La vittima designata

Strangers on a Train is given the giallo treatment in The Designated Victim, which is sadly nowhere near as good as Hitchcock's classic, nor is it one of the better Italian murder mysteries to hail from the '70s.

Tomas Milian plays successful advertising executive Stefano Augenti, who tries unsuccessfully to get his wife Luisa (Marisa Bartoli) to sell her half of the company, which would free up funds for Stefano to leg it to Venezuela with his sexy mistress, French model Fabienne (Katia Christine). While on a dirty weekend with Fabienne in Venice, Stefano encounters the foppish Count Matteo Tiepolo (Pierre Clémenti, who looks like Russell Brand crossed with Freddie Mercury) who comes up with a scheme that would benefit them both: Matteo would kill Luisa, and, in return, Stefano would murder Matteo's bully of a brother. Stefano brushes the idea off as morbid chit-chat, but Matteo goes through with his part of the plan regardless, strangling Luisa with a stocking. When the police investigate, they discover all about Stefano's affair and his intention to leave the country, which makes him the prime suspect.

What follows is a rather mundane thriller as Stefano tries to prove his innocence, with Matteo always one step ahead. Director Maurizio Lucidi fails to wring any tension from the set-up, and, barring some brief T&A from Christine during the opening credits, the film is totally devoid of the genre staples - gratuitous nudity and creative killings, making it a pretty pedestrian affair all round. A daft ending that requires Stefano to be an Olympic standard rifleman really takes the biscuit.

4.5/10, rounded up to 5 for IMDb.