L'assassino... è al telefono (1972)

User Rating:

6.1/10   

Director:

Alberto De Martino

Writers:

Adriano Bolzoni (writer)
Alberto De Martino (writer)

Release Date:

17 April 1975 (Netherlands)

Genre:

Thriller | Horror

Plot:

A woman whose husband was murdered five years previously, is stalked by his killer, who wants to eliminate her as a potential witness...

Plot Keywords:

Murder | Amnesia | Actress | Nudity | Theater

Cast

Telly Savalas	...	Ranko Drasovic
Anne Heywood	...	Eleanor Loraine
Osvaldo Ruggieri	...	Thomas Brown
Giorgio Piazza	...	George
Willeke van Ammelrooy	...	Dorothy
Rossella Falk	...	Margaret Vervoort
Antonio Guidi	...	Dr Chandler
Roger Van Hool	...	Peter Vervoort
Ada Pometti	...	Nurse
Alessandro Perrella	...	Psychiatrist
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Marc Audier
Piet Balfoort
Georges Bossair
Sandra L. Brennan
Suzy Falk
Leonardo Scavino	...	Killer
Serge-Henri Valcke

Also Known As:

Moordenaar aan de telefoon (Belgium: Flemish title)
Scenes from a Murder
The Killer Is on the Phone

Runtime:

Belgium:105 min | USA:92 min | West Germany:91 min

Country:

Italy | Belgium

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Norway:16 | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | Netherlands:16

Filming Locations:

Brugge, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium

Company:

Belga Films

Middle-of-the-pack giallo, definitely worth seeing

A theater actress (Anne Heywood) recognizes a thuggish hired killer (Telly Savalas) on the street and faints. When she comes to, she is suffering amnesia, having forgotten that has happened for the last five years since right before she witnessed her wealthy former boyfriend being murdered. This is a problem both for her husband of the past three years and for her theater company since she has the lead in their latest play ("Lady Godiva", quite convenient, of course, for a cheesecake-happy giallo film). The amnesia plot has obviously been done to death both within the giallo genre (i.e. "Eye in the Labyrinth", "Puzzle")and certainly outside it. Still this manages to add some new twists. At one point, the heroine has vague memories of being in bed with one of her male co-stars. Thinking they were lovers, she agrees to go to bed with him again in order to jog her memory, only to realize at the last moment (and to the poor guy's chagrin) that the memory is actually that of a scene in play they did together earlier! Meanwhile, the killer has also recognized her. He accidentally kills her sister, and he then comes after her.

Anne Heywood was kind of like a British version of Carroll Baker in that she started out in fairly respectable roles when she was younger (like "Black Narcissus"), but by middle age found herself appearing (usually sans clothing)in a lot of sleazy Italian exploitation flicks. This movie is not nearly as sleazy as some of her other Italian films like "Ring of Darkness" (where she has a naked catfight with the actress playing her teenage daughter). And her sleaziest film was actually a American production "The Shaming" (where she plays an interracial rape victim who falls in love with her rapist). Telly Savalas is great here as always, even if he doesn't have much more to do than look menacing. The director Alberto DeMartino is definitely not one of the great Italian directors, but his movies are always entertaining.

I really like the giallo genre so I may be a little kind to films like this. But even among the nearly two hundred gialli I've seen now, I'd rank this one solidly in the middle of the pack.