I love that in the seventies, you could pull up to a petrol station get out next to the pumps, try and light up a cigarette, find out the packet is empty, throw the empty packet on the ground, then go and pick up a hooker.
This seems to be a blend of the old school gialli (rich, soulless socialites double crossing each other) and the new gialli (gloved killer, stabbing) that has a middle part that centres around a murder prosecution. You might need a little patience.
After we're introduced to our characters with their names appearing onscreen beside them, we see a girl's corpse tumbling down a hill in a park and being found by two kids. Several witnesses spot a person in a mac stumbling through the park, with one lady claiming that the killer is a well known television personality whose daughter coincidentally it the murdered girl's best friend. However, a dazed Helmet Berger is seen staggering around the place too, so we know that things are going to get convoluted pretty quickly.
Cop Silvio Tranquilli is brought in to...well, not break these case as they get a suspect pretty quickly, but he does complain about coffee a lot. Plus, this whole sequence gives director Duccio Tessari a chance to give us all sorts of freaky camera angles while the police use scientific methods that seems to quickly lead to a healthy case to send down the TV presenter.
However, the suspect also has a pretty good lawyer who may very well get him off the hook. Well, nearly. After the presenter's wife (Ida Galli) accidentally gets the guy sent down, things get very giallo like as true motives are revealed, the double crosses begin, and the murders seemingly continue, even though the killer is in jail.
To give you an idea of the pace of this film, the police are still standing over the first victim's body eighteen minutes into the film. Then you get the courtroom drama and the mystery of what Helmet Berger has to do with it all. Duccio Tessari is no fool, however. His eye for good visuals shines through and we get a change of scenery as the film is set in Bologna, not a place that turns up frequently in these films.
It does drag, but the ending is worth waiting for. I'd been after this one for ages and although it's good, I don't think I'd ever watch it again.
