How many titles can one film have?

This Antonio Margheriti-directed and Mario Bava-penned giallo started out as Cry Nightmare . . . then became Nude . . . si muore, aka Naked . . . You Die. Then there’s The Young, the Evil, and the Savage (which stinks; sounds like a Rock Hudson jungle-romance flick). Then, when it hit the U.S. market and got some chops to the celluloid, it became Nude, She Dies, and the really sleazy and offensive, Schoolgirl Killer (but it’s not as sleazy as the title implies).

Antonio Margheriti did it all: Biblical Sand & Sandal flicks, horror flicks (Castle of Blood and The Long Hair of Death), Clint Eastwood western rips, James Bond rips (Lightning Bolt), Charles Bronson bad-ass cop rips (Death Rage), Indiana Jones rips (The Ark of the Sun God), and space opera rips (Yor, the Hunter from the Future). He even ripped off George Romero with Cannibal Apocalypse. And he did giallo flicks: this, Web of the Spider, and Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye.

This whatever-title-you-want-to-use “who done it” wastes no time in breaking out the black-gloved killer with a POV strangulation of a woman in a bubble bath—and those hands stuff her body in a large trunk for disposal. But, through a series of circumstances, the trunk ends up at St. Hilda’s College (thus, the Schoolgirl Killer moniker), an exclusive and remote (these schools, clinics, chateaus, etc. must be remote) finishing school. Closed down for the holidays, seven girls (the favored number of giallo films) remain; one stumbles into the killer in the school’s basement when he attempts to retrieve the trunk.

When Michael Rennie’s (The Day the Earth Stood Still) Inspector Durand shows up to investigate this “disappearance,” the suspicions and accusations fly among the students, staff and teachers—e.g., the ubiquitous creepy gardener, the horny swim instructor, Mrs. Clay, the new French summer school teacher, a nutty professor who collects birds (all giallo flicks must even the slightest animal angle), and the always-ready-to-hop-in-the-sack hot teacher played by Mark Damon of Hannah, Queen of the Vampires.

You can watch the Nude, She Dies version of the trailer on You Tube.

If you want this on DVD, it’s readily available, but caveat those run times: you want the Italian version which runs at 98 minutes.

You can watch the full movie for free on You Tube.

There’s another perspective on this film with a May 20, 2022, review as part of our latest week of Mario Bava and Antonio Margheriti film tributes.

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.