Director: Enzo Milioni
Year: 1978
Country: Italy
Alternate Titles: La sorella di Ursula
Genre: Giallo
Plot:
Arriving in a lavish resort, a woman and her sister, looking for their mother in the area, find that the situation has sparked a resurgence of her psychic abilities, which point to her being the next target of a killer knocking off unfaithful wives in the area, and they must race to stop the killer.
Review:
This was a better-than-expected if still flawed sleazy giallo. Among the better features of this one comes from the generally intriguing setup that provides this one with the opportunity to indulge in some intriguing psychological mind-games. The purpose of the sisters arriving at the resort and coming upon the reason for their own issues with her as they try to catch up on the various activities she used to engage in, as they go about their search in the surrounding parts of the community, which leads to some intriguing aspects here. With one sister visibly upset and suffering from a psychological condition brought about by the tears of abuse supposedly at her hands, that sets up a rather intriguing secondary subplot later on, where the normal sister begins a relationship with a local and begins to feel abandoned. This is the worst time to do so with the killer running around killing off cheating couples, and it helps to give the film a much more sound setup than expected.
As well, there’s also a lot of fun to be had when this one goes for the overtly sleazy antics, which are quite frequent throughout here. Offering up a multitude of sequences showing the various amorous antics here with the couples taking to bed together in a variety of locations, there’s plenty of enjoyably dirty and sleazy sexual encounters that are used to highlight the eventual turn into the killer stalking them. From the encounter in the hotel to a solid ambush in an underground enclave nearby and a steamy lesbian sequence that is included here, to other scenes involving characters dancing in front of a mirror nude, answering the phone, or simply walking around in the nude before being confronted by the killer, makes this all the more explicit and steamy. It crosses over just enough for this to be a genuinely erotic offering at times, with the amount of content featured here helping to make this one quite enjoyable overall.
There are some big problematic factors on display with this one. The main issue within the film is the immensely weak and overall lackluster murder mystery that comes about, with barely much of any impact on the film itself. The whole point of the rampage itself is incredibly half-baked and manages to feel thrown together at the last minute since it tends to info-dump a slew of twists at the final ten-minute mark so as to offer up some kind of unforeseen change in the story, with how ridiculous the entire thing comes across. Moreover, the film tries to make the connection to the genre make sense with the use of extreme close-ups of the killers’ eyes during the stalking scenes ends up clueing the viewer into the killer’s identity rather easily with the main clue about their eye color giving everything away when it’s easy to tell who has the actual color shown so it becomes rather unsurprising when the full reveal is brought about later on. This is what ends up bringing the film down overall.
Overview: ***.5/5
A delightfully sleazy giallo effort, this one is pretty enjoyable for what it is, with a lot to like overall and a few of the issues on display being somewhat troublesome enough to hold it down. Those with an appreciation for the style attempted here, are hardcore fans of this era of European genre cinema, or don’t mind the issues, will have a lot to like 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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