Director: Luciano Ercoli
Year: 1970
Country: Italy/Spain
Alternate Titles: Le foto proibite di una signora per bene; Days of Anguish
Genre: Giallo
Plot:
After being coerced into a blackmail plot, the wife of a businessman is forced to entertain a sleazy blackmailer with threats about his criminal past which soon grows to perverse sexual games and other forms of blackmail her attempts at getting out of the situation lead her to believe someone is driving her insane.
Review:
This is a fantastic variation on the suspense/thriller variation of the genre. Among the better aspects here is the engaging setup that manages to incorporate far more than expected into this. The initial setup here, with the lifestyle of the couple complete with their extravagant life and worry-free existence, is given an engaging hook with the murder reveal that may or may not be real due to the vagueness of the equation but still sets enough gears in motion to be a bombshell-worthy reveal. The subsequent blackmail reveal and delivery of the photos showing the promiscuity she went through to entertain their demands is a nice way to move things along.
It provides all the necessary grounding for the film to move into the overtly devious ploys to ensure the plan comes off well. Moving to actively threaten her with videotaped evidence of his crimes to engage in cash payouts or sleazy encounters to keep everything hidden away, there’s an engrossing factor that arises here where the continuous nature of her trying to keep up appearances even though the nature of what’s being asked grows increasingly more sexual and depraved yet only her friend knows what’s going on which only makes everything worse since he’s always one step ahead of them weaseling out of the traps she thinks she’s setting.
The final half here, which moves into the most impressive part of the film where the husband tries to get to the bottom of everything but any and every attempt to do so is met with the expected outcome of her appearing crazy, this one picks up considerably. Despite all the evidence against him she’s gathered, everything from the phone calls, missing photographs, and hysterical freakouts points to nothing and no one being there furthers the psychological torment quite well and comes into great view for the full reveal of everything which sets this going into some intriguing storyline reveals that are twist-filled in the best way possible.
There isn’t much but it does have some minor drawbacks. The main drawback is the inability to explain why the initial blackmail is all that threatening to her so she goes through her blackmail phases. There’s never any real reason why the murder plot he reveals to her at the very start would mean anything to her as it’s just dropped and immediately set into motion so the way it starts is to immediately make that point feel underwhelming, especially compared to the reveal at the end which is a bit problematic. As well as a rather underwhelming reveal that’s wrapped up too quickly, these do knock it back slightly from the upper echelon of the style.
Overview: ****.5/5
A gripping and engaging psychological giallo effort, there’s so much to like here that this holds itself up extremely well against minor flaws that aren’t too detrimental overall. Give this a shot if you enjoy this style of the genre, are large Eurohorror fanatics, or are fans of the creative crew while those who prefer the more traditional genre aspects will be the main ones turned off here.
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