and has all kinds of trophies from her kills. He finds a music box inside and takes it. Anna picks up a lonely young guy and takes him home. David is going to leave as they show up, so he is forced to hide behind some curtains. 
    They dance to a Strauss Waltz, talk and then the guy wants to go. (how will he go anywhere since she drove him home?) He has had a good time, but he only goes to the bar because he is lonely. Besides he thinks she is a lesbian or something with that outfit she is in. She tells him that isn't true and he should stay. He agrees and they go upstairs. David goes up and sees her kill him and leaves. He breaks a glass on the way out. She finds it, but isn't sure what that means.
    The next night David comes up and hangs out by the gate until he attracts Anna's attention. She comes out dressed in a dark haired maids outfit. Anna is impressed at how well he gets along with the dogs of the "owners of the house ". She invites him in and and goes along with her routine for a while then eventually he gives her the music box. He says he won't turn her in to the police if she gives him money. Over the next month she meets him at three different places and gives him an envelope full of cash. On the third time it is a church and she tells him that since it is Christmas she is wiped out of cash and won't be able to give him any more for a long, long time.
    With his newfound wealth David decides to buy a brand new motorcycle for himself. Not a good idea when he knows his ex-gang thinks he ripped them off. Soon after the gang spots him with the bike. A long chance ensues through city, tunnels, country and parks. The gang likes to beep their Dukes of Hazzard horn at him a lot to scare him. Eventually David crashes into a tree and the gang beats the crap out of him once again and leaves him for dead. Nick feels bad about it though and confesses to the police.
    The police turn him over to the hospital where he will become another subject for Victors' experiment. In turn the police want help from Victor to catch the killer because he is a so-called expert on the criminal mind. Victor decides to show Anna how well the experiment is going. There is a room next to the lab with two-way glass where the criminals are now snooty high class people in tuxedos and talking about work and the economy while two waiters serve them. No indication is given on how these convicts would know about the subjects they speak of. Victor leaves and tells her he'll be back tonight to celebrate New Years' with her.
    Later Anna is excited to learn she will be be nurse taking care of the paralyzed David who can no longer speak. She is determined that David won't be a guinea pig for Victor. There is no reason for this since he won't be able to blackmail her anymore. She wheels him off to Victors lab and along the way explains herself. The reason she kills is simple. She finds lonely men, gives them pleasure and then kills them while they are at their happiest. She is making them feel good and they'll never feel pain again because of her training she kills them swiftly. She feels she is doing the right thing especially after what the old man told her about people being dead anyway.
    She puts him on the table of Victor's lab, kisses him and then kills him. No reason is given why she went through all the trouble to bring him there. Victor shows up with champagne in hand looking for Anna. Eventually he goes up to his lab and finds her bloody and crying over David. "Can't you see I just killed a man?" he explains to him. Just then the former criminals in the glass room go crazy. The smash bottles of wine over the waiters heads and stab each other, dying against the glass. The End.

My Review

    What do you get when you take washed up actors, a boring "horror" movie story, bad dialog, plotlines ripped off from ACO, poor cinematography, awful music, jumbled + confused ideas plus a video cover that shows more skin than the whole movie and is filmed in Spain?? You have Murder in a Blue World! 
    You know a film is going to be bad when there isn't even a cheesy tagline on the box. Director Eloy de la Iglesia made what he calls a "Spanish Clockwork Orange". It must be the only film to rip off another that actually mentions the film it is ripping off! A family sits at home watching TV and after a speech on violence the announcer badly reads off cards and says "Coming up next we have A Clockwork Orange by director Stanley Kubrick - a film about social violence." They even have the picture of Stanley from the 1/72 cover of Newsweek on the screen!?
    What the hell was anyone thinking!? This film is a total piece of trash. I had heard of this film marketed as "A Clockwork Terror" - a shameful attempt at pretending to be an ACO sequel. With that in mind I just had to see what it was about. To even remotely compare this to ACO is just absurd. It's not even a GOOD rip-off!  It is really only a bad horror movie with an ACO wannabe plot wrapped around it. It could've been an OK grade Z low budget flick if it wasn't so poorly acted. Sue Lyon became world famous in Lolita, but never went anywhere from there. At this point she still had her looks, but the director doesn't even let her use them. Instead they try to show off her acting by having her play all these different characters to lure her victims. There are no spicy sex scenes or even nudity. The grisly murders are all tamed down and off camera.
    Chris Mitchum is easily one of the all-time worst actors to hit the screen. His performance was totally phoned in. His big scene is the Mr. Alexander "Surprise Visit" ACO rip-off. While the guys beat and rape the woman, again off camera. He takes his whip to the place!? Yawn. Why whips anyway? Doesn't seem too futuristic to me. The outfits the "droogs" have is the best part. Black leather and red motorcycle helmets, and they don't ride bikes! Yes, they even wear the helmets inside with the red visors down. Even funnier is the orange dune buggy the guys drive around with the menacing Dukes of Hazzard horn!
    I wish I could say it was a funny film to watch, but it is not. The scenes with Anna and the Dr. going around talking endlessly are so boring, I suppose you could edit it all down and just keep the horror stuff to save this movie, but it still would be bad. There is no explanation on how this humanitarian nurse got the whacked out idea to kill people while they were happy. Some insight into her background and what made her this way would've been helpful.
    The fact that Anna kept all these trophies of her victims in the big unlocked crate in the basement was such an incredibly weak plot device.  The buggy chase scene was totally out of place in the film and went on way too long plus the ending was totally screwed up. I have no idea what that was about. A big message about trying to cure violence is impossible or something? I could go on about how awful the movie is, but why bother? I wonder if they even saw ACO at all when they made it? It came out only around a year later, so it had to have been made very quickly. Probably they were making some awful film anyway and then threw in the scenes with gang to make it seem like ACO. Bottom line is that there is absolutely no reason at all to watch this film. It sucks in every way and the worst part is that it is just plain boring with barely any unintentional laughs, like a bad Italian horror film shot in a dark cave. Worst of all it took five people to write this torture of the damned!?

Rating: 0/10

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