The Monster (1977) Blu-ray Review

Radiance Films

Blu-ray Release: October 20, 2026

Video: 1:85:1/1080p/Color

Audio: Italian LPCM 1.0

Subtitles: English

Run Time: 99:44

Director: Luigi Zampa

Valerio (Johnny Dorelli) is a struggling reporter with a failed marriage and withdrawn son, Luca (Enzo Santaniello). He is angry at the world and strives for more. In the newspaper's mail, he receives the opportunity he's been waiting for: a serial killer announces and later carries out a series of grisly murders. Valerio remorselessly uses this opportunity to improve his position and standing, but will he draw himself too close to the killer? (From Radiance’s official synopsis)

Sergio Donati was among the unsung founders of the spaghetti western movement, responsible for script-doctoring duties on Sergio Leone’s For a Few Dollars More (Italian: Per qualche dollaro in più, 1965) and, based on unverified rumors, possibly A Fistful of Dollars (Italian: Per un pugno di dollari, 1964), as well as Leone’s co-scripter on Once Upon a Time in the West (Italian: C'era una volta il West, 1968), where he was brought on to make sense of Bernardo Bertolucci & Dario Argento’s original story treatment. He was also an instrumental creative force behind the Zapata western subgenre, co-writting Sergio Sollima’s The Big Gundown (Italian: La Resa dei Conti, 1966) and Face to Face (Italian: Faccia a faccia, 1967), and Leone’s Duck, You Sucker! (Italian: Giù la testa; aka: A Fistful of Dynamite, 1971).

Some time in the early 1970s, Donati began prep on his directorial debut, a thriller entitled The Monster (Italian: ll mostro)*. Early in production, he was forced to heavily alter his original treatment at the behest of star Gian Maria Volonté**, who wanted to elevate the political themes and reference the ongoing real-world criminal case of Pietro Valpreda – a convicted terrorist dubbed “il mostro di Piazza Fontana” by tabloids. Eventually, Donati either left the project (or was fired, depending on the source), card-carrying Communist Marco Bellocchio took over as director, and The Monster metamorphosed into an exposé on propaganda and corruption in the news media entitled Slap the Monster on Page One (Italian: Sbatti il mostro in prima pagina, 1972)***.

Five years later, veteran director Luigi Zampa revisited Donati’s script under its original title, The Monster (1977), turning it into an acidic satire couched in the trappings of giallo murder mystery. Unlike the writer's previous giallo, the sardonic Agatha Christie pastiche The Weekend Murders (Italian: Concerto per pistola solista, 1970; directed by Michele Lupo, co-written by Fabio Pittorru & Massimo Felisatti), The Monster is an openly confrontational cultural critique – one every bit as pessimistic as Face to Face and Duck, You Sucker.

The Monster has faint hints of the Marxist ideals at the heart of Donati’s Zapata westerns, but its larger target is the commodification of violence in news media, a subject that was just as relevant in 1977 as it had been in 1972, at the onset of the Years of Lead (Anni di piombo). This was actually one of the few aspects of Donati’s original Il mostro script that made it all the way through production of Slap the Monster on Page One, though Bellocchio’s film is more focused on the specifics of unethical journalists attempting to sway political ideology.

The Monster rarely acts as a sincere thriller – the only murder set-pieces is a scene from Luciano Ercoli’s Death Walks on High Heels (Italian: Italian: La morte cammina con i tacchi alti, 1971) that Valerio and his son are watching at the beginning of the film**** – but is an astute dissection of the genre’s deep-seated tropes, from roaming POV camera shots to red herrings and police procedural nonsense. The plot alludes to Argento’s post-Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Italian: L'Uccello dalle piume di cristallo, 1970) formula, in which an amateur detective becomes obsessed with a mystery, putting themselves and their loved ones in danger, but, unlike Argento’s protagonists, Valerio is a misanthrope who only really cares about the clout and attention he gets for reporting on the murders, not stopping them. 

The critique expands beyond the news to other media. The paper’s comic department prepares sketches of a fumetti neri-styled masked vigilante inspired by the killer for their 8 to 12 audience and a leather-clad BDSM femme fatale for their ‘older readers.’ A cosmetic company learns that the killer is using their product to mark his victims and approaches Valerio, hoping to cash in. Later, a pop starlet records a song based on the murders and stages paparazzi photos with Valerio. In the end, The Monster is so steeped in cynicism that it’s not really clear if the filmmakers are criticizing violent entertainment or simply poking fun at the absurdity of it. Either way, the denouement is a hell of a dramatic gut punch.

Zampa’s credits as writer and director date back to the ‘30s, including Telefoni Bianchi (‘white-telephone’) comedies, neorealist dramas, and various commedia all'italiana. He managed to avoid the peplum, western, and giallo fads up to the point that he signed onto The Monster. He made one other film, Tigers in Lipstick (Italian: Letti selvaggi, 1979), then retired, leaving behind an oeuvre of over 40 motion pictures.

Lead Johnny Dorelli (born: Giorgio Guidi) was a popular jazz and easy listening crooner that had, up until then, appeared almost exclusively in commedia all'italiana, including Steno’s How to Kill 400 Duponts (Italian: Arrriva Dorellik, 1967) and Mario Mattoli’s Toto, Peppino and the Fanatics (Italian: Totò, Peppino e le fanatiche, 1958).

* The title is a reference to I mostri (aka: Opiate '67), a hit 1963 commedia all'italiana anthology from genre pioneer Dino Risi. Specifically, the first of twenty episodes, L'educazione sentimentale. To describe the connection further might spoil the ending of The Monster.

** Gian Maria Volonté, like Donati, greatly benefited from the success of Leone’s early westerns, having appeared in both Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. He also starred in Damiano Damiani’s Bullet for the General (Italian: Quien Sabe?, 1966) and Solinas’ Donati-scripted Face to Face.

*** Slap the Monster on Page One was also recently released by Radiance Films. I finally got around to watching it in order to compare/contrast it with The Monster and was met with a sobering and depressingly relevant film that I highly recommend seeking out.

**** Valerio spitefully spoils Death Walks on High Heels for a nosy woman returning to the theater after an intermission and, in turn, any viewer who hadn’t already seen Ercoli’s film. 

Bibliography

• Giallo & Thrilling All'Italiana – 1931-1983 by Antonio Bruschini and Stefano Piselli (Glittering Images, 2010)

• Italian Giallo in Film and Television: A Critical History by Roberto Curti (McFarland, 2022) – All information about The Monster’s ties to Slap the Monster on Page One are from this fantastic book.

Video

The Monster has never been officially released on stateside home video. The closest thing I could find was a rip of the Italian DVD with homemade English subtitles. There was also an Italian language HDTV airing and an Italian exclusive Blu-ray with zero English subtitles from Oblivion Film. Radiance Films’ disc art touts an exclusive new 2K restoration of the original film negative and is presented in 1080p, 1:85:1.

Mario Vulpiani’s cinematography incorporates a lot of natural lighting, leading to cushy blends, raw exteriors, and moody interiors. Edges are defined without being particularly sharp. The film’s stylistic trademark is interior medium shots with elevated lighting schemes that cast soft, low character shadows against the walls, which are then contrasted with super-bright fluorescent lighting and dark nighttime shots. There are some diffused, soft focus flashbacks, too, which kick up a lot of grit, but, otherwise, grain levels are moderate and film-based artefacts are limited to minor spots and scratches. Colors are also typically naturalistic, including cool shades, earthy hues, and the occasional red or blue highlight.

Audio

The Monster is presented in its original Italian and uncompressed LPCM mono sound. As per usual, it was shot without on-set sound, so any language version is dubbed and there will be lip sync and performance quality issues throughout. There’s a little high volume distortion, but no notable condition or compression issues. Ennio Morricone’s music is, expectedly, a highlight, though not as jazzy and melodic as the more famous giallo scores he composed for Argento, Lucio Fulci, Luigi Bazzoni, Aldo Lado, and others. The main title is sort of his take on the Jaws (1975) theme and similar to the pulsing pianos he used for his Untouchables (1987) theme.

Extras

• Commentary with Rachael Nisbet and Peter Jilmstad – The co-hosts of the Fragments of Fear podcast explore The Monster’s production history, its mixed approach to genre filmmaking, the state of Italian politics when it was made, various themes, tabloid journalism, references to other motion pictures and literature, and the wider careers of the cast & crew.

• Richard Dyer on The Monster (33:46, HD) – The critic and author of The Culture of Queers (Routledge, 2001) discusses the film, the meaning of its title, connections to the Years of Lead, star Johnny Dorelli’s career, and stylistic changes in political filmmaking throughout post-WWII Italy.

• Head Bent Forward (43:50, HD) – A 2022 retrospective documentary by Freak-O-Rama, made for Oblivion Films’ BD, featuring actors Sydne Rome, Renato Scarpa, and Enzo Santaniello, along with make-up artist Pierantonio Mecacci. It includes original promotional footage with Dorelli and clips from the film that might represent the Oblivion Film’s transfer quality.

• Theatrical trailer

The images on this page are taken from the Blu-ray and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.