Director: Alfonso Brescia
Year: 1972
Country: Italy/Spain
Alternate Titles: Ragazza tutta nuda assassinata nel parco
Genre: Giallo
Plot:
Following the death of their father, a family hires an insurance investigator to look into whether the death was natural causes or a case of murder, and as he begins digging into the family’s history, a series of deaths causes him to question what’s going on with the family’s affairs.
Review:
This was a generally bland and underwhelming effort without much going for it. Most of what works here is spent on the final half, where it manages to bring about some rather enjoyable and oftentimes far more interesting elements than it should. As the storyline has involved plenty of twists and turns until this point, trying to make sense of the killer stalking the family, by the time it finally comes together and reveals the truth about their actions, this comes together quite well, tying together the family to a series of Nazi war criminals from the war. This is due to some decent if unspectacular stalking scenes that are in play, offering up some more energetic and lively sequences, knocking off victims than expected, and with the solid bits of sleaze and nudity present, they offer up some worthwhile factors.
There are a lot of issues here keeping this one down. The biggest drawback to this one is the sheer lack of anything interesting going on while dealing with the family amid the need to investigate the insurance payout. With the film going through the different affairs of the family and trying to paint them as being somewhat sleazy and sordid with how they conduct themselves for the sake of painting people as red herrings, there’s just nothing all that interesting at all with the interactions here just coming off as dull and unexciting. Instead of accomplishing that attempted idea, it just amounts to endless scenes of the family conversing with each other about their issues or trying to figure out how to use what just happened as a means of blackmail against the offending party.
That leads to the criminal lack of deaths or action here, as the majority of the running time is spent on these elements rather than anything else, and it makes for a genuinely bland experience on top of the criminally uninteresting family that we’re supposed to be following. What it tries to present as scandalous trysts or noteworthy behavior they shouldn’t be engaging in, the usual assortment of vices is featured here to try to inject some sleaze into things, but it all just falls flat, watching characters that are not worth investing in be presented in this manner. Overall, these all manage to bring about enough to hold this one down for the most part.
Overview: *.5/5
A somewhat bland and generally dull giallo effort, there’s not much to this one that’s worthwhile, as the main negatives here are more impactful and damaging than the few likable factors featured. Those with an interest in the genre or who are curious about it will be the main target audience here, while most others out there should heed caution.
This review is part of our ongoing series of reviews for Italian Horror Month, every November on the site:
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