Rino Di Silvestro said, “Sex is a natural thing, but it’s also something that gives you an uncontrollable desire, like murder for the serial killer who begs to be caught. We have an irresistible desire to make sex.”

He lived up to this because his movies were pretty much as scummy as it gets. I say this with no small amount of admiration. I mean, the guy made Women In Cell Block 7, Werewolf Woman, Deported Women of the SS Special Section, Baby Love, Bello di mamma, Hanna D. – La ragazza del Vondel Park and The Erotic Dreams of Cleopatra.

He directed and wrote this, which was also released as The Red Light Girls, Love Angels, Sex Slayer  and Street Angels. It begins with Giselle (Gabriella Lepori, Five Women for the Killer) conducting her business — the world’s oldest — as another man watches. She soon stabbed and we see her dead body on the slab of a morgue. Her fiancee Michele (Elio Zamuto) had no idea she was a roadside prostitute.

Inspector Macaluso (Aldo Giuffre) leads the cops in the investigation, but mostly the movie introduces us to slices of life in the dark streets of Italy, like when Benedetta (Orchidea de Santis, The Killer Wore Gloves) is raped by a biker gang, which causes another gang to hunt them and murder their lead with, well, a beer bottle inserted in exactly where you think its going to be shoved in.  There’s also a Satanic john, which I found funny, but it’s like almost as if the movie forgot that it was a giallo.

Did you know that Italian sex workers all hung out at a campfire and had parties when they weren’t working? Well, Di Silvestro did and according to Hysteria Lives, he got fan mail from the ladies he was depicting because of how realistic this movie was.

Also appearing: Krista Nell (So Sweet, So Dead — another giallo that has a secondary version called Penetration that has inserts…just like this film), Magda Konopfka (Satanik), Felicita Fanny (also in the director’s Werewolf Woman and Deported Women of the SS Special Section) and Lucrezia Love (Enter the Devil).

I have no idea why this starts almost like a documentary — a girl interviews on the street says she only fears “syphilis and solitude” — then becomes a dark giallo then is nearly a comedy mixed with soap opera before remembering that there’s a prostitute killer. It’s a mess and exactly what I expected, which is not a criticism. Di Silvestro seems to be trying to shock, upset and entertain you, often all in the same scene.

You can watch this on YouTube.