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| “ | Now you're going to die. You're going to die! You're going to die like all the others. | „ |
| ~ Monica Ranieri to Sam Dalmas |
Monica Raineri is the main antagonist of the 1970 giallo film The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, the first installment of Dario Argento's Animal Trilogy.
While outwardly the demure wife of a successful art gallery owner, she is in truth a serial killer who, with the help of her compliant husband, targets women over a month-long period while assuming the identity of a madman who had previously assaulted her.
She was played by Eva Renzi and was loosely based on Bessie Wilson, the main antagonist of Fredric Brown's 1949 novel The Screaming Mimi.
Biography[]
Past[]
Monica's assault, as painted by Berto Consalvi
Monica, a native of Alviano born with paranoid tendencies, was attacked by a maniac who attempted to eviscerate her. She survived the assault and repressed the incident from her mind, while the attacker was permanently committed to an asylum. The brutality of the attack inspired local artist Berto Consalvi, who saved Monica, to paint a picture of it.
Monica eventually married Alberto Ranieri, the owner of an art gallery, and moved to an appartment in Rome close to the zoo. Ten years after her ordeal, while browsing through an antique store, she saw Consalvi's painting and suffered a mental breakdown, taking on the persona of her attacker.
Donning a black overcoat and hat in imitation of the madman who attacked her, Monica's first victim, the lesbian antique store salesgirl who sold her the painting, was lured to a park and stabbed to death. The second victim was a prostitute, killed under a bridge. Her pimp, Garullo, was subsequently arrested on suspicion, but was acquitted and instead imprisoned for sex trafficking. Monica's third victim was a student on her way home from the cinema.
Alberto eventually found out about his wife's actions, but opted to enable her crimes, subsequently sharing in her psychosis and becoming her accomplice.
Present[]
Monica after accidentally injuring herself
A month after her first murder, Monica attacks Alberto in their art gallery whilst he is wearing her disguise. During the struggle, Monica accidentally stabs herself with her own knife, and her husband flees the scene. The incident is witnessed by American writer Sam Dalmas, who mistakenly believes that Monica was the victim. Alberto, whom Dalmas does not recognise as the dark figure he saw that night, continues to refrain from reporting his wife.
After leaving hospital, Monica immediately continues her murder spree, killing a 28-year-old woman in her appartment. During her absence, Alberto refuses to allow Dalmas, who is now assisting the Polizia di Stato, to interrogate Monica, claiming she needs time to recover from her ordeal. Alberto sends the hitman Er Siringa to kill Dalmas, but the attempt is unsuccessful, and Alberto murders the hired killer.
Both Monica and Alberto make anonymous phonecalls to the police and to Dalmas, threatening to kill the latter's girlfriend Julia if he continues to involve himself in the case. However, both phonecalls are recorded, thus allowing the police to determine that they are hunting two killers. The second call in particular includes the sounds of a Hornitus nevalis specimen kept in the zoo near the Ranieri's abode, though the significance of this is not realized at the time. One of the two killers attempts to murder Julia in her appartment, but is unable to break in, and is thus forced to flee when Dalmas returns.
Monica traps Sam Dalmas
Eventually, the background sound of the previously recorded phonecall is identified and Dalmas accompanies the police to the zoo, where they hear the sounds of a struggle coming from the Ranieri residence. There, Monica is once again struggling with Alberto who, while attempting to evade capture, falls off the balcony and is seriously injured. He confesses to all murders before dying, still refusing to mention his wife's involvement.
Monica, feigning shock over the event, is invited by Julia to her appartment. There, Monica murders Dalmas' friend Carlo and ties Julia up. Once Dalmas returns, Monica reveals her true nature and leads him to the art gallery, where she pins Dalmas beneath a bronze sculpture. She taunts him with a knife, but is arrested before she can land the killing blow. She is subsequently institutionalized and her case discussed on national television.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
| “ | Being a killer, I'd like to have more space and evolve. Why is this woman? Is she a psychopath? What is behind? I wasn't. I was just a piece, an instrument in black leather, asthmatic, holding the knife with black hand shoes, and in the end discovered being a killer. So what? I mean, how to kill a career! | „ |
| ~ Eva Renzi[1] |
- Eva Renzi was originally meant to star in House of Cards, but was threatened with divorce should she have participated in it by her husband Paul Hubschmid, who considered the subject matter "shit". She accepted the role of Monica Ranieri shortly after for purely financial reasons, and only watched the movie twenty years after its release. She admitted to crying upon seeing it, blaming it for ruining her career.[1]
- Renzi would state on interview that she received no guidance on how to flesh out the character's motivations, and retrospectively speculated that Monica was a sexually frustrated lesbian who had been the victim of male abuse.[1]
- There are some notable differences between Monica Ranieri and Bessie Wilson, the character's novel counterpart in Fredric Brown's The Screaming Mimi: In the novel, set in the USA rather than Italy, Bessie's brother Charlie shot and killed her assailant, but she was institutionalized as a result of the trauma. Her psychiatrist, Dr Green, fell in love with her and faked her death before leaving the hospital with her, becoming her agent at a nightclub where Bessie would perform as a dancer under the pseudonym "Yolanda". In the novel, the work of art that would cause her relapse is a statue depicting her called "Screaming Mimi", sculpted by her own brother after her attack, causing her to lash out at any woman who resembles her. Most other details follow the film's arc relatively closely, with Bessie's first victim being an antique shop assistant and Dr Green confessing to her murders in order to absolve her.
- In Nanni Balestrini's novelization of the film, published in the 1994 thriller anthology Profondo thrilling, Monica's character is given additional depth, having been born Monica Bertini in Monforte on November 2 1947. Her killing spree is written as an attempt on her part to exorcise the trauma she suffered, and her torture of Dalmas near the story's end is described as a result of her hallucinating him as the same madman who had attacked her. Prior to Monica being unmasked, Julia (renamed Movita in the novelization) reveals that she feels uneasy around her, hypothesizing that she is a repressed lesbian.
See also[]
- Dr. Casoni, second villain of the Animal Trilogy
- Nina Tobias, third villain of the Animal Trilogy