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Synopsis: Some days, it doesn't pay to get out of bed. Take the killer in this movie (we never learn his name, though his initials appear to be DA, after Dario Argento). He's minding his own business, disposing of one of his victims, and suddenly he's caught up in a murder for hire scheme. Scheming businessman Giorgio Mainardi witnesses The Killer dumping his latest kill and blackmails him into murdering his wife. Worse, Mainardi has physical evidence. Then the whole thing goes even further wrong when, after killing Mainardi's wife, a pair of joy-riding kids make off with his car with the body in the trunk. Meanwhile, Mainardi is cozying up to the police inspector on the case. What's a respectable serial killer to do? First things, first, though: after those meddling kids...

Quick Hit: So, I'm watching this movie and it occurs to me that I'm watching a variation on Dial M for Murder, with George Hilton in the Ray Milland role and with no appreciable screen-time for the Grace Kelly character (who actually gets herself killed). I can live with that, I suppose. I say some nice things about A Perfect Murder, after all. But the Dial M for Murder plot only lasts for about a half an hour. Then the movie embarks on a LOOOONNNNGGGG digression, during which the focus of the film switches not only from the scheming Mainardi, but from The Killer, too. I don't know that the audience really has any attachement to the two kids (Luca, the male half of the couple, is loathesome--he abandons his virginal girlfriend to go find a tart that will put out, then takes her back to where he ditched his girl to see if she might try a threesome), but to spend two thirds of the movie on them seems excessive. Personally, I would have preferred to see more of the methodology and pathology of The Killer, or at the very least, more flesh on the character of Mainardi. But we don't get either. We don't find out what kind of financial trouble has driven Mainardi to murder. We don't find out about the career of the The Killer (we don't even learn his name). On the whole, this is a plot populated with stock types rather than characters. And lord knows, the actors aren't up to it. Mind you, Antoine Saint-John strikes a menacing figure with his tightly-drawn face with shaved eyebrows, but he's a straw-man in the end.

The Mainardi's house has a ghastly interior, decorated in various shades of yellow in homage to the giallo itself. The rest of the film's settings are anonymous, which kills the mood somewhat. Director Cozzi gains points by keeping the narrative moving from point to point--the film isn't boring, though it's less than compelling, I guess. It lacks the cruelty of the best gialli, though, and one misses the red meat.

12/2/2005 

That isn't to say that I'm opposed to the red-meat approach to horror. I'm not. But I don't need fountains of fake blood to satisfy my horror movie jones....back