Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #151856 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-03-21
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, Dubbed, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Italian
• Subtitled in: English
• Dubbed in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 100 minutes

Amazon.com
Chilly blond Mimsy Farmer is an Italian medical student who has disturbing visions of the waking dead during a rash of grotesque suicides. She works in a morgue where every living man in her orbit hits on her and one coworker even tries to rape her ("You can't blame a guy for trying. Nothing turns on a man more than an icy woman," comforts an oh-so understanding boyfriend). Barry Primus is an angry priest with a dark past and anger-management issues (he screams, "I've killed many others and I'll kill you too," while beating a man's skull into the pavement). The apparent cause of the suicide hit parade is extreme sunspot activity (each death is punctuated with fiery images of solar flares), but when victims close to Farmer start dropping from high-rise windows, the picture twists into a murder mystery with a gallery of sleazy and shady suspects. Director Armando Crispino fills in the edges with unending images of death, shocking violence, and gratuitous nudity, creating an intermittently stylish but often bluntly exploitative horror mystery. Shorn of 15 minutes when it debuted in American theaters in the mid-1970s, the sex and violence has been completely restored for video. One short scene is in Italian with English subtitles, due to missing soundtrack materials, while the rest is dubbed in English. Ennio Morricone provides a suitably strange mix of atonal stings and lovely melodies. --Sean Axmaker

Mondo Digital
"A Twisted, Unconventional Giallo Packed With Creepy Set Pieces And A Truly Novel Setting!"

Customer Reviews

AUTOPSY WITH A BLUNT SCALPEL
this so-so "giallo" was directed by ARMANDO CRISPINO, not Josè Marìa Forquè. Set during a sizzling Roman summer, "Autopsy" opens with a grim montage sequence depicting various people committing suicide/homicide. Straight after this we are plunged into a startling episode at the central morgue: as overwrought heroine Mimsy Farmer looks round, grotesquely leering corpses seem to come to life and get up from the slabs. Powerful stuff, but unfortunately the rest of the movie doesn't come up with anything to top it. What follows is an involved, but not very interesting murder mystery, fleshed out with exclusively unlikeable characters - Farmer included - and occasional touches of cruelty. Certain scenes - the deadly trap in the crime museum, for example - are effectively suspenseful, but the tricksy narrative outstays it's welcome long before the 100 minute running time is up. Picture quality, however, is excellent and the DVD includes a trailer for the film under it's official export title, "The Victim". If you're new to the "giallo" and are looking to build up a good collection on DVD, invest your money in films like "The Girl Who Knew Too Much", "Blood and Black Lace", "The Bird With The Crystal Plumage", "Deep Red" and "Torso". "Autopsy" is passable entertainment, but hardly essential.

Murder Mystery Marketed as Horror Film
"Autopsy - A Chilling Slab of Unspeakable Horror"

Or so we read on the box of this DVD. Of Italian origin and first released in 1973 as "Macchie Solari", Autopsy has not aged well as a horror movie. Interestingly, I believe the original title referred to suns spots, which are a recurring theme in the movie.

Autopsy starts brilliantly depicting a number of suicides that invariably end up in the autopsy room, where we meet the protagonist played by Mimsy Farmer. Mimsy is studying forensic medicine and writing a thesis on how to distinguish between real and fake suicides. Something happens and Mimsy begins to see the cadavers moving around.

After this promising opening, the movie strays away from the moving cadavers and turns into a murder mystery. A young woman that Mimsy briefly meets in her apartment is found dead in what appears to be a suicide. However, dead woman's brother (played by Barry Primus) is convinced that it was murder.

Eventually, Mimsy realizes that the dead woman's brother, who is also a priest, is correct. By then, other suicides/murders start occurring around her, and even she becomes the target of one attempt. Suddenly, she doesn't know if she can trust the priest, her father, her father's business associate, her boyfriend (who also is a target of a murder attempt) or even herself.

By now, this movie is no longer a horror film. Instead, it has become a classic who-dunnit film, with occasional sunspot flare- ups depicted a certain intervals. Surprisingly, the mystery is actually well-done. Agatha Christie couldn't have written a better murder mystery.

Why the movie was titled Autopsy in English is beyond me. Scully and Mulder (X-Files) spend more time in the morgue than do Mimsy and Barry. Furthermore, the autopsies in the X-Files are sometimes even more graphic than in this movie. I can only speculate that the studios felt that "Autopsy" would draw more movie-goers than "Sun Spots". On the subject of sun spots, the movie tries to suggest a relationship between sun spots and suicides, which doesn't really fit into the murder mystery.

Overall, it is an excellent movie-if you like mysteries. But a horror movie it is not, certainly not one of "unspeakable horror".

A Masterpiece!!! (You have to be a little twisted though)!
O.K. First of all, what is up with the bad reviews for this movie? If you are into hilarious dialog, wigs, hilarious dialog about wigs, mannequins, gore, trippy visuals, incestuous innuendo, sex, bitchy cat fighting between characters and movies that are totally weird, unsettling and need a couple viewings to really savor all the aforementioned details then this is your movie. If not, then check out the latest blockbusters playing at your local theater. For those of us that are into this stuff, this is HIGHLY recommended, a 1000 stars out of 5. Also recommended: The Baby (1973), Liquid Sky (1983), The Antichrist (1974), Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1983), early 80's Lucio Fulci gore (City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, House by the Cemetery). If you see these, prepare to leave your sanity behind!!!