‘Buy yourself a straitjacket; you’ll need one in the asylum.’
A philandering husband accidentally witnesses a killer disposing of the body of one of his victims. Rather than report him to the police, he offers him money to take on a little job that he wants done…
Slightly off-brand Giallo enterprise from director Luigi Cozzi. George Hilton, Antoine Saint-John and Femi Benussi star in a far more grounded case of murder and mayhem than most contemporary examples.
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There’s trouble in paradise for businessman Giorgio Mainardi (Hilton) and wealthy wife Norma (Tere Velázquez). She’s getting a little fed up with intercepting his phone calls at home from other women and threatens to pull the rug out from under his playboy lifestyle. He protests his innocence but has to go out on business, which just happens to involve finding a quiet phone booth on the dockside. Before he can make his call, however, he sees a killer (Saint-John) bundling a girl’s corpse into a car and pushing it into the water. A few minutes later, he’s negotiating a contract on his wife.
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Saint-John poses as one of Hilton’s business colleagues and rings the couple’s doorbell in the early hours one morning. Of course, only Velázquez is home, with Hilton busy building an iron-clad alibi by telling bad jokes at a party. The deed is done, and Velázquez safely deposited in the trunk of Saint John’s car. Unfortunately, while he’s finishing up inside the house, the car is jacked by joyrider Luca (Alessio Orano) and his girlfriend, Laura (Cristina Galbó). Saint-John steals a car off the street and gives chase. Arriving home later, Hilton finds a Police Inspector (Eduardo Fajardo), who was summoned to the scene by the victims of the car theft but is now far more interested in Hilton’s open front door and the signs of a struggle inside.
Rather than provide the usual guessing game of ‘who is the killer?’, director and co-writer Cozzi gives the audience no mystery to solve in this entry. He’s far more interested in conjuring suspense than creating extravagant camera angles or showcasing clever story twists. This more grounded approach is evident from the get-go as he teases a few glimpses of Saint-John at work before presenting some well-lit close-ups of his face. His identity is not significant to the film in any way; it’s so incidental that he doesn’t even get a character name, and we never find out anything about him.
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The drama is divided into two story threads. On the one hand, we have Saint-John’s pursuit of Orano and Galbó, who are blissfully unaware that they have a dead passenger along for the ride. They are heading for the coast, where Orano hopes the reluctant Galbó will finally succumb to his manly charms. The other thread follows Fajardo’s investigation of Velázquez’s apparent kidnapping. However, the detective isn’t satisfied by that explanation of events and has his eye on the nervous Hilton.
Unfortunately, these two stories never come together in a very satisfying way and often feel disconnected. It doesn’t help that we spend far more time with the lovebirds in peril than with Hilton and the detective. This is understandable because the former element has far more opportunities for drama, but it does throw the film off balance. A couple of years previously, Cozzi had written and directed an episode for acclaimed director Dario Argento’s TV anthology show ‘Door Into Darkness/La porta sul buio’ (1973). That episode also featured a young couple menaced in an empty house by a ruthless killer, so there are some similarities here, although it’s by no means a re-run.
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Cozzi also delivers some solid suspense, including a couple of Hichckian moments when the youngsters almost open the trunk of the car. The tumbledown seaside villa where they decide to spend the night is also quite a good location, but the best aspect is the dynamic between Orano’s handsome stud and Galbó’s apprehensive virgin. It’s clear that he’s been working on her for some time, and she’s reluctantly agreed to sleep with him at last. It’s well played by both actors, with Galbó conflicted and having second thoughts, with Orano keeping up the pressure and beginning to show his true colours as a first-rate asshole. This is confirmed when she sends him out for food, and he picks up a pretty blonde motorist (Benussi) instead.
Sadly, one sequence will likely dominate the conversation whenever this film is discussed. When Saint-John catches up with the couple at their seaside hideaway, he rapes Galbó. Cozzi intercuts this dreadful act with Orano and Benussi having sex in the back of the car. It’s an upsetting scene, and Cozzi lets it run and run. Of course, it can be argued that showing a brutal rape at length is realistic and makes a valid point about the horror of it and the trauma that follows. Unfortunately, it comes off here as just crude exploitation and leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. Also, Benussi’s late arrival in the film has only one other purpose apart from the nudity; to provide the killer with another potential victim.
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Aside from that, the production is professional and solidly made. The interactions of Hilton and Fajardo are good, even though there is not enough of them, and Saint-John certainly makes for a convincing killer. Also appearing in a small role as one of the killer’s victims is American-born Sydne Rome. She became famous as a successful singer and for workout videos in the early 1980s. She’s also had a long screen career, particularly on Italian television, which is still going strong as of 2023. She was also the female lead of Alberto de Martino’s incredible ‘The Pumaman/L’uomo puma’ (1980), which is probably not something she’s very proud of, but is undoubtedly one of the funniest bad movies ever made.
Cozzi should be a familiar name to lovers of Italian genre cinema of the 1970s and 1980s. He made his directorial bow with ‘Il Tunnel Sotto il Mondo/Tunnel Under The World (1969), a low-budget science-fiction oddity, which just happens to be the film playing on the big screen while Hilton and Saint-John sit in the audience and discuss Velázquez’s murder! His best-known film is probably the semi-unhinged ‘Star Crash’ (1978) starring Caroline Munro and David Hasselhoff, which plays a little like ‘Star Wars’ (1977) on happy pills. He was also responsible for the dreadful colourized version of the original Kaju classic, ‘Gojira/Godzilla’ (1954), which he released to an unsuspecting public as ‘Godzilla’ (1977).
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Other notable projects involved a Martian cyclops and exploding alien eggs in ‘Contamination’ (1980), and presenting Lou Ferrigno as cinema’s favourite mythological muscleman in ‘Hercules’ (1983) and sequel ‘The Adventures of Hercules/Hercules II (1985). Later on, he was replaced on ‘Sinbad of the Seven Seas’ (1989), which also starred Ferrigno, by Enzo G Castellari, only for the project to be abandoned. A couple of years later, he was rehired to piece all the footage together and finish it. Although it’s unlikely he shot any new scenes with stars Ferrigno and John Steiner, it doesn’t really matter. The results are hilarious in the way only a truly bad movie can be. He has also worked with director Dario Argento several times over the years, principally as an assistant director in the 1990s, but also getting an original story credit for high quality Giallo ‘Four Flies on Grey Velvet/4 mosche di velluto grigio (1971).
It’s an efficient enough thriller but lacks anything that makes it genuinely worthwhile.