What was ex-insurance investigator Paradisi doing hiring an excavator to nose around in a recently flooded quarry? Why did his investigations compel someone to have him murdered – decapitation by digger jaw, no less – and then murder the digger operator, Ancini, making it look like he had committed suicide in response to the (non) accident? And what relation do the murders bear to an old, unsolved kidnapping/murder case from last year involving a wealthy industrialist and his young daughter?
These are the questions which the dogged Inspector Perretti (George Hilton) seeks to answer in this 1971 giallo from Tonino Valerii, a director better known for spaghetti westerns like Day of Anger and My Name is Nobody but who, like many a talented Italian craftsman, proved his versatility and adaptability within a range of genres.
While there's maybe too much in the way of heavy subject matter along with police procedural work and insufficient trash excess for some giallo fans tastes, overall My Dear Killer emerges as a more than decent entry.
Although the plotting is linear and straightforward, with Peretti's investigations proceeding by an almost literal process of elimination as the killer remains one step ahead until a final Agatha Christie style denoument where all the surviving suspects are gathered together in a room, the quirky and sleazy characters – one is clearly a paedophile while another was blackmailed for being caught in flagrante delicto with an underage girl – are pure giallo.
Psychoanalytic motifs are present – one character is symbolically castrated through the losee of a hand, while a mirror proves a major clue in the murderer's unmasking – but mercifully their deployment is deft, not heavy-handed.
Valerii skilfully handles the traditional subjective killers-eye view scenes and delivers some susprisingly brutal murders, with a gruesome and graphic circular saw attack that delivers as much, if not more, explicit gore than the entirety of Tobe Hooper's notorious The Texas Chainsaw Massacre .
George Hilton proves a reliable dramatic lead once more, this time playing the unambiguous hero rather than a suspect as in The Case of the Bloody Iris and All the Colours of the Dark .
Though second billed, William Berger's role is really little more than a cameo: He doesn't appear until well into the film and then doesn't have much to do.
Ennio Morricone's surprisingly subdued score, using mournful vocals, is another asset.
Shriek Show's Region 1 DVD of My Dear Killer looks good. Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and Dolby Digital, the transfer is clean, bright and sharp for the most part, with the film probably looking and sounding as good as it can be expected to.
The extras comprise brief but informative interviews with director Valerii and star Hilton, presented in a Q&A format with English subtitles, and trailers for the film, Massimo Dallamano's What Have You Done to Solange , and Umberto Lenzi's Spasmo and Hitcher in the Dark (under his Nabokovian Humphrey Humbert pseudonym).
The animated menus are eye-catching, with a circular saw blade buzzing from one side of the screen to the other!
(External) Erratica's George Hilton page
Copyright © K H Brown 2002-2005
Rating:
2.0 / 5
(1 vote)
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