Sylvia Hacherman (Mimsy Farmer, FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET) is a young workaholic chemist living alone in an old apartment building in Rome (the exterior facade of which later showed up prominently in the Rome sequence of Dario Argento's INFERNO). When she attends a party with her geologist boyfriend Roberto (Maurizio Bonuglia, TOP SENSATION/THE SEDUCERS) for African university professor Andy (Jho Jenkins, SHAFT IN AFRICA), she is unnerved when the talk turns to black magic and human sacrifice. She is further unnerved when she subsequently pricks her finger on a nail while playing tennis with Andy, Roberto, and neighbor Francesca (Donna Jordan, L'AMOUR). When Roberto goes away for a week, Sylvia starts to have hallucinations involving her dead mother and her perverted lover. Francesca drags Sylvia to a party where a blind psychic (Nike Arrighi, THE DEVIL'S OWN) recounts the drowning death of Sylvia's sailor father and the mysterious death of her mother. Sylvia's apartment is then invaded by a malicious younger version of herself (Lara Wendel, TENEBRE) who tells her that everyone else is evil and out to get her. When Francesca mysteriously dies, Sylvia retreats into isolation. When she discovers that her mother's lover Nicola (Orazio Orlando, POLICEWOMAN) has been spying on her, she believes the answer may lie in her traumatic past, but the solution may be something more sinister and shocking.

Although she started out as an AIP contract player in the sixties, Farmer found much of her success abroad starting with Barbet Schroder's MORE and George Lautner's ROAD TO SALINA. Having already played father-obsessed, paranoid neurotics in Dario Argento's FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET and Armando Crispino's AUTOPSY, she was perfect for director Francesco Barilli's riff on ROSEMARY'S BABY (with a dash of REPULSION) and she's up to the task of this semi-one-woman-show. Although Farmer shares the screen with an interesting supporting cast, the script dials back characterization on most of them since they are seen through Sylvia's distorted worldview (the film also shows her friends, colleagues, and strangers she has encountered engaged in vague, sinister interactions outside of her awareness, but this may too be part of her delusion). Oscar winner Nicola Piovani's score recalls Krzysztof Komeda's score for the Polanski film, weaving a lullaby that is anything but soothing throughout several cues in different arrangements. Barilli's only other genre directorial effort PENSIONE PAURA is only available on Italian DVD without English options (Barilli - along with Lucio Fulci - contributed to the scenario of Giuseppe Petroni Griffi's erotic thriller LA GABBIA/THE TRAP [1985] with Tony Musante, Florinda Bolkan, and Laura Antonelli).