Director: Giampaolo Lomi, Edoardo Mulargia
Year: 1972
Country: Italy/Haiti
Alternate Titles: Al tropico del cancro; Death in Haiti
Genre: Giallo
Plot:
Arriving in Haiti for work, a doctor trying to keep various figures from getting their hands on a miraculous drug being developed runs into a friend and his wife on vacation, trying to save their marriage, and when they all start to become involved in the growing body count, he must try to stay alive against the attackers.
Review:
This one turned out to be a rather pedestrian and underwhelming giallo. The main issue that holds it back is that hardly anything here is interesting, with nothing being given a worthwhile status. The espionage story at the center of the film is a major obstacle, with barely anything about the miraculous drug beyond lip-service denoting its hallucinogenic properties, as this reputation is all that's given to this one. Basically, given nothing to work with doesn't make it interesting, nor does a stranger going around beating up random people trying to get information out of them, intriguing as this just doesn't make for an interesting time, rather just gets confusing. On top of that, the married couple going around trying to repair their relationship is simply tedious, as they go through the usual woes associated with this topic and just end up wasting time for the most part.
It's also not that impressive if there's not much in the way of traditional genre action here. As the exploits of the style denoted a masked killer wandering around trying to kill someone off, this one barely has any of that occur as the focus appears to be on the doctor running around the island performing his duties or the married couple getting lost in the tourism side of the area while trying to be civil with one another until they run into him who saves the couple. This industrial espionage type of action comes across as being in the wrong film altogether, as this grounds the film more realistically compared to the series of hallucinations and visions, which have little connection to what's going on. All in all, these are what hold it back for the most part.
There are a few slight positives to be had here. The biggest plus is that even though the hallucinations and visions feel out of place, they're pretty impressive visually. Especially noteworthy is the big sequence of often buying the fertility statue, as that's quite expressive and appealing, which is quite fun. As well, there's also the intriguing amount of stalking scenes on display, which are rather fun as this one manages to bring in some excitement to this. From the ambush in the hotel room to the stellar stalking of the henchmen looking for a secret payout in the factory, which results in a nice, surprising scene and the series of double-crosses and foot-chases which are featured here, there's quite a lot to enjoy here with some decent kills mixed in. Along with some fine nudity mixed in, this one offers up some decent points if not a whole lot overall.
Overview: *.5/5
An underwhelming and barely interesting giallo that works better as a cheap industrial espionage thriller, there's little here for genre fans, as that can all be found in better efforts anyway. This is really only for the most diehard genre completists or fans of the creative crew, while most others should heed caution with this one.
This review is part of our ongoing series of reviews for Italian Horror Month, every November on the site:
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