Starring: Robert Hoffmann, Pilar Velázquez,
Irina Demick, Adolfo Celi
A
businessman is found dead in a House of Horrors ride in an amusement park in
Madrid. Unsure if it is an accident or murder, insurance investigator Chris
Buyer is put on the case – and his first move is to seduce the man’s adult
daughter, Catherine. She is soon targeted by a man in the black leather coat
and receives threatening phone calls. Deciding to lay low for a while, she
takes Chris to her family’s rural mansion, where he meets her disturbed mother
and licentious sister, Barbara. He has an affair with Barbara, who is found
dead in the park in the following morning
Unlike
some really out there giallo titles, like Your
Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key or others that simply don’t
make any sense, such as Cat o’ Nine Tails
and The Killer is on the Phone, Naked Girl Killed in the Park is pretty
direct about what the film has to offer. Director Alfonso Brescia churned out
Italian B-movies across a wide variety of genres, but this was his first
giallo. It utterly lacks the suspense, scares, gore, or atmosphere found in the
genre’s classes, but it undeniably has a bit of charm. The opening sequence,
where Catherine’s father dies in the amusement park, is lifted right out of
John Boulting’s British noir, Brighton
Rock, but the scene is still effective and has some fittingly creepy
moments.
Naked Girl Killed in the
Park’s
real claim to fame is how thoroughly sleazy it is. The beautiful and often nude
female cast essentially embodies a group of insane, horny, and vindictive women
all trying to stab each other in the back. Giallo films often have unlikable
characters, but Catherine and her family really milk this for all it’s worth, particularly
her mother, who spends the first half of the film deliriously imagining that
her husband is still alive. Like Paul Naschy film The Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (made two years later in 1974),
this Italian-Spanish coproduction forces the women to compete for the sexual
attentions of an unlikable protagonist. Catherine’s sister is happy to seduce
Chris at the earliest opportunity, luring him outside for a midnight tryst with
the premise that she knows who killed her father. I’m not going to give away
her mother’s behavior, but it’s certainly a sight to be seen and rivals the
antics of Martha’s bereaved mother in Fassbinder’s Martha.
As
Chris, Robert Hoffman is stuck playing a thoroughly unlikable protagonist – I’m
not even sure I can call him that – and he fails to rise above some truly bland
writing. He’s also a total asshole, delighted to find himself in the midst of
so many crazy women. Though this begins as a more straightforward giallo with a
central murder, a protagonist menaced by the killer, and plenty of suspects and
red herrings, it becomes a strange family drama in the vein of The Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll. This
may not appeal those expecting a giallo film, but there is a bitter, cynical
twist at the ending that I thought was a nice final touch.
I
can’t really recommend Naked Girl Killed
in the Park. There are some enjoyable moments, namely the licentiousness
that goes on at the family estate and the opening death sequence in the
carnival, which is the film’s finest. It also might be worth watching for a
performance from Thunderball’s Adolfo
Celi as a constantly bumbling inspector who pretty much never gets anything
right and provides plenty of unintentional laughs. Afonsio Brescia doesn’t do
anything breathtaking in the director’s chair and there are some truly awkward,
clumsy scenes are awkward and clumsy. It’s not one of my favorite giallo films,
but if you’d like to see it, it’s available
on DVD in a real bargain basement edition from Desert Island Films.
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