After nearly strangling his co-star Beryl (Laura Gemser, THE ALCOVE) to death on the set of his latest horror film, actor Michael Stanford (Stefano Patrizi, CONVERSATION PIECE) is overcome with an urge to visit his childhood home where he murdered his composer father William (also Patrizi) as a child. Michael's girlfriend Deborah (Silvia Dionisio, LIVE LIKE A COP DIE LIKE A MAN) is coldly welcomed by his mother Glenda (Anita Strindberg, A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN) - who lives all alone in the villa with her late husband's manservant Oliver (John Richardson, BLACK SUNDAY) - however, she is extremely affectionate with Michael. The next day, Michael's director Hans (Henri Garcin, THE WOMAN NEXT DOOR), assistant director Shirley (Martine Brochard, THE VOYEUR), and Beryl join them to look over the estate for filming locations. That night, strange events start to occur (Deborah has a nightmare where she takes part in a black mass, Hans encounters a sleepwalking Oliver in the foggy woods, and someone tries to drown Beryl in her bath). The next day, Michael, Beryl, Hans, and Shirley drive off to inspect locations. Michael and Beryl sneak off to make love, and Michael wakes up to find that Beryl has been slaughtered with his hunting knife and he has no memory of it. Could he be the wandering presence that has armed itself with a chainsaw and axe to stalk the other inhabitants of the villa?

Riccardo Freda's final film is a somewhat uneven return to the Italian Gothic territory that he briefly mined in the sixties with the memorable THE HORRIBLE DR. HITCHCOCK and THE GHOST (and returned to briefly in the seventies with TRAGIC CEREMONY AT VILLA ALEXANDER). Cristiano Pogany's camera prowls candlelit rooms and views incestuous undercurrents through sheer wall hangings, and Strindberg and Richardson are in fine form; however, the central lovers are uninteresting (although it is regrettable that Dionisio - who was previously married to director Ruggero Deodato [CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST] did not make more genre films), as are the body count fodder characters. Potentially suspenseful sequences are recounted in flashback, preventing the audience from identifying with the perspective characters' fear (including an attempt at a delirious nightmare sequence involving devil worshipers and a giant spider not unlike the imagery of Luigi Batzella's NUDE FOR SATAN, a nudity-filled seventies throwback to sixties Gothic horror). The gore effects - the work of uncredited Angelo Mattei (INFERNO) and Sergio Stivaletti (THE STENDHAL SYNDROME) - compare poorly to those that Carlo Rambaldi (E.T.) fashioned for Freda's TRAGIC CEREMONY (a somewhat similarly-themed Spanish/Italian co-production in which fun-loving teenagers are given shelter in a villa inhabited by devil worshiping aristocrats). Despite its flaws, MURDER OBSESSION is still a worthy viewing with a somewhat sixties Italian horror atmosphere combined with seventies sex and eighties gore