Man, this director sure got a lot of mileage out of that topless dancing scene. Just as well though as this is a straight down the middle quasi-giallo that takes too long to get cooking and doesn't have enough sauce once it's ready. Or cheese.
Lou Castel is an arrogant photographer with a hot Euro-babe model as a girlfriend, and while he's taking stylish of her on some beach somewhere (well, while having it off on the beach after the photo session) he spies two men putting an seemingly unconscious man into a car, then causing that car to explode. Lou takes pictures of the two men and does what any honest citizen would do: He goes to a porno director and asks him how they go about blackmailing the men in the picture.
The blackmail thing doesn't pan out but the wheelchair bound porno guy (whose name is Uncle Fifi!) suggests that Lou take the pictures to a certain publication and ask them for a ridiculous amount of money, as the man killed was a high-ranking Prosecutor. However, by this point a black-gloved killer, complete with hat and raincoat, starts stalking and killing the cast, starting with the one hitman we did see at the start of the film.
We also spend plenty of time with cop Adolfo Celi, who, using his brain power, has to track down the killers of the prosecutor and Lou Castel. This helps the film immensely because Adolfo's natural charm keeps things afloat while not being terribly exciting. For added giallo quirkiness there's also a mafia boss who loves cats, and Adolfo Celi's character is a stamp collector.
However, there's dozens of these gialli so this one doesn't stand out from the pack too much. It's well made, well-acted by Celi and Castel, but isn't exactly essential when compared to the thousand or so other gialli made in 1972.
Lou Castel is an arrogant photographer with a hot Euro-babe model as a girlfriend, and while he's taking stylish of her on some beach somewhere (well, while having it off on the beach after the photo session) he spies two men putting an seemingly unconscious man into a car, then causing that car to explode. Lou takes pictures of the two men and does what any honest citizen would do: He goes to a porno director and asks him how they go about blackmailing the men in the picture.
The blackmail thing doesn't pan out but the wheelchair bound porno guy (whose name is Uncle Fifi!) suggests that Lou take the pictures to a certain publication and ask them for a ridiculous amount of money, as the man killed was a high-ranking Prosecutor. However, by this point a black-gloved killer, complete with hat and raincoat, starts stalking and killing the cast, starting with the one hitman we did see at the start of the film.
We also spend plenty of time with cop Adolfo Celi, who, using his brain power, has to track down the killers of the prosecutor and Lou Castel. This helps the film immensely because Adolfo's natural charm keeps things afloat while not being terribly exciting. For added giallo quirkiness there's also a mafia boss who loves cats, and Adolfo Celi's character is a stamp collector.
However, there's dozens of these gialli so this one doesn't stand out from the pack too much. It's well made, well-acted by Celi and Castel, but isn't exactly essential when compared to the thousand or so other gialli made in 1972.