Director: Aldo Lado
Year: 1972
Country: Italy/Monaco/France
Alternate Titles: Chi l'ha vista morire?
Genre: Giallo
Plot:
Arriving in Venice from a vacation, a separated couple finds that their daughters' death is a part of a larger conspiracy when their investigation into the incident brings them in contact with a seedy underground in the city and race to find the true killer before he strikes again.
Review:
This was quite the enjoyable if slightly overrated Giallo. When this one works, it's in the details of the film's central premise involving the abduction and eventual discovery of their daughter. The sequence where it takes place, featuring her playing with the other children in town only to have the ominous figure watching all along and striking when she's alone, while his frantic search around the city to find her resulting in the exceptionally disturbing and shocking centerpiece sequence of the body being discovered in the middle of the canal. That is quite an impressive sequence and readily steals the show with its impact and grief, as well as their impending relationship that's brought out of the sequence as their clumsy and inelegant attempt at lovemaking following the requisite funeral makes for a nice completion to this arc of the story.
Beyond this, it does go for a couple of impressive stalking scenes here which are quite thrilling, from the suspected sequence of the killer in their apartment bathroom before a nice false scare, a more thrilling stalking in a crowded movie theater where the striking killer appears during a showing and offs the suspect in the middle of the packed audience without anyone noticing and several frantic foot-chases through the city's underground buildings and streets that all ends with a fantastic encounter in an under-construction building. The fine finale, taking place in a large church full of differing corridors and floors is an endlessly chilling series of set-pieces full of nice interplay with the darker shadows revealing the killer coming after them and resorting to some fine attempts at hiding away before the final reveal is made which gives this quite the effective and startling finish. While these here are what give this one some of the more enjoyable and atmosphere elements, there's a pretty big and damaging flaw that does lower this one significantly.
The biggest issue here is the fact that there's just not a whole lot of action within here where the film slows down considerably after the main strike occurs as this one becomes quite stilted featuring an endless series of scenes showing them first reconnecting before going into their investigations which are so dull and dragging that film sloughs through its middle portions. The body count is so low for these types of efforts that it really highlights the lack of action to be found here as so many of these scenes are brought up and then pushed aside without much effort in connecting the events to the central storyline, so not only is the pacing dull but there's just not all that coherent a storyline. Trying to piece out the killer's rationale and motive is next to impossible to piece out which does nothing to help the action here as it doesn't really make sense what's going on and it's not that interesting anyway so it does come down after that opening. While it does have some solid work here, there are some flaws to hold it back.
Overview: ****/5
One of the finest giallo films ever made in most regards, the lone detrimental factor against this one in the lowered body-count does knock this just slightly out of the top-tier in the genre. Still, any and all genre fans or those looking for solid, straightforward Eurohorror from this time-period should look into this one while those that hold the flaws as more important than the positives should heed caution.
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