Who Saw Her Die? (1972) User Reviews

She's off to Venice with the Girls

[Bezenby · 6/10 · 10 November 2017]

I am required by law to mention that this film is similar to Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now, made a year later. So that's that out of the way.

Who Saw Her Die begins in the French mountains with a red-haired girl being murdered by what looks like an old woman wearing a black veil. We then kick in with Ennio Morricone's outstanding soundtrack made up of a child's choir and harpsichord – a far cry from twangy guitars and harmonicas! I should note here that this soundtrack woke my daughter up and freaked her out from two rooms away!

In Venice, skinny sculptor George Lazenby is happy that his daughter Roberta has come from London to visit him, although it's clear by her absence that things aren't going too well with his wife Anita Strinberg as she's stayed behind. Worse still, an old woman in a black veil stalking the kid and seems determined to murder her, which happens while George is banging his mistress.

George is distraught and blames himself for his daughter's death, leading him on an obsessive quest to find the killer, which will lead him down sleazy avenues involving the rich and powerful in Venice. This being a giallo, the killer gets wind of this and tries to eliminate some of the witnesses…

Even though it's not a top tier giallo, this film is still worth a watch due to the misty Venice location shooting, Morricone's creepy soundtrack, and the acting talents of Adolfo Celi, who here, like in the film Eye of the Labyrinth, can seemingly change his mood and personality with subtle facial expressions and posture. The mystery isn't that hard to solve if you've watched a few of these films, but that's not going to put anyone off, is it?

Why are Lazenby and Strinberg so thin though?

A So-So Giallo Starring A Sickly-Looking Lazenby

[ferbs54 · 5/10 · 6 November 2007]

For those of you wondering whether George Lazenby ever made another picture, after incarnating the most under-appreciated Bond ever in 1969's "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"...well, here he is, three years later, in the Italian giallo "Who Saw Her Die?" In this one, he plays a sculptor named Franco who is living in Venice. When his cute little red-haired daughter is murdered and found floating in a canal, Franco naturally embarks on a quest to find the demented child killer. Lazenby, it must be said here, is almost unrecognizable from three years before. He sports a sleazy handlebar moustache in this film and looks decidedly thinner, almost gaunt, as if he'd been afflicted with a wasting disease in the interim. And the film itself? Well, it's something of a mixed bag. Yes, it does feature stylish direction by Aldo Lado, as well as a pretty freaky score by master composer Ennio Morricone, consisting largely of echoey chanting. We are also given plentiful scenery of Venice, which looks both beautiful and seedy here, an intriguing story to set our mental teeth into, AND Adolfo Celi, always a welcome presence (and another Bond alumnus, from "Thunderball"), here playing a mysterious art dealer. On the down side, I must confess that I was at a loss to understand what the hell was going on throughout most of the picture; what explanations do come toward the end are either half heard from distant rooms or grunted out during fisticuffs. Dubbing doesn't help matters (subtitles would have been a nice option), and the film is never particularly scary or suspenseful. I'll probably need to sit through this one again to get a better handle. Still, "Who Saw Her Die?" remains an interesting, nice-to-look-at giallo, nicely captured here in widescreen on yet another fine DVD from Anchor Bay.

Who saw? We saw!

[cbdunn · 7/10 · 11 December 2003]

I have been a fan of the Italian "Giallo" movies for about ten years now. This film was released by Anchor Bay in a four dvd collection towards the middle of 2002. This film is a classic example of what the Italians had to offer during the 1960's and 1970's. The imagery and cinemaphotography are superb. The acting is pretty good. I am puzzled as to why George Lazenby was dubbed!? Very odd.

++++++++++++SPOILERS++++++++++++++++ The story (as with most giallo) is about the murders of several children that have gone unsolved. The killer's face is not revealed and there is the possibilty that it is being committed by a woman!? However, the killings have started again. Is there a connection? Why is George Lazenby's character so interested in becoming a semi-gumshoe? Watch the movie and find out. A major plus (and addition to the mood) is the haunting score by the one and only Ennio Morricone. His music is just as great as always. For those people in the Louisville, Kentucky area who might be interested in seeing this gem...seek it out at Wild and Woolly Video.

Great little Giallo!

[jlabine · 7 July 2000]

"Who Saw Her Die" was a great little surprise. I had been searching for it for a little while, and when I had found it, I was happy to find that it was a much better film for actor George Lazenby ("On Her Majesty's Secret Service"), then the other films he had been making at that time ("Universal Soldier", "Stoner" etc.). It is a tad annoying to see that he was completely dubbed (a standard Italian practice I've heard), but I didn't find this too distracting from the film. It does however contain a great eerie soundtrack supplied by Ennio Morricone, which seems to jump in everytime we are viewing the killer's point of view through a veil. It's also a lot more mature than the typical Italian Giallo of that time, It's never too grautuidice in it's gore or nudity. It does contain great cinematography, especially great if viewed in widescreen. George Lazenby's daughter in the film is played by a little girl that seemed to play in every Giallo/ Horror flick that ever got produced in Italy ("Bay Of Blood", "Deep Red", and "Andy Warhol's Frankenstein"), which is due no doubt to her very unusual looks. Also, the fact that they have a cameo from Adolfo Celli ("Thunderball") makes me think that director had a James Bond fascination. The only problems I really have of the film, is that the ending is a little unclimactic and predictable (you guess who it is, before they show you). A slight influence from Nick Roeg's "Don't Look Now" is evident. Other than this, quite a little gem of a film. And actually hold's up to some of Dario Argento's earlier work, if not better.

Great cinematography and a fair mystery

[Keltic-2 · 7/10 · 15 February 2000]

_Chi L'ha Vista Morire?_ is, visually, a very beautiful film. From the first shots emphasising the starkness of the alpine landscape which segue into similarly stark black and white photos and drawings from a police file to the closing scenes, the cinematography is beautiful. In particular, one shot in which a flock of pigeons taking flight in a town square provides a metaphor for the rising panic of the father, played by George Lazenby, struck me as particularly beautiful - both aesthetically pleasing in its own right and a very tasteful way to lay the ground for the scene that follows. A unifying visual motif is the veil worn by the killer, which makes for some interesting point-of-view shots, although the impact must have been blunted somewhat by viewing on video.

Unfortunately, there's some flaws that detracted from the experience for me. Lazenby does not speak Italian, so his lines are dubbed. At times, the sound level appears to be much too high, making the dubbing glaring. Similarly, the soundtrack is at times overbearing, particularly during appearances by the killer, whose discordant "theme music" became incredibly annoying, particularly when the rest of the film was marked by such a light touch. Mercifully, this problem is rectified at the climax and the music is cut short.

On the visual side, watch for some very fake looking blood. Many scenes (particularly interior scenes) are very dark, which caused me some problems in determining what was going on, but again this may have been compounding by watching on videotape rather than the big screen.

Overall, a satisfying mystery film, if a little slow-paced.

Who could kill a child? You'll find out

[ofumalow · 7/10 · 11 October 2021]

This above-average giallo starts out rather shockingly with a little girl at a ski resort sledding down a hill--at the bottom of which a female figure in black unceremoniously bludgeons her to death, seemingly at complete random. Then George Lazenby plays a man vacationing in Venice with his own little redheaded daughter; the wife and mother (Anita Strindberg) is elsewhere. We immediately perceive that the same sinister individual is stalking this girl, too, and that ends badly. So the majority of the film is Lazenby's attempt to avenge his daughter and find the killer, Strindberg soon joining him. There's the usual array of suspicious characters who turn up en route, including Adolfo Celi and Fassbinder regular Peter Chatel.

This doesn't utilize the Venice setting as richly as some later films ("Don't Look Now" seems to have really alerted filmmakers to its potential), and there isn't much in the way of explicit violence, let alone nudity. Still, the movie has real atmosphere and tension, along with solid performances. It feels less purely exploitative than many films in the genre, as somehow it has a little more emotional heft--maybe because it's rooted in acute parental grief, and the horror of a child's death. Though needless to say, the death toll soon encompasses other age groups. It's a very well-crafted movie with a particularly eerie Ennio Morricone score.

Average giallo

[dopefishie · 6/10 · 20 April 2021]

Great atmosphere, acting, and cinematography. Venice looks fantastic!

However, the plot and the killer were meh.

When added together, it comes out feeling like an average thriller.

Worth seeing only if you're already a fan of giallo.

From a venetian with bore

[elvinjones · 6/10 · 7 June 2003]

I've seen this movie on the first days of the private tv in Italy. I am from Venezia and everybody in my house stands in front of tv watching this thriller only to find places we know. In fact this movie capture as not other else some fascinating places of my town, a town very hard to use as a location (the risk is to make a movie like a postcard). You can also see an ex cinema named "Progresso"(the place where Dominique Boschero is strangled). Now is a supermarket... About the movie: is very professional, with a good photography, but is a clone of Argento with less originality. Lazenby is bad as in all his works and the surprise is not very surprising... There are some moments good (like the meeting with Adolfo Celi into the Stucky's mulino) but the plot is too much confused and without any real substance. You can find movies of the same period more ugly than this, but "Chi l'ha vista morire" (also know as "Malastrana") is only 5/10

Terrific giallo

[ODDBear · 8/10 · 3 June 2005]

A child murderer is running loose in Venice. Distraught father Lazenby investigates after his daughter is killed.

A superb giallo from Aldo Lado. From the very first scene Lado builds up a tense atmosphere that holds it's grip on the viewer until the very end. In keeping up with some of the giallo's best trademarks, this film has excellent photography, making good use of Venice's enchanting scenery. Ennio Morricone's haunting musical score is another huge plus.

The film is well written and has a good story, albeit a bit complicated. It took me two viewings to get everything, but maybe I'm just a little dense at times. Maybe it doesn't bear too much scrutiny, but I didn't find any huge plot holes. The revelation of the killer is, as in most giallo's, quite a surprise. I'm guessing you won't guess it.

George Lazenby (in my opinion a very underrated Bond) is a very likable leading man, gives a credible performance as the grieving father and amateur sleuth and Anita Strindberg looks smashing.

I advice you the check this one out if you're a fan of this genre.

Stop watching at the half-hour mark and imagine your own ending

[Zeego · 6/10 · 30 November 2015]

"Who Saw Her Die?" starts with the murder of a young girl on a snowy mountainside. This sets the bleak tone for the first half-hour of the film. We go to another young girl, whose parents are played by George Lazenby and Anita Strindberg. The girl is stalked by an unseen stranger while her parents remain oblivious. Even if you can predict what is going to happen to her, the suspense becomes almost unbearable. This section of the film is excellent.

At approximately the 32-minute mark, there's a sex scene between Lazenby and Strindberg. I highly advise you to stop watching at that point, because the whole film falls apart quite rapidly from there. All the suspense that was built up until this moment dissipates into boredom, and Lazenby spends most of the remainder of the film wandering around aimlessly. The film plods along until it reaches its laughable conclusion. It's so bad that it almost retroactively ruins the first part.

If you feel the need, imagine your own ending. It couldn't possibly be worse than the one they came up with.

Sub-Par Giallo Entry...

[EVOL666 · 4/10 · 16 October 2006]

I consider myself a relatively big fan of the giallo genre, though I haven't seen nearly as many as some that I talk too - but I figure at this point I've seen enough to separate the notable entries from the weaker ones - and WHO SAW HER DIE? is honestly about the lamest that I've seen so far. It started off well enough and held interest until about the halfway point, and then pretty much completely dropped the ball after that...

A famous sculptor's young daughter comes from her home in London to visit him in Venice. She is murdered while on her holiday, and the sculptor spends the rest of the film running around Venice trying to find clues to his daughter's murder...

Honestly - WHO SAW HER DIE? fails on pretty much all levels. The storyline gets confused and redundant after the daughter's murder, characters are introduced who are thinly explained, and the "resolution" is dumb and forced as though the director couldn't find an adequate way to tie the film together. Scenes of the father running from one locale to the next are dull and repetitive. Even the few murders in the film are pretty weak and uninteresting. As to the couple of minor "good" points - the Venecian setting is nice and adds a bit of atmosphere to the film, and sexy genre favorite Anita Strindberg gets nekkid a few times. That's about all that's going for this one. Not a completely horrible film, but definitely sub-par for the genre, and I would consider this one either for giallo completists only, or a skip altogether...4/10

An Excellent Giallo

[Adam-95 · 8/10 · 30 June 2002]

Very well-crafted giallo is an obvious precursor to Nicolas Roeg's ingenious and similarly Venetian-set "Don't Look Now". Suspenseful, engrossing and with some skillful visual flourishes--such as the black-veiled killer framed against a snowy landscape--makes it clearly stand from its sleazier counterparts in the genre. Ennio Morricone's delirious score is one of my favorites and nearly impossible to shake from your mind!

Sporadically effective giallo

[gridoon2024 · 6/10 · 12 September 2016]

Wow, looking at George Lazenby here, you wouldn't believe that merely three years earlier he had played James Bond! With his worryingly skinny body, his unkempt hair and his "porn mustache", he looks as if he was deliberately trying to distance himself as much as possible from the image of Bond. The film itself is a well-made but slow and diffuse giallo; there are sporadically effective scenes (mostly the stalkings and the killings), but the Lazenby's investigation is not as gripping as it should be, and the ending may strike some viewers as a cheat, because the killer is a character who is barely in the film! The on-location shooting in Venice and Ennio Morricone's extraordinarily weird score help; the traditionally poor English dubbing doesn't. **1/2 out of 4.

Well, the city sure is nice to look at.

[capkronos · 3/10 · 24 August 2006]

Venice is a gorgeous city full of canals, garish colors and stunning architecture. Setting a film in this city is always a plus because you are guaranteed an interesting backdrop. Unfortunately, when the city itself turns out to be the best part of the entire movie, you know you are in trouble. Even more disheartening, CHI L'HA VISTA MORIRE (known to English-speaking audiences as WHO SAW HER DIE?) is cynical enough to use Venice as a distraction technique to keep people from realizing that this is simply just another tepid, poorly paced, clichéd-to-the-max murder mystery we've seen dozens of times before. Only slower. Very, very slow. I'm talking moving at the speed of a tortoise with three broken legs slow. I guess it takes a special kind of director to make a film about a serial killer of children this devoid of emotion, this bland and this uninvolving. Aldo Lado is not helped any by a cast of non-actors who sleepwalk through their respective parts, but he is especially not helped at all by his own uninspired direction.

One of the key shots in the film is a killer's POV shot. At first, the shot is effective at building up the creepy, off-screen menace getting ready to strike out. The shot looks through a thin black veil (presumably that of an old woman), watching victims as the Ennio Morricone music (an increasingly annoying children's choir) slowly starts to creep in. But then this same exact shot with the same exact music keeps being repeated over and over and over again for almost all of the horror related scenes. To make matters worse, the shot is used pointlessly on multiple occasions where nothing even happens. A common technique used in horror films is the "cheap scare." You know, like a cat jumping out of a closet to startle a character, and the viewer. In this film, the veil scenes are simply "cheap suspense" because the script fails to create any honest suspenseful/horrific scenarios based on the storyline, plot, characters or dialogue.

Another major problem are the characters. They are poorly developed, shallow and completely unsympathetic, and the actors portraying them seem disinterested in the material. You could care less about them or what happens to them. George Lazenby never once comes off as as impassioned or driven, which is important to the believability of his vengeance-seeking father character. Just like him, this film is cold, clinical, technical, by the numbers; basically just going through the motions in a completely lifeless manner. Sure, this film could have been cold in a calculating, disturbing way, but it's not. It's just cold in an off-putting, blasé kind of way. And the ending reeks of desperate, lazy film-making and writing. The identity of the killer is supposed to be a surprise, but it's not a surprise in context of the script, it's a supposed surprise based on an occupation; a costume.

A formulaic but engaging murder mystery

[aschepler2 · 15 February 2004]

WHO SAW HER DIE? (1972) *** George Lazenby, Anita Strindberg, Peter Chatel, Adolfo Celi. In this engaging giallo directed by Aldo Lado, George Lazenby plays Franco Serpieri, a well-known Venetian sculptor. After Serpieri's young daughter is murdered, he grows impatient with the efforts of the police and tries to find the killer himself, with some help from his estranged wife (Strindberg). The film sticks to a familiar formula: the likely suspects are killed off one by one, and the last man (or woman) standing is revealed as the murderer. But the process feels clumsier than it ought to here, and since the killer turns out to be one of the film's least developed characters, the ending is less than satisfying. Fortunately, though, painterly cinematography and an intriguing score by the brilliant Ennio Morricone help compensate for the weaknesses of the script. Recommended.

To catch a killer

[Chase_Witherspoon · 7/10 · 9 June 2015]

I must confess my impression of George Lazenby improved after watching "Who Saw Her Die", he was far more restrained than I expected, dare I say even improved the overall film which was otherwise a meandering tale that failed to find purpose.

The general plot is disturbing enough (concerning a child killer) and unfolds well, but the subsequent self-investigation by Lazenby (as the grieving father) and track-down of the killer seemed too randomised and illogical.

There's a few gripping moments after the initial horrors (Strindberg startled in the apartment was tense) but mostly the shocks are too well telegraphed to properly land more than just a glancing blow (e.g. the aviary scene). Too many extraneous characters brought into ephemeral focus appear to paper over a thin, largely arbitrary plot that runs out of road all too quickly. Adolfo Celi's supporting role seems largely frivolous and the statuesque Swedish beauty Strindberg is left to spin her wheels with little opportunity to become embroiled in the mystery.

So Lazenby has been given the keys and does deliver the film to at least a decent standard, whilst the sets and exteriors are highly stylised and visual, typical for Italian thrillers of that era. Too many loose strands that just doesn't manage to knit all the threads together in one cohesive and compelling whodunit. Not bad, but just middle of the road in my opinion.

Fairly enjoyable, if imperfect

[I_Ailurophile · 7/10 · 5 September 2022]

I don't know if it says more about Ennio Morricone or the movie itself that the most readily grabbing part of the production is the composer's score. The emphatic use of a children's choir in the soundtrack, particularly in that discordant theme that accompanies the killers movements, is altogether chilling, not least given the subject matter. 'Who saw her die?' occupies the thriller side of giallo more than the horror, but Morricone's music lends a tension to the proceedings that rather helps to tilt the needle. Put this aside and one may well remark on some recognizable names and faces in the cast, but even at that, this movie doesn't necessarily stand out otherwise. Make no mistake, all the stylings of the Italian genre are here in abundance - the very specific camerawork, the method of building and escalating the mystery, the weirdly particular type of fake blood. Even if it's not an essential must-see, however, 'Who saw her die?' is nonetheless capably engaging, and worth checking out.

Lent a hand with terrific selection of film locations, filmmaker Aldo Lado demonstrates a keen eye for arranging shots and scenes; the basic visual presentation is itself fair reason to watch. This includes fetching hair and makeup work, costume design, and art direction, and more so instances of violence, and those few stunts that we see. The ensemble give swell performances of controlled range and personality, with George Lazenby unexpectedly making at least as much of an impression as co-stars like Anita Strindberg. And especially with all this in mind, in those scenes of most immediate peril for one character or another, the feature ably builds strong tension that keeps one's attention.

As great as each individual element may be, however, the whole feels lesser than the sum of its parts. The main issue I see is that there's no real sense of dynamics in the picture. From expositions to killings, from investigation to climax and ending, 'Who saw her die?' carries the same tone all the way, with only the music offering major variation. If the classic model of narrative progression is a triangle with rising action on one side, peaking at the climax, and resolving with falling action, this movie mostly feels like a single flat line. As if to emphasize - I was shocked to glance at the digital timer at one point and learn that more than two-thirds the runtime had elapsed; for whatever had transpired in the story, it doesn't meaningfully feel like it goes anywhere. And for that matter, if we accept at face value the threads connecting bits and pieces of the plot where the killer is concerned, still the progression of the protagonist's investigation seems haphazard and flimsy, not least of all given little to no sense of rise and fall in the plot development.

One way or the other, I guess what it ultimately comes down to is that wherever it lands on the spectrum of quality, this falls in neatly among its giallo brethren. On some baseline level our expectations of the genre will be met, and it's just a question of how well. I think 'Who saw her die?' is better than not, and a decent way to spend 90 minutes, with the caveat that it has distinct faults that prevent it from meeting its full potential. So long as you're looking for passing entertainment over an actively compelling viewing experience, this is worth a look, and recommendable most of all for fans of the cast or of Morricone.

Kind of pointless but has its moments

[preppy-3 · 7/10 · 8 March 2008]

In Venice Franco (George Lazenby!) is visited by his young daughter. She disappears and is found brutally murdered. His estranged wife Elizabeth (Anita Strindberg) comes to comfort him and help find the murderer. But Franco finds out things are complicated and soon the murderer is after him and his friends.

There's a LOT of problems with this. For starters Lazenby looks terrible. He's far too thin (the scenes of him with his shirt off are actually pretty horrifying) and he has long hair and an ugly moustache. The dubbing is lousy--even Lazenby is dubbed! The story ceases to make sense more than once. There are far too many characters to keep track of and the final resolution really doesn't make sense. Also the POV shots of the killer stalking people are cool at first...but then they're happening nonstop and quickly get tiresome. Still this has some things going for it.

Before the plot goes barreling out of control it's actually kind of interesting. All the characters and situations keep your attention. The location shooting in Venice is just great--their are some incredibly beautiful visuals here. It has its share of spooky sequences (one with Elizabeth alone in Franco's apartment actually got to me) and some cool bloody murders. Also Ennio Morricone's score is incredible--kept reminding me of "Deep Red" and "Suspiria".

So, it's not a good film but has its moments. Director Aldo Lsdo did much better with "Short Night of the Glass Dolls". Giallo fans might want to take a look.

Unsettling at the start and tense

[acidburn-10 · 7/10 · 10 November 2013]

The movie starts out with the murder of a young girl, which straight away I found rather unsettling and then fast forward a few years later and we meet George Lazenby who lives in Venice and also has a young daughter and what becomes even more unsettling his daughter becomes the next victim, which becomes heartbreaking as firstly we get to know the little girl and sees her bonding with her father and then the rest of the movie focus's on the father trying to solve the mystery as the police are absolutely clueless.

Okay the storyline isn't to everyone's taste, and if you keep watching as the movie goes on it is rather good, and of course we get array of quirky characters and suspects in the usual giallo style and watch as the numbers dwindle down and this movie does a good job of keeping you guessing all the way through to the end, with twists and turns at almost every corner.

The Venice setting is a nice touch and rather beautiful and yet at the same time rather sinister and the wonderfully staged murder set pieces. Plus the performances are decent as well, George Lazenby gives a decent performance and a character to root for and Anita Strindberg as his wife was also strong and Nicoletta Elmi is a real highlight as the doomed daughter.

All in all a decent movie but does have a few small flaws like the countless red herrings, but with it's moody atomoshere, Who Saw Her Die is still a decent addition to the giallo genre.

one of the best gialli

[nippy-4 · 10/10 · 5 October 1999]

WHO SAW HER DIE (1971)is a classic and very underrated giallo. I think it is excellent packing an emotional punch due to Ado Lado's skilful direction and the haunting Ennio Moriconne score. It is very stylish and due to the striking appearance of the killer who wears a veil over the face there are some truly striking images. Also the acting is better than in you usual giallo. IMO ,ex-James Bond, George Lazenby is particularly convincing as the mourning father obsessed with finding the murderer of his young daughter. The most impressive aspect of this film however is the way the location, Venice, is manipulated by the excellent cinematography. It is transformed into a sombre, claustrophobic maze consisting of Renaissance-esque buildings peering through the mist and surrounded by calm, soothing waters. IMO there is a very apparent influence on the famous art-house thriller DON'T LOOK NOW (1973). Apart from the obvious plot and location (Venice) similarities, there is a sex scene featuring Lazenby's character and his wife which is intercut with the two lying in bed next to each other weeping and reflecting on their childs death. In DON'T LOOK NOW there is a similar scene with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie in the role of Lazenby's character and his characters wife. The only difference being the sex scene is intercut with the two getting dressed afterwards. The way the scenes are shot is also very similar, both using jagged editing. A classic movie that is hard to find and challenging to watch.

Suffer the Children

[Vomitron_G · 7/10 · 21 February 2010]

Gripping giallo with slightly more disturbing themes than we're used to. Mainly because little girls are being killed here, as well as there seem to be decadent sex-sessions going on amongst a group of selected adults. Apart from the opening scene, this movie takes place in Venice, but doesn't exactly extol this romantic city. Director Aldo Lado prefers to portray a city in decay, showing us several rundown buildings where some of the chase scenes take place and a sleazy cinema-theatre as well as drawing out some perverted characters. The sometimes sloppy editing and grainy cinematography help in giving this movie a raw feeling. Ennio Morricone's score is pretty haunting. The main theme has a children's choir singing creepy chantings. Though that theme is over-used more than a bit too much, it never misses its effect. There was just one disappointment, though: this was the third time in a giallo-row that I guessed, very early on in the movie, who the killer was... Oh well, it's still a decent and disturbing giallo. Certainly worth it if you're a fan of the genre.

Passable but badly edited Giallo, plenty of suspense, thriller, chiller and grisly killings

[ma-cortes · 5/10 · 31 January 2020]

So-so Giallo, regularly mounted with a heinous criminal at large committing astonishing murders . A little girl is cruelly killed in France, sometime later, another kid is also murdered in Venice, Italy . She is daughter of a notorious sculptor, George Lazenby. Later on, the parents, the well-known sculptor and his separared wife, Anita Strindberg, begin investigating and soon encounter some twisted clues thoughout streets, mansions and slums of Venice. Along the way, more and more killed corpses go on appearing, as the body-count keeps rising, as the series killer begins butchering all those who know about his sinister activities. There are various suspicious people. Who's the Killer?....

An acceptable but disjointed Giallo with thrills, chills, high body-count , nudism, confusing plot, gory effects, and a lot twists and turns. Ordinary Gialli with its usual elements : a murderer with gloves, barroque style, sadistic and ritualized ominous killings, unsettling and disturbing scenarios as interior as exterior. It results to be a twisted and complex Giallo based on a creepy story with script from Francisco Barilli and director Aldo Lado himself. The main interest resides in finding out the murderer on loose and watching the non-sense crimes, as well as seeing the surprising faces of the victims being killed and their bellies being ripped open with a knife. Starring the skinny George Lazenby, ex-007, along with Anita Strindberg, a Scandinavian actress regular on Italian Giallos , both of whom give mediocre interpretations. They are well accompanied by some Italian actors, usual in B-films, such as Adolfo Celi of Thunderball , Rosemarie De Lindt and the beautiful Dominique Boschero, habitual in Peplum and Spaghetti Western.

It contains an atmospheric and evocative cinematography by Franco Di Giacomo, showing splendidly palaces, houses , streets, bridges, cannels, and docks from Venice. Special mention for the classy and prolific composer Ennio Morricone, he composes a really frightening and eerie soundtrack, especially when assassinations happen. The motion picture was professional but regularly written and directed by Aldo Lado. He is a good writer and filmmaker who has directed a few films with great casts . His first film was a giallo titled The short night of the butterflies or Paralysed or Malastrana with ingrid Thulin, Jean Sorel. After directing the extremely violent : Last stop in night train. Following other movies with not much success such as : La cosa buffa, La disubbidienza, La cugina and Il nocturno di Chopin. Aldo Lado even made a Scifi movie with international cast titled The Humanoid. Rating : 5.5/10. Acceptable and passable giallo that will appeal to Italian Thriller aficionados.

An excellent stylish and sinister murder mystery

[Red-Barracuda · 9/10 · 3 June 2013]

Aldo Lado is surely one of the most under-rated Italian directors of the 70's. He seems to be relatively forgotten, while several lesser contemporaries get a lot more attention. But whatever the case, Lado was responsible for three excellent horror/thrillers in the mid-70's. There was the nasty revenge thriller Night Train Murders and a couple of gialli - the Prague-set Short Night of the Glass Dolls and the Venice-set Who Saw Her Die? All films were very distinct from one and other and all had considerable style to burn.

Who Saw Her Die? is the one which follows the classic style formula of the giallo most closely. In it a serial killer is on the prowl in Venice. Like Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now, this one used the crumbling streets of that famous ancient city to great creepy effect. It begins, however, in the French Alps with a nicely atmospheric prologue in which a young child is killed by a black-veiled killer in the snowy expanses. This villain is a very good one and is presented throughout the movie in a very sinister manner indeed, with close-up shots of their shoes as they menacingly advance toward their victims and shots of their obscured veiled face. Additionally this character is accompanied by an absolutely rivetingly creepy Ennio Morricone theme which is a controlled cacophony of a children's choir over a steady beat. It's one of his most memorable individual bits of music and that's saying a lot considering the sheer volume and quality of Il Maestro's output. The cast is solid with George Lazenby appearing in his first starring role following his solitary turn as James Bond in the under-valued On Her Majesty's Secret Service; while he is ably supported by genre regular's such as Anita Strindberg (The Case of the Scorpion's Tail) and Adolfo Celi (Danger: Diabolik).

As far as I am concerned, this is an excellent giallo by one of the most reliable Italian directors from the period. It works well as a pretty intriguing mystery, while it delivers the requisite vicarious thrills too. And most importantly it presents these things with a healthy slice of style and verve. Well worth seeing…!

It's okay

[Jeremy_Urquhart · 6/10 · 3 March 2024]

It's a giallo film, so it contains a good bit of sleaze and some out-there poorly delivered lines like: "Play a match of ping-pong... if you can't play ping-pong, don't get mixed up in politics!" But you have to take the bad with the good, because there's also an interesting Ennio Morricone score here, and a side character who looks exactly like Henry Kissinger, which is kind of funny. For real though, that score paired with the editing kind of saves this movie and makes it at least a bit interesting.

I was also tempted to call Who Saw Her Die? A rip-off of Don't Look Now, but it actually came out a year before, so maybe Don't Look Now was the rip-off, considering both movies take place in Venice and deal with the grief of losing a child... broadly speaking. The narratives and genres differ, but that main premise and basic setting prove similar.

Anyway, I'm tired and don't really know what else to say. If you like giallo movies, this is probably worthwhile, and if you don't, avoid. I don't mind Italian thriller/horror movies from this time but don't tend to be crazy about them, and so it checks out that this was one I found to be just okay.

clichéd boredom...

[macabro357 · 3/10 · 7 May 2003]

(aka: WHO SAW HER DIE?)

Not as good as SHORT NIGHT OF GLASS DOLLS, the giallo film Aldo Lado did the year before, which I also happened to see the same time as this one.

I HATE the Morricone soundtrack. It's surprising to say that, but it's true. It's nothing more than an annoying children's choir that grates on one's nerves after awhile. Blah...I never knew a Morricone score could be this annoying.

Venice is rocked by the murder of children. The child murderess is always dressed in black with a big veil draped over her head. George Lazenby's daughter is found dead in one of Venice's canals and it is now up to him to find the killer. There's a convoluted sub-plot involving art dealers protecting someone, that's a real mess.

Then a woman Lazenby is supposed to meet in a theater is strangled by the killer and nobody else in the theater notices it until Lazenby sits down next to her. It's not even very dark in the theater so how come nobody noticed it? Sloppy and unbelievable.

Jeez, Argento did this kind of thing so much better while Lado makes it look a unconvincing cliché, here. In no way did I sense any tension or suspense with what looked like scenes of someone just going through the motions.

The kid getting murdered at the beginning looked fake, too. It obviously looked like a small mannequin with a red wig. Clumsy and sloppy, done on the cheap which the DVD makes even more apparent. Plus no motive is ever given as to why the killer only picks little red-haired girls to murder. The voices are also poorly dubbed with the children having adult voices, sounding like children. George Lazenby's daughter sounds older than he does as being one prime example. This is really bad, making the script sound even more amateurish than it should be.

And speaking of Lazenby, he looks like he lost a lot of weight here compared to his 007 days from a couple of years earlier. He looks like a long-haired junkie or someone ill with some kind of disease. Clearly not his usual, healthy-looking self.

The ending isn't surprising at all since it falls under the standard giallo cliché of copying Alfred Hitchcock from the 1960s. If you see enough of these films, you'll know what I'm talking about. I knew who the killer was a half an hour into the film, so you'll just have to see it for yourself.

The Anchor Bay DVD is up to their usual high standards with an 11 minute extra commentary by the director himself. A very pristine, wide-screen print is used. Plus we get to see beautiful Venice locations as part of the deal.

Get's a 3 out of 10 for boredom and annoyance