‘Ready the engines and prepare the rifles!’
After his lover ends their relationship, a young man takes a trip to the coast, where he becomes involved with another woman. However, when she suddenly disappears, it seems that he may have killed her…
Obscure Giallo with a somewhat muddled production history. Started by director Mario Imperoli and finished by Ezio Alovisi, the films stars Erna Schurer, Luis La Torre and Monica Strubel.
Life seems too good to be true for young stud Luca Sivandi (La Torre), idling away his time on his boat with aristocratic blonde Mirna (Schurer). However, the romantic idyll ends when she suddenly announces their relationship is over without giving him a reason. Unable to accept the rejection, he keeps calling and following her around, much to her annoyance. Meanwhile, photographer Giancarlo (Giancarlo Annunziata) gets an assignment to stage a fashion shoot at the famous Castellana Caves on the Puglia Coast. He asks La Torre to take him and his models to the location on his boat.
When they arrive, La Torre hooks up with bubbly blonde Stefania (Lorenza Guerrieri), who is there with her friend Claudia (Strebel). One afternoon, Guerrieri suggests rough sex on a remote beach with a still camera automatically shooting photos of their romp. During the session, Guerrieri passes out when La Torre starts to choke her, and he panics and runs off to get help. When he returns after failing to find anyone, Guerrieri and the camera are both gone. At least that’s the story he relates to Strebel after Guerrieri has been missing overnight. Then he receives copies of the photographs taken on the beach, and the ugly spectre of blackmail raises its head.
In contrast to the usual urban locations of the Giallo thriller, this example heads for the great outdoors instead and the beautiful, sun-drenched coast of Southern Italy. However, we are back in the world of the idle rich as, aside from shutterbug Annunziata, this is a cast of characters who seem to have nothing better to do than hang around, look beautiful and act bored and miserable. Sulky La Torre, in particular, makes for an unsympathetic protagonist, and his single-minded pursuit of Schurer in the face of her continued indifference gives him definite sex pest/serial killer vibes.
When the action relocates to the coast, La Torre continues in the role of Mr Personality, getting it on with Guerrieri before switching to her BFF Strebel after she vanishes. Still, he has plenty of time to lounge about with his shirt off, as little else is happening. Unfortunately, that is the main issue with the film: a severe lack of action and very sparse plot development. One inconsequential, aimless scene follows another with tedious regularity. At one point, La Torre and Guerrieri get an urgent summons to meet Strebel in the caves, but when they arrive, she’s working, so they leave. They meet with her later in the local nightclub, and the girls briefly discuss how things are going between Guerrieri and La Torre. So that was the urgent reason she needed to see them? Some plot eventually arrives late, but the mystery’s final resolution is somewhat mundane and fairly predictable.
Given the unusual multi-flashback structure, you could argue that the film displays an interesting, non-linear method of storytelling. However, these flashbacks are almost entirely just repeated footage the audience has already seen rather than examples of new plot information. Some facts in La Torre’s possession are also held back until the climax, which isn’t necessarily a bad idea; only his failure to connect them in any way with Guerrieri’s disappearance and the events that follow is a little baffling.
It’s far more likely that this awkward structure resulted from production issues rather than artistic or creative choices.
Unsurprisingly, production information on an obscure, low-budget Italian feature made over half a century ago is limited. It appears that the film initially began shooting in 1970 under director Mario Imperoli before apparently running into financial difficulties. Some sources state that the film was completed in 1974 by Alovisi and released in 1975 in Italy with a running time of 90 minutes. However, others say that the film was never released theatrically, sat on a shelf for almost two decades and eventually saw the light of day in 1987 as part of the VHS home rental revolution. At this time, Alovisi assembled the available footage to complete the film, with a runtime of only 74 minutes, the only version seemingly available today.
On balance, it’s probably the latter that is true. In the heady days of the Home Video explosion, distributors went on a desperate search for anything and everything that could be transferred to tape, put in a colourful box with inaccurate artwork and shipped to your high street rental store. European genre pictures were a prime target for this process, along with double episodes from British TV shows repackaged with new titles as apparent features and obscure, no-budget independent American flicks that had probably never played outside their home state’s drive-in screens. These are only a few examples of how products were obtained to flood the market. Alovisi also has a very slim filmography, which otherwise begins on television in 1981.
Also supporting this notion are the contents of the film itself. All the footage looks like it was shot around the same time. There are no additional sets of characters in mismatched extra scenes who never interact with the principals, which was the most common device for boosting an unfinished project somewhere near to feature length. There’s also all that repeated footage, which is not all that present at first but becomes increasingly noticeable as the film spools out. Awkwardness arrives with the sudden entry of VoiceOver Man around the hour mark, whose presence helps stitch some of the plot together, and an apparent attempt to kill La Torre is conveyed via a swift series of still images that flash briefly across the screen.
Alovisi gets a co-writing credit on the film, which was likely an acknowledgement of his work piecing together the existing, unfinished material shot by Imperoli. Whether his probable salvage job took place in 1974 or 1987, it’s no great surprise that the results aren’t remotely satisfying. When forced to use every scrap of film available, it’s almost inevitable that some scenes will be inconsequential at best and won’t advance the story at all. There are more than a few of those here, but to Alovisi’s credit, the story ends up making sense, even if it’s not remotely compelling. The idea that Strebel would take up with La Torre when she thinks he might have killed her best friend is, of course, laughably ridiculous, but given that both actors perform as if on the verge of a valium overdose, it’s hard to care. At least Guerrieri brings some personality to the proceedings, and you have to applaud her efforts amid such a performance vacuum.
There are a couple of points of interest, though. The cinematographer was Luciano Tovoli, who was just starting out on a highly notable half-century career in 1970. He first came to international prominence for his work on Michelangelo Antonioni’s award-winning ‘The Passenger’ (1975) but is mostly celebrated for his creative partnership with director Dario Argento. They worked together several times, most notably on ‘Tenebrae’ (1982) and the visual masterpiece that is ‘Suspiria’ (1976). His Hollywood ventures included hit feature ‘Single White Female’ (1992), ‘Kiss of Death’ (1995) and ‘Murder by Numbers’ (2002). The musical soundtrack comes courtesy of Franco Bixio and includes songs by The Motowns, an Italian-British rock band. These are not necessarily bad in themselves but are inserted so frequently, and in scenes where they don’t belong, they soon become an active distraction.
Top-billed Schurer was born in Naples in 1942 and made her screen debut at the age of 18 in 1960. After a couple of minor roles in Spaghetti Westerns toward the end of the decade, she made her first notable appearances in Alberto Cavallone’s ‘Salamander/Le salamandre’ (1969) and as the lead in tatty horror-Giallo ‘The Doll of Satan/La bambola di Satana’ (1969). Lead roles in crime dramas, comedies, adventure films, and horror movies followed, although it’s fair to say that they are pretty obscure titles. A supporting role in ‘Strip Nude for Your Killer/Nude per l’assassino’ (1975) was her final flirtation with the Giallo, and she moved increasingly to television in the years that followed. Her final film appearance was a supporting role in obscure horror ‘Spectre/Spettri’ (1987) which starred Donald Pleasance.
A dreary thriller that was almost certainly pieced together from elements of an unfinished project.