La polizia brancola nel buio

"La Polizia brancola nel Buio" (The Police are blundering in the Dark) occupies a place of honor among the bizarre gialli. Even for a Giallo, "La Polizia brancola nel Buio" is quite strange: the film begins with a bang; a girl is driving on a road and suddenly a flat tire forces her to stop by the road. She looks around and sees someone nearby, and she asks him to help her in changing tires. He promptly goes there to help her and the girl says: "molto gentile" (that could be translated as - very nice of you). Suddenly the face of the girl changes from a smile to an expression of terror; the stranger had a pair of scissors in his hands, and starts running after her with murderous intentions. She runs through a forest, hitting branches, and losing one by one her upper clothes, till her tits are bare, it's then that the killer reaches her and slashes her throat. Sex and violence!

After a while, there's another girl on a road, and she's forced to stop her car in front of an inn, her car must be fixed, and to crown it all, rain starts to fall, a heavy rain. Will this girl survive the inn? Well, anyway, this girl is wet, she wants to get dry, so she warms herself by the fireplace, but not before taking all her clothes off. It seems that there's someone in the room, or is it just imagination? These two girls and other ones had been going to a villa nearby to make photo shoots. This villa is inhabited by odd characters; many film scenes are filmed inside its walls, the characters do nothing much, they dine, talk, play cards, and there is the owner of the villa that invented a camera that photographs thoughts… and so on. There are many people who think that this part of the film is boring, but I haven't felt this way – the dialogues are completely over-the-top, and things are weird and ridiculous. And just don't forget – there's a killer on the loose.

This film could be cool, if the director had some sense of style, but no, the death scenes and everything is kind of pedestrian. I think that the only way of breaking the limits of a low budget is through the imagination, and this (in a way) is something the filmmaker lacks, but the film is so uneven, incoherent and amateurish, that it has some strange kind of charm. Why? I don't know. I've seen this film twice already.

A reporter agrees to meet a model friend at an isolated villa. Turns out she's been stabbed to death by an unknown assassin. The owner of the villa is a wheelchair-bound man who has invented a device for photographing thoughts. Typically for these types of movies, the house is also populated by a selection of other oddballs and eccentrics.

The Police Are Blundering in the Dark is a bargain basement yet extremely strange giallo. It opens with a half-naked woman being chased by an unseen assailant and then being stabbed to death with a pair of scissors. But from hereon in it just gets stranger. The very idea of a machine that photographs thoughts is of course ludicrous. Its nearest giallo equivalent would be the ridiculous eye device in Dario Argento's Four Flies on Grey Velvet. But that's where the comparison ends, as this flick is hardly on the same level as Argento's one. It is a somewhat bizarre entry in the giallo sub-genre it does have to be admitted and for that alone it deserves at least some recognition. But it's strictly a movie for Euro-trash connoisseurs, it's not even going to necessarily appeal to giallo enthusiasts as it's a little bit too clunkily offbeat for its own good.

What a bizarre mess!

We begin by seeing a woman having her car break down and getting a pair of scissors in her neck for her trouble, which then leads to a shot of a deranged man tending a lettuce patch and chuckling. We then cut to another young lady who breaks down and calls her boyfriend to get help. He's says he'll be right along, but neglects to mention he's in bed with another girl. Naughty, fella, naughty!

This guy is Marcello and every single female member of the cast wants to tug his tummy banana. Marcello does eventually head off to pick up his girlfriend, but not before she receives a pair of scissors to the neck (although she's given time to strip off for the camera of course). Marcello is confused when he discovers his girlfriend's car is still around, so he's unsure where she's disappeared to, and instead he ends up at a villa full of very emotional people/suspects.

There's the afroed-wheelchair scientist who has perfected a machine that can print out peoples thoughts (which it does by taking pictures via the eye of a gold statue situated in the dining room!). His wife, who suffers from 'Erotomania', whatever that is - she just seems pissed off that she lives in the country, and their neice, a blonde, sexually repressed girl who lives in terror of her uncle and seems to be the main subject of the thought machine. Plus, there's the doctor who looks after the scientist, the giant gardners guy, angry butler Alberto and yet another sexually repressed maid who has the hots for Marcello, and everyone else for that matter.

This film looks like it cost about five lire to make and even though there's plenty of nudity to keep you awake, an interminable dinner party in the middle almost derails the whole thing. Luckily the thought machine and a novel death for the killer goes in its favour. Of course the killer's motives don't make much sense and there's a couple of extra twists at the end because...you know...it's a giallo. Got to have twists!

Talky, nearly gore-free, and overlong at under 90 minutes, The Police Are Blundering in the Dark might be one of the least interesting giallos ever made. While most giallos aren't known for their award winning scripts or realistic dialogue, there's usually a little style or sleaze to keep one's interest, but this film is too coy and pedestrian to keep one's attention.

(1975) The Police Are Blundering In The Dark/ La polizia brancola nel buio (In Italian with English subtitles) CRIME THRILLER/ MYSTERY/ HORROR

Written and directed by Helia Colombo that has a young lady driver stuck in the middle of the gravel road asking someone to help her change a tire. He pulls out a knife and manages to rip off her clothes before he kills her so that her bare breasts can be seen for the world to see, and of course viewers do not know who the killer is until the very end. The next scene has the servant/ chauffeur, we find out later his name is Alberto (Francisco Cortéz) as he is reading the daily newspaper that indicates about a fourth missing model from the same area with it also reads "The Police are blundering in the dark" hence the title. Alberto then puts the newspaper down as the bus pulls up a lady gets off by the name of Lucia (Gabriella Giorgelli) has accepted the job as housekeeper for the Parissi family household. And while Lucia is settling in, it looks as if Alberto may have had to do something and as he was coming in to the Parissi resident, Enrichetta Blond (Margaret-Rose Keil). And while Enrichetta was driving home, she was driving in the middle of the night while raining and storming real hard, except that her car goes out and she stops by a hotel/ inn to use the phone. Upon calling her boyfriend, Georgio D'Amato (Joseph Arkim) he is sleeping around with another lady, and promises to pick her up the following morning. Forcing her to rent the room and stay the night. She suddenly becomes the second victim and on the following morning when Georgio arrives she is missing. And at this point, he becomes the main star as we find out he is not just a player, but he also happens to be a journalist as well. And her body is nowhere to be found, it would eventually lead him to the other last place she was seen with was the Parissi family household. It is there he is introduced to Edmondo Parissi (Danny P. Gerzog) who is wheelchair bound and is impotent; his wife, Eleonora (Halina Zalewska) and their niece, Sara (Elena Veronese) who lost her parents from a plane crash and sometimes the family doctor, D. Dalla (Richard Fielding) who grows lettuce.

One of the downsides of jotting down set ups and plots of many Eruo slasher movies is that they are forgettable and sometimes hard to describe. The only reason anyone would watch them are the voluptuous nude scenes if the violence itself does not do anything for anyone, the reason why I am giving this one 5 out of 10. Viewers get to see four of the young actresses that count the most to be nude of breasts and sometimes their rear end. Anyways, the movie does not make a ton of sense as the only appearance the police made throughout the entire run is towards the end too little too late. The killer is already dead explaining the why that does not make a ton of sense either.