(1975)
Dir - Luigi Cozzi
Overall: MEH
A quasi-giallo from Dario Argento collaborator Luigi Cozzi, The Killer Must Kill Again, (L'assassino è costretto ad uccidere ancora, The Dark Is Death's Friend), has sleazy characters doing sleazy things, but it does not adhere to many of the sub-genre's tropes. An adaptation of Giorgio Scerbanenco's novel Al mare con la ragazza, George Hilton plays a scumbag husband who figures out a way to get rid of his wife so that he can inherit all of her money and continue sleeping around with whoever he wants. This plan involves Antoine Saint-John doing the dirty deed, but of course things go awry and the bulk of the movie turns into an uneventful chase to catch-up with the thrill-seeking couple that stole the killer's car which inconveniently has Hilton's wife's body in the trunk. There is some suspense generated from the characters almost getting busted and Saint-John makes for an unnerving and emotionless psycho, but the story has no mystery, Cozzi's presentation has no flash, and the drawn-out ending is nothing to write home about.
(1977)
Dir - Antonio Bido
Overall: MEH
Though it boasts inventive and brutal kill scenes plus the most blatantly Suspiria-esque musical score in any giallo, Antonio Bido's full-length debut Watch Me When I Kill, (Il gatto dagli occhi di giada, The Cat with the Jade Eyes, The Cat's Victims, Terror in the Lagoon, The Vote of Death), suffers from drab pacing and a dull story. Kicking-off with the usual motif of somebody witnessing a murder and then becoming the target of the killer, it features a guy accidentally getting his throat sliced, an old man in a bathtub getting strangled with the shower hose while listening to opera, and best of all, a woman who gets her face cooked in an oven. Under the guise of Trans Europa Express, Mauro Lusini and Gianfranco Coletta's music is textbook for the genre and the main theme is far more creepy than the material deserves. Besides the flashy murders, the plot is aggressively monotonous as Corrado Pani's private dick protagonist slowly smirks his way around trying to protect his previous ladyfriend, eliminating possible suspects, and looking as Charles Bronsony as possible in the process. The killer reveal is dished out with a hefty explanation because of course, but there is no sexual angle to the murders for a change and the closing shot is more sad than extravagant.
(1978)
Dir - Giuseppe Rosati
Overall: MEH
Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Rosati closed out his career with the giallo The Perfect Crime, (Indagine su un delitto perfetto); a sufficient if unremarkable entry in the sub-genre. Headed by a recognizable cast including Adolfo Celi, Alida Vali, Paul Müller, Gloria Guida, and token American Joseph Cotten, someone dies in a plane crash, someone is presumed to have died in a car crash, and several more people who are tied into a globally powerful company also die, directing suspicion everywhere and giving the police inspectors a splitting headache trying to decipher such convoluted plotting. The wacky details are fun to a point and Cotten's demise is a unique one in that the killer gets him by fatally triggering his pacemaker, but the presentation is played more straight than sleazy. It is a lot of humdrum pitter-patter from all involved, plus Rosati exhibits zero pizzazz from behind the lens. Rare for Euro-trash where there were usually many cooks in the kitchen, Rosati received sole screenwriting credit, but he seems to have gotten carried away with the Agatha Christie framework and forgot to emphasize the fiendish set pieces or unintentionally goofy misogyny. In other words, it checks off all of the boxes yet does not indulge in any of them, so one is not likely to remember it amongst the hordes of better, worse, and more ridiculous giallos out there.
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