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Don Paolo D'Archangelo is the hidden main antagonist of the giallo film The Bloodstained Shadow. Paolo is the brother of Stefano D'Archangelo, as well as the killer of a Catholic girl from more than a decade ago. When he was being blackmailed and threatened as the only witness to a separate murder, he resumed killing, targeting everyone he suspected was threatening him.
He's portrayed by the late Craig Hill.
Biography[]
For reasons unknown, Paolo strangled the school girl, Andreani more than a decade before the events of the film. His little brother Stefano witnessed the crime when he was just a boy, but either from Paolo's threats for Stefano's denial, Stefano sublimated the memory for years. Paolo retreated into his duties as a priest in hopes he'd do some good to balance out the consequences of his crime. Around the time Stefano, now a professional artist, returned to Venice to visit Don, a local medium was strangled to death. She presided over seances also partaken in by Count Pedrazzi, a pedophilic nobleman; Dr. Aloisi, a local physician with a gambling problem; and Elizabeth Nardi, a local illegal abortionist with a reclusive invalid son. Paolo was the only witness to the murder, in spite of not seeing the killer, and he was too late to save the medium. Stefano began having flashbacks of the schoolgirl's murder from the medium's murder being uncanny in M.O.
After the medium's home is broken into to steal material she was blackmailing the killer with, Paolo realized one of the ne'er-do-wells she associated with was the killer. The killer feared this, so she sent death threats from a typewriter and a skinned lamb head placed in Paolo's church to harass him into silence. Paolo wouldn't tolerate that, so he set out killing the suspects, impaling Pedrazzi with one of his own halberds and drowning Aloisi. In addition, Paolo knew the stepmother of Stefano's girlfriend, Sandra Sellani, had a painting of Andreani's murder in her house. When he tried to break in and destroyed it, the woman woke up, so Paolo burned her in her own fireplace.
Knowing Nardi was the only suspect left, and thus the killer of the medium, Paolo was in more danger to her wrath, which she enacted on by loosening a wire holding up a marble statue of Christ in the church. The statue came crashing down and nearly killed Paolo. Paolo bought time by breaking into Sandra's house to steal a printed copy of the painting in her scrapbooks. When she heard him, she was near being murdered by him, but he swiftly escaped instead. But by the time Nardi made a move to stab Paolo, which didn't kill him. Paolo retaliated by slashing her throat in her home. Her invalid son tried to strangle Paolo in grief, but Stefano knocked him out, and he was take into custody to be committed. In spite of Paolo hoping the man would be his patsy, Stefano realized with Paolo and Nardi being aware Andreani had a torn page from a notebook, which Paolo stole from her since it was evidence against him, that Paolo was the killer. Paolo tried to deny Stefano's deductions, but he confessed to all his crimes in regret. When he hallucinated all the victims, he had a mental breakdown, ran to the top of the church's bell tower, and, despite Stefano's pleas, committed suicide by jumping.
Gallery[]
