THE FOURTH VICTIM
(1971)
Dir - Eugenio Martín
Overall: MEH
Scheming women up to heaven knows what in Eugenio Martín's The Fourth Victim, (La última señora Anderson, Death at the Deep End of the Swimming Pool, The Fourth Mrs. Anderson); an Italian/Spanish co-production and one of several giallos to star Carroll Baker. While it is as convoluted in its mystery as any from the sub-genre, it actually adheres to few other giallo trademarks. This also renders it almost vacant on action as there are only two deaths, neither of them are murders, and they bookend the roughly ninety-minute running time. In between all of that we have Michael Craig acting indifferent over the fact that his wives keep dying while José Luis López Vázquez's police inspector, (equipped with an Irish accent in the English dub), persistently suspects him of foul play. Of course this proves to be red herring as Baker and Euro-scream queen Marina Malfatti are the actual ladies that have either dubious or mentally unbalanced intentions, though neither of them are given convincing motivation for such traits. The plotting is dreadfully sluggish as well as awkwardly rushed and confused in its final moments, plus Martín's direction is completely void of flare.
(1972)
Dir - Ferdinando Merighi
Overall: MEH
The second of only three directorial efforts from Ferdinando Merighi, The French Sex Murders, (Casa d'appuntamento, House of Rendezvous, The Bogey Man and the French Murders, Meurtre dans la 17e avenue), is sleazy and unremarkable despite some interesting details. Star power wise, horror regulars Howard Vernon and Rosalba Neri are significantly featured, Euro bombshell Anita Ekberg has a minor role as a brothel owner, and professional Humphrey Bogart look-alike Robert Sacchi plays the police inspector with trench coat and cigarette in tow. Merighi's direction is nothing to write home about and is mostly flat and lacking in energy, plus some of the shot construction and editing is sloppily handled. Plenty violent, the gore is a mixed bag as the severed limbs and tomato soup blood look hilariously cheap and gaudy, yet the murders have a brutality to them that is amusing in an exploitative sense. The final kill scene of the film sees the murderer beheading one woman, stabbing another, and then strangling and eye-gouging a third all in rapid succession of each other. Otherwise though, it is flatly structured and offers little to the well-worn giallo formula.
(1975)
Dir - Alessandro Santini
Overall: WOOF
On paper, the pairing of a Nazi-atrocity-inspired mad scientist scheme, police procedural, and a budding romance between two doctors, (all of which is done under the guise of a giallo), should wield something less insufferably dull than writer/director Alessandro Santini's third film La pelle sotto gli artigli, (The Skin Under the Claws). The problem lies almost entirely on the shoulders of Santini's wretchedly uninspired direction. Brimful of stagnant wide-shots, Santini makes the common mistake of amateur-level filmmakers by simply setting up his camera and letting the actors say all of their lines before cutting to the very next scene where either the same characters or a few new ones also stand in frame so that they can say slight variations of the same dialog again. This goes on and on with the grisly details of character actor Gordon Mitchell's murders are merely talked about instead of shown, until the last few minutes where we finally witness his laughably stupid torture dungeon which is all in the name of science and mating live people with dead body parts or something. The final scene is a hoot for anyone unlucky enough to still be paying attention, but the movie is a lazy embarrassment for all involved and one that comes off as if the entire personnel in the production was barely interesting in what they were even doing in the first place.
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