‘Flowers are sensitive creatures but also impotent.’
Several young women have disappeared in mysterious circumstances in a region about 20 miles from Rome. When the boyfriend of the latest girl comes looking for her, he finds himself tangled up in a web of lies and murder…
Somewhat hapless, ramshackle Italian-Turkish Giallo from writer-director Helia Columbo. It was her only movie credit in any capacity, and, likewise, most of the cast had never ventured onto the screen before and did not repeat the experience afterwards.
Living in a private villa outside Rome, artist and wheelchair-user Edmondo Parrisi (Francisco Cortéz) pursues his interest in radical new advances in photography. One night, his latest model, Enrichetta Blond (Margaret Rose Keil), is forced to hole up at a local inn after her car breaks down on the way back to the big city. During the night, she disappears from her room without a trace. The following day, her boyfriend and freelance journalist Giorgio D’Amato (Joseph Arkim) comes looking for her, and his enquiries lead him to the Cortéz home. The artist invites him to stay the night, and he needs little persuasion, given the presence of both amorous chambermaid Lucia (Gabriella Giorgelli) and the photographer’s pretty young niece, Sara (Elena Veronese).
It doesn’t take long before he becomes suspicious of the somewhat unusual household. Keil is the fifth girl to disappear from the region in the last 18 months, and they all worked as models. Cortéz’s wife, Eleonora (Halina Zalewska), seems unhappy about his staying on the premises, and butler Edmondo (Alberto Gasparri, billed as Danny P Gerzog!) is out and out hostile. Family friend and local physician Doctor Stefanelli (Richard Fielding) seems more welcoming, but Cortéz is obviously unhappy about the medical man’s apparent alliance with Zalewska. When Veronese reveals that her aunt is abusing her, Arkin determines to take her away with him, but it’s clear that more is going on in the house than meets the eye.
Shot sometime in 1972 under the title ‘Il giardino delle lattughe’ (The Salad Garden), this film sat on a shelf for three years before finding a distributor. The completely misleading title was almost certainly an attempt to cash in on the wave of Police Procedural films (‘poliziotteschi’) that had supplanted the Giallo at the box office. One policeman does turn up in the last five minutes for the explanatory wrap-up but doesn’t even get the courtesy of a character name. Apart from that, the forces of law and order are conspicuous by their absence. The title is justified by the phrase appearing in a newspaper article Gasparri is reading at the start of the film.
None of that would be an issue, of course, if Columbo had created a compelling mystery and delivered it with style and panache. Unfortunately, that could not be further from the case. The problems begin with the screenplay, which can’t decide on a focus for the drama. Is it a whodunnit mystery? A condemnation of promiscuity and the perverse desires of the idle rich? A science fiction drama about the dangers of new technology? It tries to be all those things and ends up being none, resulting in an odd mishmash that never comes together satisfactorily. The science fiction element is particularly baffling. Cortéz has invented a machine that ‘photographs human thought’ which sounds intriguing but is a difficult concept to integrate into a story or depict visually. Given that, it’s perhaps not surprising that it ends up being almost entirely incidental to the thread of the main story and, therefore, pointless.
The mystery is also very slight. The killer is simply mad, with no apparent justification or specific motivation. Why the killing spree begins or what the perpetrator has against models are questions the film never addresses in any meaningful way. There’s also a smattering of odd genre clichés that are quite redundant. When arriving at the rural dive bar to ask for help with her broken down car, Keil gets the kind of response usually reserved for tourists asking the way to Castle Dracula. The locals are persistently depicted as rude and unhelpful to a degree that ends up bordering on the ridiculous. In the opening scene, we see another young woman stranded on a remote country lane with a flat tyre. The killer appears as if by magic and chases her through the woods when she runs for it. Now, I appreciate that she’s not wearing appropriate footwear for the occasion, but does she really have to fall over that many times?
The project is also hamstrung to some extent by an obviously low budget. Although some studio sets may have been employed, it’s clear that most of the shooting was done in a real home doubling for Cortéz’s villa. It’s undoubtedly a smart residence, but it has limitations for filmmaking purposes. Curtains are usually drawn to prevent lighting issues, and the after-dinner conversation is delivered in one static shot, which has Arkim and Zalewska sitting on a sofa with their backs to the camera. Clearly, the room wasn’t able to accommodate more appropriate camera setups. Placing this content in the dinner scene that comes before it might have been a better choice. That shooting space allowed Columbo to employ some camera movement and shot variation. It might also have replaced some of the awkward, stilted small talk that seems to go on for an eternity.
Most of the cast had apparently not acted for the camera before, so it’s unsurprising that most are mainly bland and ineffective. Pseudonyms were common in Italian genre cinema in this era, however, so some of them may have other credits. However, the only one who could be singled out for particular criticism is Cortéz, whose facial contortions in significant moments are pretty laughable. It’s unfair to lay the entire blame at his door, though, as a more experienced director would probably have made him dial it back a little. Predictably, the acting plaudits belong to the cast members with previous experience. Giorgelli manages to evoke some audience sympathy for the one-dimensional nymphomaniac chambermaid, and Zalewska brings an appropriate world-weariness to the dissatisfied wife.
If you’re looking for deeper meaning or subtext in this somewhat dreary enterprise, may I refer you to our not-so-clean-cut hero? His motivation for searching out Keil changes almost at once from consideration for her welfare to sniffing out a big story that may kickstart his journalistic career. Although the details of their relationship are never specified, she has borrowed his car, and when she calls him from the bar asking for help, it’s clear that she feels that they have a close relationship. He can’t come, of course, because he’s about to get busy with the naked brunette in the bed beside him. If he had turned out, of course, she wouldn’t have had to stay overnight there and wouldn’t have been horribly murdered, but why worry about that? He is the hero, after all. Later on, Veronese comes to his bedroom late at night in tears, and what’s a guy to do with a semi-hysterical, vulnerable young virgin? Take her to bed and have sex with her, of course. What an absolute diamond.
Although it’s relatively easy to point out the flaws in this project, it’s also important to note that, overall, the film is better than all these problems make it sound. It’s far from good, of course, and it definitely falls below the average compared to other Giallo films of the era. However, it certainly doesn’t plumb the depths of such wretched projects such as ‘The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance/La sanguisuga conduce la danza’ (1975) or ‘I due gattoni a nove code… e mezza ad Amsterdam (The Two Big Cats with Nine Tails… and a Half in Amsterdam)’ (1972). It may fall short in many departments, but it’s nowhere near a complete disaster.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment is that this is one of the rare cases of a woman taking on writing and directorial roles on a Giallo, and a female perspective on such material sounds intriguing. However, this might be due to the apparent confusion surrounding the director’s identity. Helia is a woman’s name, derived from Greek rather than Italian, so an assumption of feminine gender seems reasonable. However, some sources suggest that Columbo was the pseudonym of songwriter and record producer Elio Palumbo, sometimes known as Eliop. Available information shows him as a man who began his creative career as a director for television before switching his focus to music in the mid-1960s. International success arrived in 1975 with his song ‘Tornerò’, performed by the band Santo California, which sold over 11 million copies worldwide. He wrote songs for the stables of artists on the record labels he founded, and he enjoyed further musical success well into the 1980s.
A very minor entry with little entertainment value.