The Killer Is One of 13

Owing an obvious and massive debt to the work of Agatha Christie, The Killer Is One of 13 isn’t as gory or hyper-violent as a lot of giallo pictures are but it’s a decent enough mystery film in its own right. It never feels wholly original, probably because the influence of Christie’s work is so very obvious here, but it makes good use of an interesting cast.

Helmed by a Klimovsky runner up, Javier Aguirre (who directed Count Dracula’s Great Love and Hunchback of the Morgue along with this film all the same year), it’s advertised here as a riff on Agatha Christie’s pioneering body count classic Ten Little Indians—which is accurate as far as the set up goes, though the story veers off in its own direction after that. The real draw here is an absolutely insane cast of Spanish cult movie staples all gathered together for what feels like a Fantasy Island episode for the Euro horror crowd, complete with a rousing final half hour when the gory murders start to fly fast and furious.