With all the lovely women in this Italian Giallo
and the copious amount of nudity, I feel almost guilty only giving it a four
and a half, but it is a pretty bad movie. Most of the blame lays I expect
with the director, Ferdinando Merighi, who seems to think that naked breasts
and grisly murders are enough to get by. And sometimes it is. But the film
generates little tension which for a serial killer film is the kiss of death.
But the women? Well much of it takes place in a French bordello run by Madame
Collette portrayed by Anita Ekberg (La Dolce Vita) and she has good taste
in employees. It is a classy bordello and the women reflect that.
A hothead named Antoine (Peter Martell)
falls in love with one of the girls and when she doesn't reciprocate he beats
her up and leaves. They later find her dead body. Ok, fine except she is being
played by the lovely Barbara Bouchet of the Finely Chiseled Face. You
have Barbara Bouchet in your cast and you kill her off in the first ten minutes?
Are you crazy. There are still a few girls to spare though. Antoine is easily
caught and sentenced to be guillotined. He swears he didn't do it and promises
revenge from beyond the grave. He escapes though but in the chase he ends
up being guillotined anyways. And there goes his head like a fly ball to
centerfield.
Then people begin to be murdered and I
admit a few of them were nicely set up and shot with the head here and the
body way over there, a sword through the gut, a throat cut. Another one of
the women in the film is Rosalba Neri - she is jet fuel for the undersexed.
Howard Vernon, veteran of more genre European films than I can count plays
a professor and an over protective father to his daughter. This was a nice
surprise as she is played by Evelyne Kraft.
You may ask who? Evelyn Kraft - legend
of a sort in none other than Hong Kong for one cult film - The Mighty Peking
Man. This is her debut. Who would have thought she would go on to greatness.
Here she is playing an innocent sweet daughter who is one of the few to keep
her clothes on. But the strangest casting is of the Inspector. I thought he
looked a lot like Humphrey Bogart. An Italian Bogart. Nope, he was the American
actor Robert Sacchi, who made a career out of his resemblance to Bogart -
the film The Man with Bogart's Face - that's him. The acting is bad - all
the actors coming from different nations - so it is badly dubbed, the pacing
is poor, it really makes no sense and no one seems to notice the cop looks
just like Bogart.. Too bad because the ingredients were here for a good Giallo.
Ingredients being defined as some stunning women willing to be murdered.
