A Game of Crime/Crimine a Due (1964)

‘If you really must cry, wait until we get home.’

A degenerate gambler owes money to the mob and steals from his employer to cover the debt. When his boss discovers the theft, he threatens to call the police, but a heart attack intervenes and offers some murderous possibilities…

Early black and white Giallo from director Romano Ferrara (credited as Roy Freemount) that also bears a nodding acquaintance with Film Noir. The principals’ plot and counterplot with murder for profit as the root of all evil. Ferrera also co-wrote the film, along with Marcello Coscia and an uncredited Alessandro Continenza, but the screenplay throws up little in the way of excitement or suspense, although it does leave room for some interesting speculation.

Feckless gambler Paolo Morandi (John Drew Barrymore) is on a streak of bad luck that may be terminal. He owes money to the local crime lord who, somewhat unreasonably, wants him to pay up or face some painful consequences. Girlfriend Christina (Ombretta Colli) has also been silly enough to go and get herself pregnant. What’s any self-respecting, worthless playboy to do? Lift a million lira from his employer Davide (Jean Claudio), pay off the syndicate and get Colli the abortion she doesn’t want. What a guy! Oh, and did I mention he’s also sleeping with Davide’s wife, Anna (Luisa Rivelli)?

‘Can you lend me a few quid until payday?’

Unfortunately, his amazingly cunning plan starts to unravel when Claudio notices the missing money and threatens to call the police. Rivelli tries to stop him, but it’s no dice. Claudio suspects the two are more than good friends, and he’s had enough. But fate intervenes in the shape of his weak heart, and he’s bedridden in the care of nurse Elisabeth Buckner (Lisa Gastoni). From there, it’s a relatively simple matter for Barrymore to switch his medication and exit Claudio. To Rivelli’s surprise, she finds that her ex-husband had recently taken out a hefty insurance policy, naming her as the sole beneficiary. The only condition is that she remains in the house to look after his invalid brother Carlo, heavily bandaged and brain-damaged after a devastating road accident.

All this doesn’t sit too well with local police Commissario Perrotti (Umberto D’Orsi), mainly after he receives an anonymous tip-off that Claudio was murdered. From there, we get the usual ‘cat and mouse’ between the authorities and the killers, with the film’s second act seemingly aiming for ‘Double Indemnity’ (1944) territory with the lovers torn apart by the burden of suspicion and their lack of trust in each other. Only it doesn’t really work because we’re never sure how complicit Rivelli was in her husband’s death. She doesn’t see Barrymore switch the medicine bottles and they never explicitly discuss the crime. Later on, when the blackmailing Gastoni meets her maker, D’Orsi has them in his sights, but the film’s resolution provides a very different outcome.

‘Well, that was unexpected!’

There are two main issues with the film that adversely affect its quality; the sluggish middle third and the twist ending. Because the climax isn’t just implausible, it makes no sense whatsoever, becoming more and more ridiculous the closer it’s examined. If that wasn’t bad enough, it’s followed by a wrap-up scene that almost beggars belief. Some of our black-hearted protagonists get what amounts to a happy ending and D’Orsi transforms into the most forgiving police inspector in cinema history. All of this comes crashing in out of left field like a runaway 18-wheeler and flattens any credibility the film had remaining. However, there is a possible explanation for this bizarre turn of events.

Earlier in the film, there’s a scene where Barrymore, Rivelli and D’Orsi discuss literature and their reading preferences, specifically the Giallo genre in which the film belongs. Rivelli doesn’t like that kind of book because they are too violent, but Barrymore does because they are ‘so far-fetched’. D’Orsi also finds them ‘full of absurd tricks’. It’s a pointless conversation in terms of the story but may have been intended to foreshadow the ludicrous conclusion. Were the filmmakers, in fact, satirising the Giallo? It’s tempting to believe so.

‘Now if only I can rewrite the ending…’

Barrymore was, of course, a member of the famous acting dynasty continued today by his daughter Drew. Like several members of the clan, he had issues with substance abuse and these curtailed any significant career that he might have had. He’d already appeared in makeweight Giallo ‘Death On The Four Poster’ (1964) and, from here, his appearances were limited to guest slots on network TV shows, which had petered out entirely by the mid-1970s. He was later rumoured to be living as a derelict before estranged daughter Drew made some living arrangements for him and paid his medical bills until his death in 2004.

Rivelli turned up in Eurpspy films ‘Lightning Bolt’ (1966) and ‘So Darling, So Deadly’ (1966), which was part of the ‘Kommissar X’ series with Tony Kendall. Despite being Italian by birth, Gastoni began her screen career in the UK playing bits on film and TV in the 1950s, her most notable appearance probably being in comedy ‘Three Men and a Boat’ (1955). A return to her homeland brought a featured role in ‘L’ ultimo gladiator’ (1964), forgettable Giallo ‘Night of Violence/Le notti della violenza’ (1965) and the female lead in Antonio Margheriti’s wonderfully demented ‘The Wild, Wild Planet’ (1966). She retired in 1978 but returned to the big screen with a significant role in the drama ‘Sacred Heart’ (2005) and was still working up until 2017.

A slow-moving and very minor Giallo with a few points of mild interest around its genuinely bizarre climax.

Death On The Fourposter/Sexy Party/Delitto Allo Specchio (1964)

‘There was a man in the corridor with a strange face!’

A group of young party animals decide to spend a wild weekend at the isolated castle where one of them lives. One of the girls brings along her psychic boyfriend, who predicts gloom and disaster. Sure enough, it’s not long before someone is murdered…

Early Giallo thriller that owes a lot to the whodunnit ‘closed circle’ mystery popularised by Agatha Christie. Sure enough, we’ve got the lonely location miles from anywhere; no-one can leave because all the cars are locked up and people start dying one by one. This black and white example from Italy was directed by Jean Josipovici and Ambrogio Moltenim and written by Josipovici and Giorgio Stegani.

It’s taken quite a while for his friends to persuade handsome Riccardo (Michel Lemoine) to invite them back to his ancestral pile for tea and biscuits, and no wonder! They are just so wild and untamed! On the way, they drive their cars really quite fast and stop every now and then to run recklessly about, giving the girls piggybacks and throwing them through the air! No wonder Lemoine’s attractive housekeeper Caterina (Luisa Rivelli) is less than impressed when they arrive to party. After all, dancing to records and snogging quickly follows!

‘Let’s party!’

Things get even more out of hand when man-eating loose cannon Serena (Antonella Lualdi) makes the scene, bringing along new American boyfriend Anthony (John Drew Barrymore). She starts by getting all the girls to dance to crazy ’45 single ‘Sexy Party’ (the film’s funniest moment) and then starts breaking up the established couples by encouraging them to play naughty psychological games.

To cap all of this, it turns out that Barrymore is a psychic! He accurately relates the history of the owner of a makeup case just be holding it, and goes on to tell the future by staring into the flame of a single candle. Unfortunately, the future ain’t bright – it’s evil! The men will see themselves from above and the women will change appearance and go back in time. Barrymore exits stage left, advising everyone to do the same but, of course, they take no notice. A little while later, Lualdi turns up strangled on the fourposter, and the party is really on…

This is not a bad film, but there are some significant flaws which impact negatively on the audience experience. The main problem is with the characters on display. Simply put, the men are loud, arrogant and annoying, and the girls are loud, giggly and annoying. Their ‘madcap’ antics in the film’s first half are loud and annoying. To make matters worse, none of them are sufficiently well-drawn to stand out from the rest, so it’s hard to care about their eventual fates. Nicoletta is the new girl, Luciana wears glasses, Sergio is a bit shy, Edie is an airhead and Paolo has a gambling problem, and so on. That’s about as deep as it gets. Really, you just can’t wait for the killer to get to work (and yes, he/she does take their damn time about it).

Although the mystery’s conclusion makes perfect sense, there’s not a great deal of surprise to it, and it turns out there was a lot less going on than you thought there might be. This lack of creativity is reflected throughout the story. On arriving at the castle, all the cars are locked away in an old garage that can only be opened by one key. Lemoine leaves the key on a ledge just outside the door and points it out to everyone. Hey, I wonder if that’s going to be significant? He also enjoys a submissive sexual relationship with housekeeper Rivelli (which turns out to have no significance whatsoever), and the two make veiled hints about his hidden motive in inviting all his friends over. We never find out what it was, but, hey, it makes him look really suspicious, right?

‘Hang on for a moment, girls, I just need to do something suspicious…’

Unfortunately, the filmmakers seem more than a little determined to set Leomine up as the killer and end up taking this much too far in the story’s later stages. Although undeniably handsome, under certain lighting the actor does look a little strange, and that is more than sufficient for the audience to doubt his innocence. However, we also get him contaminating the crime scene by wandering around holding the murder weapon (a scarf), pulling silly faces and carrying on without due care and attention.

There’s also a sprinkling of some of the usual ‘old dark house’ cliches, such as the sinister groundskeeper/servant, the dodgy fuses and a moving bookcase that hides a secret passage. Despite knowing there’s a killer on the loose, people persist in going off on their own and creeping about in the dusty passageways. However, there is an amusing sequence when Vittoria Prada gropes around on the floor for her lost glasses, foreshadowing the actions of Velma from many a ‘Scooby Doo’ cartoon!

Barrymore was the father of Hollywood leading lady Drew Barrymore and a member of an acting dynasty that goes back to the early days of cinema and the Broadway stage of the 1880s. He emerged fairly quickly as the black sheep of the family, having issues with substance abuse and many runs in with the law. He was variously incarcerated for drug possession, domestic violence and public drunkeness, and his career finally petered out in the mid-1970s. In this film, he’s saddled with an odd, floppy blonde hairstyle but gives a perfectly adequate, if surprisingly, brief performance, probably recruited simply as a device to sell the film in America.

A reasonable enough picture, but one that fails to strike any significant sparks.