‘This car must be a museum piece, but you’re not too shabby.’
A teenage girl has her throat cut in a rented room after being stalked by a man in mirrored sunglasses. The police cannot identify her, but a mysterious stranger begins an investigation of his own…
Intriguing mixture of conspiracy thriller and Giallo from co-writer and director Sergio Martino. Genre veteran Ernesto Gastaldi co-authors and a strong cast is headed by Claudio Cassinelli and Mel Ferrer.
After being stood up on a date at a dance hall, pretty young Marisa (Patrizia Castaldi) is approached by handsome older man Paolo Germi (Cassinelli). As they dance, she spots a man in sunglasses (Roberto Posse) and panics, leaving Cassinelli behind as she makes a run for it. She makes it to a cheap boarding house where she expects to meet Raimondo (Franco Alpestre) but has not managed to shake off Posse. He attacks, leaving her dead on the floor of their rented room. The police, led by Inspector Teti (Gianfranco Barra), cannot identify her, and the official investigation stalls.
However, Cassinelli enlists the help of small-time thief Giannino (Adolfo Caruso) and begins asking his own questions. He quickly discovers that Castaldi has been working as part of a ring of underage prostitutes controlled by Alpestre. Meanwhile, the young son of a prominent local businessman is kidnapped, and the tycoon pays a high price to secure his release. Cassinelli tracks down the elusive Alpestre to an abandoned house on the edge of town, but they struggle, and the criminal winds up dead. Rather than report matters to the police, he stays overnight in the house. The following day, two more criminals arrive, bringing with them the ransom from the recent kidnapping.
By the mid-1970s, the Giallo bonanza kickstarted by Dario Argento’s international hit ‘The Bird with the Crystal Plumage/L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo (1970) was over. Further examples would arrive at the rate of half a dozen a year until the end of the decade, but its place at the forefront of Italian crime cinema had been taken by what became known as ‘poliziotteschi’. These were police procedurals featuring plenty of gunplay, car chases, cops taking on organised crime and conspiracies involving supposedly respectable pillars of the community. This switch to a grittier, more grounded approach to crime cinema reflected the social unrest in the country during this period when political violence, scandal, kidnappings, robberies and assassination frequently dominated the headlines.
However, a handful of these thrillers also retained some Giallo DNA, usually in the form of a nameless killer tying up the loose ends left by a high level criminal conspiracy. Typically, with a blade in a black-gloved hand. This small group of films also tended to centre on storylines involving organised rings of teenage prostitutes, probably as a result of the success of Massimo Dallamano’s ‘What Have You Done To Solange?/Cosa avete fatto a Solange?’ (1972). Indeed, leading man Claudio Cassinell had already appeared in Dallamano’s high-quality ‘What Have They Done To Your Daughters?/La polizia chiede aiuto’ (1974).
Martino’s take on this theme also results in a superior thriller, with a solid mix of good filmmaking techniques, a script packed with incidents and a strong cast. Where it differs a little from its contemporaries is the surprising inclusion of some comedic elements. These are mainly centred around Caruso, who goes from Cassinelli’s unwilling accomplice to an unwelcome, over-enthusiastic sidekick. Both actors play the relationship dynamics well, and it’s an excellent setup for the downbeat final act, which serves as an effective sucker punch. Martino walks a fine line by including humorous moments in what’s a highly sombre tale, and he pulls off the balancing act, even when including a car chase that involves Caruso tearing the doors off Cassinelli’s decrepit 2CV (a running gag on its own) and flinging them at the pursuing police cars.
Martino makes specific reference to the Giallo in a couple of ways. The assassin’s kills are pretty blunt and nasty, shown up close up and personal. The killer does wield a pistol with a silencer, but he much prefers more immediate methods such as strangulation and the knife. Martino also indulges in some inventive shot framing and, although he never ventures into the Gothic extravagance of prime Giallo, there are still echoes of that approach in the images he favours. There’s also a nice sense of mystery surrounding Cassinelli’s character in the early stages. Is he an undercover cop, as seems likely, or is he actually the killer? This isn’t allowed to play out for too long, but it gives him and his actions a sense of uneasy ambiguity that adds another layer to the drama and helps to keep the audience engaged.
The action set pieces are also nicely handled and there’s some fine location work involved. One shootout occurs on a building with a retractable roof, the climactic one on a moving train that ferries cars across the border. These unusual settings are indicative of the care that’s been taken in all creative departments. There’s also a nicely understated score by Luciano Michelini, and it’s good to see a score of familiar faces from Italian genre cinema in supporting roles such as Carlo Alighiero, Massimo Girotti (Mario Bava’s ‘Baron Blood’ (1972)) , Gianfranco Barra (Lucio Fulci’s ‘Don’t Torture a Duckling/Non si sevizia un paperino’ (1972)) and Jenny Tamburi (‘Smile Before Death/Il sorriso della iena (1972)). One-time Hollywood ‘A’ Lister Mel Ferrer even turns up as the police chief, although it’s little more than an extended cameo.
Another technical plus is the fine cinematography from Giancarlo Ferrando, who was Martino’s regular director of photography. They had already collaborated on previous Giallo projects ‘All the Colors of the Dark/Tutti i colori del buio’ (1972), ‘Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key/Il tuo vizio è una stanza chiusa e solo io ne ho la chiave’ (1972) and ‘Torso/I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale’ (1973). Later on in the decade, Ferrando was also on hand for Martino’s excursions into post-apocalyptic science fiction with ‘2019: After the Fall of New York/2019 – Dopo la caduta di New York’ (1983) and ‘Hands of Steel/Vendetta dal futuro’ (1986). Their partnership endured until Marti o’s final film ‘Il paese delle piccole piogge’ (2012), which was made for television.
If it’s not quite as gripping as the premier examples of this short-lived Giallo offshoot, this is still a quality piece of work that remains engaging until the final fadeout.