A Giallo from a non-expert country (France) and released during an era when the subgenre was long dead & buried already, is that even worth watching? Short answer: God, yes! If only for the presence - and frequent nude sequences - of two stunningly gorgeous women. Blond Brigitte Lahaie is definitely in my personal top five of most beautiful women ever, and brunette Florence Guérin is probably not far behind. With these two parading around, and a couple of other beauties like Natasha Delange and the nameless woman who gets brutally strangled at the beginning of the film, I tend to be a lot milder for weaknesses in the script or lack of tension. Yeah, I'm that shallow.
Still, even in terms of plotting, suspense, and grisly murders, "Le Couteau Sous La Gorge" isn't too bad at all! Admittedly, the whole thing is incoherent and everything that is happening feels random and like it was improvised on the spot. If, at the end of the film, the killer must explain the why and how he/she accomplished all the murders, there's something wrong. It didn't bother me, though.
The opening fifteen minutes are powerful. Florence Guérin runs half-naked (the lower half) and in panic through the city streets and into a police station. She claims to have been gang-raped but none of the cops takes her seriously, which initially comes across as quite shocking. It turns out the young woman - Catherine - is a mythomaniac who regularly makes up stories like this. She's also a successful nude model, and together with her roommate Florence and tough businesswoman Valerie (Brigitte Lahaie) she does an eccentric photoshoot in a cemetery at midnight. The caretaker of the cemetery can't cope with the scandal, goes berserk, and violently strangles an innocent young woman. One month later, after a trip abroad, Catherine receives obscene phone calls from an actual stalker, but given her condition, nobody believes her.
In good old Giallo tradition, there are sadist kills and plenty of potential culprits. Catherine has a drug-addicted ex-boyfriend, their regular photographer (who's named J. B. after the whiskey he's drinking) is an aggressive sexist, the girls' weird landlady always walks around with hedge clippers, or the cemetery caretaker might not be dead after all. Take your pick!
Lahaie and Guérin also both starred in "Faceless", which is director Jess Franco's third best film out of a total of two hundred.
