‘Bonzo has a particular loathing for men sitting around in bathrobes.’
A young artist is forced to rent out her upstairs apartment when her journalist boyfriend is sent to Vietnam and seemingly disappears. Her new tenant apparently commits suicide on the first night, and she discovers a hidden cache of stolen money…
Obscure Giallo thriller by Spanish director Juan Bosch, who also had a hand in the script. Egypt-born but very English Gillian Hills takes the lead, supported by Ángel del Pozo and Bruno Corazzari.
The carefree heyday of swinging London seems a distant memory to artist Peggy Foster (Hills). Her boyfriend Michael is overseas on assignment in Vietnam, and she has been waiting to hear from him for more than four months. Little sympathy is forthcoming from colleague Shirley (Orchidea De Santis) or her smug, lecherous boss Ronald James (Stelio Candelli). Short of money, she rents out the apartment upstairs where Michael lives.
The tenant is a man named John Kirk Lawford (Corazzari), but when he arrives, she finds him as appealing as the slimy Candelli. Returning home later that evening, she finds the street filled with police officers and a body on the pavement, seemingly that of her new lodger. While being questioned by the police in her flat, there’s a knock at the door and in comes del Pozo, introducing himself as Lawford. Shortly afterwards, she finds the hidden money and mysterious things start to happen.
After his previous film ‘The Killer with a Thousand Eyes/Los mil ojos del asesino (1973)’, co-writer and director Bosch returns to the world of the Giallo. Whereas this project certainly has more right to the label than his previous film, this is another very grounded thriller where lovers of Giallo’s extravagances may feel very short-changed. There’s more than a feel of the mainstream crime thriller here, and those expecting an escalating body count and stylish kills will likely come away disappointed.
As the film opens, the first thing to note is that the production filmed at least some of its exteriors in London and that Hills at least was present at the time. After a murder in an airport restroom, we join her in the street, somewhat improbably catching a glimpse of the missing Michael driving by in a car. She attempts to follow but fails, although her tour of the city centre helps to justify the budget for shooting overseas.
It’s fortunate that Hills is pretty good as the girl in peril because most of the film’s run time finds her in the apartment, often alone. There is a nicely atmospheric scene where she is stalked around a deserted airport hangar, but that’s the exception rather than the rule. Most of the time, the poor girl is surrounded by one creep or another: the greasy Corazzari, the unpleasant Candelli and weird cat-loving neighbour Mr. Lewis (a wonderfully unsettling performance from Carlos Otero).
Sadly, there’s not much here to back up Hills’ artistic endeavours. The script is thin, with the mystery’s resolution logical enough but humdrum at best. The characters are one-note for the most part, and del Pozo’s strangely robotic performance is a severe weakness. To be fair, though, the film has an unfinished feel, as if the production may have run into financial difficulties, and we may not be viewing the story as it was originally intended.
The first sign of this comes with Hills’ uncooperative attitude toward the police investigating the supposed suicide. At this point, she has not discovered the money and has little reason to suspect any criminal activity is taking place in her life. Yet she acts as if she’s guilty of something and hides the existence of her new lodger, even though she has to assume that he’s the one dead in the street below. Why? She has no reason to cover anything up. The police even confirm the jumper took a dive from the balcony of her upstairs flat, but still she remains silent.
There’s also the climax of the film. After a strangely awkward screen kiss that comes out of nowhere, Hills and del Pozo are chased through the English countryside by the killer on a motorbike. Only that countryside doesn’t look very English at all, and the village they hurtle through looks oddly like somewhere in rural Spain. This hurried, three-minute scene ends with a quick stunt, a couple of snatches of overdubbed dialogue and a sudden crash to a black ‘End’ screen. It leaves the unmistakable feeling that we didn’t get the whole story.
If that was the case, it’s a shame as there are a few moments of quality here and there. As well as the scene in the airport hangar, an effective sequence unfolds in Michael’s darkroom, and there’s a nicely-staged murder committed with a coil of piano wire. However, these moments aren’t enough to offset the mediocrity evident elsewhere, most neatly summed up by another murder on the London Underground, which is so ineptly shot as to be almost comedic.
This was the last role for the multi-talented Hills, who was the daughter of famed British author, adventurer, humanitarian and all-around hero Denis Hills. She was discovered at the age of 14 by famous French film director Roger Vadim. Seeing her as a possible successor to Brigitte Bardot, he cast her in his version of ‘Les Liaisons dangereuses’ (1959). The title role in the British beatnik effort ‘Beat Girl’ (1960) followed, along with a recording contract in France. She enjoyed considerable success on the French music charts over the next few years, recording both covers and self-penned material.
She moved to England in the mid-1960s to star in Michelangelo Antonioni’s award-winning ‘Blowup’ (1966) and began appearing in theatre. Later screen roles included a cameo in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ (1971). After quitting films, she pursued a career as an illustrator in New York, achieving success with designs for book covers such as ‘The Color Purple’ by Alice Walker. In recent years, her recordings have been featured on the famous TV shows’ Mad Men’ and ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ and in films such as ‘Mesrine’ (2008) with Vincent Cassel.
A pretty forgettable exercise; Hills deserved better for her swansong.