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The American racer (Carroll Baker) is told to avoid stress following a crash, the joke is that attempts to curb drinking and smoking point her instead toward murder. From Rome to the Balearic Islands at the invitation of the oil baroness (Anna Proclemer), their point of contact is the tanned gigolo (Jean Sorel) who has got draining and dumping sugar mamas down to a fine art. "You're a typical European male: Selfish, amoral and corrupt, who couldn't care less about our puritanism." The women conspire to off the playboy, but when the time comes it's Proclemer who gets tossed in with the seaweed. Besieged by a vacationing judge named Duchamp (Luis Dávila) and a snooping stepdaughter (Marina Coffa), the guilty couple try to keep their cool in between boudoir sessions. "Be careful. A woman in love can do anything." A pleasing bit of grime spread over glossy surfaces, an Umberto Lenzi specialty. Racetracks and discotheques are throwaway diversions for the hollow bourgeoisie, only killing seems to bring life to their glassy eyes—distressed with cocked rifle in hand, the teen ingénue is reassured of the therapeutic side of a firing range: "Shooting pigeons frees us from our unconscious aggressiveness." Les Diaboliques to start with, Rebecca for incriminating evidence imprinted on home movies. Youth is inquisitive but corruptible amid the shifting alliances, the heiress blooms into a nubile vulturette posed like a bewigged reflection as the heroine faces the mirror. Chekhov's harpoon gun, limestone caverns lit up like Bava frames, credits played through a psychedelic negative filter for Fauvist smears. On the edge of the precipice, up the tower and finally down to the ocean for a capper out of Clément's Purple Noon. "Only diseases kill with impunity." With Lisa Halvorsen, Alberto Dalbés, Hugo Blanco, and Jacques Stany.
--- Fernando F. Croce |