‘Hey, don’t look at the ass, look at the cat.’
A young girl is brutally raped and murdered, and her body is dumped in a river. The leading detective on the case links the crime to an exclusive girls’ boarding school, but the killer hasn’t finished yet…
Familiar, traditional Giallo whodunnit from Moroccan director Alberto Negrin. Actor Fabio Testi heads up this Italian-West German-Spanish co-production, which also stars Jack Taylor, Ivan Desny and Christine Kaufmann.
While shopping at the local supermarket, Commisario Gianni Di Salvo (Testi) catches attractive brunette Christina (Kaufmann) in the act of shoplifting. Instead of taking her in, he takes her home, but their afternoon tea is interrupted by a call from the precinct. The body of teenage schoolgirl Angela Russo has been discovered dumped in a plastic sheet in the river by a local dam. Arriving at the crime scene, Testi is greeted by the head of detectives, Louis Roccaglio (Desny), who officially assigns him to the case. After the girl is identified, Testi focuses on the exclusive Saint Teresa D’Avila boarding school, which she attended with best friends Franca (Taida Urruzola), Paola (Carolin Ohrner) and Virginia Brini (Brigitte Wagner).
The student body also includes Emilia (Fausta Avelli), the younger sister of the murdered girl, who encourages him to focus on her sister’s friends and the secrets that they share, which include Urruzola’s surreptitious affair with young languages master Max van der Weyden (Tony Isbert). Avelli’s assistance proves invaluable when she furnishes her sister’s diary, which contains regular weekend appointments marked with drawings of a cat. By chance, Testi and his assistant (Bruno Alessandro) discover that these match the logo on jeans sold at the exclusive boutique run by Michel Parravicni (Taylor). He insists that he knows nothing about the murders, but Testi remembers that he was involved in a high-profile art forgery case some years earlier.
If the setting and basic premise of the story seem somewhat too familiar to Giallo enthusiasts, that’s probably because this project originated with writer-director Massimo Dallamano. He originally envisaged it as a thematic continuation of his earlier efforts, ‘What Have You Done To Solange?/Cosa avete fatto a Solange?’ (1972) and ‘What Have They Done To Your Daughters?/La polizia chiede aiuto’ (1974). Sadly, Dallamano was killed in a car accident in 1976, and the script underwent some significant revisions before shooting. Eventually, five other writers shared screenplay credit on the film. If that wasn’t enough, original director Piero Schivazappa was replaced during production by Negrin, and, in later years, star Taylor even suggested that the film was never properly completed.
If all this sounds like an obvious recipe for disaster, it’s pleasing to report that, although flawed, this is a surprisingly solid and satisfying experience. Much of this is due to leading man Testi, who brings a good portion of star quality and acting talent to the table. Critically, he underplays his volatile policeman for much of the film, which gives his outbursts of frustration greater weight and significance. It’s this delicate balance that makes his crusading detective a compelling character. Testi effortlessly pulls the audience into his ongoing investigations, and although the details and circumstances involved never possess the complexity or social commentary of Dallamano’s previous films, there’s still enough drama here to retain audience interest and investment.
The film’s scant 84-minute running time may have resulted from production issues, but it makes for a lean, fast-moving experience that never threatens to drag. Unfolding events develop quickly, and there are plenty of them to keep the viewer engaged. Testi almost gets burned to a crisp in Isbert’s caravan, Wagner takes a headlong dive down the school steps in the arms of a statue of Saint Teresa after slipping on some marbles, and one major player meets a surprisingly sudden end in a brutal traffic collision which is anything but an accident. The girls also receive threatening notes, signed by someone called ‘Nemesis’, which quote the lines of English poet John Donne used so memorably in the closing moments of Val Lewton’s influential tale of urban witchcraft ‘The Seventh Victim’ (1943).
Although Taylor may have gone on record denigrating the film, he gives a wonderfully uncomfortable performance as the shifty boutique owner, whose shop is a hangout for the girls. The sequence where Testi interrogates him on a rollercoaster is one of the film’s undoubted highlights, and Taylor delivers the goods here as the terrified suspect. Elsewhere, nine-year-old Avelli is very good as the calculating Nancy Drew wannabe Emilia. It’s the kind of role that would have gone to genre standout Nicoletta Elmi a few years earlier, and it’s high praise that Avelli is at least competing on the same playing field. There’s also a strangely unbilled appearance by Europe’s hardest-working actress, Helga Liné, who plays the grieving mother of Emilia and her dead sister. Despite some leading roles, she appeared in many small parts over the years, the price of financial need when raising two children as a single mother.
The most significant signs of a compromised production are probably the aspects relating to Testi’s life away from the job. His scenes with Kaufman are severely limited, and it feels as if material that would have invested their relationship with greater depth and significance is missing. It’s a real shame as the notion of a romance between a cop and a kleptomaniac is certainly novel, and the actors have a fine chemistry which still comes through despite their limited screen time together. Although Negrin doesn’t imbue the film with any notable visual flair, there are still some well-realised sequences here and there. The girls’ school also makes for a striking architectural backdrop to some of the action, although it isn’t utilised often enough to be shown to its full advantage.
Of course, it’s tempting to speculate on what the film might have been like if Dallamano had made it as he originally intended. In particular, the high-level conspiracy elements do feel truncated and underdeveloped, but, on the other hand, there is always the possibility that going to this same thematic well for a third time might have been one time too often. After all, it doesn’t take a genius to work out what these budding daughters of privilege are up to when they’re outside the classroom, even if you haven’t seen Dallamano’s previous two films on the subject. The crusading director may have had something more to say, of course, but it’s plain that Negrin’s focus was on the more commercial aspects of the story. Mentions of parental neglect amongst the wealthier classes make fleeting appearances occasionally, but it’s peripheral to the drama at best.
Globetrotting actor Taylor certainly had a varied career. Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1936, his first acting credit was on American TV in 1953, but by the end of the decade, he had crossed the border into Mexico. There, he did uncredited roles for director Alfonso Corona Blake before doing more significant work for Federico Curiel, appearing under the name Grek Martin. He twice played Professor Thomas opposite wrestler Wolf Ruvinskis in two films, including ‘Neutron Contra El Dr Caronte’ (1963), and was featured in the director’s 3-part epic about the vampire Nostradamus. Moving to Europe for financial disaster ‘Cleopatra’ (1963), his contribution ended up uncredited, but he decided to stay.
Five years later, he collaborated for the first time with notorious director Jesús’ Jess’ Franco as the male star of the erotic horror ‘Succubus’ (1968). The two worked together multiple times over the years on such projects as ‘De Sade 70’ (1970), ‘Count Dracula/Nachts, wenn Dracula erwacht’ (1970), which starred Christopher Lee, ‘Sex Charade’ (1972), ‘The Vengeance of Dr Mabuse/Dr. M schlägt zu’ (1972), and ‘Female Vampire/La comtesse noire’ (1973). He also provided the English voice of Spanish horror star Paul Naschy for the U.S. releases of his films and appeared alongside him in ‘Dr. Jekyll vs. The Werewolf/Doctor Jekyll y el Hombre Lobo’ (1972). There were also supporting roles in bigger budgeted Hollywood productions, such as ‘Conan the Barbarian’ (1982), ‘1492: Conquest of Paradise’ (1992) and ‘Goya’s Ghosts’ (2006) with Natalie Portman and Javier Bardem.
A little compromised it may be, but it’s still an enjoyable, fast-moving Giallo outing for fans of the genre.