Autopsy is a 1975 giallo film directed by Armando Crispino. Mimsy Farmer stars as pathologist Simona Sanna. Ray Lovelock plays her photographer boyfriend Edgar, and Barry Primus plays Father Paul Lenox. Ennio Morricone provides the music. The original Italian title, Macchie solari, means “sunspots” and refers to unusual solar activity taking place in Rome during the film.
Simona is a pathologist doing an internship in a morgue in Rome, while writing a Master’s thesis on distinguishing authentic from simulated suicides. Rome is having an extremely hot summer, marked by both unusual solar activity - and a flood of suicides. (Though it’s not stated within the film, there is a belief that solar activity can cause an increase in suicides.)
Overworked, and stressed by difficult personal relationships (her boyfriend Edgar, pressuring her for sex; the creepy morgue coworker Ivo who also makes passes at her; her playboy father Gianni) Simona has reached the point of sporadic hallucinations.
One night, while working at home, Simona has a brief interaction with a red-headed woman coming from her father’s upstairs apartment. The next day, a blonde woman shows up in the morgue as an apparent suicide. Around the same time, Simona realizes she met the woman when she was wearing a wig, and a priest named Paul Lenox shows up, claiming that the dead woman was his sister - and that she didn’t commit suicide.
Autopsy contains examples of:
- Blackmail: The reason Edgar kills Gianni: He was in possession of a will that would prevent Edgar from inheriting his father’s money.
- Booby Trap: Simona discovers what purports to be her own suicide note, claiming she’s going to end her life in Room 13 of the museum she’s currently in. When she enters that room to investigate … a shotgun trap nearly gets her.
- Chekhov's Gun: Paul’s medication for seizures. Apparently it’s what allows him to overcome the paralytic injection the killer gives him.
- Creepy Mortician: The morgue attendant Ivo feels up female corpses, not to mention sexually harassing Simona. He later attempts to rape Simona in the morgue.
- Fan Disservice: The first person we see in the movie is an attractive, totally nude blonde woman. Just before she commits suicide. Out of many naked bodies we see in the movie, only four are alive when we see them.
- Hot for Preacher: Simona starts falling for Father Paul Lenox, and pleads with him in the confessional to put aside his vows and be with her. He doesn’t. Later invoked when Edgar tries to stage their deaths in a double suicide.
- Prank Gone Too Far: Ivo tells Simona there is another suicide she needs to look at. Simona screams when she finds her boyfriend Edgar under the sheet - who starts waggling his tongue at her.
- Rage Breaking Point: Several people died in the accident Paul Lenox had at Le Mans. As the caretaker learns, harassing him over it is a bad idea.
