‘Drugs are worse than broken windows.’
Tripping on a new hallucinogenic drug, a top model sees a woman being murdered across the street with a spiked, metal glove. The journalist who paid her to participate in the experiment doesn’t believe her story. Instead, he reveals her identity when the story is published, placing her firmly in the sights of the killer…
Italian-Spanish Giallo set against the background of the international drug trade from genre director Luciano Ercoli. Nieves Navarro and Simón Andreu are the familiar faces in front of the camera, and some of the names behind it were regular participants in thrillers that dwelt on the border between mystery and horror.
Hotshot redhead model Valentina (Nieves Navarro) has negotiated a cool payday with journo Gio Baldi (Simón Andreu). He’s writing a story on a new experimental hallucinogen called HDS, and she’s agreed to take it under controlled conditions so that he can observe its effects. However, she gets far more than she bargained for during the session. Under the influence, she sees a man in dark glasses commit a brutal murder in the building opposite, ramming a spiked metal glove repeatedly into a young woman’s face. Andreu puts it down to the effects of the drug and reneges on his promise to keep her identity a secret. He names her when he publishes his story, and she loses her job.
Things only get worse for Navarro from there. It turns out that there was a murder in that location, but it happened six months earlier. Not surprisingly, Inspector Serino (Carlo Gentili) is a bit sceptical of her statement and prefers to concentrate on real police work. His disinterest only intensifies when Navarro identifies the woman she saw is a recent suicide rather than the victim of the old killing. The poor girl doesn’t get much more sympathy from Andreu or her sometime lover, sculptor Stefano (Peter Martell). The killer believes her, though, which is a bit unfortunate.
Efficient, entertaining Giallo that makes up for what it lacks in the logic department with solid performances, a swift pace and a good quota of suspense. Director Ercoli keeps a tight hold of the narrative for the most part, and it’s only in the hurried rush of explanations at the climax that it becomes clear that the mystery was rather a mundane affair, after all. It’s a little disappointing, considering one of the team on script duty was Ernesto Gastaldi, who could reasonably be regarded as ‘the Godfather of Giallo’ from a writing perspective.
However, the film does have some very positive aspects, principally the fine performance of Navarro, who balances the different elements of her character with great skill. Rather than a damsel in distress or air-headed window dressing, this is a woman who has carved out a successful career and is facing the world on her own terms. She’s often selfish, very money-orientated and has quite the temper. However, Navarro shows a slightly softer side in the quieter moments. It’s never enough to compromise the character’s core but enough to keep the audience on her side. And she can be forgiven for the occasional tantrum when dealing with the men in her life. Most of them won’t take her very seriously because…well, she’s ‘only a woman’ after all.
There’s also good work in some of the supporting roles. Navarro is contacted by the enigmatic Verushka (Claudie Lange), the sister of Hélène, the girl murdered six months earlier. She wants the model to identify the man convicted of the killing, junkie Nicola Radelli (Luigi Norossi). He’s serving out his sentence at the asylum run by her husband, Professor Otto Wuttenberg (Ivano Staccioli), who Lange believes was actually behind the crime. There are also a couple of apparent hit men on the loose, one of them played with manic glee by Luciano Rossi, not to mention sinister handyman Pepito (Fabrizio Moresco), who likes to hang out with dead cats. So there are plenty of suspects to keep the pot boiling.
It’s also a nice break with tradition to see the killer from the first, rather than have him revealed as one of the familiar faces at the climax. The kills are also surprisingly graphic, and Ercoli delivers these in very brief shots, which adds to their impact. However, this approach does give Navarro’s view of the murder the quality of almost a psychic vision. The distance between her apartment window and the building opposite is clearly too great for her to see much of anything, let alone a close-up of the murderer’s face. Perhaps this was a conscious decision to cast doubt on what she sees, but it just comes across as confusing and illogical.
This was Ercoli’s third film as director, following on from other Gialli ‘The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion/Le foto proibite di una signora per bene’ (1970) and ‘Death Walks on High Heels/La morte cammina con i tacchi alti’ (1971). He co-produced these projects with Alberto Pugliese, and Gastaldi and Mahnahén Velasco were behind the typewriter each time. Andreu and Navarro, billed under her usual pseudonym of Susan Scott, featured in all three, the latter taking leading roles in the last two. That’s not much of a surprise when you realise that she and Ercoli tied the knot in 1972 and remained married until he passed on 43 years later.
Navarro was born in Almeria in Spain and began her career as a fashion model before working in television commercials. An auspicious screen debut starring opposite star comedian Totò in ‘Totò d’Arabia’ (1965) led straight to an impressive performance in Duccio Tessari’s excellent Spaghetti Western ‘A Pistol for Ringo/Una pistola per Ringo’ (1965), an important early landmark in the genre. She did some of her best work in the superb ‘The Return of Ringo/Il ritorno di Ringo’ (1965), which was a sequel in name only and she may have become typecast, although many of these Westerns were at least partially filmed in her hometown. The advent of the Giallo does seem to have given her career a shot in the arm, though. Her work in the sub-genre was not confined to projects with Ercoli. She featured in Sergio Martino’s ‘All the Colors of the Dark/All the Colors of the Dark’ (1972), ‘So Sweet, So Dead/Rivelazioni di un maniaco sessuale al capo della squadra mobile’ (1972) and ‘Passi di Danza su una lama di rasoio’ (1973). In later years, she moved into supporting roles, including several in the ‘Emanuelle’ series, including the first of the title roles in ‘Emanuelle e Lolita’ (1978). She retired from the screen in the 1980s.
Not one of the most notable examples of the Giallo, but still a brisk, entertaining thriller helped by an excellent central performance.
Mark David Welsh 