Dr Roger Mell (Ray Milland), a physician and headmaster of a boarding school, is having an affair with the beautiful Sonja (Sylva Koscina), a married woman. He arranges to have the husband murdered, but is mortified to find out that the hitman killed the husband by blowing up a plane on take-off killing 140 people. In a fit of rage, Dr Mell kills the hitman, but realizes that one of the pupils has witnessed the crime. The only question is who...
I was well and truly surprised when I first saw L'Uomo più velenoso del cobra as the film starts out in my hometown Stockholm, but apart from the opening montage, we don't really get to see anymore of Stockholm in this bottom of the barrel giallo. The script is quite poor to begin with (in spite of co-writing credits from Ernesto Gastaldi and Luciano Martino) and it certainly doesn't help that Albertini manages to botch the few sequences that should have been suspenseful due to poor direction and poor choice of music. The score doesn't really fit the film, but I would suspect that Cipriani recycled quite a few cues here (certainly the Femina Ridens theme anyway). I didn't find much worthwhile about it, but at least is was mercifully short at 82 minutes.
My first viewing of Duccio Tessari's La Morte risale a ieri sera was in Italian with no english subs available. I usually tend to wait and watch films until I manage to find some kind of English option, but being a big Tessari fan I jumped at the chance to finally see it. Even though I only understood a very small part of the dialogue with my very limited Italian, I thought it was a truly excellent film. Tessari film is a very engaging thriller that packs a powerful emotional punch without ever succumbing to melodrama. On subsequent viewings of the film, I've had the pleasure of watching it with subs and my appreciation of the film has only increased.
Looking at the poster, you'd hardly think it's be a thriller, but Romolo Guerrieri's La Controfigura is something of a hidden gem and it has more than Jean Sorel in common with Short Night of the Glass Dolls. It all starts off with Jean Sorel getting gunned down in a underground parking garage and through non-linear flashbacks we're shown the events leading up to the shooting. The flashback narrative works well and there are some great visuals along the way. The trio of Jean Sorel, Ewa Aulin and Lucia Bosé are all great in the leads and the film features a groovy lounge score by Armando Trovajoli. Those looking for a fix of black-gloved killers and straight razors won't find a lot to savour here, but to the more adventurous gialli fans, this is a good as it gets. I'd love to see it on dvd one day.
As you can probably tell from the poster, Mario Caiano's ...a tutte le auto della polizia is a poliziesco/giallo hybrid along the lines of Dallamano's La Polizia chiede aiuto. Some people might find this a tad slow-moving for a giallo (since the killer doesn't start dispatching of witnesses until quite late in the film), but hopefully that won't put anybody off. Great direction by Caiano and excellent performances by Enrico Maria Salerno and Antonio Sabato.
I'll start off with one of my favourite acquisitions since I last posted. The locandina for Umberto Lenzi's 1969 giallo, Orgasmo, has been a bit difficult to find, so I was very pleased to finally get my hands on it.
Posts
